Salient: paying the price for media freedom

Matt Nippert has an op-ed in this morning's Herald which makes clear exactly what was at stake in VUW's efforts to suppress Salient:

A hypothetical example should suffice in illustrating how worrying a precedent this case may have set.

Imagine if Michael Cullen, beavering away in Cabinet, produced a document proposing that all tax rates be raised by a uniform 10 per cent. Imagine if these papers were leaked to the Herald, and a justifiably outraged front page was drawn up.

Then imagine Government agents arriving at the printers and locking all 230,000 copies of the paper away in a mysterious vault (that presumably also houses the surplus).

A hyperbolical example to be sure, but a great many important stories, both here and overseas, have relied on leaks to reach the public domain.

The transcript of Iraena Asher's final 111 call was leaked to TV3, starkly illustrating deep flaws in our emergency response system.

The Winebox case, illustrating widespread corporate fraud, was named after the box containing leaked documents that was delivered to Winston Peters.

In the United States in 1971, leaked Pentagon Papers exposed the fact that even the military hierarchy believed the war in Vietnam to be unwinnable.

And you can hardly go past that little case called Watergate.

If Victoria University's injunction had been upheld, it would have set a precedent which could then have been used to suppress any story based on leaked information - and thus prevent the media from effectively holding those in power (be they government or business) to account. That is a prospect which should frighten us all - and particularly the media, who rely on leaks in order to do their job. And yet, as Frogblog points out, the media voices who screamed over the Dunne decision mostly remained silent. Instead, it was left to a motley collection of students to defend the freedom which makes their job - and democratic society - possible.

Those students now get to pay the price for VUW's ham-fisted attempt at censorship: $8000. The least Fairfax, APN and TVNZ could do is chip in to help pay it...