Australian Press Council Prize 2003
Results and judges' comments

Winner
Honourable mentions
Judges' comments

The Australian Press Council has announced results of its 2003 essay Prize. The Prize is awarded for the best essay submitted on a set topic.

In 2003 the topic was:

The ability of newspapers to publish anything they want has always been constrained by laws, including defamation, suppression and contempt. More recently, laws protecting privacy and outlawing racial vilification have increased the constraints on newspapers. What, if any, such curbs on a free press, including but not limited to those already noted, are justified in a pluralist and multicultural Australia?

Entries were invited from tertiary students (as at 30 June 2003), who had a 2,500 word limit

There were 29 entries in the essay prize.

Winners were selected by a panel of judges, John Morgan, former executive editor of The Herald and Weekly Times, Sharon Hill, Editorial Staff Manager of Nationwide News, and Jack R Herman, Executive Secretary of the Council.

The Winner

The first prize of $2000 was awarded to to Daniel Creasey, a a student at La Trobe University. His winning entry is posted to this website.

Daniel Creasey is a final year student at La Trobe University, completing an Honours degree in Bachelor of Laws as well as a Bachelor of Media Studies (Journalism) degree. His particular area of study for the law degree has been international law/human rights law, exploring the legal ramifications of the ASIO Amendment (Terrorism) Act 2002. He intends to undertake articles of clerkship/graduate lawyer position with a national firm in 2004. Daniel's interests include travel, film, literature, theatre, swimming and squash. His future aspirations include writing for newspapers in areas of concern to him, including international relations.

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Honourable Mentions

The judges also awarded an Honourable Mentions to three students: Darryl Hunt, QUT, Joy Cameron-Dow, Bond Uni, and Phillipa Prior, Curtin University.

Joy Cameron-Dow is a mature-age international student at Bond University, where she completed her Master of Communication degree last semester and is now enrolled as a PhD candidate. Joy's journalism experience in the workplace has encompassed all aspects of the profession, focussing in recent years on the broadcast media. She hopes to continue her work and research in the communications field.

After finishing high school, Phillipa Prior wandered the earth for a few years before deciding to return to Australia to pursue a career in the media. She is currently completing her second year of a BA in Journalism and Professional Writing at Curtin University in WA. She is an active member of the Media and Communications team at Amnesty International (WA) and regularly churns out articles for their newsletter, which she helps coordinate. Her career dreams include conscientious journalism, feature writing in all shapes and forms, travel with notebook and recorder in hand.

[At this time, we have no biographical information for Darryl Hunt.]

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Judges' comments on the 2003 APC Prize

[See also the comments made by the 1994 judges and
the comments made by the 1998 judges]

Judge 1

Herewith my comments on the essays I read:

Most of the essays demonstrated a wealth of research into free-speech issues and legal precedents and indicated that the writers understood quite well the difficulty of balancing competing interests when considering the desirability and the efficacy of existing curbs on press freedom.

Many writers referred at length to the NSW report Race for Headlines and offered the report's conclusions and recommendations in support of the notion that - on matters affecting race, at least - the press required more regulation. But few of the writers who quoted from Race for Headlines canvassed the widespread public criticism that followed its release or appeared to question the broad finding that NSW newspapers contribute to racial tensions in the community by "unfair" reporting about various ethnic minority groups.

It would have been pleasing to have seen a stronger defence of the notion that in reporting on controversial issues - especially issues as sensitive as race - newspapers are exercising freedom of speech, a freedom without which we would cease to be a democracy.

Judge 2

Far be for me to condemn the scholarly approach of the essay writers, but the "life is earnest, life is real" syndrome is too much for an old hack like me. Yes, yes newspapers have an important role in our multi-this and pluralist-that society, and journalists should aim to be accurate, fair, unbiased, unprejudiced and heirs to all the virtues, but all sides of the business have to bow to the commercial imperative. Too many of the essayists imagine that "You're printing that to sell more papers" is a condemnation in itself. Selling papers is what the game is about; you can't sell ideas, report what you think is important, display the truth without, in this country at least, surviving as a business. Too many of the writers are inclined to sweepingly trash the "tabloid" press in favour of the "serious press", ignoring how much more accessible and entertaining the broadsheets have become and how much more informative, if opinionated, the tabloids have developed.

There seems to be a feeling among the essayists that the reporter should go off on his rounds on his/her rounds, carting behind a trolley of law tomes and case histories with him/her. Staying out of trouble may lead to safety, but it will never lead to great newspapers. I would have appreciated a more free-wheeling approach from our essayists, who, I hope, plan to practise journalism rather than study it; I also urge upon them a greater understanding of the reality of working journalism.

Most of the essayists had a clear view of the various limitations on our reasonably free press, and the arguments made for those limitations. Few made much of a case for the dangers inherent in those limitations. Marx was quoted a couple of times, fairly innocuously, but I would have liked to have had Lenin's "Truth depends where you're standing" brought up to highlight the problems of perception ... truth is not that damn easy to define. Historical mistakes crept in now and again, and bold assertions, such as "Journalists often sue one another for libel", took me by surprise

Several essayists quite legitimately took to the question of media ownership and the limitations imposed in this area, without offering much in the way of suggested improvements one way or the other (not that anyone else has). This subject sometimes led the question of editorial independence, but no one made the point that guarantees of independence mean little compared with the power to hire and fire...and no one pointed out the obvious: that a paper's success is as good a guarantee of independence an editor can get.

Misperceptions of the role of the Press Council surfaced, together with muted calls for coercive and punitive powers; yet nobody made the clear defence that a Press Council with such powers would be the very antithesis of what a body devoted to a free press should advocate.

Sometimes the essays were too legalistic; in one case the footnotes seemed longer than the main text. Sometimes words were misused completely, and all too often the thoughts were right but the expression clumsy.

Nevertheless, we have picked worthy winners, and the overall standard was high. Please, please, you young writers, your facts should not only be right and your opinions interesting, but the whole darn thing a joy to read. That's what journalism is about.

Judge 3

My comments include:

1. there must have been defamation cases other than Ettingshausen and Gutnick but they are the obvious stars;
    
2. too many students read the Race for Headlines report but none of the criticisms of it;
    
3. their grasp of facts and of history is slightly wonky, by and large; and
    
4. argument by assertion and by generally accepted knowledge (usually of the soft-left variety) is far too prevalent.
    

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See also:
2004 APC Prize topic and conditions of entry