Imprisoned whistleblower David McBride spoke to the Walkley Awards ceremony, Australia’s Pulitzers, in a nationally-televised address that was a challenge to the authorities who jailed him. Consortium News was there.
Imprisoned whistleblower David McBride speaking from jail to Walkley Awards ceremony on Tuesday. (Cathy Vogan still from Walkley feed)
David McBride, a former military lawyer deployed to Afghanistan, is in prison for exposing Australian war crimes there to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which broadcast last night’s Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism event. Here is our video report (17 min) from CN Live! producer Cathy Vogan who attended the event in Sydney for Consortium News.
Australian whistleblower Richard Boyle also spoke. Walkley Foundation Chair Adele Ferguson acknowledged that the suffering of these men lay behind great journalism and the judging board chair, Sally Neighbour, called on Australia’s Attorney General Mark Dreyfus to deliver on proper whistleblower protection, as he has promised.
Journalist Andrew Fowler, a frequent guest on CN Live!, won a Walkley for his new book Nuked: The Submarine Fiasco that Sank Australia’s Sovereignty, about the controversial Australian submarine deal with the U.S. and U.K.
At the event, Karen Percy, federal president of the media section of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), Australia’s journalist union, celebrated the release from prison this summer of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, and told the crowd of several hundred journalists it was time to stand together against tyrannical forces that would define and suppress journalism. (Video 4 min.)
At an event for McBride earlier this month in Brisbane, John Shipton, Assange’s father, blasted U.S. policy in Afghanistan while praising McBride for exposing Australian war crimes.
Cathy Vogan was there too and filed this (25 min) video report:
Cathy Vogan is a filmmaker and executive producer of CN Live!
i can only admire the courage of all whistleblowers,
the perseverance of their supporters who help them
face the injustices they endure as they intend to right
wrongs, intend to correct blatant system failures in
order to IMPROVE the systems, not to bring them down,
and their willingness to do so at a high personal cost.
i can only admire and THANK them and hope that
public pressure will help all of them regain their so
well-deserved FREEDOM.
thanks to mr shipton, too, for reminding us to “generate warmth!”,
to appeal to our representatives’ skills – rather than bash them –
in order to, hopefully, achieve our goals for the COMMON GOOD,
and to clean out the loads of rot created by the selfishness, greed
and endless indifference of the supposedly “chosen few” …
Someone is messing with CN again. Videos are not available. I started watching the first one without an issue earlier. No longer possible.
It’s working now.