Nowhere has this been more keenly felt than in newsrooms around the world. The dreadful events in France have even percolated through our little newsroom here in Nowra, where our journalists have spoken about their role in reporting the news and the efforts of some less enlightened people in the community to either impose restrictions on them or try to dictate what goes in the newspaper and what prominence it should be given.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott, himself a former journalist, said: “It would be a travesty if we were robust in our criticism of everything except that which might do us harm.

“We have to be prepared to speak up for our beliefs. We have to be prepared to call things as we see them.

“Of course from time to time people will be upset, offended, insulted, humiliated. As a politician I sometimes pick up the paper and think, ‘My God, this is so unfair’ but it is all part of a free society.

“It is all part of understanding things better: the clash of ideas, the ability of people to speak very robustly to each other.

“Sure, we would like it to be polite but where it is not, so be it, because in the end the cornerstone of progress is free speech.”

As journalists in a democracy, our responsibility is to report the news and hold power to account. Mercifully, in this country to date, we have not faced the kind of violence meted in other parts of the world. We are not kidnapped, tortured or gunned down in our offices. Our job is so much easier than that of reporters in conflict zones or countries where extremism has charted new fields of violence.

We take very seriously our duty to our readers to report the news as we see it, to chronicle the life of the community we serve and to carry the broad range of opinions that help our democracy to decide its own future.