Skip to content

Taking Liberties With the Press

When

Event Status

One of the world’s largest and most powerful media dynasties threatens to unravel after a scandal that has veered from high to low drama and back again. The scandal may well permanently reshape the media landscape in the UK, where phone hacking may have been more widespread than previously reported, and where senior government and police figures find themselves compromised. Meanwhile, sections of the US media will be carefully monitoring the progress of an FBI investigation into allegations of hacking into the phones of 9/11 victims and their families, while rumours persist of a ‘black ops’ room at Fox News.

Just as Australia was shielded from the worst of the global financial crisis, so too do the worst excesses of the British phone-hacking scandal seem to have bypassed us, if only by dint of our relative smallness. Some would wish it were not so: amid calls for media inquiries and privacy-protection legislation, it seems the local media configuration may not be left unexamined.

Join a panel of leading media commentators and analysts as the process of teasing out the implications of Hackgate begins in earnest. We’ll take a look at what the phone-hacking scandal means for the media locally and abroad.

Featuring

Richard Ackland

Richard Ackland is a journalist, editor and solicitor with a track record of more than 30 years in journalism and publishing. Richard’s early career was spent in the print media, specialising in finance. He was Canberra correspondent for the Australian Financial Review in the 70s. He went on to ho... Read more

Mark Day

Mark Day is a veteran journalist and commentator on media matters for The Australia. Mark’s career began in 1960 at the Adelaide News, later covering state and federal politics. He was a News Limited foreign correspondent in New York in the late 1960s and on his return edited the Sunday Mail in Ad... Read more

Margaret Simons

Margaret Simons is Associate Professor in the School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University. In 2015, she won the Walkley Award for Social Equity Journalism. Her recent books include Six Square Metres, Self-Made Man: The Kerry Stokes Story, What’s Next in Journalism?, Journalism at ... Read more

Rod Tiffen

Rodney Tiffen is Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His most recent book is Rupert Murdoch. A Reassessment (2014).  He is co-author, with Ross Gittins, of How Australia Compares. Rod’s teaching and research interests are in the ... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

More details

Stay up to date with our upcoming events and special announcements by subscribing to The Wheeler Centre's mailing list.

Privacy Policy

The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.