tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/julian-disney-5058/articlesJulian Disney – The Conversation2015-07-20T04:07:03Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/448412015-07-20T04:07:03Z2015-07-20T04:07:03ZPress Council chief fires parting shot at News Corp<p>Professor Julian Disney, who stepped down in February 2015 after five years as chair of the Australian Press Council, has delivered a sharp rebuke to News Corp for “serious misrepresentations” and “extravagant criticism” of Press Council adjudications and processes.</p>
<p>The rebuke is contained in his foreword to the Press Council’s 2013-2014 <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/other-publications/">annual report</a>. The report was placed on its website this month.</p>
<p>Disney sets his criticism in the broader context of “freedom of speech and of the press” and precedes it by these more general remarks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… Powerful interests in government, business or the media … should not use their freedom of speech to gravely damage, even destroy, other people’s freedom of speech. It is especially important that powerful publications do not abuse their freedom of speech in this way by, for example, repeatedly and seriously misrepresenting what a person has said, especially if it also denies the person a reasonable opportunity to correct the misrepresentation.</p>
<p>A publication that engages repeatedly and flagrantly in practices of this kind cannot credibly claim to be a supporter of free speech, except perhaps for people with whom it agrees or from whom it seeks support.</p>
<p>Some of the greatest obstacles to achieving and sustaining genuine freedom of speech are extremism and hypocrisy by people that prominently propound it and have privileged opportunities to exercise it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Referring then specifically to News Corp, Disney says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Serious misrepresentations of Council adjudications or other processes have appeared prominently in several of its major publications in recent years, sometimes accompanied by extravagant criticism. On occasion, the Council has sought to correct the record by a published letter to the editor. But this approach rarely achieves adequate rectifications of prominent misrepresentations, especially if the publication then repeats them rather than acknowledging them.</p>
<p>On another occasion, its national newspaper [The Australian] refused to co-operate with the Council’s complaints work for several months in protest about the handling of a particular adjudication. The recent incidents have rekindled concerns about the depth of commitment to a genuinely independent and effective Council.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Campbell Reid, group editorial director of News Corp and a newspaper industry nominee on the Press Council, was invited to comment on these remarks, but said he was unable to help. </p>
<p>Reid was not in an easy position. In 2011, the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation – the <a href="https://theconversation.com/finkelstein-review-calls-for-new-statutory-regulator-to-oversee-media-5676">Finkelstein Inquiry</a> – received a submission from News Corp asserting its commitment to the Press Council and supporting a range of measures taken under Disney’s leadership to strengthen its effectiveness. That was a time when the newspaper companies faced what they thought was a clear and present danger of genuinely external accountability being imposed on them by the government.</p>
<p>But the danger passed. The Gillard government’s communications minister, Stephen Conroy, made a hash of the reform process. It disappeared under the 2013 Rudd-Gillard leadership avalanche.</p>
<h2>A shift from support to attack</h2>
<p>Emboldened by this liberation, in 2014 News Corp embarked on a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/19/news-corps-conveniently-shifting-opinions">sustained attack</a> on Disney and his chairmanship of the Press Council.</p>
<p>The attack consisted of the standard News Corp tactics of ridiculing the person, creating stories where no story really existed, promoting these stories well beyond any objective assessment of their news value, and publishing associated editorial commentary prosecuting the underlying agenda driving the exercise in the first place.</p>
<p>Disney was accused of “activism” and <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/press-councils-mission-creep/story-e6frg71x-1227023565317">“mission creep”</a>. Puns on his name suggested he was presiding over some kind of <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/press-council-in-disneyland/story-e6frg75f-1226657314748">cartoonish operation</a> that was not to be taken seriously. </p>
<p>There were vague threats that News Corp might withdraw from the council. Since the company contributes about 45% of the council’s funding, this was no idle consideration.</p>
<p>During the dispute over the complaint that led to The Australian’s refusal to co-operate for several months, efforts by the council and Disney personally to have the newspaper acknowledge its misrepresentations were unavailing.</p>
<p>This says something about the unequal power relationship between a newspaper and any citizen who wishes to challenge it. If the chair of the newspaper self-regulator can’t get effective redress, what hope is there for the less powerful in society?</p>
<p>It also says something about the hypocrisy of an organisation that purported to support Disney’s reforming zeal when it suited – and in Reid’s case to lay claim to being an architect with Disney of the much-needed strengthening of Press Council processes – and then repudiated him when the need had passed.</p>
<p>Disney’s successor as Press Council chair is David Weisbrot, emeritus professor of law and honorary professor of medicine at the University of Sydney, and a part-time commissioner of the NSW Law Reform Commission.</p>
<p>Weisbrot has taken over at a time when the Press Council’s relationship with its largest funder is under strain. It will be interesting to observe how this plays out in the longer term.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller was a consultant to the Finkelstein Inquiry.</span></em></p>If the chair of the newspaper self-regulator can’t get effective redress, what hope is there for the less powerful in society?Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371562015-02-04T04:52:37Z2015-02-04T04:52:37ZMaking media accountable to the public bolsters press freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71010/original/image-20150204-25520-17w0m84.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Julian Disney is preparing to depart as chairman of the Australian Press Council after five years in the role.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Julian Disney, the outgoing chair of the Australian Press Council, made a singularly powerful argument in his <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/uploads/52321/ufiles/Press_Council_Chair_addresses_the_National_Press_Club.pdf">valedictory speech</a> to the National Press Club on Wednesday: that freedom of the press is strengthened, not weakened, by effective public accountability.</p>
<p>Discussing press freedom, Disney said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The council’s main and unique contribution to the cause of press freedom is its core work of developing standards of media practice and responding to complaints about possible breaches.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In doing so, Disney put his finger on something that the media industry is unwilling or incapable of accepting: press freedom ultimately depends on public legitimacy, and that legitimacy rests in part on public accountability. The industry’s attitude to this was vividly illustrated by its <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/finkelstein-report-medias-great-divide/story-e6frg996-1226295437607">reaction</a> to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/1205_finkelstein.pdf">Finkelstein inquiry</a> into press regulation in 2012. Finkelstein and others who espoused the view that there should be meaningful media accountability were Stalinists bent on censorship.</p>
<p>As Disney also recounted, the spectre of external regulation – as Finkelstein recommended – spooked the newspaper companies into <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/apc-update-issue-7/">boosting their funding</a> for the Press Council. At the same time, they also agreed to set funding levels at least three years in advance, to give four years’ notice of any intention to withdraw from the council and to remove themselves from membership of the complaints adjudication panels.</p>
<p>Set against the troubled history of the Press Council – littered with arbitrary withdrawals of membership and cuts to funding, threatened and actual – these seemingly modest achievements are quite significant. They reflect not only the pressure brought about by the Finkelstein inquiry, but Disney’s robust and determined leadership.</p>
<p>Over the past two years in particular, Disney has endured a sustained and highly personalised campaign by News Corp against his chairmanship. That company’s newspapers took to calling the Press Council <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/press-council-in-disneyland/story-e6frg75f-1226657314748">“Disneyland”</a> as they ridiculed and misrepresented Disney’s reforms.</p>
<p>Disney named no names in his speech, but the target of some of his remarks was clear to anyone who has followed the history. For example, when speaking about the Press Council’s independence and integrity, he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Above all, the council must not be diverted from meeting the responsibilities that it, including its major publisher members, has solemnly assured the public it will fulfil. If honouring these commitments meets fierce attack from a powerful voice or voices in the industry, the council will need to continue standing firm.</p>
<p>Potential estrangement or loss of a dissident publisher, no matter how powerful, cannot justify deceiving the public and disadvantaging the other publishers who will continue to respect council processes and decisions, even when not agreeing with them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a similar vein, Disney had this to say about freedom of speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The freedom should not be largely the preserve of powerful interests in government, business or the ranks of publishers. These powerful interests also should not use their freedom of speech to gravely damage – even destroy – other people’s freedom of speech.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was especially important that freedom of the press was not abused by, for example, repeatedly and seriously misrepresenting what a person had said, or by abusing or intimidating a person with whose views it disagreed. Disney said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If a publication repeatedly and flagrantly engages in these kinds of practices, can it credibly portray itself as a supporter of free speech? Or is it only a supporter of free speech for people with whom it agrees or from whom it seeks support?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>News Corp will not like this, nor will it like Disney’s advocacy of a series of reforms that it continues to oppose. Among them is the increased use by the Press Council of the power to investigate possible serious breaches of its standards even when there has been no specific complaint, but where it is important to clarify publicly whether there has been a breach.</p>
<p>There was a strong case to do this in the aftermath of the Lindt Café siege in Sydney in December 2014. Among some otherwise excellent media coverage, there were some serious <a href="https://theconversation.com/news-corps-siege-coverage-built-on-a-take-no-prisoners-culture-35656">breaches of privacy</a>, exemplified by the exploitation of people’s Facebook content.</p>
<p>Respect for privacy has been one of the priority issues for the Press Council under Disney’s chairmanship. He spoke of the increased threats to privacy arising from digital technology:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a common belief in the media that if a photograph is taken in or from a place to which the public has access, there is necessarily no breach of privacy. But the true test is whether the relevant place and activity meant that the person had a reasonable expectation of privacy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Consistent with this view, Disney has presided over – and driven – the development of a new set of specific standards to flesh out the Press Council’s <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/statements-of-principles/">general principles</a>. One was concerned with the protection of hospital patients from media intrusions; another was on the coverage of suicides.</p>
<p>Work has started on the burgeoning conflicts of interest arising from so-called “content marketing” or <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/native-advertising">“native advertising”</a>, where paid advertising is embedded and disguised in what appears to be news content.</p>
<p>So, as Disney acknowledged, there is still much to do. For all its weaknesses, the Press Council is the best Australia has by way of an accountability mechanism for newspapers. He leaves it noticeably stronger than he found it. </p>
<p>Disney’s calls for further reform deserve to be heeded with the same determined sense of purpose he brought to the job.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Julian Disney, the outgoing chair of the Australian Press Council, made a singularly powerful argument in his valedictory speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday: that freedom of the press is strengthened…Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129632013-03-22T01:20:49Z2013-03-22T01:20:49ZMedia reforms a historic opportunity missed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21599/original/4jsvhcb3-1363913819.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">After Conroy's media reforms failed to find any standing, where does media regulation go from here?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To get an idea of how big an opportunity the federal government missed with its <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-21/labor-pushes-media-reforms-as-mps-tap-rudd/4585436">shambolic attempt at media reform</a>, consider this: the last federal minister to achieve any substantive reform of media self-regulation was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moss_Cass">Dr Moss Cass</a>, Minister for the Media in the Whitlam Government 38 years ago.</p>
<p>Dr Cass, now aged 86, did it by provocation. In August 1975 he issued a media release saying that the establishment of an <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a> was “desirable and practicable”. For debate only – and not part of his recommendation for a press council – he set out other options for media accountability. They included the establishment of an Australian Newspaper Commission, a kind of print version of the ABC, and – most provocatively of all – a press licensing system.</p>
<p>The newspaper proprietors did the usual thing: they went ballistic. Dr Cass put out another media release in which he said his proposal for a press council had been subjected to “bizarre distortion and hysterical over-reaction”. Some things never change.</p>
<p>But he had scared the proprietors, and now they decided to act. In November 1975 they announced the formation of the Australian Press Council.</p>
<p>Straightaway it ran into one of the biggest problems that Senator Stephen Conroy tried this week to fix: the propensity of the newspaper companies to come and go from the Council as they please – or to not join at all. <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fairfax-sir-warwick-oswald-12475">Sir Warwick Fairfax</a>, then chairman of what is now Fairfax Media, majestically dismissed the Council’s invitation:</p>
<p>“We not only decline to join the Council, we believe that in principle the formation of such a Council was not in the interests of the ideals and aims which newspapers pursue …”</p>
<p>This is of course the self-same Press Council now held up by the newspaper companies as the soul of self-regulatory virtue.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/speeches/2013_-_minister_speeches/005">Conroy tried</a> to overcome the weakness inherent in voluntary membership of the Press Council by introducing a law saying that the newspaper companies must join an approved self-regulatory body or lose their immunity from the operations of the Privacy Act, something they value highly for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, he messed this up in two ways.</p>
<p>First he opened the possibility that there could be any number of press councils, a ludicrous proposition which would have created endless complexity for the public and self-destructive fragmentation for any system of accountability.</p>
<p>After much behind-the-scenes negotiation, it was proposed that the existing Press Council be the sole accountability body, and the breakaway council formed by <a href="http://www.sevenwestmedia.com.au/">Seven West Media</a> – with the Orwellian name of the Independent Media Council – be grandfathered.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21600/original/vkk92qqz-1363914255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21600/original/vkk92qqz-1363914255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21600/original/vkk92qqz-1363914255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21600/original/vkk92qqz-1363914255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21600/original/vkk92qqz-1363914255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21600/original/vkk92qqz-1363914255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21600/original/vkk92qqz-1363914255.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Professor Julian Disney, Head of the Australian Press Council, speaks at an inquiry into the media reforms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, Conroy proposed to place the approval and monitoring of this accountability body in the hands of a single part-time public servant appointed by the Minister, the so-called <a href="http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013B00047">Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA)</a>. Such an office would have lacked any real independence, being dependent on the Minister’s department for resources as well as being in thrall to the Minister for tenure.</p>
<p>More behind-the-scenes negotiation led to various proposals for beefing up the independence of this office, including the creation of a panel in place of a single PIMA and its appointment by a committee of the great and good, similar to the process used for appointing the board of the ABC.</p>
<p>By this time, though, two of the independents – Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie – had written the whole thing off, and late in the week the Government withdrew the bills, just in time to prevent them being engulfed by Simon Crean’s strange leadership tsunami.</p>
<p>So where to from here?</p>
<p>As the cold light of day dawns on the broken landscape of media reform, one gives thanks for <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/julian-disney-3043/profile_bio">Julian Disney</a>.</p>
<p>Professor Disney is the chair of the Press Council. He gave courageous testimony at the Senate committee of inquiry into the media reforms this week, saying he personally was prepared to support some degree of statute-based self-regulation, so long as the statutory involvement was confined to establishing benchmarks and requiring reviews of performance. He also said that the Council itself was divided on this question.</p>
<p>He has been a strong and reforming chair, skilfully using the leverage supplied by the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Finkelstein Inquiry</a> and <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">Convergence Review</a> to extract more money from the newspaper companies to finance the Council, and embarking on a long overdue process of establishing better and more sophisticated media standards on matters such as suicide and access to patients in hospitals.</p>
<p>It was he, as much as anyone, who tried to salvage something sensible from the wreckage of the Conroy juggernaut. It is he who now has to try to ride out the resultant turbulence and keep his own reform program alive. This includes getting the power for the Council to conduct own-motion investigations, and introducing independent triennial reviews of its performance.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of this week’s events, the attitude of the newspaper companies is unpredictable.</p>
<p>Have these events scared them, as Moss Cass’s proposal did in 1975, making them more amenable to Press Council reform, or will they be awash with hubris, thinking they have seen off Conroy and are immune for another 38 years?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/12963/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To get an idea of how big an opportunity the federal government missed with its shambolic attempt at media reform, consider this: the last federal minister to achieve any substantive reform of media self-regulation…Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.