Herald-Sun journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus face jail for refusing to reveal the key source of an article that caused Government embarrassment. The Canberra-based journalists remained tight-lipped as the prosecution of senior public servant Desmond Patrick Kelly, charged with leaking the information, continued in the Melbourne County Court on Tuesday. Attacks on press freedom are becoming all too familiar as was highlighted in the Alliance’s Press Freedom Report, launched earlier this year. This is yet another example of an increasingly concerning trend where journalists and their sources are being intimidated from speaking out.

Old Parliament House is developing a new interpretive exhibition and for the first time the House of Representatives Press Gallery will be open to the public. While researchers have gathered material such as personal correspondence, newspaper clippings and oral histories, they need your help to collect more objects associated with working in the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

Germany’s Association of Journalists (DJV) has urged the German competition watchdog, the Federal Cartel Office, to block a merger between Germany’s best-selling newspaper with its biggest TV company. They say the merger will have ‘disastrous’ effects for diversity of public opinion, creating an ‘opinion monopoly’.

The International Federation of Journalists has written to John Howard, protesting the Government’s proposals to undermine existing levels of employment protection. IFJ general secretary Aidan White said plans to abolish unfair dismissal laws and the proliferation of individual agreements within media organisations will “reduce morale within the media industry and compromise the atmosphere of professionalism on which independent journalism thrives.”