Reporting Guidelines
General Press Release No. 83 (November 1986)

Opinion Polls

The Press Council is opposed to any proposal for the introduction of legislation which would limit the media's right to report opinion polls, according to a Council spokesman.

In response to reports of a call for limitations on the reporting of opinion polls, the spokesman, Vice-Chairman David Flint, said,

"To use legislation to ban or limit the use of opinion polls would constitute an overreaction to the influence, if any, of opinion polls on the results of the Queensland elections. In fact, the Australian Parliament has only recently removed the restrictions on the right of the electronics media to report comment immediately prior to elections. This is clearly a recognition of the sophistication of the electorate in being able to give appropriate weight to media report and comment on elections before coming to a decision on who should represent them. More importantly, it is a recognition of the public's right to information and the right of all to speak and comment freely in our democracy. Restrictions on these rights should only be imposed in extreme cases - for example, the location of naval vessels in time of war to protect them from enemy action.

"At the same time", the Council spokesman continued, "the press, and indeed other media outlets, should give sufficient information to the public when reporting opinion polls so that the public can properly judge the value of the relevant poll.

"The Council has previously issued guidelines", he said, "which set out our position on the information which ought to be provided by the press, and indeed, the other media".

PLEASE NOTE: Guidelines on reporting of opinion polls -re formulated by the Press Council in May 1986 - follow.

GUIDELINES

The Australian Press Council has revised its general guidelines for the Press when publishing public opinion and phone-in polls.

After gathering information from both the press and those firms engaged in polling, it has decided on a series of guidelines to assist the Press, but at the same time the Council stresses that the bulk of newspapers are already using most of them. The Council appreciates also that tabloids might have difficulty, because of lack of space, in publishing the full list.

The guidelines are not mandatory, but are issued to help both the press and the public get maximum information from any published poll.

The report of a published poll should so far as possible include the following information:

1. The identity of the sponsor (if any) of the survey.
2. The exact wording of the question(s) asked.
3. A definition of the population from which sample was drawn.
4. The sample size and method of sampling.
5. Which results were based on only part of the sample: e.g. men or women; adherents of particular political parties; and the base number from which percentages were derived.
6. How and where the interviews were carried out: in person, in homes, by telephone, by mail, in the street, or whatever.
7. Date when the interviews were carried out.
8. Who carried out the poll, e.g. trained interviewers, telephonists, reporters etc..
9. Name of organisation by which survey was carried out.

When using poll results, particularly ring-in polls or street polls, it should be made clear that they refer only to the proportional response on the particular issue and are not a proper statistical sampling and are not necessarily representative of public opinion.

In reporting the results of such polls, expressions such as "most people", and "the public" should be avoided if likely to give a misleading opinion that the poll results are representative of public opinion.

This GPR superseded GPR 39.

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