Redacted pages.

AUSTRALIAN newspapers on Monday made a powerful statement against state censorship. In a coordinated campaign, they published identical, redacted front pages accompanied by a question: 'When government keeps the truth from you, what are they covering?' The media industry in that country has been in an uproar since several months over raids by police on a journalist's residence and the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to recover leaked documents that had provided material for an expose published in 2018. The story blew the lid off plans for an Australian intelligence agency to be given unprecedented powers to spy on the country's citizens, and was deeply embarrassing for the government. The development comes amid a climate of increasing restrictions on the media's right to access information, particularly on grounds of national security.

This is a growing trend across the globe, with governments treating freedom of speech and the right to information as a privilege they bestow on their citizens. The pretext of 'national security' in a post-9/11 world is particularly useful, being an amorphous concept that can be made to fit any inconvenient truth and throttle independent reportage. This is naturally par for the course in countries with dictatorial regimes where the leadership is unaccountable and whose workings are closed to media scrutiny. Worryingly, however...