P&I can pursue important issues early and keep publishing when others look away because it answers to readers, not powerful interests. One week into the August fundraiser, that community has already taken us almost 20 per cent towards our target.
In a former life, I was responsible for media and communications at the Australian National University.
My favourite part of that job was waking each day to hear familiar voices on the radio helping us all understand the events of the day – whether it was the Fukushima nuclear disaster, what to do in a white-powder scare, or another political upheaval.
Lately, it has been déjà vu all over again.
This week, ABC’s Four Corners ran a shocking exposé of a computer algorithm distorting the aged care system. Except that, for P&I readers, it wasn’t quite such an exposé. The leading expert in the field, Kathy Eagar, wrote about technology trumping human judgement back in July.
And this is no coincidence. In fact, it is a pattern.
The AUKUS deal has been in the news this week too, with former politician and Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett and his crowdfunded-inquiry leading the charge. Except that, for P&I readers, the scrutiny began the moment the deal was inked in September 2021.
Over five years, P&I authors have examined the flaws in the technology, the difficulty of actually delivering the submarines, the skyrocketing costs and the implications for Australian sovereignty.
Many of those same questions are now being raked over by the inquiry.
On this and many other issues, P&I authors have consistently been ahead of the curve. Not because we spend our time trying to be “first”, but because we focus on important issues that are too often ignored or skated past elsewhere, and lay down a foundation of fact and informed argument. On AUKUS, P&I authors have been making many of the arguments now at the centre of a much wider reconsideration of the deal – by almost everyone, it seems, except the Federal Government.
There is another kind of independence too: the willingness to keep publishing when there is pressure to look away.
On the genocide in Palestine, there has been heavy pressure to stay silent or mask the truth. P&I has covered it consistently from day one and will continue to do so.
Jewish Australians of extraordinary moral courage, such as Robert Manne and Sara Dowse, along with dozens of others, have shared their grief and shame as the State of Israel continues its murderous campaign.
So why is P&I different? Well, we can afford to be – not because we are backed by big power or big dollars, but precisely because we are not.
We are independent because we are not reliant on funding from governments, big business or lobby groups. We do not have to toe the line or tip-toe around anyone. We serve no-one apart from you, our readers and our growing P&I community.
And that means we rely on your financial support.
At the end of the first week of our August fundraising campaign, the response from readers has been extraordinary. 150 of you have become first-time regular donors, 200 have increased existing donations, and another 275 have made one-off contributions.
That generosity is humbling, and means we’re already almost 20 per cent of the way towards our $250,000 target.
As with all we do, this first week has given us a strong base. The challenge now is to build on the momentum you have created and raise the money that allows P&I to keep doing what I’ve described above – publishing independent expertise, pursuing important issues long before they become fashionable, and refusing to look away when others do.
If you can, please consider a regular contribution of $10, $20 or $50 a month – or whatever amount works for you. It genuinely makes a difference.
The P&I community is determined and generous. Thank you for making this work possible.
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Catriona Jackson is the Chief Executive and Editor of Pearls and Irritations.