tag:theconversation.com,2011:/columns/denis-muller-1865Media matters – The Conversation2016-05-30T05:41:16Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/601902016-05-30T05:41:16Z2016-05-30T05:41:16ZPaying a high price for embarrassing the government<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124445/original/image-20160530-7706-1njdm2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Involving the media seems to send the message of how unpleasant the AFP can make life for people who challenge the government.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>None of the politicians are talking about it, but threats to freedom of speech have emerged in three different guises in the first three weeks of the election campaign.</p>
<p>First there was the assailing of Duncan Storrar by that bastion of free speech, News Corp, for having had the nerve to put his head above the parapet on the ABC TV program Q&A, by questioning the fairness of the federal budget.</p>
<p>The newspaper company dredged up his criminal history – his last conviction was eight years ago – and revealed unhappy aspects of his family life.</p>
<p>It was a chilling spectacle for other private citizens. Despite a disability and poor education, Storrar wished to make himself heard in the national debate.</p>
<p>The second case concerned Dr Peter Young, psychiatrist and whistleblower.</p>
<p>Young was responsible for supervising mental health services to asylum seekers in all Australian-run detention centres from 2011 to mid-2014. In this capacity he was employed by International Health Management Services (IHMS), a company contracted to the federal government.</p>
<p>In 2014, giving evidence to an Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry into children in detention, Young said that the Immigration Department had been told several weeks earlier about the prevalence of mental health problems among child detainees. He told the inquiry that the department had ordered the figures be removed from a report.</p>
<p>Now it emerges that he has been a target of an Australian Federal Police investigation.</p>
<p>The Guardian Australia <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/24/australian-police-accessed-phone-records-of-asylum-whistleblower">reported on May 24</a> that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) had compiled hundreds of pages of file notes and reports on Young, including documents that showed his phone records had been investigated.</p>
<p>The newspaper reported that the Department of Immigration had sought an investigation by the AFP after the publication in media reports of the medical records of Hamid Khazaei, an asylum seeker detained on Manus Island. Khazaei died from septicaemia in September 2014, provoking strong criticism of the government’s asylum-seeker policies.</p>
<p>Young had subsequently requested access to files the AFP had compiled on him. According to the newspaper, the files stated that Young was a suspect in the investigation of the leaking of Khazaei’s records, because of “comments attributed to him being highly critical of [the Immigration Department] and IHMS in their handling of asylum seeker medical care” in two news reports.</p>
<p>However, the police examination of Young’s phone metadata revealed that he had had no contact with the media when the articles on Khazaei were published.</p>
<p>Young was quoted by The Guardian as saying that, in addition to accessing his metadata, the AFP had contacted his colleagues and questioned them about why they were speaking to him.</p>
<p>The third case also involves the AFP.</p>
<p>Last week, they made a fine election-time media spectacle of a raid on the home of a staffer for Labor’s communications spokesman, Jason Clare.</p>
<p>Television cameras and a scrimmage of media accompanied the officers to a home in Brunswick in Melbourne’s inner north. When the door opened a woman occupant was caught in a fusillade of flashbulbs.</p>
<p>On the same day, the AFP also raided the parliamentary office of the former Labor communications minister, Stephen Conroy, in the more restricted confines of the Commonwealth Offices in Treasury Place, East Melbourne.</p>
<p>This time the police were investigating the leaking of documents concerning cost blow-outs and other embarrassments surrounding the roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN).</p>
<p>Having the media along for the ride seemed designed to show how unpleasant the AFP can make life for people who dare to embarrass the government.</p>
<p>These episodes raise several questions:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>When big media start banging on about freedom of speech, whose speech are they clamouring to protect? Just their own or everyone else’s too?</p></li>
<li><p>How effective are Australia’s whistleblower laws in protecting people who speak out on matters of public interest, as Young did?</p></li>
<li><p>Is government embarrassment a sufficient reason to punish disclosure?</p></li>
<li><p>Does the AFP display an appropriate degree of operational independence?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The force has a long history of going after whistleblowers, even when the subject matter has nothing to do with terrorism, national security or serious crime.</p>
<p>One of the more egregious examples occurred in 2004 when the AFP prosecuted a Commonwealth public servant – unsuccessfully, as it turned out – for allegedly disclosing material proving the Howard government was lying about the effects of changes to war veterans’ welfare entitlements.</p>
<p>The public servant was acquitted on appeal, but the proceedings ensnared the two Herald Sun reporters who <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_McManus_and_Harvey">wrote the story</a>. This ultimately resulted in them being convicted of contempt of court for refusing to disclose the identity of their confidential source.</p>
<p>The law that enables the AFP to embark on these oppressive operations is a catch-all secrecy provision, Section 70 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act. Like its contemporary successors, including the Anti-Terrorism Act (No 2) 2005, and the National Security Legislation Amendment Act (No 1) 2014, Section 70 contains no public-interest defence with which whistleblowers and journalists might defend themselves in the event of prosecution.</p>
<p>All this suits both sides of politics, so we are not likely to hear anything about it from the campaigning politicians. But three obvious remedies suggest themselves: putting a public-interest defence in the various laws, making the whistleblower laws more effective, and changing the craven culture of the AFP.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60190/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
None of the politicians are talking about it, but threats to freedom of speech have emerged in three different guises in the first three weeks of the election campaign. First there was the assailing of…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/595132016-05-17T01:12:55Z2016-05-17T01:12:55ZLeaders’ debate highlights real differences on policy, but a unity ticket on civility<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/122772/original/image-20160517-15924-r3htph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten showed they differ on a number of policy positions, but both kept the tone of the debate civil and free from "gotcha"s and gaffes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sky TV’s people’s forum on the evening of last Friday gave us something refreshingly different from recent federal election campaigns: a civil discourse between the two main political leaders.</p>
<p>Perhaps it was because Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten were in the presence of voters, and therefore on their best behaviour. Perhaps it was just that neither of them is from the Tony Abbott school of shirtfront politics.</p>
<p>In its place, an atmosphere of reason prevailed. This was helped by the vigilant but calibrated interventions of the moderator David Speers, creating space and time in which the audience were able to ask questions on a wide range of topics, and get answers that conveyed some actual meaning.</p>
<p>This was insiders encountering outsiders, and it yielded a superior result to previous debate formats where insiders encounter insiders – politicians and journalists – who then play their familiar game of Gotcha and Gaffe. In this game, the politicians are habitually on the defensive and the journalists on the attack. Public enlightenment is at a premium.</p>
<p>By contrast, the people’s forum lived up to its name. The audience consisted of 100 undecided voters from the seat of Macquarie, which takes in the Blue Mountains and the northwestern outskirts of Sydney. It has changed hands at every election since 1975, and at present is held for the Liberal Party by Louise Markus on a margin of 3.2%.</p>
<p>The audience was recruited by Galaxy Research, who surveyed a random sample of voters in the seat on their voting intention. Those who said they were undecided were then told of the forum and invited to participate. They were also asked which party they were leaning towards, and were recruited so that there was an approximate balance of “leaners” between the two main parties.</p>
<p>People who said in advance that they wanted to ask a question were asked to sit near the aisles. Speers selected them at random as he wandered around among the audience.</p>
<p>Their questions revealed something about voters’ priorities, and all were focused on issues. None were to do with personality politics or political strategy. And there were none to do with terrorism or boat people, the electorate presumably reckoning that nothing was to be gained by revisiting that particular field of bipartisanship.</p>
<p>Instead there were questions about jobs going offshore, corporate tax-avoidance, the Medicare levy, privatisation of government assets, tax-cut thresholds, superannuation, arts funding, regional hospital funding, childcare costs, education funding and the deficit.</p>
<p>When the politicians tried the old trick of getting back on message regardless of the question, Speers pulled them into line by repeating the nub of the question. This had the effect of minimising the opportunity for spin, and of forcing the politicians to do better than sloganeering.</p>
<p>The organic way in which the forum unfolded, the random selection of questioners and the unpredictability of the questions themselves created a kind of anti-journalism: no contrived story structure, no gaffe or gotcha, no media intervention between leaders and voters except for Speers’ light-touch refereeing.</p>
<p>Out of this rather low-key process emerged something of importance: a noticeable ideological divide between the two leaders on a range of issues. These included privatisation of government assets, funding for school education, and bank regulation.</p>
<p>Shorten said he thought the pendulum had swung too far towards privatisation of government assets; Turnbull left open the possibility of selling more. After three decades in which there has been little questioning of privatisation by either side, this signal from Shorten that enough is enough is a departure of some note from what has been bipartisan political wisdom. It is fundamentally an argument over the size and role of government, an issue of some significance.</p>
<p>On education funding, Turnbull focused on outcomes and value for money, while Shorten focused on children’s needs. Leaving aside arguments over amounts of money, which tend to get tediously and misleadingly bogged down, these two positions represent fundamental differences in ideals and objectives.</p>
<p>On banking regulation, Shorten asserted that a royal commission was overdue because the banks had shown that, left to themselves, they could not clean up their act. Turnbull asserted that competition would eventually sort the problems out, along with some prodding from the banking regulator. This was an argument about government intervention versus market forces (and a regulatory touch-up).</p>
<p>So the forum yielded no easy headlines and no sharp news angles, but created a conversation out of which the attentive voter learnt some useful things about the leaders and what they seem to stand for.</p>
<p>At the end, the audience were asked to indicate on their wristbands which way, if any, they were now inclined to vote. Of the 100 voters present, 42 nominated Shorten and 29 Turnbull, with the rest indicating it had not inclined them one way or the other.</p>
<p>This factoid supplied conventional journalism with a news hook. The Australian faithfully reported the arithmetic, which was acknowledged by its editor at large, Paul Kelly, but contradicted by another of its senior political writers, Dennis Shanahan, who defied the numbers to say Turnbull had won.</p>
<p>The night was over and the prince of reason had turned back into a frog.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Sky TV’s people’s forum on the evening of last Friday gave us something refreshingly different from recent federal election campaigns: a civil discourse between the two main political leaders. Perhaps…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/590022016-05-08T03:24:39Z2016-05-08T03:24:39ZNegotiating the media minefields in a world where radio is no longer king<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121489/original/image-20160506-435-18rwmjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an eight-week election campaign stretches out ahead of us like a trackless desert, it might be useful to take a bearing on where the prime minister stands in relation to the conservative side of the media, elements of which play themselves into the election game as self-anointed kingmakers.</p>
<p>One such kingmaker is Sydney-based commercial radio talkback host Alan Jones.</p>
<p>Malcolm Turnbull has refused to appear on the Jones program for the past two years. This might reflect a strategy to differentiate himself from Tony Abbott, who was a Jones favourite, as well as a show of genuine contempt for Jones’ sense of self-importance.</p>
<p>The current tension dates back to the febrile political aftermath of the now-notorious Abbott-Hockey budget of 2014. Turnbull was communications minister, and it was in that capacity that he <a href="http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/transcript-interview-with-alan-jones-and-the-budget-and-relations-with-cliv">appeared on the Jones program</a>.</p>
<p>It didn’t start well:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jones: Can I begin by asking you if you could say after me this? “As a senior member of the Abbott government I want to say here I am totally supportive of the Abbott-Hockey strategy for budget repair”.</p>
<p>Turnbull: Alan I am not going to take dictation from you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And sometime later Jones says to Turnbull:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You have no hope ever of being the leader. You’ve got to get that into your head. No hope ever. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not the happiest of prognostications.</p>
<p>But time passes, elections loom, and mutual interests assert themselves. In the symbiosis between politicians and the media, Turnbull needs to reach Jones’ audiences, particularly in Western Sydney and in Queensland, and Jones needs the kudos that comes with having the prime minister on his program.</p>
<p>And so there is talk of rapprochement.</p>
<p>Not that Jones is demonstrating anything like a diminution in his sense of superbia. He is <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/feud-fighters-turnbull-and-jones-planning-talks-to-bury-the-hatchet/news-story/ce04e804de7b193b5be9296d63fe5b98">quoted as saying</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No-one has ever won an election by not appearing on my program.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A clever form of words.</p>
<p>It just means that every candidate for prime minister – win or lose – has appeared on his program.</p>
<p>It does not mean that those who won did so because they appeared on his program, though that’s clearly what Jones wants people to believe.</p>
<p>Jones is syndicated across more than 70 stations, mainly in NSW and Queenland, but to think that he can make and unmake prime ministers is absurd. His 2GB Sydney audience on May 6, 2016, for his interview with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was 167,000. His audience share in that city has been in steady decline for the past five years, from about 20% in 2010 to about 14% in 2015. </p>
<p>After being syndicated to 4BC in Brisbane in June 2015, his audience share there declined 1.2 points to 5.2% of the breakfast audience over the first two ratings periods.</p>
<p>So let us say on a generous estimate his total audience is 300,000, not all of whom are of voting age.</p>
<p>There are nearly 15 million voters in Australia, so Jones’ audience probably amounts to less than 2% of the voting population.</p>
<p>An analysis by Clive Hamilton in 2006 showed that Jones’ audience was far more likely to vote conservative than was the electorate as a whole: 65% of Jones listeners compared with, typically, between 48% and 52% at elections. So, to a large extent, he preaches to the converted.</p>
<p>His listeners were also disproportionately older – 68% over 50 compared with 37% in the over-14 population as a whole, and with a tendency to be on low-to-middle incomes. Although Hamilton’s analysis is ten years old, audience characteristics like this don’t change much.</p>
<p>So Jones might make a marginal difference in a few marginal seats, but kingmaker? No.</p>
<p>As for Turnbull’s relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp newspapers, another element in the conservative media with kingmaking aspirations, there are signs of it being not quite settled.</p>
<p>The Australian’s reception of the budget was no more than measured, and the Herald Sun’s was positively contemptuous. Its front-page headline was “A pop-gun budget”, with Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison depicted as a couple of hapless tommies like characters from Dad’s Army.</p>
<p>The Daily Telegraph, however, fell over itself in admiration, depicting Morrison as Superman and acclaiming him as the “hero of the hard worker”. With its heroic blue-sky backdrop, it was reminiscent of a 1970s propaganda poster from somewhere behind the Iron Curtain.</p>
<p>Rupert has always been careful about overtly claiming kingmaker status. When the egregious Kelvin MacKenzie, as editor of the London Sun, claimed “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” after the British Conservative Party’s win in 1992, Rupert was reported to have rejoiced privately but when confronted publicly with statements that it showed how influential he was, he deprecated the headline as unwontedly boastful.</p>
<p>Yet it suits Rupert that the perception of decisive influence persists.</p>
<p>However hard it might be to measure that influence, the fact is that in Australia he has a newspaper monopoly in Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart, as well as the mass-circulation Herald Sun in Melbourne and Daily Telegraph in Sydney. The latter plays to much the same audience as Jones.</p>
<p>With these two elements of the conservative media, then, Turnbull has some work to do. And that’s before we even think what the combined forces of Peta Credlin and Mark Latham on Sky television might unleash.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
As an eight-week election campaign stretches out ahead of us like a trackless desert, it might be useful to take a bearing on where the prime minister stands in relation to the conservative side of the…Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.