Some of the largest media companies have joined together to form a coalition to fight what they see as a gradual decline in free speech.

News Ltd’s chief executive, John Hartigan joined the heads of seven other media organisations including Austereo CEO and head of Commercial Radio Australia, Michael Anderson to explain the decline in free speech and to announce a plan to tackle the problem. The group will be called “Australia’s Right to Know coalition”.

Hartigan told the Sydney Morning Herald that the coalition was concerned that freedom of information laws were “at risk of becoming an oxymoron”, courts were increasingly suppressing information, sedition laws were curtailing expression in the media and the arts, and that Australians could be detained without charge.

“We’re now tangled up with more than 500 legal prohibitions that limit the release of public information.

“Many of these laws were introduced with good intention but, taken cumulatively, they represent a very, very significant threat.”

The coalition comprises News Ltd, Fairfax Media, the ABC, Free TV Australia, SBS, Sky News, Commercial Radio Australia and AAP.

The group will begin by a commission a study of threats to free speech and expression and will then disseminate the report to the public prior to the federal election.

The group gave a list of examples that they believe demonstrate an erosion of free speech in Australia. One of the examples was that there are now more than 1000 court suppression orders in place at any one time compared with 100 at a time a decade ago.

Commenting in his own masthead, The Australian, Hartigan added: “Our freedom of speech is not free, certainly as much as we would wish it to be and the slide, if anything, is accelerating.”