Greg Barns writing in www.crikey.com.au yesterday gives Mick Keelty a well-deserved serve.
"Are there two Mick Keeltys? Last night a man calling himself Mick Keelty and claiming to be the Australian Federal Police Commissioner told a Sydney audience that he wants a black-out of all media coverage of terrorism investigations and cases. This Mr Keelty claims that police records of interviews are being leaked to the media to help the person under investigation get public sympathy. And this Mr Keelty thinks there should be a secret society of editors that he and his fellow security agency heads can brief, on an off-the-record basis, so that matters are set straight.
Now, let's turn to the other person who calls himself Mick Keelty and who also claims to be the nation's top cop. This is the Mick Keelty who revels in media publicity about terrorism cases, whose organisation leaks to the media and who runs a police force which wrongly accused a Gold Coast Indian doctor of terrorism offences (besmirched his name in the media in the meantime).
Could the real Mick Keelty please stand up? Is it the man calling for media black-outs and secret briefings, or is it the man who uses the media relentlessly to chase his quarry? The evidence suggests it's the latter."
"Aunty ABC" took a more measured approach which canvasses similar views.
"After taking sustained criticism for the Australian Federal Police's handling of the Mohamed Haneef saga, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty has gone on the front foot to defend his organisation's handling of terrorism cases.
In a speech to the Sydney Institute last night, Mr Keelty took a swipe at media coverage of such cases, saying it is often uninformed and gives an incorrect perception that the AFP is failing in its duties.
But lawyers and journalists involved in the Mohamed Haneef case say Mr Keelty is simply shooting the messenger in what they say is a crude attempt to regain credibility for the AFP.
When Mr Keelty addressed the Sydney Institute last night, he had a few things he wanted to get off his chest.
"For most people, their sole source of knowledge regarding the AFP's counter terrorism investigations is in the mass media," he said.
"As such, it would be perfectly understandable if they mistakenly thought or held the belief that the AFP has failed the community.'-------
The Australian newspaper's Hedley Thomas won Australian journalism's highest award, the Gold Walkley, for his coverage of the Mohamed Haneef affair. He describes Mr Keelty's reasoning in the speech as strange.
"On the one hand he was saying that defendants and suspects deserve a much better go in the court of public opinion, as he described it, and that the media should treat them more kindly," he said.
"But the facts are that in the Mohamed Haneef case and others, it's been the police, the security agencies and the politicians using police information, that have smeared the character of the suspects before they have even been charged."
Dr Haneef's barrister, Stephen Keim, is equally perplexed with Mr Keelty's views about media coverage of AFP operations."
ABC News report yesterday:
