tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/press-council-906/articlesPress Council – The Conversation2021-12-14T19:10:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1718422021-12-14T19:10:32Z2021-12-14T19:10:32ZForget calls for a royal commission into Australia’s big media players – this is the inquiry we really need<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437479/original/file-20211214-19-j01jn4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C335%2C3898%2C2329&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Mediadiversity/Report">deeply partisan</a> report of the Senate Inquiry into Media Diversity, tabled on December 9, is a disappointment.</p>
<p>The main report by the Greens and Labor endorsed the campaign by former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull for a royal commission into media diversity and ownership, which they want to examine the influence of News Corporation and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. </p>
<p>The dissenting reports by Coalition senators Andrew Bragg and Sam McMahon opposed any inquiry and recommended the Australian Press Council reform itself and that the ABC be subject to stronger regulation.</p>
<p>Among these predictable and largely unhelpful proposals, the report identified genuine problems I have placed in three groups and grappled towards solutions. </p>
<h2>Getting enough public interest journalism</h2>
<p>The bargaining code proposed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has the Government has enacted goes some way to address the excessive power of digital platforms, ensuring they make a financial contribution towards the production of public interest journalism. </p>
<p>The government has also taken some initial steps to fund local and regional news gathering and the AAP wire service. </p>
<p>As the ACCC has argued – and the behaviour of media giants News and Nine has shown – there is market failure that limits the production of news about local courts, local government and other local and regional activities. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437471/original/file-20211214-15-1obwlc5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">AAP needs government support.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins</span></span>
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<p>Some ongoing government support would lower the cost for new entrants into the news business, allowing them to compete with the larger organisations. </p>
<p>The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s suggestion that proceeds from the sale of broadcast spectrum be used to finance an independent trust might help, but first we need an assessment of how much is needed.</p>
<p>There is also a case for concessional rates of tax for new ventures investing in public interest journalism, and for extending deductible gift recipient status for appropriate philanthropic ventures, as suggested by the Public Interest Journalism Initiative and recommended by the committee.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the Coalition senators’ attacks on the ABC and SBS, those media outlets play an important role in the collection and dissemination of news, including in local and regional areas.</p>
<h2>Regulation of professional standards</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-journalism-needs-more-than-better-protection-it-needs-better-standards-171117">previous article</a> I argued that more needs to be done to ensure adequate and consistent regulation of the media. As the Finkelstein and convergence reviews a decade ago revealed, the current fragmented arrangements are no longer fit for purpose. </p>
<p>While the 2012 Finkelstein review’s proposal for a statutory authority goes too far, relying solely on industry self-funding is a recipe for continued weak regulation and insufficient capacity to update and promote standards. </p>
<p>The Senate report’s proposal for an independent and permanent trust to assist emerging news ventures might be a suitable vehicle for such funding, avoiding any risk of government interference.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-protection-australian-journalism-needs-better-standards-171117">More than protection, Australian journalism needs better standards</a>
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<p>In focusing on a couple of Press Council judgements, the report fails to acknowledge the challenges involved and the need to invest resources into reviewing and updating standards. The council revised its general principles some years ago, partly in recognition of the increased blurring of news and comment. </p>
<p>It strengthened its <a href="https://www.presscouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GENERAL_PRINCIPLES_-_July_14-1.pdf">Principle 1</a> concerning accuracy to ensure it applied to “factual material” wherever it occurs, even if it is in commentaries. </p>
<p>It retains a requirement that factual material be distinguishable from opinion, but that is increasingly problematic: many online publications are nothing but commentary.</p>
<p>Other challenges for the council (and for any organisation that replaces it) include regulating “fairness and balance”, and whether it should consider patterns of articles rather than simply each article complained of in turn. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437473/original/file-20211214-25-f2di61.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Commentary and reporting are getting blurred.</span>
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<p>Societal developments also need to be considered, as the council has done by introducing new guidelines for reporting sexual identification.</p>
<p>The ABC and SBS face additional challenges because of their need to be “impartial”.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how the inquiry into the ABC’s complaints process – conducted by former commonwealth and New South Wales ombudsman John McMillan and former SBS news and commercial news director Jim Carroll – addresses the issue.</p>
<p>Perhaps the thorniest issue is the regulation of the digital platforms. As the Australian Communications and Media Authority indicated last year, they need more than a disinformation code. </p>
<h2>Media diversity</h2>
<p>Action on the first two issues should enhance the production and quality of public interest journalism and the range of voices involved. </p>
<p>Ownership controls are no longer central, although proposed mergers should be examined carefully to ensure they are in the public interest as former ACCC Chairman Allan Fels suggested to the committee. </p>
<p>For the foreseeable future, the ABC and SBS also remain essential to an informed public and to avoiding reliance on sources that push only certain views.</p>
<h2>What would be better than a royal commission?</h2>
<p>That News Corporation has campaigned vigorously for political purposes is clear. In doing so, its publications have at times breached Press Council standards, and at times condemned council adjudications. </p>
<p>The best way to address such behaviour is to address the three issues mentioned in order to shift the environment in which that company (and the others) operate. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/press-council-chief-fires-parting-shot-at-news-corp-44841">Press Council chief fires parting shot at News Corp</a>
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<p>There are better options than a royal commission led by lawyers and established by politicians wanting to pursue Murdoch and News Corporation, or having no inquiry at all.</p>
<p>The best approach would be have an inquiry into how to build on the new bargaining code, led by the Productivity Commission or another independent body reporting to the treasurer and minister for communications.</p>
<p>Such an inquiry ought to be able to come up with improvements that promote freedom of speech rather than constrain it, and promote media responsibility.</p>
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<p><em>Andrew Podger was a public member of the Australian Press Council from 2012 until 2021 and continues to sit on some council adjudication panels.</em></p>
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<h2>Response from Kevin Rudd</h2>
<p><em>Subsequent to this article’s publication, The Conversation received the following response from former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, which we have published here in full.</em></p>
<p>Andrew Podger’s call for a narrow media inquiry behind closed doors may appeal to academics, but it is politically naïve in the extreme. It is simply unrealistic to expect any substantive media reform to occur without the driving force of a royal commission.</p>
<p>Media policy is especially difficult for three main reasons. First, because the most powerful vested interests – chiefly Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – have extraordinary power to shape public perceptions about any inquiry. This power is turbo-charged when the people cannot watch the inquiry’s proceedings firsthand. We saw this with the Finkelstein Inquiry, whose representations were misrepresented by Murdoch as totalitarian on the scale of Stalin and Mao.</p>
<p>Second, Murdoch has an impressive track record of thugging politicians into cherry-picking the recommendations of any report that suit his bottom line, and junking the rest. The new News Media Bargaining Code is a case in point; Murdoch’s News Corporation is now booking more than A$100 million each year in payments from Facebook and Google, while smaller rivals are left behind.</p>
<p>Third, media policy is diabolically complex. Decades of piecemeal reform have resulted in a weak and disjointed series of laws, regulators, self-regulators and co-regulators. There is no mutually agreed base of evidence from which a government could begin to make decisions. Media reform also requires the balancing of competing values that go to the heart of our democracy. When is a citizen’s right to privacy more important than the rights of media companies to publish their secrets? When should national security be used as an excuse to block freedom of information? These are not questions for the number-crunchers of the Productivity Commission, as Podger suggests, or something for a handful of elites behind closed doors.</p>
<p>This same philosophy gave us the Abbott government’s Financial Systems Inquiry. Its highly credentialled panel of experts, when asked to investigate consumer protection in the banking industry, failed to hear the voices of the people most affected by their abuses. It wasn’t until the Hayne Royal Commission – which was bitterly opposed by not only the finance sector, but the upper crust of financial journalists – finally lifted the lid on rotten behaviour for all to see that substantive change became possible.</p>
<p>An open public inquiry with a broad remit, proper resourcing and a commissioner of unimpeachable integrity can give proprietors, journalists, editors and others the opportunity to each be heard and have their assertions tested in real time. It would have the legitimacy of an open process with daily exposure of its revelations that keep the public informed and engaged throughout. It would serve as a lightning rod for Australians, including former and serving Murdoch employees, to give evidence fearlessly. Since it would be a proper investigation – not a partisan trap of the kind set by Tony Abbott’s royal commissions – it could also test the Murdoch media’s gripes about anti-siphoning laws, social media and allegedly endemic left-wing bias at the ABC. Its recommendations, whatever they are, would carry the force of that legitimacy.</p>
<p>We don’t need another boutique review to be ignored or manipulated. We’ve tried that too many times, and it has delivered us the most concentrated media industry of any democracy on Earth.</p>
<p>– <em>Kevin Rudd, 26th Prime Minister of Australia and Chair, Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Podger was a Public Member of the Press Council until July 2021 and still occasionally sits on its adjudication panels.</span></em></p>Rather than a royal commission focused on News Corporation, the best approach would be an inquiry into ways to maintain standards and better fund public interest journalism.Andrew Podger, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1711172021-11-08T23:16:35Z2021-11-08T23:16:35ZMore than protection, Australian journalism needs better standards<p>Australia may be <a href="https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/josh-frydenberg-2018/media-releases/accc-mandatory-code-conduct-govern-commercial">leading the world</a> in measures to protect public interest journalism from the threats arising from media restructuring and news aggregators such as Google and Facebook, but it has yet to properly address the related need for firm professional standards.</p>
<p>At the moment the <a href="https://www.presscouncil.org.au/what-we-do/">Australian Press Council</a> deals with complaints about the print and online content of the newspapers, magazines and journals that fund it.</p>
<p>Among those publishers are the two biggest: <a href="https://www.presscouncil.org.au/who-are-our-members/">Nine and News Corp</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/pressure-mounts-on-australian-press-council-to-change-strategy-20210421-p57l70.html">Other big publishers</a> are not or cannot be members, among them Guardian Australia, The Conversation and the ABC.</p>
<p>A separate <a href="http://www.independentmediacouncil.com.au/">Independent Media Council</a> deals with complaints against newspapers operated by Seven-West media, which funds it. The Independent Council handles about 30 complaints a year, whereas the Press Council handles more than 1,000.</p>
<p>Complaints against the news content of licensed radio and television stations are handled by the government’s <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/investigations-tv-broadcasters">Australian Communications and Media Authority</a>.</p>
<h2>There have been attempts to lift standards</h2>
<p>It is nearly a decade since </p>
<ul>
<li><p>the government’s Finkelstein Review recommended a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/1205_finkelstein.pdf">government-funded statutory body</a> take over the role and functions of the Australian Press Council and the news-related functions of the Communications and Media Authority</p></li>
<li><p>the government’s subsequent Convergence Review recommended an industry-led body with some government funding to oversee journalistic standards for news and comment <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140321214755/http://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/147733/Convergence_Review_Final_Report.pdf">regardless of the platform</a> on which it is posted</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Neither recommendation was implemented, though the threat of government regulation did lead to significant <a href="https://www.presscouncil.org.au/apc-update-issue-7/">reforms</a> to the Press Council on which I served between 2012 and 2021.</p>
<p>The reforms the Council Chair Julian Disney drove strengthened its independence from the organisations that funded it, and its ability to not only to consider complaints but also to review its general principles, develop new standards and guidelines and to establish education and promotion activities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/10-years-after-finkelstein-media-accountability-has-gone-backwards-159530">10 years after Finkelstein, media accountability has gone backwards</a>
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<p>Publisher members agreed to double their fees and to enter into contracts requiring them to give four years’ notice should they leave. A more rigorous approach was introduced for handling complaints with adjudications being made by panels of members representing the pubic and journalists only.</p>
<h2>The government is inching towards more</h2>
<p>The government has raised the possibility of trying again, its <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/media-reform-greenpaper-december2020_0.pdf">green paper</a> last year on broadcasting promising to “implement a staged program of reform towards ‘platform neutral’ media regulation”.</p>
<p>The legislation that set up this year’s <a href="https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code">mandatory bargaining code</a> with platforms including Facebook edged down this path by requiring news organisations that wanted to use the code to pass a “<a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2021A00021">professional standards test</a>”.</p>
<p>But the test required little more than that they be subject to one of the existing bodies or have internal standards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430699/original/file-20211108-10108-uix4yl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=666&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2021A00021">Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code) Act 2021</a></span>
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<p>At best the requirement is weak. At worst it might deepen fragmentation.</p>
<p>Another step is the <a href="https://digi.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Australian-Code-of-Practice-on-Disinformation-and-Misinformation-FINAL-PDF-Feb-22-2021.pdf">Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation</a> issued by the Digital Industry Group Inc in February in response to a <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2020-06/acma-releases-guidance-digital-platforms-voluntary-misinformation-and-news-quality-code">discussion paper</a> issued by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.</p>
<p>Despite its title, the code focuses only on disinformation not “misinformation and news quality” and “empowering users to identify the quality of news and information” as <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-06/Misinformation%20and%20news%20quality%20position%20paper.pdf">asked for by the authority</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/press-council-chief-fires-parting-shot-at-news-corp-44841">Press Council chief fires parting shot at News Corp</a>
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<p>Last year’s green paper also suggested the establishment of a <a href="https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/fletcher/media-release/public-interest-news-gathering-program-opens-business">Public Interest News Gathering (PING) Trust</a> which would issue grants funded by proceeds from the sale of broadcast spectrum. </p>
<p>There is also a <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Mediadiversity">parliamentary inquiry</a> into media diversity which is yet to report.</p>
<p>Meantime, the Press Council has had to freeze its fees in response to the financial positions of the publishers that fund it. It is financially dependent on just two big ones. News Corp alone provides more than half of its revenue.</p>
<p>The journalists union, the <a href="https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/journalists-union-gives-notice-to-quit-australian-press-council/">Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance</a>, gave notice of its intention to withdraw from the Council in April. </p>
<p>It said “despite media convergence being a lived reality for journalists and the public for a decade, the regulatory framework had failed to keep up to date”.</p>
<h2>Here’s how better regulation could work</h2>
<p>The Council has its critics, whether related to slowness in handling complaints (a legitimate concern) or seeming insufficiently independent or insufficiently (or overly) critical of the work it examines. But its work is important. </p>
<p>One way a platform-neutral regulatory framework could work would be to separate the media into three categories, applying different standards to each:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The vast majority of individuals and organisations who communicate publicly, exercising their freedom of speech limited only by the laws of defamation and anti-discrimination etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Non-government organisations providing public interest journalism, expected to meet professional standards including “accuracy, fairness and balance”</p></li>
<li><p>government-funded media organisations such as the ABC and SBS, expected not only to be “accurate, fair and balanced” but also politically neutral overall in their news coverage</p></li>
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<p>Radio and television broadcasters licensed to use spectrum could be included in the second category, though some might argue they should have the higher standards of the third category.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384361/original/file-20210216-22-11ig87o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1216&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Nine would have its television stations regulated like its newspapers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins/AAP</span></span>
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<p>The obvious starting point for the second category is to replace or restructure the Press Council.</p>
<p>The ambit of the new or expanded body would include the news and current affairs responsibilities of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.</p>
<p>That way Nine would have its television stations regulated in the same way as its newspapers.</p>
<p>There was a good reason for rejecting the Finkelstein inquiry’s idea of a government-funded statutory authority to replace the council: self-regulation is more consistent with press freedom. </p>
<p>But government funding is almost certainly needed (on top of industry funding) if the council or a body like it is able to do its job properly.</p>
<p>Using spectrum revenue for funding as is proposed for the PING Trust would be one way to providing government funding without government interference.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tv-networks-holding-back-the-future-155220">The TV networks holding back the future</a>
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<hr>
<p>Regulating digital publishing is more difficult because much of it is international, although there is a strong case for some form of independent oversight of algorithms to limit the risk of social harm.</p>
<p>One thing that could be done in Australia is for digital platforms and publishers to voluntarily adopt an improved version of the Digital Industry Group’s code.</p>
<p>Users would be able to better assess the quality of information on platforms or sites if they knew whether the source was a member of the Press Council or its replacement and how they could take part in its complaints-handling processes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171117/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Podger is affiliated with the Australian Press Council. I was a Public Member of the Press Council until July 2021 (mentioned in the article), and I still occasionally sit on its adjudication panels. </span></em></p>Regulation is fragmented, and the Press Council is short of funds.Andrew Podger, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/760272017-04-18T15:21:21Z2017-04-18T15:21:21ZThe state of South African journalism: There’s good news and there’s bad news<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164830/original/image-20170411-26715-16fbhzj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's media landscape has changed fundamentally.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Wits University’s Journalism and Media Studies Department have just published their latest State of the Newsroom report. The annual publication maps key developments in the South African media landscape – from changes in circulation and audiences, to shifts in media ownership, digital trends in the newsroom, transformation of the news media, political, legal and regulatory issues, and the status of media freedom in the country. Politics and Society Editor Thabo Leshilo asked the editor and lead researcher …</em></p>
<p><strong>What is the “State of the Newsroom” report and what does it say?</strong></p>
<p>State of the Newsroom 2015-2016 is called <a href="http://www.journalism.co.za/stateofnewsroom/"><em>Inside/Outside</em> </a> to try catch the dynamic of multiple sources of media and news that we are confronted with, a lot of it falling outside of the “mainstream” news. </p>
<p>Although we still have “newsrooms” in the normal sense of professional journalists and media houses, we also have very vibrant independent media sites and projects – The <a href="https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/">Daily Vox</a>, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/">Daily Maverick</a>, <a href="http://www.groundup.org.za/">GroundUp</a>, or projects like <a href="http://www.witsjusticeproject.co.za/">The Justice Project</a> that “write into the news”.</p>
<p>During the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">#FeesMustFall protests</a>, students and academics <a href="https://twitter.com/NMMUFMF">reported </a>from the frontline using social media, and were a source of news from the coalface of the protests for many people. The #FeesMustfall protests showed how independent news producers, like The Daily Vox, could cover unfolding events <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thedailyvox/posts/1021472407978175">more effectively</a> than the mainstream media, and how student social media impacted on the coverage offered by the mainstream. </p>
<p>All of this makes us ask: What exactly do we mean by the “newsroom” today? This State of the Newsroom tries to contribute to the discussion on this phenomenon. </p>
<p><strong>Are there causes for concern? What are the most significant ones, especially in the era of fake news?</strong></p>
<p>If we look at the media landscape generally, there are good and bad signs. For instance, the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.za/">Press Council</a> is reinvigorating itself and now has an ombudsperson for online media. The <a href="http://www.sanef.org.za/">South African National Editors Forum</a> has been vocal on issues of media freedom. There are new measurements for broadcast statistics. </p>
<p>I think the diversity of content available is undeniably a good thing. But retrenchments also continue, and newspaper <a href="http://www.bizcommunity.com/PDF/PDF.aspx?l=196&c=15&ct=1&ci=157443">circulation is down</a>. For the first time free newspapers declined in circulation too. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164799/original/image-20170411-23215-tq9rcl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164799/original/image-20170411-23215-tq9rcl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164799/original/image-20170411-23215-tq9rcl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164799/original/image-20170411-23215-tq9rcl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=820&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164799/original/image-20170411-23215-tq9rcl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164799/original/image-20170411-23215-tq9rcl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164799/original/image-20170411-23215-tq9rcl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1030&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The government has bungled the <a href="http://www.channel24.co.za/TV/News/etv-wins-digital-tv-box-case-as-court-slams-minister-as-confused-20160531">digital terrestrial television process</a> – again. Of course, the SABC remains a mess, and the desire by the state to control what’s news is felt increasingly, whether through its <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/media/2015/10/19/zuma-defends-call-for-media-appeals-tribunal">Media Appeals Tribunal proposal</a>, or <a href="https://www.apc.org/en/pubs/apcs-written-submission-south-africa-cybercrimes-a">draft legislation</a> that tries to tighten the grip on the free flow of information in the public interest.</p>
<p>Other signs of concern are the influence management has on editors. Editorial independence in the newsroom is being corroded. </p>
<p>As far as <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2017/04/17/Huffington-Post-SA-blog-calling-for-white-men-to-be-disenfranchised-a-%E2%80%98sad-day-for-journalism%E2%80%99%E2%80%9A-says-Media24-boss">fake news</a> goes, in some ways I think it’s a red herring. I hope that it will only make news consumers more critical and start to question the veracity of what they read through habit. So I think there’s an upside to fake news. </p>
<p>More worrying is when it starts to look like deliberate propaganda. This goes hand-in-hand with the willingness of political parties and other public speakers to be less than truthful with the facts, or deliberately feeding the public false facts. </p>
<p><strong>What is your view on the growth of alternative news platforms, including the ANC’s in-house news service and the government’s increased use of social media to report on themselves</strong></p>
<p>I think we need to be careful about calling some of these initiatives “alternative”, which in South Africa has a positive, politically progressive history in terms of news media. I have mentioned some initiatives that could be described in this way. </p>
<p>But we are also seeing in South Africa what happens all over the world: social media and the internet being used by the state and its allies and supporters to create a counter-narrative to what’s out there. Perhaps we should call it propaganda 2.0. There’s nothing necessarily unusual about that. </p>
<p><strong>What are the positives and dangers associated with such alternative news platforms as seen against the role of a free press in a democracy?</strong></p>
<p>I think we need to start at the beginning and ask ourselves: What does a free press really look like? What do we want? Does the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/pressfreedomday/windhoek.shtml">Windhoek Declaration</a> on press freedom matter anymore? Do journalists care about our human rights? Are they prepared to be watchdogs to those rights? And if they aren’t, is our press free? </p>
<p>Just as there’s no point talking about a free press if there is unfettered state control, there’s no point talking about a free press if our editors are told what’s in the public interest by advertisers and managers. We have the constitutional guarantees, and indices such as <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/regions/sub-saharan-africa">Freedom House</a> more or less say we are free. Certainly more than other Africa states such as Angola or The Gambia or Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>But we also know that <a href="http://www.giswatch.org/en/country-report/communications-surveillance/south-africa">journalists are surveilled</a> – or at least feel they are which is as bad – and that reporters are kicked out of press conferences, and increasingly coming under physical threat when covering events: from students, from party supporters, from police or private security firms. So there’s no generally accepted idea, of a free press floating around.</p>
<p>At the same time, what contribution the media can make to democracy is not necessarily being answered by what’s being published by mainstream media. Instead, as Levi Kabwato, one of the authors in this year’s State of the Newsroom who looked at transformation in the press found, editors say this kind of thing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I received more threats from owners and executives than from politicians in my entire term as editor. The people we had to be careful of were the owners. I received more threatening letters from companies than politicians. Owners are the real threat to media freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We have to think of transformation more broadly than just how many black people or women are employed in a newsroom, or in terms of ownership. It’s about content too – what’s covered, and why. </p>
<p>This is why the independent and alternative media platforms are so interesting. Just look what <a href="https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/who-we-are/">The Daily Vox</a> says about itself. It wants to: “put the young citizen at the centre of news”. Or <a href="http://www.groundup.org.za/about/">GroundUp</a>: “We report news that Is in the public interest, with an emphasis on the human rights of vulnerable communities.” And they are doing it with a fraction of the budget that big media houses have at their disposal. Good journalism doesn’t necessarily have to cost money.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76027/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Finlay is a lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Media studies at Wits University.</span></em></p>The growth of new, vibrant, independent media sites and projects in South Africa have challenged conceptions of what a newsroom is. On limited budgets, some even fare better than mainstream media.Alan Finlay, Lecturer: Journalism and Media Studies, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag: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/400902015-05-04T04:43:27Z2015-05-04T04:43:27ZIt’s time for Australians to rewind the media policy machine<p>As Australia drifts between national elections it is time, once again, to ask some hard questions about media policy. Those questions should be asked and answered by all Australians rather than just by Malcolm Turnbull, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Shorten, Kerry Stokes, Bruce Gyngell and Tony Abbott.</p>
<p>A guide is provided by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-finkelstein-inquiry-into-media-regulation-experts-respond-5675">Finkelstein Report</a>, a victim of political opportunism and ALP infighting. </p>
<p>Another guide is provided by a poll in the UK, which suggests that non-specialists <em>are</em> interested in media policy, in particular the development of policy that reinforces integrity through accountability. </p>
<p>Responsiveness by politicians to that interest will go some way to overcoming the disengagement that is recurrently lamented by the major parties and that fosters micro-parties that rely on personality rather than policy.</p>
<h2>What do the people think?</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk/get-involved/poll-shows-strong-support-for-action-on-media-ownership">UK poll</a> is specifically concerned with media regulation. It is an expression of attitudes by ordinary people. We don’t have a local counterpart - an independent study is needed - but we can draw some conclusions. </p>
<p>One conclusion is that we need to rewind the policy machine, with another viewing of the Finkelstein Report. </p>
<p>The UK poll was run by <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/">YouGov</a> for the <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk/">Media Reform Coalition</a>, an advocacy group that reflects concerns regarding competition policy, editorial interference and scandals such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-needs-a-regulator-to-protect-itself-and-the-rest-of-us-35114">Hackergate</a>.</p>
<p>The group reports that 74% believe that ownership of a UK television channel, radio station or newspaper should be dependent on the company being based in the UK. No more <a href="https://theconversation.com/google-tax-debate-pits-corporate-thieves-against-state-sovereignty-39681">dutch sandwiches</a> – companies should pay full UK tax. </p>
<p>The poll found 61% of respondents favour compulsory governance mechanisms, such as truly independent editorial boards, to reduce editorial interference. And 41% want strengthening of media ownership rules to restrict the market dominance of any one organisation. </p>
<p>It is likely that Australian voters, so disillusioned by the theatrics in Canberra that you’d have to drag them away from <em>Game of Thrones</em>, have much the same attitude. They haven’t been soured by Hackergate but are disquieted by media bias, perceived inequity in corporate <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-08/tax-chief-under-pressure-to-name-corporate-evaders/6377882">taxation</a>, inconsistencies in competition law and ongoing attacks on the ABC. </p>
<h2>Why we should rethink the rules</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://theconversation.com/self-regulation-and-a-media-we-can-trust-6466">Finkelstein Report</a> highlighted questions about media concentration and self-regulation. These are questions that we need to consider because ownership, governance and editorial decisions affect informed policy-making and community disengagement in an era where traditional demarcations between print and broadcast are no longer relevant. </p>
<p>We need to think about media concentration in general, something elided in the recent <a href="http://theconversation.com/harper-makes-case-for-competition-overhaul-experts-react-39582">Harper Review</a> of Australia’s competition framework. Does it matter who owns the dominant channels, as long as the content is diverse and fair? Why do we have a nationality requirement, or a character requirement regarding broadcast ownership? </p>
<p>Should we be regulating Google and Facebook alongside Channel Nine, given that many people now rely on “new media” for current affairs information rather than just entertainment? Why are the broadcasters dealt with by <a href="http://acma.gov.au/theACMA/About/The-ACMA-story/Regulating">ACMA</a>, a government agency, when regulation of newspapers and magazines is done by print magnates for print magnates in the form of the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a>? Should we disregard the ineffectiveness of the Press Council, in the expectation that newspapers will either wither or go online? </p>
<p>Does the national government have the ability to restrict media corporations from structuring the operation to avoid the sort of tax obligations faced by most people? Do the ALP and LP/NP have the will to restrict that restructuring? Should we regard Google and Apple as media groups, rather than focusing on the Herald Sun and SevenWest?</p>
<p>The unhappiness evident in the UK poll is romantic, because there is no sign that any of the UK parties will take meaningful action. We don’t, however, need to despair. We need instead an informed national discussion about the shape of the Australian media and the nature of any regulation. We should expect politicians to lead that discussion, articulate issues and offer proposals. </p>
<p>A basis for that discussion would be to do a rerun of Finkelstein, in the same way that a classic television series is well worth another viewing. Ask some hard questions. Find out what people want. Give them a sense of why particular solutions might be ineffective. </p>
<p>Trust the people, rather than reinforcing disengagement by failing to inform them and restricting policy-making to Canberra insiders. That is, after all, what we want from a liberal democratic state.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Baer Arnold 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>Current regulations are a complete mismatch for today’s media practices and structures. While politicians shy from the debate, it’s time to heed public opinion and revisit the Finkelstein Report.Bruce Baer Arnold, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of CanberraLicensed 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/356562014-12-19T00:04:27Z2014-12-19T00:04:27ZNews Corp’s siege coverage built on a ‘take-no-prisoners’ culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67630/original/image-20141218-31028-148bt61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are ways for the media to cover stories such as the Sydney siege without committing gross ethical violations.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joel Carrett</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote><p>AUST gets wake-call with Sydney terror. Only Daily Telegraph caught the bloody outcome at 2.00 am. Congrats.</p>— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) <a href="https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/544587566297522176">December 15, 2014</a></blockquote>
<p>In one brutally insensitive tweet, Rupert Murdoch told the world everything it ever needed to know about the central tenet of the News Corp culture: nothing matters except the story.</p>
<p>It is a culture in which the ends justify the means.</p>
<p>It is a culture that celebrates cruel vulgarity, infamously exemplified by the headline <a href="http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/gotcha.html">“Gotcha”</a> in the London Sun when, during the Falklands War, the British forces sank the Argentine warship the General Belgrano, with the loss of 368 lives. In <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stick-It-Your-Punter-Newspaper/dp/0571299709">Stick It Up Your Punter!</a>, their account of life on The Sun, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie wrote that although even the editor, the egregious Kelvin MacKenzie, had second thoughts about the heading, Murdoch said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I rather like it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a culture that ultimately leads to the kind of criminality exposed in the phone-hacking scandal that <a href="https://theconversation.com/deplorable-and-indefensible-the-ethics-of-the-news-of-the-world-2215">engulfed</a> the British branch of Murdoch’s empire in 2011. It is a culture that says if that’s what it takes to get the story or sell a newspaper, let’s do it.</p>
<p>In the case of the Lindt Café siege, it is a culture that permitted the publishing of the faces of hostages as they were forced at gunpoint to hold up the gunman’s black flag in the café window. There was a strong news case for showing them holding up the flag but no case for showing their faces.</p>
<p>These are images that are likely to haunt those hostages all their lives. The risk of doing harm should have been obvious. The disregarding of that risk is unjustifiable and unforgivable.</p>
<p>It is a culture that permits the publication of a door-stop photo of the father and husband of Katrina Dawson, who died at the gunman’s hands. They are leaving the hospital where Dawson died. The photo is clearly taken against the husband’s wishes: he is covering his face with his hand. The father’s face is a mask of shock. The intrusion on their grief is another unforgivable act.</p>
<p>There are ways to cover these stories without committing these gross ethical violations, and much of the other media showed how to do it. Channel Nine’s graphic live footage of the final police assault, and other television footage of hostages dashing from the scene, were vivid and immensely strong pieces of news reporting. ABC TV’s careful pixelating of faces of hostages in footage taken during the siege was another example of good ethical decision-making.</p>
<p>However, the newspapers – and not just <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/sydney-siege-hostage-marcia-mikhaels-chilling-facebook-post/story-fnqxbywy-1227157700358">News Corp’s</a> but <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/nsw/sydney-siege-over-lindt-cafe-gunman-forces-hostages-to-appear-in-videos-20141216-127wgy.html">Fairfax’s too</a> – seemed to think that material posted by the hostages on Facebook was simply public property to be exploited for media purposes.</p>
<p>This is a clear violation of a foundational privacy principle that says material supplied for one purpose shall not be used for another purpose without the provider’s consent. Many people – young people in particular – post material on Facebook for the purpose of sharing it with their friends. They do not anticipate that it will be used by the media in whatever context or for whatever purpose the media thinks fit.</p>
<p>The focus of this article has been on News Corp because the connection between its performance and Murdoch’s tweet is the principal point of argument. However, that is not to say News Corp coverage was all bad, nor that others were blameless.</p>
<p>The coverage of the Lindt Café siege is as a strong a candidate as we have seen in recent years for the Australian Press Council to conduct an investigation into the performance of the newspapers generally, and for the Australian Communications and Media Authority to use its <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/About/The-ACMA-story/Regulating/regulatory-guides-guidelines-limitations-on-control-acma">own-motion powers</a> to do the same in respect of radio and television.</p>
<p>The mixed quality of the media performance was illustrated by the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sydney-siege-press-council-clouds-own-rules/story-e6frg6n6-1227160006029">responses to it</a> by the NSW Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, and the chair of the Australian Press Council, Professor Julian Disney. Scipione publicly thanked the media for acting responsibly in the way they covered the siege:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For you to act the way you did, to be responsible, all I can say is “thank you”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Disney <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/media-release-16-december-2014/">issued a statement</a>, saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Much of the coverage has been excellent and has not hesitated to tell painful truths when necessary. But there have been some deeply regrettable errors and exaggerations, spreading dangerous misinformation without any reasonable basis. This type of material can be a serious risk to public safety, as well as causing an unjustified level of fear and distrust across the community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a general statement of assessment, and did not make specific allegations against any particular media outlet.</p>
<p>However, it provoked a response from News Corp broadsheet The Australian, which has been running a <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/08/11/smelling-an-adverse-ruling-the-australian-turns-on-press-council/?wpmp_switcher=mobile">campaign</a> to undermine Disney in his last year as chair of the Press Council.</p>
<p>In a front-page story, it accused Disney of “triggering concerns” – by whom, one wonders – about “whether his organisation has abandoned the rules of procedural fairness”.</p>
<p>The basis for this accusation was that Disney had spoken without hearing the media’s side of the story. The weakness in this argument is that Disney was not making a finding against a specific newspaper, but making a general statement about the performance of the newspapers as a whole.</p>
<p>However, the motive for the story became clear in its last paragraph. There, The Australian quoted its own editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, as saying Disney:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… has just dealt the Press Council out of any future complaints about the role of the media during this week’s events.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was clearly meant as a shot across the bow of the Press Council. In the event that the Press Council does decide to hear complaints about the coverage of the siege, it is reasonable to suppose that News Corp will challenge its fitness to do so. This may not thwart any such inquiry, but it might make it more difficult to accomplish, especially if News Corp decided not to co-operate on the grounds of apprehended bias.</p>
<p>This brings us finally to another aspect of the News Corp culture: every critic is an enemy, and we take no prisoners.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35656/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>AUST gets wake-call with Sydney terror. Only Daily Telegraph caught the bloody outcome at 2.00 am. Congrats.— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) December 15, 2014 In one brutally insensitive tweet, Rupert…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/129092013-03-20T01:01:54Z2013-03-20T01:01:54ZMedia reform could save victims of misinformation … like my grandfather<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21433/original/k9vbgcmk-1363670331.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Courier Mail never retracted a story alleging Manning Clark was a spy, even though the Press Council ruled against them.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dave Hunt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is a matter of public record in Australia that my grandfather was a communist spy.</p>
<p>That he wasn’t really one doesn’t always matter. <a href="http://manningclark.org.au/html/guide-to-papers/index.html#bio">Manning Clark</a>, famous Australian historian and my father’s father, is recorded in several major Australian newspapers as having been a secret agent.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21435/original/p8xm54f9-1363670473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21435/original/p8xm54f9-1363670473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21435/original/p8xm54f9-1363670473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21435/original/p8xm54f9-1363670473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21435/original/p8xm54f9-1363670473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21435/original/p8xm54f9-1363670473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/21435/original/p8xm54f9-1363670473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Manning Clark’s family had limited recourse when untruths were published about him.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was in 1996 that Brisbane’s Courier Mail <a href="http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms9873#c0111">published</a> an eight-page liftout alleging that Clark, who died in 1991, had been a secret agent working for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and that he had secretly received an Order of Lenin for this work.</p>
<p>The Courier Mail’s report was syndicated across several News Limited papers, and of course went on to receive widespread coverage in Australian and international outlets. </p>
<p>Was it true? The Press Council found, in its <a href="http://www.worldlii.org/au/other/apc/1996/64.html">Adjudication No. 890</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The newspaper had too little evidence to assert that Prof Clark was awarded the Order of Lenin – rather there is much evidence to the contrary.</p>
<p>That being so, the Press Council finds that The Courier-Mail was not justified in publishing its key assertion and the conclusions which so strongly flowed from it. The newspaper should have taken further steps to check the accuracy of its reports.</p>
<p>While the Courier-Mail devoted much space to people challenging its assertions, the Press Council believes it should have retracted the allegations about which Prof Clark’s supporters complained. That adjudication effectively discredited The Courier Mail’s reportage as not meeting the professional standards expected of journalism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, The Courier Mail nor any of the parties making the allegations subsequently retracted them, and the Press Council had no power to compel that reparatory action or any other. These wilfully false accusations remain in circulation — not least because News Ltd writers continue to re-air them.</p>
<p>If such a finding were made against an academic, pursuant to a formal grievance heard by our peers, we would expect to face sanctions. The same is true for counsellors, lawyers, sportspeople, and many other professionals in this country.</p>
<p>That the same is not true for journalism in Australia has been manifestly evident in the career trajectories of the journalists involved in making and then sustaining the allegation. In particular, the editor then in charge of The Courier Mail, Chris Mitchell, has gone on to become editor-in-chief at The Australian.</p>
<p>This is why I believe there is a strong logic for endorsing the federal government’s proposed <a href="http://www.timebase.com.au/topics/2013/03/13/new-media-law-reforms-proposed-conroy">Press Standards Model</a>, which uses media exemptions from privacy laws as leverage for enforceable self-regulation. </p>
<p>To some extent, <em>ad hominem</em> attack is a normal part of the media game. But that does not detract from its abusiveness. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that the profession of journalism has good reasons to fear the consequences of government or other bodies interfering in its ethical self-regulation. But the community at large has equally good reasons to fear the consequences of journalism without ethical checks and balances. </p>
<p>Legally enforceable self-regulation by the profession is the most appropriate response to these twin dangers.</p>
<p>Australian journalists, especially those in the written and printed media, have to date been answerable to few ethical limitations other than the directions of their employers and the law.</p>
<p>There are countries where the profession of journalism is subject to an enforceable ethical framework, though. And there is no clear case that Australia’s democracy is stronger than such countries, or that Australian journalists are less fearful of undue influence.</p>
<p>The legal framework in Iceland, for example, affords journalists and their sources <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100616/1035169849.shtml">greater protections</a> against proprietors, government, and other stakeholders. But the <em>quid pro quo</em> is enforceable self-regulation. Iceland’s journalists are simply more answerable to their peers for the way they meet standards of professional conduct.</p>
<p>It is worth briefly considering an Australian example from 2011: the case of <a href="http://abalinx.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Eatock-v-Bolt-Judgement.pdf">Eatock v Bolt</a>. This complaint was heard in the Federal Court, which found Andrew Bolt had breached Australia’s <a href="http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013C00013">Racial Discrimination Act</a> and ordered his publisher to issue retractions and apologies.</p>
<p>In that case, the complainants did not press the case for damages against Bolt; instead they settled on a penalty that would be entirely within the scope of a properly empowered Press Council or equivalent authority. Indeed, it seems that the complainants pursued the case through the court system precisely because that was the only mechanism by which they could enforce redress upon an Australian newspaper.</p>
<p>At what point in Australian public life is a powerful publisher compelled to account for its mistreatment of individuals or groups? Or to withdraw its support from journalists who embark on personal campaigns of victimisation? For those who cannot litigate, the answer to date has been never.</p>
<p>I have no particular wish to hurt Chris Mitchell or his co-conspirators, as hurtful and unfair as their actions have been to my family. </p>
<p>But simply ensuring that the rulings on professional ethics of the Australian Press Council (or some equivalent peer authority) had an enforceable standing would act as a brake on such abuses of power.</p>
<p>Communications minister Stephen Conroy’s policy offers direct succour to citizens and groups who engage with civil society – even if you argue that its details need improvement – because this kind of self-regulation means complaints about victimisation and vilification by journalists will become enforceable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/12909/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Clark is a grandson of Manning Clark.</span></em></p>It is a matter of public record in Australia that my grandfather was a communist spy. That he wasn’t really one doesn’t always matter. Manning Clark, famous Australian historian and my father’s father…Tom Clark, Senior Lecturer in Communication, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/89822013-03-19T00:58:01Z2013-03-19T00:58:01ZExplainer: Conroy’s proposed new media laws<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21391/original/nfzgsbvy-1363649749.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has come under concerted attack by many sections of the media over his proposed reforms. But what exactly are they?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the past 12 months we’ve been warned on an almost daily basis that the sky is about to fall in on media freedoms in Australia, but what does the legislation before parliament this week actually propose?</p>
<h2>News Media (Self Regulation) Bill 2013</h2>
<p>There is one simple purpose to <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r4994">this legislation</a> and it is not to stifle freedom of the press. Instead this bill simply creates the conditions under which the Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA) can declare that an organisation is a “news media self-regulation body”.</p>
<p>The definition of a self-regulator rests on one condition: the body must have a self-regulation scheme that is binding on members.</p>
<p>The only other function of this bill is to remove a news organisation’s exemption from some provisions of the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/pa1988108/">Privacy Act 1988</a> if it is not a member of a self-regulatory body recognised by the media advocate.</p>
<p>The effective clause of the Privacy Act is 7B(4) and as it currently stands, a news media organisation is only exempt from some Privacy Act provisions if it adheres to public standards. This new bill changes nothing in that regard.</p>
<p>That is it; that is all this legislation is aimed to do.
The self-regulation scheme proposed in the bill is no tougher than the current rules and membership requirements of the Australian Press Council.</p>
<p>Under the terms of this bill, the self-regulatory bodies will still devise their own standards, investigate breaches, handle complaints and apply sanctions. The “remedial direction” available to the self-regulatory body (not to the PIMA) is either an apology or a correction. That is exactly as it is now.</p>
<p>Contrary to the screams of impending doom and horror from the news media bosses and their hired guns, this legislation does not imply any form of censorship over content.</p>
<p>The PIMA’s advocacy role is limited to assessing the effectiveness of any proposed self-regulation scheme and standards.</p>
<p>Even this has caused hand-wringing and weasel words from the news media. Why? </p>
<p>The legislation mentions “community standards”, which are notoriously hard to define. However, at the end of the day, common sense tells us that community standards are fairly relaxed and comfortable. </p>
<p>Whatever they are at any given time is surely a measure of the community’s tolerance and limits of what is acceptable. Why should this frighten the horses?</p>
<p>The PIMA’s ability to suspend an organisation – that is to revoke its status under the legislation – is also limited to circumstances that currently apply anyway to the Australian Press Council: failure to pay registration fees, or failure to comply with a remedial direction.</p>
<p>It is important to remember that remedial orders are not given by the advocate, but by the self-regulatory body. This is no different from the situation today.</p>
<p>Any move by the PIMA to disallow a media self-regulation body must only follow a period of full consultation; it is not the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles#Sword_of_Damocles">sword of Damocles</a> we’re talking about here.</p>
<p>There is also an important clause in the legislation that signals clearly that the intent is not to shut down news media hostile to the current, or any subsequent government:</p>
<p><strong>14: Implied freedom of political communication</strong>
<em>This Act does not apply to the extent (if any) that it would infringe any constitutional doctrine of implied freedom of political communication.</em></p>
<p>Finally, the lifespan of the legislation (if passed this week) is limited to three years; after which time it is to be reviewed.</p>
<h2>Public Interest Media Advocate Bill 2013</h2>
<p>The second <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r4993">piece of legislation</a> being debated this week is the bill to establish the public interest media advocate (PIMA).</p>
<p>The advocate has a limited range of functions:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a) such functions as are conferred on the PIMA by the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 or the News Media (Self regulation) Act 2013; </p>
<p>b) to do anything incidental to or conducive to the performance of those functions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The advocate will be appointed after a period of consultation with the industry and other stakeholders. It will only be a part-time position so will not really be able to interfere very much with anything. </p>
<p>There is no provision for the PIMA to be told what to do by governments and there is no provision for a large bureaucracy to be built around the office. The advocate will not be a media “tsar” and there won’t be any gulags for miscreant columnists.</p>
<p>In spite of the mild language in the 5,500 words contained in both of these bills at least 20 times that amount have been written to bolster claims that this is an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of expression.</p>
<h2>Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r4992">This bill</a> amends other legislation to bring it into line with the realities of convergence and to overcome the techno-legal time-gap that exists between analogue laws and digital technologies.</p>
<p>The key pieces of legislation affected are the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/bsa1992214/">Broadcasting Services Act 1992</a>; the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/abca1983361/">Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983</a> and the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sbsa1991254/">Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991</a>.</p>
<p>The effect of the changes are:</p>
<ul>
<li>to ensure there are no more free-to-air network licenses granted; effectively limiting Australia to three FTV networks (7,9,10)</li>
<li>to slightly increase the Australian content quota required for free-to-air television networks’</li>
<li>to bring the digital services of the ABC and the SBS into the coverage of their respective Charters.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Australian content quota will increase over the next three years to be not less than 1460 hours per year in 2015.</p>
<h2>Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (News Media Diversity) Bill 2013</h2>
<p>It is <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r4991">this legislation</a> that perhaps most upsets the bosses at News Limited because a major implication of this bill is that it will bring subscription television services and platforms – such as Sky News and Foxtel – under the auspices of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992.</p>
<p>Other amendments to the BSA 1992 include adding digital services to sections of the act where previously only newspapers were mentioned. This is another simple tidy up from analogue to digital realities.</p>
<p>This bill also introduces the PIMA and relates it to ACMA by allowing ACMA to disclose material to the advocate if it would assist her/him to carry out specified duties. This is a standard boilerplate clause in legislation of this type as it merely allows the machinery of the bureaucracy to mesh cogs effectively. It does not represent a draconian increase in powers. However, there are other changes to the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/acamaa2005453/">ACMA legislation</a> as a consequence of the new bill.</p>
<p>A new clause has been added to the Objectives of the Broadcast Services Act 1992 and it is this that is upsetting the media bosses:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>d) to encourage diversity in control of the more influential sources of news and current affairs;</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This specifically references news and current affairs providers for the first time. However, it is not, as far as I can tell, the thin end of the wedge that will lead to government control or censorship of news and current affairs.</p>
<p>The real angst generated by this legislation is the joining up of the ACMA and BSA acts with the new office of Public Interest Media Advocate. This occurs in a new Part 5A of the 2013 bill that amends ACMA 2005. Helpfully, the bill provides the following simplified summary of the intentions of the new section.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This Part prohibits a transaction that results in a person becoming the controller of a registered news media voice unless the Public Interest Media Advocate has approved the change of control.</p>
<p>The Public Interest Media Advocate must not approve a change of control unless:</p>
<p>a) the change of control will not result in a substantial lessening of diversity of control of registered news media voices; or</p>
<p>b) the change of control is likely to result in a benefit to the public, and that benefit outweighs the detriment to the public constituted by any lessening of diversity of control of registered news media voices that would result from the change of control.</p>
<p>Each of the following is a news media voice:</p>
<p>a) a commercial television broadcasting service that provides news or current affairs programs; </p>
<p>b) a commercial radio broadcasting service that provides news or current affairs programs;</p>
<p>c) a subscription television service that provides news or current affairs programs;</p>
<p>d) a subscription television platform;</p>
<p>e) a print publication that has news or current affairs content;</p>
<p>f) an online service that has news or current affairs content.</p>
<p>A registered news media voice is a news media voice that has been registered in the Register of News Media Voices.</p>
<p>A news media voice will be registered if the size of its audience or customer base exceeds 30% of the average metropolitan commercial television evening news audience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the new set of rules that gives the PIMA its power to intervene in the transfer of ownership of significant “news media voices” in the Australian market. The figure of 30% of the average evening news audience is an interesting choice. </p>
<p>Channel Ten, for example, has an average evening news viewing audience nationally of about 690,000. So on that basis a news voice that attracts anything more than about 200,000 readers, viewers or unique visits. On that calculation, if the number is based on audited circulation figures, The Australian might not qualify, its audited circulation is less than 150,000 per day. Nor would the Fairfax Media newspapers either. Only the Melbourne Herald-Sun has a strong Monday to Friday circulation of around 450,000 per day. It really only makes sense if the calculation is done on readership.</p>
<p>Minister Conroy said that the cut-off point would be a media organisation about the size of the Australian Financial Review. However, the legislation already contains a list of registered news voices and all the major Australian news media outlets on AM (talkback) radio, television and in print are listed. The only exception is the Northern Territory News.</p>
<p>Perhaps the NT News is too small, or in the view of the drafting bureaucrats, its contents don’t qualify as news.</p>
<h2>Controversial ‘control events’</h2>
<p>The news media diversity bill is perhaps the most controversial for the current media owners because it introduces a “control event” which triggers PIMA action under the news media diversity provisions. If a person effectively controls a news media voice and is likely to be in a situation to control another registered news media voice then the PIMA can look at that situation. </p>
<p>If the transaction that triggers the control event is not approved by the media advocate, the legislation creates an offence with a 20,000 point penalty, which equates to a fine of $3.4 million dollars.</p>
<p>You can see why this has got the attention of Kerry Stokes, Kim Williams and Greg Hywood; all of whom have been in Canberra to lobby various parliamentary committees. It is here where the much-discussed “public interest” test becomes relevant in Clause 78CB(3). </p>
<p>Under this provision, the PIMA can approve the control event transaction if there is no lessening of diversity in the control of registered news media voices, or if there is a nett benefit to the public interest. There will be an opportunity for public submissions to the PIMA in relation to any determination of a control event.</p>
<p>It is this section of the new legislation (assuming it survives this week) that is likely to be tested first. There are already <a href="http://www.mediaspy.org/2013/03/02/potential-for-change-to-reach-rules-begins-merger-talks/">rumours of possible mergers</a> involving the big networks and smaller regional players in the television market which will trigger control events.</p>
<p>And to ensure that no transactions occur to circumvent the legislation there is a reverse grandfathering clause that allows the PIMA and ACMA to act on control events that might happen before the legislation is gazetted. The big media companies that supply news content are also upset that aggregators like Google are not caught within the legislation too.</p>
<h2>Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 2013</h2>
<p>The purpose of <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r4997">this bill</a> is to provide a financial sweetener to the commercial television networks by reducing their licence fees by up to 50 per cent. It has no other purpose.</p>
<p>There are also consequential amendments within the new raft of bills. Most importantly to alter the Privacy Act 1988 to reference the News Media (Self-regulation) Act 2013. This is in relation to exemptions for properly regulated news media organisations.</p>
<p>These bills might be clumsy, or unnecessary, and it is true that the whole exercise of introducing media reform has been badly handled by Minister Conroy and Julia Gillard, however, there is no fundamental threat to Rupert Murdoch or anyone else in this legislation. Nor is there, as far as I can tell, any reason to think that freedom of the press (for what it is worth) is going to be lessened.</p>
<p>Given the limited changes that these bills give effect to, it is valid to wonder why they have even been drafted in the first place.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Hirst is a member of the MEAA.</span></em></p>For the past 12 months we’ve been warned on an almost daily basis that the sky is about to fall in on media freedoms in Australia, but what does the legislation before parliament this week actually propose…Martin Hirst, Associate Professor Journalism & Media, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127782013-03-12T19:43:03Z2013-03-12T19:43:03ZLow-key Conroy proposals are media reform lite<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21165/original/xwfq8rpq-1363067926.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Senator Stephen Conroy did not have a mandate for significant change.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Yesterday, communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy finally presented the government <a href="http://www.afr.com/rw/2009-2014/AFR/2013/03/12/Photos/73ae3770-8ac2-11e2-b3be-e962dfe94952_Reforms%20to%20secure%20media%20quality,%20diversity,%20and%20certainty%20for%20the%20future.pdf">response</a> to the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">Convergence Review</a> and <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Finkelstein review</a>. </p>
<p>It is hard to know how many drafts of this long-awaited response have been generated in the minister’s office, but what has finally been put forward is decidedly low-key. It is focused on current concerns and existing media players more than a convergent media future.</p>
<h2>Core reforms</h2>
<p>Given the fanfare with which the initial media enquiries were announced, and the mix of hope and trepidation that surrounded what they may recommend – a fair part of which was generated by the media itself – a modest set of recommendations has emerged. </p>
<p>Among the core reforms proposed are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>A press standards model that maintains self-regulation, but beefs up the role of the Press Council and clarifies its standing in relation to online as well as print media;</p></li>
<li><p>The introduction of a Public Interest Test for future media takeovers and mergers, including the creation of a Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA) to evaluate their implications for media diversity;</p></li>
<li><p>Updating the ABC and SBS charters to explicitly incorporate their online activities as core to their public service mission;</p></li>
<li><p>Continuing allocation of the sixth free-to-air channel to community television, or, put differently, a continuing prohibition on a fourth free-to-air commercial TV service;</p></li>
<li><p>Making permanent the 50% licence fees rebate for commercial television broadcasters, subject to their meeting new Australian content obligations, particularly on their digital multichannels.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Old world thinking</h2>
<p>This package of measures is hardly the “<a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/147780/Convergence_Review_Final_Report_Executive_summary.pdf">new policy and regulatory framework</a>” the Convergence Review believed was the necessary response to technological and audience changes rendering the existing legislative framework redundant.</p>
<p>Yes, the new policy recommends changes to media ownership, news standards, public broadcasting and Australian and local content that are largely with the convergence review recommendations, but these still largely sit within the established media “silos” of print, broadcasting and online media. </p>
<p>More radical proposals, such as setting content standards for Google, or eliminating broadcasting licences altogether, are clearly off the agenda.</p>
<h2>Legislating the public interest</h2>
<p>The proposal for a public interest test for media mergers and acquisitions, and the creation of a Public Interest Media Advocate (PIMA), are the recommendations most consistent with the spirit of the convergence review. </p>
<p>The review proposed that a revised media policy framework needed to be “technology-neutral”, avoiding structural biases for or against any particular media platform or service type, while recognising that public interest questions about media ownership concentration or the loss of local content still matter.</p>
<p>The PIMA proposal walks the line between establishing more flexible, less prescriptive approaches to regulating media ownership, without fully abandoning controls in the interests of securing media diversity. It draws upon the concept of <a href="http://www.gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/gtcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Weeks_SoftLaw_%20Australia.pdf">soft law</a>, whereby legislation establishes a general principle – in this case media diversity – and grants decision makers a degree of autonomy in determining the scope of its application in particular cases. </p>
<p>Soft law is seen by many as a necessary response to rapid technological change, where events are moving too quickly for parliaments to be able to regularly update legislation.</p>
<h2>The politics of change</h2>
<p>Senator Conroy indicated his personal preference for eliminating what he sees as legacy rules, such as the maximum 75% audience reach rule for commercial broadcasters. This rule clearly assumes that services such as broadcast news are only accessed through broadcast media, whereas they are clearly now available to 100% of Australian homes with a reasonably fast internet connection. </p>
<p>It is worth remembering that almost no Australian homes had an internet connection when these initial restrictions were passed, let alone access to YouTube and on-demand media services.</p>
<p>But the politics of legislating for changes to media laws in a political context where the government lacks a majority in either house, and where an election is six months away can also be seen in the Conroy’s response to the reviews.</p>
<h2>A modest proposal</h2>
<p>Rather than presenting a single set of legislative changes to parliament, Conroy has instead opted to unbundle the proposals. This means the licence fee rebate and the changes to the ABC and SBS charters do not hinge on how parliament responds to the PIMA proposal. The former could be passed even if the latter is rejected.</p>
<p>What has finally emerged is a compromise set of changes; a very cautious, and in many ways piecemeal, response to the proposals of the Convergence and Finkelstein reviews. It has probably not modernised media laws sufficiently to “tackle the challenges of the future”, although it does make some overdue changes to existing law. </p>
<p>Given the lack of community consensus as to what media laws should prioritise, it would have been hard to have advanced further without a clearer mandate for change than the federal government currently possesses.</p>
<p>It would appear that a larger overhaul of media policy and regulation to meet the challenges of convergence will need to wait for another occasion. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/12778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terry Flew 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>Yesterday, communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy finally presented the government response to the Convergence Review and Finkelstein review. It is hard to know how many drafts of this long-awaited…Terry Flew, Professor of Media and Communications, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67582012-05-01T04:17:33Z2012-05-01T04:17:33ZConvergence Review: media business as usual<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10180/original/vygj26dy-1335843648.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=41%2C38%2C1898%2C1323&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dull grey tone: media organisations are "Content service enterprises", according to the Convergence Review.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">Convergence Review’s final report</a> is remarkable for its blandness and predictability.</p>
<p>Despite the cries of fear and loathing from the Murdoch stable that the cold hand of government intervention was upon us, the review has explicitly rejected <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Ray Finkelstein’s suggestion</a> that a statutory News Media Council should be established by legislation.</p>
<p>What we have in this report is an attempt to play regulation catch up with digital convergence, while preserving flexibility to adapt quickly to further change. It is a difficult balance and the report fails to meet the challenge.</p>
<p>The Convergence Review has opted to suggest a set of principles, rather than prescription in order for any new regulatory regime to remain nimble and effective. Unfortunately, the recommendations are weak and in some cases almost totally unworkable.</p>
<h2>Two tier regulation</h2>
<p>There will be two types of regulation in the system proposed by Glen Boreham and his fellow reviewers. The first will be a much trimmer version of the <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME">Australian Communication and Media Authority</a> that will apply a very light touch regulation of ownership issues and spectrum allocation and it will incorporate a revised classifications process for media content (except news and current affairs). New regulations will be applied to media companies according to their size and reach. If companies outside the limit grow, they will then be included.</p>
<p>To establish the second arm of self-regulation, the review has politely invited the nation’s top 15 news content providers to join what would essentially be a souped-up <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a>. These top 15 providers are measured by audience reach and revenues with the cut-off for regulation being revenue of around $50 million a year and/or audience reach of about 500,000 per month.</p>
<p>In a line straight out of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister">“Yes, Minister”</a>, the report has coined a new term that continues the dull grey tone of the text. Media organisations – whether in print, broadcast or online, will be henceforth deemed to be “content service enterprises”. </p>
<p>This bureaucratic mouthful sits alongside other gems of government prose such as “uniform content scheme” and “television-like services”. The new self-regulation body will only apply to the major “content service enterprises” whose business is the provision of news and commentary and membership is voluntary.</p>
<p>In what appears to a rejection of the Finkelstein proposal to bring bloggers and social media into the regulation net, the size and service provisions, and what the report describes as the publishing or broadcast of ‘professional news and commentary’, means that amateur and citizen journalism is not subject to regulation. But Telstra and Google too would be outside the framework, according to the Review’s figures. This has naturally upset some of the other media players.</p>
<h2>Clayton’s reform</h2>
<p>This report and its recommendations is the sort of Clayton’s reform we have come to expect from expensive government inquiries; fiddle with the terminology, shuffle the paper, look busy for a while, collect the cheque and quietly slip out the backdoor. </p>
<p>The report is very business friendly – there’s nothing in here to frighten the market and nothing to excite or enthuse anyone campaigning for real and meaningful change.
The only substantial achievement in this review is a recognition that convergence in media technologies and platforms means that there must be some sort of change. However, only mild change has been proposed; really it’s no more than tinkering.</p>
<h2>Spectrum Fees</h2>
<p>The broadcast licence fee will be replaced with a spectrum fee, so this alteration to the status quo – while appearing significant – is only semantics. Media organisations will still pay for the right to broadcast free-to-air TV, but the spectrum can be bought and sold or traded on the open market.</p>
<h2>Local Content</h2>
<p>The report recommends that the ABC and the SBS be brought into the new Australian content rules through designated quotas and levies on the commercial networks. The “converged content production fund” will be used to produce content, but whether or not it will go past “New Same, with added MORE” is yet to be decided.</p>
<h2>Industry-approved regulation of news and commentary</h2>
<p>The key recommendation about news and current affairs is the “industry-led” body that will oversight “journalistic standards” across all platforms. This is a Press Council on steroids.</p>
<p>The self-regulatory body for news and commentary – the Press Council supersized – would administer codes around fairness, accuracy and transparency; hear complaints and make determinations and regulate “journalistic standards”. Platform neutrality is a key determining factor emphasised in this report, which argues there is no longer any justification for separate self-regulation given the platform cross-over between publishing, broadcasting and online delivery.</p>
<p>However, getting the various industry groups and media companies to agree to this structure may be difficult. Current arrangements for the Press Council and for commercial radio and commercial television providers are purely voluntary, but the Review sees this as a “structural weakness” and argues that the largest content service enterprises should be pushed to join: “The structural weakness of this purely self-regulatory model is addressed under the Review’s approach, which will ensure that all content service enterprises are subject to standards and sanctions set by the news standards body.” </p>
<p>The government’s “stick” to ensure compliance with this approach would be that current exemptions to privacy or competition law enjoyed by news providers would be conditional on membership of the new self-regulation body.
The radio and television industry lobby groups have not yet responded to the Convergence Review report, but it is hard to imagine them giving up their independence without inducements or coercion.</p>
<p>At best this suggested change amounts to a new set of dentures for the existing publisher’s poodle. It will be able to accept sanitised government funding in ways that will not upset the old-guard in the newspaper industry who see Armageddon in every attempt at regulation by government. There is no indication in this 170+ page report that there is any real problem or issue with media accountability and standards in Australia. This is a whitewash of the highest standard.</p>
<h2>A public interest test for ownership</h2>
<p>The report pays lip service to the idea – long argued by critics of the mainstream – that market forces can lead to oligopoly and monopoly and that this is bad for media “diversity”. A public interest test will be introduced that will examine ownership issues from a broader perspective than simple market economics and the test would be invoked when a “content service enterprise” changes ownership. However, no one contemplating becoming a media mogul should be too concerned, despite howls of protest that this change somehow “politicises” the review process. The Review argues that the onus of proof should be on the regulator to prove that a proposed sale is not in the public interest.</p>
<p>The previous market-share ownership rules will be replaced, but the new system sounds remarkably like the old one. The new rule will be known as the “minimum number of owners” clause. The often cumbersome rules regarding television, radio and print media will be removed, but the networks and newspapers have not had their ambitions of no ownership rules at all realized. The effect of the public interest test will not be known until it is tested in use, but the Australian media market is already heavily controlled by a few companies and this is likely to remain the case. There is no positive suggestion that existing near-monopolies be dismantled. Under “minimum number of owners”, hybrids such as NineMSN and Yahoo will also be caught up in the regulatory net for the first time.</p>
<p>The report says these rules should be complementary to the ACCC and other competition regulation, not duplicate them; so it is hard to see that there will be teeth in the public interest test. Just in case though, there is an out clause that allows the public interest to be over-ridden if there is a greater public interest in allowing concentration of ownership. Sir Humphrey’s fingerprints are all over this report.</p>
<h2>Security for public and community broadcasting</h2>
<p>The report recommends that community television be given some certainty about its future and argues that the abolition of licence fees in favour of permanently allocated spectrum should benefit community broadcasters. It has long been a scandal that community television has been operating (for more than 20 years) on ‘temporary’ licences and the low threshold for sponsorship for community broadcasting limits its potential to increase revenue.</p>
<p>The report also recommends a review of the ABC and SBC charters to reflect convergence. This seems straightforward, but lurking behind the curtain is a move by the commercial operators to quarantine their activities from competition from publicly-funded broadcasters. This push has been led in the UK and Australia by Rupert and James Murdoch who have argued for years that the BBC and ABC are taking food from their mouths.</p>
<p>This is a self-serving argument and we will have to be vigilant to ensure that the ABC and the SBS are not hamstrung by any changes.</p>
<h2>The political reality</h2>
<p>The report has been released and the process is now in the political sphere for action. However, with an election due by October next year and the parliamentary landscape littered with bodies at the moment, it is highly unlikely that the Communications Minister will move quickly to implement any of the review’s recommendations.</p>
<p>The report suggests a staged approach to development and implementation of its recommendations, but stage 1—stand-alone changes that can be achieved in the short term, including the public interest test, requires that the new regulator be established first. I doubt Stephen Conroy will be in any hurry to move on this given the likely hostile response he would get from the Opposition and from some quarters of the media.</p>
<p>Overall this is a fairly mediocre piece of work – it does not attempt to do anything innovative or radical in relation to convergence, regulation or standards. The supersized Press Council (Mark II) may or may not get off the ground, but why would the broadcasters give up their own self-regulation systems in the first place?</p>
<p>This review, like many others, will gather dust. The words “fiddling”, “Rome” and “burning” come to mind.</p>
<h2>News media regulation at a glance</h2>
<p>The key features of the Convergence Review’s approach include:</p>
<ul>
<li>major media organisations should be required to participate in any scheme regardless of platform and not be able to “opt out”</li>
<li>any scheme should have adequate funding, a majority of which should come from the industry</li>
<li>sanctions for failure to meet standards should be meaningful and credible</li>
<li>regulation should not impinge on free speech and an independent press.</li>
<li>The Review says that government-backed regulation of news content should only be a “last resort”.</li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, the new self-managed body would, the report says, have the following characteristics:</p>
<ul>
<li>the appointment of a board of directors, a majority of whom would be independent from the members</li>
<li>adequate funding and resourcing of the body and its operations</li>
<li>the establishment of standards for the production of news and commentary, including specific requirements for fairness and accuracy</li>
<li>the maintenance of an efficient and effective complaints-based scheme</li>
<li>a flexible range of remedies and credible sanctions, including the power to order members to prominently and appropriately publish its findings on the relevant media platform.</li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Hirst is a member of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance and the Journalism Education Association of Australia.
He is director of the 2012 JEAA annual conference to be held in Melbourne from 2 to 5 December.</span></em></p>The Convergence Review’s final report is remarkable for its blandness and predictability. Despite the cries of fear and loathing from the Murdoch stable that the cold hand of government intervention was…Martin Hirst, Associate Professor Journalism & Media, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67532012-05-01T01:47:13Z2012-05-01T01:47:13ZConvergence Review: tame cat Press Council gets playmate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10158/original/jzh54nrd-1335832206.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The line between traditional and new media has now blurred into indistinguishability.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">flickr/francescominciotti</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It should be easy for the Gillard Government to accept the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review#report">recommendations</a> of the Convergence Review. </p>
<p>On the surface it seems all very sensible: a converged <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Press Council</a> and <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME">Australian Communications and Media Authority</a> (ACMA) to keep news organisations honest, easy to understand rules regarding media ownership, extra television channels, more Australian audio visual content, more local content, and a technology-neutral and flexible approach to media content standards. </p>
<p>(Listen to Glen Boreham from the Convergence Review team on Radio National this morning <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/report-recommends-media-changes-glen-boreham/3982056">here</a>.)</p>
<p>Some of the recommendations will be warmly welcomed – who wouldn’t support more locally made kids programs, dramas and documentaries? Who wouldn’t support more Australian music? (Even if it won’t be on the digital airways).</p>
<p>The key recommendation for journalists, to beef up the current Press Council (and rename it to a news standards body), appears sensible.</p>
<h2>Tinkering around the edges?</h2>
<p>Many in the Australian media have long argued the need for a one-stop shop for news standards which adjudicates on complaints and provides timely remedies. </p>
<p>Putting the Australian Press Council and ACMA together recognises the reality of today’s media. As the report states, “In a converged world it is no longer viable to argue that news and commentary in print media should be treated differently from news and commentary in television, radio and online. The new industry-led body should cover all platforms—print and online, television and radio.” </p>
<p>For the punters, it has always been difficult to figure out exactly where to complain or seek redress when legal action has been financially out of reach. </p>
<p>There are some strong recommendations which deserve to be applauded, but the bottom line is, the recommendations of the Convergence Review will likely do little to <a href="https://theconversation.com/search?q=phone+hacking">solve the problems that prompted public concern</a> in the United Kingdom and in Australia about news organisations their culture, ethics and practices.</p>
<h2>Culture and ethics: can they change?</h2>
<p>Unless forced, I doubt the new standards body will be able to agree to enforce a common media code aimed at promoting fairness, accuracy and transparency. Aggrieved parties have had difficulty getting action from the current Press Council, and with the addition of other content providers such as the ABC and free-to-air TV, getting agreement on action will likely be that much harder. </p>
<p>Similarly, it is unlikely that the members will agree on credible sanctions and the enforced prominent publication of its findings. While the ABC might be happy to run a full program correcting the record, I can’t imagine ever seeing a front page correction from the major broadsheets or at a fully replaced program on the tabloid current affairs programs. </p>
<p>It’s all about culture and ethics, and every news organisation has a different one, just ask those who work at NewsCorp, Fairfax, Crikey, the ABC, the Global Mail and Mammamia.com. </p>
<p>Further, the Review had not included social media and user generated content. While being defamed on a butterfly collectors blog may seem a small deal to those outside the group, it is potentially devastating, even if only 400 people have read it.</p>
<h2>News suppliers</h2>
<p>Like the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Finklestein Inquiry</a>, the Convergence Review ignores the power of the suppliers of “news”. In this regard <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/business/on-balance-its-a-pr-plague-20090303-8nex.html">Michael West is right</a> when he says that the PR plague is out of hand. </p>
<p>The PR industry is like an arms dealer supplying the fighters in a third world guerrilla war, while the journos are child soldiers unwillingly conscripted to the other side. One of the most startling pieces of evidence at the <a href="http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leeveson inquiry</a> was Rupert Murdoch finally admitting that all the salacious “news” in the Sun came from PR. </p>
<p>The Convergence Review notes that it is in the public interest for the body to be appropriately resourced, and to this end suggests government contributions limited to specific purposes. However, this keeps the government (or as I’d like to say the public) out of the main debate. </p>
<p>This kind of tokenistic funding can’t help provide a much needed cultural change and will instead be like water in milk, immediately diluted.</p>
<h2>Who pays the piper</h2>
<p>The review says the majority of funding for the journalism body should come from its members. This would continue to give the existing news organisations the same power they currently have with the Press Council – the power to do little. </p>
<p>Not only that, the owners of our established but struggling news organisations are already finding it difficult to maintain or grow revenue. Current members are unlikely to want to sign up to more funding, and new members may have financial difficulties contributing. </p>
<p>Even yesterday the major television stations pleaded poverty over the proposed requirements to increase Australian content.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/10163/original/xg8tgps3-1335833533.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Convergence Review ill not deal with the kind of cultura; issues like phone hacking that are worrying many Western citizens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I applaud the idea that the news standards body will refer to the new communications regulator instances where there have been persistent or serious breaches of the media code, although I’m not sure how satisfactory this can be. </p>
<p>That leads to my most serious concern - the recommendation to give the regulator the legislated power to “write-its-own-rules”. While I do not fear government funding, I certainly fear any regulator being able to make up its own rules on the run, even with a dynamic media environment. </p>
<p>Certainly the policy framework should take a technology-neutral approach that can adapt to new services, platforms and technologies, but this should not be the expense of allowing a regulator that “can apply, amend or remove regulatory measures as circumstances require” without any referral to the government (read again the Australian people).</p>
<h2>Capital ideas</h2>
<p>There are a couple of other recommendations which are significant for anyone working in Australian journalism which I won’t dwell on. However, media ownership is a big issue Australia’s capital cities, but it is an even bigger issue in regional Australia. </p>
<p>Although the proposed “minimum number of owners” rule and a public interest test isn’t perfect, it’s a good step towards helping ensure a diversity of voices (and importantly jobs in the media for young Australians). </p>
<p>Also, it is important to keep the charters of both the ABC and the SBS up to date to expressly reflect the range of existing services, including online activities. No government funded organisation should work outside its charter. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6753/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Wake works as a freelance broadcaster, often with Radio Australia (Australian's international radio and online broadcaster). Alex previously worked with Professor Matthew Ricketson, one of the authors of the Finklestein Report. Ten years ago she worked as a senior media advisor to a state government minister. Alex is completing a PhD on journalism education in emerging democracies.
</span></em></p>It should be easy for the Gillard Government to accept the recommendations of the Convergence Review. On the surface it seems all very sensible: a converged Press Council and Australian Communications…Alexandra Wake, Lecturer, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/64662012-04-17T00:37:34Z2012-04-17T00:37:34ZSelf-regulation and a media we can trust?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/9657/original/bddms6n4-1334557372.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=65%2C11%2C1907%2C1248&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seven West Media's decision to withdraw from the Australian Press Council raises questions about the Australian commercial media’s commitment to corporate social responsibility and best practice.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the report of the Independent Inquiry into the media and media regulation, aka <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Finkelstein inquiry</a>, was released some time ago, it was <a href="http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_rise_of_the_totalitarians/">denounced as sinister</a> and – like the <a href="http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson Inquiry</a> in the UK – as a totalitarian assault on freedom of speech. </p>
<p>Some critics were quick to construe freedom of speech as freedom of the press, a sacred freedom that has been traditionally enjoyed by investors who own a press and have the money to hire a QC or two.</p>
<p>Finkelstein highlighted concerns regarding the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a>, an industry body that has no statutory basis or powers, is poorly resourced, does not cover the electronic media and historically has been loath to bite the corporate hands that feed it. </p>
<p>Those hands of course belong to a few commercial media organisations, consistent with the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2809848.html">high level of media concentration</a> in Australia. A realist might be forgiven for concluding that the most effective watchdog of journalistic behaviour – and managerial tolerance of misbehaviour – is the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/">ABC’s Mediawatch</a> program rather than the Council or <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME">Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)</a> that emphasises “light touch” self-regulation and has thus only ever imposed derisory penalties on errant commercial broadcasters. </p>
<p>Finkelstein (and associate Matthew Ricketson of the University of Canberra) was criticised for proposing a government-funded but independent national News Media Council, an entity with appropriate resourcing and power. Consistent with the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">“convergence”</a> of media technologies and formats, the new body would be concerned with all media rather than in the words of former Prime Minister Paul Keating being restricted to the “princes of print”. </p>
<p>Critics indicated that regulation was best left to those who know what they are doing, that is, the managers and investors who control the media groups.</p>
<p>We might be forgiven - on reading the <a href="http://www.sevenwestmedia.com.au/docs/business-unit-news/statement-from-seven-west-media.pdf">terse announcement</a> from Seven West Media (the WA-based magazines and television network conglomerate) that it is abandoning the Press Council and going it alone to “guarantee accountability of all the group’s publications” – for asking whether moving house is a demonstration of improved accountability. </p>
<p>Seven West reportedly plans to set up an Independent Media Council headed by <a href="http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/13408733/former-judge-to-lead-media-council/">former judge, Christopher Steytler</a>, a body which West Australian Newspapers group editor-in-chief Bob Cronin has said will be independent of the company and governments.</p>
<p>But this still raises questions about the Australian commercial media’s commitment to corporate social responsibility and best practice. </p>
<p>Will each media group set up its own Independent Media Council, each with a distinguished person at the head and each with no power? Can we trust the managers and investors to police themselves (a problematical notion given the global financial crisis) and respond effectively when concerns are raised? </p>
<p>Meanwhile the remaining members of the Press Council, apparently unfussed by Seven West’s secession, are proposing to <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/document-search/strengthening-press-council-mr-5-april-2012/?LocatorGroupID=662&LocatorFormID=677&FromSearch=1">double their funding</a> of the Council. That’s admirable … and a small price to pay in avoiding establishment of a body that has sharp teeth. </p>
<p>Trust is a fundamental issue in an environment where billionaires such as <a href="http://theconversation.com/forget-the-personality-sideshow-serious-legal-issues-are-at-the-heart-of-rinehart-family-feud-5813">Gina Rinehart</a> and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/lew-tries-to-gag-media-in-fight-for-trust-fund-millions-20120411-1ws5z.html#ixzz1rliIWCym">Solomon Lew</a> reach for suppression orders to privatise justice, where <a href="http://theconversation.com/tax-avoidance-or-tax-evasion-a-haven-for-misunderstanding-2405">some corporations and some colourful entrepreneurs</a> have quite legally arranged their affairs to pay derisory amounts of tax (perhaps we need to adopt <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4318382.stm">Norway’s</a> publication of tax returns) and the dominant parties are reluctant to “speak truth to power”. </p>
<p>In an “information economy” power resides in the hands of people who control mines, broadcasters and newspapers and can afford the best QCs in town in litigation that keeps personal information out of the public domain. If we are to protect the Rineharts and Lews, what about the accident victims whose pain, as noted by Finkelsten, was exposed by by the broadcasters? What of figures such as <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/nsw-mp-apologises-seven-stands-by-story-20100521-w1y7.html">David Campbell</a>, “outed” by Seven Network staff and bereft of the comfort provided by a team of QCs queuing in the NSW Supreme Court for suppression orders?</p>
<p>From a regulatory perspective Seven West’s secession from the Press Council is disappointing - and possibly counterproductive to its aims. </p>
<p>A perceived flight from accountability is likely to reinforce calls for a national, whole-of-industry body that has teeth and is trusted. Trust is a foundation for courts heeding calls by the media not to privilege disputes involving the powerful through comprehensive suppression orders.</p>
<p>As Australia’s Chief Justice commented in a decision on the Rinehart dispute, “the proper conduct of trustees is a matter which warrants close public scrutiny”. That scrutiny is appropriate and imperative whether there is $500 million at stake, or $50. There are times when we should embrace notions of a freedom of the press that overrides concerns regarding privacy and confidentiality. Those notions however should not be taken as a given. They are founded on accountability.</p>
<p>In damning proposals for statutory protection against serious invasions of privacy (proposals recommended by law reform commissions in three Australian governments and thus presumably having some substance) the <a href="http://www.ruleoflawaustralia.com.au/Downloads/Freedom_of_the_Press_and_Freedom_of_Speech_in_Australia.pdf">Rule of Law Institute last year proclaimed</a> that:</p>
<p><em>Today, nearly 200 years after the first publication of the Australian newspaper, freedom of speech and freedom of the press remain under attack. This time the battle is the proposal of the Australian Government to pass a new law to make it illegal to talk or write the truth about another person where it “invades” that person’s privacy. …</em></p>
<p><em>… freedom of speech and freedom on the press are not limited to informing the public about matters of public concern. The Bill displays a fundamental misunderstanding of those freedoms and a desire to marginalise them.</em></p>
<p>Media groups that signal a disregard for accountability by becoming judge and jury arguably do as much to marginalise freedoms as any new statute. It’s time to embrace the Finkelstein Report.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/6466/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Baer Arnold 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>When the report of the Independent Inquiry into the media and media regulation, aka Finkelstein inquiry, was released some time ago, it was denounced as sinister and – like the Leveson Inquiry in the UK…Bruce Baer Arnold, Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43572011-11-18T19:52:15Z2011-11-18T19:52:15ZMedia Inquiry misses the point, as the news crisis worsens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/5664/original/INQUIRY_men_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ray Finkelstein and Matthew Ricketson look like they're leaning towards recommending a single regulatory body for all media platforms.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It seems that despite their sometimes bitter commercial rivalry, the Fairfax and News Limited empires agree on one thing: the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Finkelstein Media Inquiry</a> has been a giant waste of time and money.</p>
<p>Both have produced more than one editorial slamming it as <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/the-unnecessary-media-inquiry-20111106-1n1ym.html">unnecessary</a> and asking <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/what-exactly-is-the-question/story-e6frg71x-1226198254270">what its purpose is</a>.</p>
<p>Outgoing News Limited Chief Executive <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/labor-chasing-press-scapegoat-says-news-ceo-john-hartigan/story-e6frg996-1226198306659">John Hartigan</a> and current Fairfax Chief <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/success-of-a-free-press-lies-in-its-own-hands-20111116-1nizp.html">Greg Hywood</a> sang the <a href="http://theconversation.com/better-the-devil-you-know-news-limited-tells-media-inquiry-theyll-pay-more-to-the-press-council-4321">same jingle</a> during their appearances at the inquiry this week.</p>
<h2>What will the inquiry recommend?</h2>
<p>There is likely to be change to the way the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a> operates. At the moment it’s quasi-independent, but because it’s entirely funded by the two major newspaper companies and some smaller publishers, this claim of independence must be questioned.</p>
<p>It is likely that some form of “super” APC will emerge taking some over-arching role in complaints handling, with additional funding from government coffers; perhaps in spite of mild resistance from the key media companies. At the end of the day they may well agree to wear such an outcome knowing it won’t really change much in their day-to-day operations.</p>
<p>What we could end up with is something that looks like, smells like and barks like the British <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/">Press Complaints Commission</a>. This isn’t an ideal outcome and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-29/head-of-uk-press-watchdog-to-step-down/2817026">the PCC has not covered itself in glory</a> recently. It doesn’t receive any government funding, but the size of the British market perhaps suggests it doesn’t need to. What is clear from the APC’s own submissions to the inquiry and Finkelstein’s generally positive commentary, is that some subsidy from the public purse could be offered.</p>
<p>This point has generated the most heat in the discussion so far. <a href="http://theconversation.com/a-new-broom-for-news-limited-as-hartigan-exits-but-what-now-for-murdochs-empire-4236">John Hartigan</a> dismissed it outright, <a href="http://theconversation.com/better-the-devil-you-know-news-limited-tells-media-inquiry-theyll-pay-more-to-the-press-council-4321">even conceding</a> that News Limited and the other council members might have to up their own contributions to keep government “interference” at bay. The argument is that a government subsidy would mean government meddling, because it would require some statutory backing from parliament.</p>
<h2>Legislative authority</h2>
<p>Giving the APC some legislated authority would create something of a hybrid: a cross between the self-regulatory functions of the Press Council (or Complaints Commission) and the statutory regulation of broadcasters provided by the <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/pc=HOME">Australian Communications and Media Authority</a> (ACMA). Such a body would be a break with tradition; most Western liberal democracies have historically kept self-regulation of the print media at arms length from government while heavily regulating broadcasters using the argument of “spectrum scarcity”.</p>
<p>This argument - scarce bandwidth requires tough controls - is now out-of-date and has been for sometime. What it should mean is that heavy regulation of broadcast media should be lifted, not that an attempt should be made to drag the print and online media into the fold.</p>
<p>The media inquiry was tasked with examining the issue of compliance, codes of practice and regulation in the context of digital convergence. In the logic displayed so far by Ray Finkelstein it makes sense to combine complaints handling in one body that is platform neutral. </p>
<p>The question raised again and again though, is: How do you get independents, bloggers and so-called citizen-journalists to register and be included in such a regulatory system?</p>
<p>No doubt these are questions that will be “hhhmmmmed and hhhaaaed” over in the next few months. The Inquiry’s report and recommendations are due to be put to the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review">convergence review</a> in February next year. But this focus on regulation and complaint management misses the point somewhat.</p>
<h2>Lack of diversity</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/5663/original/Murdoch_pic_for_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/5663/original/Murdoch_pic_for_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/5663/original/Murdoch_pic_for_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/5663/original/Murdoch_pic_for_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/5663/original/Murdoch_pic_for_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/5663/original/Murdoch_pic_for_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/5663/original/Murdoch_pic_for_hirst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Press Complaints Commission didn’t stop the crisis at the News of the World.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/FacundoArrizabalaga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The existence of the PCC did not prevent the UK’s <a href="http://theconversation.com/news-of-the-world-scandal-reverberates-beyond-the-murdoch-empire-2256">biggest media scandal</a> in a generation, the now notorious News of the World serial phone-hacking debacle. Streamlining the complaints procedures will not improve the quality of news or journalism.</p>
<p>Two issues of quality and diversity were mentioned at the inquiry, but have been effectively sidelined in the coverage.</p>
<p>The first is the issue of market failure and Australia’s impenetrable duopoly in print news media. While the exact figures are disputed, depending on the measure you use, <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/sp/media_regulations.htm">it is clear</a> that News Limited has a dominant position in metropolitan print markets, closely followed by Fairfax. The situation is not much different in radio, television or magazines.</p>
<p>In this environment how do we ensure a diverse range of media and opinion is available? It is difficult for new players to enter either print or broadcast markets because the cost of plant, equipment and human resources to match the two dominant entities is well into the hundreds of millions.</p>
<p>Where public interest players are in the market – <a href="http://www.cbaa.org.au/">in community radio and television</a> – the terms of their licenses are so restrictive that they exist tenuously without adequate funding or commercial income streams.</p>
<h2>Failure of the market</h2>
<p>The smug response from the big two is that anyone is free to launch an online competitor and that the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FHxpoQqPTU">“invisible hand”</a> of the marketplace will decide the outcome. What this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qjvwQrZmpk&feature=related">free market myth</a> fails to take into account is that the market is a) not a level playing field because of high entry costs and the advantage of size and first mover, and b) the market itself has failed; it does not deliver the promised outcomes and, in fact, the failure of the market has contributed to the current crisis in both news business models and in a lack of public trust.</p>
<p>At the heart of this market failure is a contradiction so intense that it is almost insurmountable and unresolvable in the market’s own terms.</p>
<p>The market dictates that competition produces profits for some and losses for others. It elevates the interests of property and shareholders above the value of public interest.</p>
<p>In this context, the profit-taking behaviour of shareholders, acting in their self-interest in the marketplace, does not guarantee an effective outcome in the public interest.</p>
<p>This, I feel, also undercuts <a href="http://theconversation.com/media-inquiry-day-one-chicken-little-takes-the-floor-4209">the argument</a> from News Limited and Fairfax that the media inquiry is an attack on the news media’s right to free speech. In the marketplace of ideas, speech is not free. It takes on a commercial and commodified form and the right to freedom of the press claimed by editorialists and CEOs, is effectively a property right. As such, it is not available to everyone. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, apart from <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/former-federal-court-judge-ray-finkelstein-qc-begins-media-inquiry/story-e6frg996-1226188468768">my own modest contribution</a> on the first morning of the inquiry in Melbourne last week, these ideas have not been canvassed. Perhaps <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-18/holmes-winners-all-round-as-news-ltd-face-media-inquiry/3678792">Stuart Littlemore came closest on Thursday</a> when he talked about the festering culture inside some newsrooms to explain how some reporters and editors appear to take perverse delight in venal attacks on certain targets.</p>
<h2>Addressing the crisis</h2>
<p>There is evidence that the current model is broken and, as senior Fairfax news executive Peter Fray said in his <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/documents/Peter_Fray_Decade_Fellow_lecture_16Nov_2011.pdf">Sydney University lecture</a> earlier this week, journalism has failed us. He rightly argued that journalists are guilty of group-think and are seduced by public relations.</p>
<p>The question that was not asked, let alone answered, amid all the bluster and talk of reform attending the Media Inquiry is: What to do about the crisis in news and journalism?</p>
<p>Peter Fray has offered one solid suggestion: “What I am saying is that we need to become more sophisticated and radical about the way we talk about journalism and its roles.”</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more, but when sophisticated and radical ideas were raised in front of <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry/independent_media_inquiry_biographies">the professor and the judge</a> last week, they were howled down by <a href="http://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/thank-you-for-your-comment-now-piss-off/">a chorus of acrid abuse</a> from those who are charged with living up to the ideals that their bosses espouse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4357/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Hirst is a member of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance. He was the first witness called at the government's media inquiry during public hearings in Melbourne last week.</span></em></p>It seems that despite their sometimes bitter commercial rivalry, the Fairfax and News Limited empires agree on one thing: the Finkelstein Media Inquiry has been a giant waste of time and money. Both have…Martin Hirst, Associate Professor Journalism & Media, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43212011-11-17T19:50:05Z2011-11-17T19:50:05ZBetter the devil you know: News Limited tells Media Inquiry they’ll pay more to the Press Council<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/5639/original/hartigan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Hartigan would prefer to increase funding to the Press Council rather than face a new regulator.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Departing News Limited CEO <a href="http://theconversation.com/a-new-broom-for-news-limited-as-hartigan-exits-but-what-now-for-murdochs-empire-4236">John Hartigan</a> has agreed in principle to support increased industry funding for the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a> but with a caveat.</p>
<p>On day four of the <a href="http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry">Independent Media Inquiry</a>, now holding hearings in Sydney, Hartigan told Justice Finkelstein that “rather than writing a cheque for increased support” members would want to see, and approve, any new accountability model that Press Council chair Professor <a href="http://theconversation.com/profiles/julian-disney-3043">Julian Disney</a> has in mind.</p>
<p>Hartigan, supported by Group Editorial Director Campbell Reid, voiced clear support for the devil News Limited knows, rather than risk greater regulation by a disenchanted federal government.
His concession was hardly startling, given spectre of a single statutory media regulator shimmering on the horizon.</p>
<p>Nor was it a guarantee of better funding ahead for Council, given the central part News Limited has played in crafting a leaner Council and its budget since 2009.</p>
<p>Yet News Limited’s attitude was in marked contrast to that of Fairfax Media. </p>
<p>In Wednesday’s hearings Fairfax CEO <a href="http://www.fxj.com.au/corporate-profile/executive-management.dot">Greg Hywood</a> argued against further funding or enforcement powers for the Press Council, which he said was “adequately funded” and operating well – despite Professor Disney’s claims last week to the contrary. </p>
<h2>If it ain’t broke…</h2>
<p>Greg Hywood has argued that there are no systemic problems of accountability or diversity with the Australian press that warrant further industry regulation. The company’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/marketing/a-free-and-robust-press-is-key-to-democracy-fairfax-20111116-1nij7.html">defense of press freedom</a> has been reproduced in every one of its 185+ websites from Bunbury to Cessnock.</p>
<p>Yet at the inquiry Fairfax executives were not over generous with praise for the Press Council’s role in keeping the ethical peace.</p>
<p>Company Secretary Gail Hambly criticised its spending on media industry research, such as its <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/other-publications/">State of the News Print Media</a> reports.</p>
<p>She told the inquiry that Council should abandon its interest in research and use its funding more effectively on complaints. </p>
<p>Hywood said that the Council was a useful but not “necessarily essential” avenue for redress, as people could complain to editors or try legal remedies for serious media misconduct. </p>
<p>Peter Fray, Editor-in-Chief of the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/">Sydney Morning Herald</a> and <a href="http://www.sunherald.com.au/">Sun Herald</a> titles cast a doubt about the “grandeur” of the Council’s complaint handling job, suggesting that media complaints generally tended to be “personal, vexatious and serial”. </p>
<p>Fray may yet change his mind about the importance of that process, as he is Fairfax’s newest representative on Council and yet to deal extensively with its adjudications.</p>
<p>Even so, his blanket judgement of complaints sat uncomfortably with his later <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2011/peter_fray%20at%20the%20University%20of%20Sydney">First Decade Fellowship speech</a> on the future role of editors. There he proposed a new compact with audiences and championed the cause of editorial accountability and transparency.</p>
<h2>One-stop complaints shop</h2>
<p>In contrast to the otherwise steady as she goes approach of the press’s two big employers, the media union used the inquiry to renew a decade-old call for a unified body that can handle complaints about news and opinion, regardless of the publishing platform.</p>
<p>Chris Warren, head of the <a href="http://www.alliance.org.au/">Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance</a> has proposed the creation of a Media Council which would oversee complaints about media conduct in print, television, radio and online. </p>
<p>This concept has been around, with various permutations on powers and funding, since at least the mid-1990s.</p>
<p>Media academics <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/18659241?selectedversion=NBD5921516">John Hurst</a> and <a href="http://australian-centre.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/fellows/fellows-information.html">Sally White</a> outlined details of National News Commission in their 1994 book <a href="http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/328781">Ethics and the Australian News Media</a>.</p>
<p>They argued the Commission could cover both media workers and companies, and should have the power to fine breaches of industry codes. It could be funded by an advertising levy and media union member contributions, or a scaled proportion of company profits. </p>
<p>A similar plan crops up again in 2000, with federal MP <a href="http://www.peterandren.com/">Peter Andren</a> asking for a media council with statutory “teeth” and government funding as a necessary support to privacy legislation. At the time he said the self-regulatory codes of conduct did not “go anywhere far enough in protecting the vulnerable from exploitation.”</p>
<p>Andren was probably fresh from reading the Senate Inquiry earlier that year, <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/it_ctte/completed_inquiries/1999-02/selfreg/report/contents.htm">In the Public Interest: Monitoring Australia’s Media</a> which outlined the shape of an independent statutory body, the Media Complaints Commission (MCC). That was to be “a one-stop-shop for all complaints and will assist to enforce standards established by self-regulation.” </p>
<p>Like many inquiry recommendations, this one clearly sat on the shelf until the MEAA and Press Council dusted it off for Justice Finkelstein.</p>
<p>And it is just possible that some combination of all these ideas will be cobbled together to reinvigorate, and eventually replace, the Press Council. But as yet no-one has come up with a palatable, workable funding alternative to member contributions that might allow any platform-inclusive or statutory duties expansion.</p>
<p>Hartigan rejected the idea, put to him by Justice Finkelstein that the government might chip in. That would be “totally inappropriate”. An industry levy would be difficult to support, although he claimed he “hadn’t thought it through”. </p>
<p>Indeed by the end of the days jousting about who might pay to monitor the media and how, Hartigan’s opening promise to rethink the Council’s allowance seemed like gold.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/4321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Martin has received funding from the Australian Press Council for online news publishing research. </span></em></p>Departing News Limited CEO John Hartigan has agreed in principle to support increased industry funding for the Australian Press Council but with a caveat. On day four of the Independent Media Inquiry…Fiona R Martin, Senior Lecturer in Convergent and Online Media, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/33982011-09-15T04:34:33Z2011-09-15T04:34:33ZIndependent media inquiry: self-regulation key to freedom of press<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/3606/original/Mastheads.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C30%2C3285%2C1807&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Self-regulation of newspapers can lead to a conflict of interest.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/William West</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Gillard Government has announced it will <a href="http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2011/254">hold an inquiry</a> into the state of the Australian print media.</p>
<p>One of the key elements investigated will be the role of the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a>, the self-regulatory body that currently governs the industry.</p>
<p>While we will have to wait six months until the inquiry concludes, it is reasonable to expect that its conveners - former Federal Court judge <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/reformer-and-keen-inquirer-link-up/story-e6frg996-1226137272789">Ray Finkelstein</a> and University of Canberra academic <a href="http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/arts-design/staff/journalism/profiles/matthew-ricketson">Matthew Ricketson</a> - will return findings with significant impact for the Press Council.</p>
<p>The Conversation spoke with RMIT journalism lecturer Josie Vine about how the Press Council operates and its evolution in Australia.</p>
<h2>Is the Press Council really a toothless tiger as many critics allege?</h2>
<p>It depends how you look at it. The way I teach journalism is as a set of cultural values and beliefs and those cultural values and beliefs align very much with the Press Council’s <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/statements-of-principles/">Statement of Principles</a>.</p>
<p>First and foremost is freedom of expression being a right of everybody in this country and in democracies all over the world. That is how we function. In order to maintain freedom of expression we do have responsibilities and if we don’t behave ourselves as journalists as the public expects, then somebody else will walk in regulate the industry for us.</p>
<h2>How did the Press Council come about? </h2>
<p>It was set up by newspaper proprietors back in the 80s when the government was proposing to regulate the media. They offered to set up this self-regulatory body called the Australian Press Council, and the government agreed to it.</p>
<h2>What flaws does the Press Council model of self-regulation have?</h2>
<p>It can’t really enforce any type of punishment. But again if you look at journalism as a group of people with common values and beliefs they are the same values and beliefs as the Press Council: accurate reporting, transparency, honesty, that kind of thing.</p>
<p>The other problem is that it just covers newspapers and that is an issue in the online environment because newspapers are broadcasting just as much as television and radio is broadcasting.</p>
<p>It also can’t actually act on any indiscretions unless a member of the public makes a complaint. </p>
<h2>Do certain media organisations have the ability to influence the Press Council’s operations?</h2>
<p>Therein lies the problem of self-regulation generally. It is a conflict of interest. If you are going to publish that you have made some type of indiscretion which is usually the punishment for newspapers, they have to be able to be willing to do that.</p>
<p>That publishing of indiscretions, might only be a tiny item on the back of page four that people won’t even notice when the indiscretion might have been a huge front page news item.</p>
<p>It is certainly not a perfect system and I think if the owners or owner decided they didn’t want to play ball with the Press Council then it would all fall to pieces but Mr Murdoch, <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/murdoch-media-crisis">facing the trials he has</a> of late, is little more sensitive to self–regulation these days.</p>
<h2>Are there examples elsewhere in the world of press regulation that we could learn from?</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/">Press Complaints Commission</a> in Britain I think has shown itself to be fairly weak, particularly in the <a href="http://theconversation.com/news-of-the-world-scandal-reverberates-beyond-the-murdoch-empire-2256">News of the World type situation</a> where regulation and government has had to step in and I think that is the biggest challenge for us as a self-regulatory system in that if we don’t regulate ourselves, somebody else will.</p>
<p>We have got to be very careful to behave ourselves in a manner that is expected while also juggling with freedom of expression and freedom of speech. The last thing we want is for somebody to walk in and regulate us because then that is it, forget the idea of freedom of the press.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/3398/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Josephine Vine 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>The Gillard Government has announced it will hold an inquiry into the state of the Australian print media. One of the key elements investigated will be the role of the Australian Press Council, the self-regulatory…Josephine Vine, Lecturer, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/23712011-07-18T04:03:35Z2011-07-18T04:03:35ZThe unfolding impact of the Murdoch media crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/2339/original/PIC_-_McNair_2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sign of the times for Rupert Murdoch's UK print media operations</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Born and bred in the UK, I have spent my entire adult life in the company of News International newspapers. </p>
<p>And as a media scholar by profession, I have been critical of the Murdoch titles for decades – from the Sun’s Gotcha headline in 1982, which celebrated the sinking of the Belgrano and the deaths of hundreds of Argentine conscripts in the cold seas of the South Atlantic, to the same paper’s obscene defamation of the <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/67/Hillsborough_disaster_Sun.jpg">Hillsborough dead and Liverpool football fans</a>, to News International’s relentless cheerleading for the Thatcher-era Tories as they dismantled the UK’s coal mining industry and engineered mass unemployment for an entire generation of the country’s young. </p>
<p>Like many of my compatriots, I perceived News International as the worst that journalism could be – politically biased beyond reason, and driven wholly by the desire to boost the proprietor’s private wealth; ethically flawed in its intrusive newsgathering; and morally hypocritical.</p>
<p>Murdoch’s papers gleefully served up topless teenagers on page 3, while the same papers ran witch hunts against alleged paedophiles who then turned out to be innocent victims of rumour and moral panic.</p>
<h2>Seeing the other side</h2>
<p>I softened in my attitude towards him and his empire in the post-Thatcher era, as he embraced New Labour and supported the Blair government (and yes, he did it for selfish reasons, and because his readers were heading that way, but he did it nonetheless, which was good for Britain).</p>
<p>The brutality of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute">Wapping move</a> in 1986 did the British press a favour by liberating it from restrictive union practices and enabling a flowering of new titles such as The Independent. His company’s development of satellite TV in the UK revolutionised the sector, vastly increasing the range of services available, such as live football on tap. </p>
<p>Sky News in the UK was a pioneer in real time news delivery, and inspired BBC News 24. Fox News in the US was a different story, of course – and it will be no great loss to this observer if it goes down in the current scandal - but in the UK Sky News played by British public service rules, and added to the diversity and pluralism of the sector in ways which were genuinely beneficial. More recently, as the rise of the internet has challenged traditional news business models, Rupert Murdoch’s repeated declarations of the importance of investment in editorial and journalistic resource have been welcome.</p>
<h2>Taking the good with the bad</h2>
<p>I never stopped being aware of News International’s ethical flaws, of course. But then, if ten million copies of the Sun and the News Of The World were being bought as recently as the late 1990s, and double that number reading them voraciously for the latest sleazy scoop, who was I to take the moral high ground? In medieval times people clapped and cheered as their neighbours were burnt at the stake and gruesomely tortured as witches. Public hanging was a lively spectator sport until quite recently. </p>
<p>Tabloid journalism, I’ve always believed, can be viewed from a sociological perspective as its modern day equivalent, and an arguably less vicious alternative. </p>
<p>Many celebrities and public figures cultivated their media profiles, precisely to maximize their coverage (Diana being the best and most tragic example). Gordon Brown, while attacking News International for “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/15/rupert-murdoch-gordon-brown-interview">criminal behavior on an industrial scale</a>”, was himself no slouch in using the more ruthless and bullying tools of spin against his enemies. </p>
<p>So what if they had to take the bad with the good? That was the nature of a very lucrative celebrity culture. And if politicians left, right and centre, in government and in opposition, were tolerant of the company’s newsgathering practices while practicing the dark arts of spin for their own ends, what was the point of media academics beating their heads against a brick wall to make an issue of them? </p>
<h2>Regime change?</h2>
<p>So what changed at the beginning of July to bring the empire crashing down in such giddy, eye-popping fashion? We’ve seen nothing like it since the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>And nothing like it, ever, in the history of media barons. News Corp is like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – solid and impregnable for decades, apparently secure in its grip on power, until something gives and the empire is revealed to be built on nothing more than fear. </p>
<p>The prospect of a wholly News Corp-owned BSkyB was the key factor in shifting the balance of power in the UK. The takeover was opposed not just by the usual suspects on the British left – who on their own could have been safely ignored by the Murdochs - but by right wing media companies such as those that own titles like the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, and by a broad coalition of politicians and public figures. </p>
<p>Murdoch’s media competitors were worried about their long term profits if one company owned so much of print, online and TV, while the rest of us were concerned about the prospects of a “Foxification” of Sky News. Regular reports of the atrocities passing for broadcast journalism coming out of the mouths of such as Glenn Beck stoked up simmering anxieties about Murdoch’s capacity to abuse his power in the UK. </p>
<p>And so, when a four-year old phone-hacking story which had been widely ignored by the public, the political class, and the majority of the British media suddenly focused on violations of the privacy of murder victims and fallen servicemen – in themselves no more outrageous than the coverage of the Hillsborough dead in 1989, it seems to me - the conditions were in place for a long-delayed explosion of outrage and hand-wringing, even from those such as the current prime minister who had cheerily been drinking champagne with News Corp executives a week before.</p>
<p>The ongoing consequences for News Corp in the UK and the US are hugely damaging, possibly terminal. As this article was being finalised, News International CEO Rebekah Brooks was under arrest in London [Brooks has subsequently been bailed]. </p>
<p>UK Labour leader Ed Miliband is now calling for News Corp to be stripped of its remaining 39% share of BSkyB in the UK, while the US dimension of the crisis – currently focused on the alleged hacking of the victims of 9/11 – looks set to run and run, with catastrophic legal and financial outcomes for the Murdochs. </p>
<h2>Australia is not Britain</h2>
<p>But what about Australia, where Rupert Murdoch started his career and launched his journey to global power? News Corp is Australia’s largest commercial media company, even more dominant here than overseas, with 70% of the print market.</p>
<p>In many Australian cities there is no competition to the News Ltd title. Will its Australian business be infected by the phone-hacking scandal? Senator Bob Brown and others have called for an <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/push-on-for-media-inquiry-20110714-1hg7n.html">inquiry into News Ltd’s newsgathering practices</a> and a Labour prime minister has accepted that something of the kind could be appropriate.</p>
<p>News Ltd CEO, John Hartigan, rejected the need for an inquiry in an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-14/john-hartigan-joins-730/2795736?section=business">ABC interview with Leigh Sales</a> last week, while agreeing to an internal review of all editorial expenditure during the past three years to “confirm that payments to contributors and other third parties were for legitimate services”. </p>
<p>He would say that, wouldn’t he, but those who argue that Australia isn’t Britain, and News Ltd isn’t News International, have a point. British press culture – tabloid and broadsheet - has always been and remains uniquely aggressive, uniquely intrusive. </p>
<p>Australia has a vigorous celebrity culture which is obsessively covered in its popular media, and there are certainly many issues to be addressed around the quality of Australian journalism, such as the state of current affairs on commercial TV. </p>
<p><a href="http://theconversation.com/dumbing-down-the-media-or-shooting-the-messenger-lindsay-tanners-sideshow-1010">Lindsay Tanner’s recent book</a> makes some important points about the way in which the country’s media have made a game or “sideshow” of the democratic process. But phone-hacking the accounts of murder victims? Revealing the private medical details of senior politicians’ sick children? Surely not, although independent scrutiny of the company’s activities will be necessary to prove Hartigan’s protestations of innocence, given the propensity to cover up demonstrated by News Corp officers in London. </p>
<p>If there have been breaches of the law by any in the Australian media then let them answer in court, but I can see no evidence of the systematic, routinised violation of taste, decency and privacy law indulged in by the News Of The World and other UK titles for decades. </p>
<h2>An opportunity for reform?</h2>
<p>More important, though a separate issue from the phone-hacking scandal and its relevance to Australia, is the fact of News Ltd’s dominance of the media. News Ltd, controlling more than two thirds of press circulation, in addition to Sky News (and remember – it was precisely a concern about the combination of print and broadcast ownership which so alarmed the Brits and has brought News International to its knees) has for some time now functioned as a cheerleader for the Coalition, and a relentless campaigner against the government on issues such as the National Broadband Network and environmental policy. </p>
<p>Murdoch doesn’t like the idea of the NBN because it might limit his ability to make money in the future, and so his newspapers must swing into line, as they did on the global level with his views on intervention in Iraq (more than 140 titles supported the war. None opposed it). </p>
<p>What he has against carbon pricing isn’t clear, since whatever else he is Murdoch isn’t stupid, and in the west every capitalist worth his or her salt accepts the scientific evidence that man-made global warming is real and requires a response. Maybe having another stick to bash Labor with is deemed good enough reason to take a flat earth approach to the issue, and environmental concerns be damned. </p>
<p>But political bias, and having one’s editorial head stuck in the sand, are not the same thing as unethical or illegal behaviour. A free media is entirely consistent with political bias, as long as there is also diversity and pluralism of opinion. In Australia News Ltd has Fairfax as a major competitor, and a strong public service broadcaster in the ABC. We saw the value of that in Leigh Sales’ penetrating interview with John Hartigan last week, an example of watchdog journalism at its best. </p>
<p>Fairfax has been less effective in countering the News Ltd line, which makes the argument about bias and concentration of ownership more complex. It may be that The Australian is a better newspaper than The Age or SMH, and that the Murdochs are better at running newspapers than their rivals. Which is of course no reason to seek to limit News Ltd’s activities. </p>
<p>In Australia, no more than in Britain, the phone-hacking scandal and what it tells us about News Corp should not become an excuse to impose constraints on media freedom which might prevent legitimate scrutiny of power. Here, as in the UK, effective self-regulation in the context of strict adherence to the law is the key to healthy media, and a healthy political culture. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://theconversation.com/press-council-payments-to-police-are-not-legitimate-journalistic-practice-2291">Australian Press Council isn’t perfect</a>, and may benefit from some scrutiny and even reform in the wake of the News International revelations, but there is no justification on the evidence so far for its replacement by some form of state regulation based on what some politicians think the media should or should not be doing. </p>
<p>If News Ltd or any other media company in Australia are found to have broken the law at any time in the recent past, by all means throw the book at them. But don’t use News Corp’s misfortunes overseas to seek to restrict media freedom in this country.</p>
<p>The ownership issue is another matter again. Australians may feel that if the Brits have lost patience with News International’s control of 40% of their press, and 39% of the satellite network BSkyB; and given that the US has even tighter restrictions on media ownership in place, that it’s time to look again at the rules governing the structure of the Australian media industry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/2371/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair has received funding from the ARC</span></em></p>Born and bred in the UK, I have spent my entire adult life in the company of News International newspapers. And as a media scholar by profession, I have been critical of the Murdoch titles for decades…Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/22912011-07-12T01:07:03Z2011-07-12T01:07:03ZPress Council: payments to police are not legitimate journalistic practice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/2233/original/PIC_-_Brooks_and_Murdoch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rebekah Brooks and Rupert Murdoch in London last weekend</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ongoing <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world">phone hacking scandal</a> in Britain raises a number of questions for Australia’s media and political future.</p>
<p>Could the practices engaged in by Rupert Murdoch owned newspapers like the News of the World and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/11/phone-hacking-news-international-gordon-brown">Sunday Times</a> also be happening here?</p>
<p>Australian News Ltd chief <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/unethical-and-immoral-behaviour-not-tolerated-says-hartigan/story-e6frg996-1226090526489">John Hartigan says it isn’t</a>, but the UK experience demonstrates that senior News executives have denied activity that has subsequently been proven to be occurring.</p>
<p>Britain’s print media watchdog, the <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/">Press Complaints Commission</a> (PCC) initially dismissed complaints about News of the World journalists hacking into mobile phone voicemail accounts.</p>
<p>How would Australia’s regulators react to similar revelations?</p>
<p>The Conversation spoke with University of NSW Professor of Law Julian Disney, Chair of the <a href="http://www.presscouncil.org.au/">Australian Press Council</a>, to discuss phone hacking, payments to police and more.</p>
<h2>What are the Australian implications of the News of the World hacking scandal?</h2>
<p>The UK problems may be more severe than in Australia but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. In the year or so since I agreed to chair the Press Council I have repeatedly emphasised that our resources and performance need to improve substantially. The Council has already made some improvements and others are to be announced later this month. But the UK furore reinforces the need to go further and faster in the key directions of enhancing the Council’s independence, boosting its resources, strengthening its standards of good media practice, and enforcing those standards more effectively. </p>
<h2>Does the Press Council approve of payments to police as a legitimate tool of journalistic inquiry? </h2>
<p>It is difficult to imagine any circumstances in which it would be acceptable. The Council’s General Principle 5 is especially relevant here and prohibits using dishonest or unfair means to obtain information unless it is in the over-riding public interest. Of course, a criminal offence may also be involved. </p>
<p>Spelling out the implications of our General Principles in a particular context is the main purpose of the new Standards Project. For example, a forthcoming Specific Standard will focus on journalists or photographers using dishonest or unfair means to access a patient in a hospital or similar institution. With our new focus on a pro-active approach, this standard was developed without waiting for a particular complaint to be made to us (although we were aware of complaints being made through other avenues). </p>
<h2>Does the News of the World scandal show that self-regulation by the media doesn’t work?</h2>
<p>The current Australian system can’t really be described simply as self-regulation. Some statutory regulation applies already and the Council itself has significant elements of independence from the media industry. For example, independent “public members”, including the Chair and Vice-Chair, comprise almost half of the Council and more than half of its Complaints Committee. Fewer than half of the Council are nominated by publishers.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the Council’s real and perceived independence must be improved. All public members need the skills and standing to be persuasive voices around the Council table. It has been argued that they should also comprise the majority of the Council. Another option is for the Complaints Committee, on which they are already the majority, to become the final arbiter on complaints rather than the full Council. Current employees in the media industry could be precluded from sitting on the Committee. </p>
<p>Any changes in these directions must recognise the value of media expertise and of constructive engagement by publishers and journalists in the work of the Council. A principled and practical balance has to be struck between simplistic theories of separating regulation from the industry and, on the other hand, intransigent resistance to external scrutiny of the kind which journalists rightly insist should apply to other professions. It is also essential, of course, to retain due independence from government. </p>
<h2>In terms of maintaining that independence, does that affect how the Press Council is and should be funded? </h2>
<p>The Council’s funding shouldn’t continue to be entirely dependent on the media industry. I was delighted when the Council agreed last year that two-thirds of the budget for our major new Standards Project could come from non-media sources, including governments. The Myer Foundation is now contributing to the project budget and other independent sources, as well as the Federal Government, have been asked for support. The way is open for funders interested in strengthening media standards to step up to the plate. </p>
<p>This broader range of funding is essential not only to enhance our independence but also to boost our staff resources substantially above the current level of only four people, especially by strengthening our capacity to investigate complaints and generally monitor compliance with our standards.</p>
<h2>What would happen in Australia if a media outlet was accused of engaging in phone hacking?</h2>
<p>The Council might decide that our investigative powers and resources are not adequate to arrive at a reliable adjudication. In that case, it should frankly acknowledge our limitations and refer the matter to the police or some other authority with the requisite powers and resources. We certainly must not give an impression that the complaint has been adequately investigated and resolved. </p>
<p>Unlike some overseas counterparts, the Council supplements its preliminary investigations by requiring complainants and newspapers to attend the Complaints Committee and answer questions in the presence of each other. But it is not realistic or desirable for the Council to conduct investigations and hearings with the depth and rigour of a criminal process. The risk of excessive legalism, cost and delay would prevent many people from lodging or pursuing their concerns. </p>
<h2>Should the Press Council have greater powers to impose sanctions on media outlets? </h2>
<p>There is a strong case for strengthening the use of our existing powers. For example, the Council is actively considering whether to specify more firmly the way in which our adjudications must be published. Other options could include issuing admonitions or censures, or requiring publication of retractions, apologies or rights of reply. </p>
<p>The Council does not want powers to impose more severe sanctions such as fines. They would lead inevitably to more formal and legalistic processes, often including high-level legal representation of parties. The resultant cost, delay and adversarial atmosphere would effectively preclude many people from pursuing valid complaints.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/2291/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Disney receives a stipend as chair of the Australian Press Council.</span></em></p>The ongoing phone hacking scandal in Britain raises a number of questions for Australia’s media and political future. Could the practices engaged in by Rupert Murdoch owned newspapers like the News of…Julian Disney, Chair of Press Council and Professor, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.