The Source and the Surveillance: Annika Smethurst on Committing Acts of Journalism.
In June 2019 federal police raided NewsCorp journalist Annika Smethurt’s home and seized material for her story about government plans to increase surveillance of the Australian people. All charges against Smethurst have since been dropped; the raid appears to have been a naked attempt to uncover her source. In association with the 4th CIJ Logan Symposium, Smethurst talks about her experience and its implications for journalists everywhere to the Director of the CIJ James Harkin.
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Annika Smethurst
James Harkin
- 11 July 2020 10.00–11.15
Reporting and The Surveillance State
Richard Norton-Taylor, veteran, much-garlanded national security reporter and author of The State of Secrecy: Spies and the Media in Britain, came (virtually) to the CIJ for an informal conversation with CIJ Director James Harkin about his experience as a reporter for the Guardian and the challenges faced by investigative journalists, the development of the national security state and the pace of its surveillance apparatus, and, after his pioneering work on verbatim theatre, the crucial importance of new kinds of documentary storytelling.