Benefits of Self Regulation

The main role of the Australian Press Council is to deal with complaints from members of the public about newspapers or magazines. In order to do this effectively, the Council offers a service which is cheap, efficient and fast.

It costs nothing to complain to the Council - you do not need a solicitor or anyone else to represent you. (Indeed, thanks to the commitment of the print media to effective self regulation, there is no burden on the taxpayer either.)

Our main aim is always to try and resolve disputes amicably and quickly. A substantial number of the complaints we get are resolved - and it usually takes us less than a week to mediate such settlements.

To ensure we stick to these commitments, Council reviews its principles and practices via surveys, questionnaires and other feedback. This means we will be able to maintain our standards of service to the public year on year.

Accessible to all

It is our aim to ensure that the Press Council is accessible to all members of the public who need to use it. That is why we:

• operate a Freecall 1800 number to enable possible complainants to make phone enquiries to the Council's office;
  
• encourage publications to run all adjudications arising from complaints against them;
  
• engage in promotional activities, including meetings outside Sydney, through which we can publicise the work of the Council, in the local media, case studies seminars, and publications;


• provide the print media with promotional advertisements which they can run when they have space available, including provision of this ad to the ethnic community media in the six most common non-Anglophone languages; and


• have started this Internet site.

Proof of the accessibility of the Council is that we continue to receive around 400 formal complaints every year. This is over double the number we received before we commenced the promotional activities noted above. It is hoped that the Internet site will provide a further rise in the profile for the Council.

An industry committed to standards and to an independent press council

Self regulation works because the newspaper and magazine publishing industry is committed to it. Throughout the last ten years, every critical adjudication against a mainstream newspaper or magazine by the Council has been printed with due prominence. The codes of practice of individual publishers recognise the Council's Statement of Principles as an integral part of industry standards - a sign of their commitment to it.

The reason for this commitment is that the Press Council administers a Statement of Principles redrafted in 1996 by the full Council with the co-operation of the publishers and their editors, after extensive consultation with the industry following the publication of the results of a survey of past complainants to the Council. The involvement of the public, through the survey of complainants and the efforts of the public members of the Council, in the redrafting of the Statement of Principles means that the Council is not a tool of the newspaper industry. Far from it: the Council has a majority of members on it with no commitment to a publisher or publisher body. This ensures that, although it is funded by the industry for the benefit of complainants, the Council is clearly independent of it. A system of appointments guarantees that public members are also independent of the press and journalist and editor members are not the employee of any publisher.

Protecting the vulnerable

Central to the work of the Council and to the Statement of Principles is the protection it gives to particularly vulnerable groups of people. The Council recognises the special interests of children, innocent relatives and friends of those convicted of crime, victims of sexual assault and patients being treated in hospital. It also includes rules on discrimination to protect individuals at risk of racial, religious, sexual or other forms of discrimination.

The Council, from time to time, issues special guidelines designed to add even further to this protection. For instance, the Council has issued guidelines on the portrayal in the media of persons suffering from mental illness and on the coverage of youth suicide and on the reporting of "race".

Maintaining a free and responsible press

One of the central benefits of press self regulation is that it combines high standards of ethical reporting with a free press. The Press Council promotes freedom of speech, and of the press. Through its free speech activities, but it is a press freedom which has to be used responsibly, in accordance with the Statement of Principles.

Statutory controls would undermine the freedom of the press - and would not be so successful in raising standards. The Council recognises that, in a country like Australia with no express guarantee of freedom of speech, or of the press, a tort of privacy would be unworkable and may lead to an unacceptable infringement on press freedom. It would be of potential use only to the rich and powerful who would be prepared to use the Courts to enforce their rights - and would be misused by the corrupt to stop newspapers from reporting in the public interest. Self regulation has none of the problems of the law - yet still provides a system in which publications are committed to the highest possible ethical standards.

for more discussion of this topic see
Dennis Pearce's speech,
The Press Council and self-regulation

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