Privacy

Deborah Kirkman reports on the second plenary session: the reporting of private matters.

The second plenary session dealt with the reporting of private tragedy and grief. Miranda Devine, associate editor and columnist at The Daily Telegraph, introduced the topic with the contention that, "what I have found is that Australians have an unhealthy obsession with privacy ... particularly other people's privacy".

In expanding her premise, Ms Devine recounted the recent events surrounding the arrival in Australia of Kosovo refugees. Naturally, the media were interested in their story. The Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock, on the other hand, wanted to protect their privacy. Ms Devine argued that Mr Ruddock missed the point when he told the media to leave the refugees alone, that "they are not circus animals to be dealt with and photographed, as a matter of perverted interest". What he didn't acknowledge was the fact that the "refugees wanted publicity. They wanted the world to know what they had suffered, to rally support for NATO's campaign against their Serb oppressors and to broadcast to the world the horrors of Slobodan Milosovic's regime". Ms Devine then spoke about two quite different examples of tragedy, the role the media played and the reaction of those affected.

The first tragedy was the 1997 landslide in the ski-resort of Thredbo. Occurring around midnight, the landslide crushed two lodges, together with their occupants. Locals were thwarted in their attempts to rescue survivors by police, who were fearful the site would slip further down the hill. At the press conference the next day the journalists asked questions as to why it took ten hours before emergency workers began digging for survivors. Then the reaction started. Ms Devine noted that the villagers, observing the conference on television, "began hissing the reporters, angry for some reason that uncomfortable questions were being asked, angry at the bad manners of pushy reporters who seemed to be haranguing of officials". She observed that, "this is what reporters do. They try to extract information which ought to be in the public domain from officials intent on keeping it secret".

The media, however, did have a supporter in the person of the Bishop of Goulburn. He acknowledged that the publicity about the landslide had focused the compassion of Australians on Thredbo. "The media", he said, "has done a great service to Australia in helping us be aware of the plight you people here in Thredbo have suffered". Three days after the landslide, the sole survivor, Stuart Diver, was found. Over three million people watched the live coverage on television as Mr Diver was pulled from the rubble. His survival leant added weight to the journalists' questions about the rescue delay. "Would others have survived if the rescuers had gone in earlier?" Ms Devine asked. That is a matter yet to be determined by the coronial inquest.

The reporting of the Port Arthur massacre was the second tragedy examined by Ms Devine.Walter Mikac became the focus of grief. His photograph, "sitting staring out the window of a police car as he was driven back into Port Arthur to see the bodies of his wife and children" still haunts Ms Devine. Here was a man who had lost everything, and here was a man who was not hostile to journalists who sought him out. As Ms Devine noted, he didn't accuse journalists of intruding ... "he wanted to talk about his family, what they were like, how he loved them and how much he would miss them". And he wanted answers. "How could Bryant have assembled such an arsenal of weapons?" he asked. Walter Mikac became "the public face of gun control". For him, "it meant something good had come out of the death of his family". In ending her speech, Ms Devine returned to her opening contention about an obsession with other people's privacy, reinforcing that, "to want to isolate people who are in suffering and anguish is inhumane. But isolation is exactly the consequence of an obsession with privacy".

Standing in at the last moment due to the late withdrawal of a guest speaker, Prof Dennis Pearce drew largely on the Australian Press Council's experience with the reporting of tragedy and grief. He observed that only five per cent of complaints received by the APC dealt with invasion of privacy, and included in that percentage were complaints from third parties. The press, he noted, has a right to publish material in the public interest, but "should not pander to the prurient interests of members of the public". There was, for example, no public interest in publishing sneak photographs of an ex-Senator and his wife having a heated discussion in their backyard. The distinction, however, between the public interest and what is interesting to the public, is not always easily drawn.

The questions to be asked, according to Prof Pearce, are "How is it to be judged? Where is the line to be drawn? Who is to judge where that line is to be placed?". Questions which do not have ready and uniform answers. Then there is the issue of different standards being expected for different types of media - graphic displays in the electronic media of death in overseas countries seem to be accepted by viewers, yet when the print media published similar photographs they attract criticism. A similar differentiation exists between metropolitan and regional newspapers, the latter which focuses on local news. For example, the APC, by a majority of nine to eight, rejected a complaint against a metropolitan newspaper which had published a front page colour photograph of a murdered policeman, lying in a pool of his own blood. By the same majority, it had upheld a complaint against a regional newspaper for publishing a picture of the partly covered body of a car accident victim, arguing that the dead man was well known by the readership of the paper. Prof Pearce explained that, "the impersonal nature of the publication in the metropolitan daily made the picture less offensive than in a small community where the person concerned was known".

And then there is the distinction between tabloids and "serious" publications, and that in relation to different types of magazines. You know what to expect from Playboy. But, what type of standards should apply to the new genre of magazine which relies upon reader's contributions? And where is the line drawn when a family consents to the publication of a graphic photograph, and a third party complains? Prof Pearce told the delegates about a recent complaint on "the publication of photographs in a publication which showed the bodies of two people who were said to have been involved in a suicide pact. There was a view held by some members of one of the deceased's family that in fact the two people involved had been murdered and that there have been an inadequate investigation of the matter by the police". The third party complainant to the APC, was "concerned about the graphic nature of the photographs and said that she found them offensive and in particular would not want her children to be exposed to them". Prof Pearce clarified that, "The issue here was one of taste or offensiveness to readers, not one of invasion of privacy". And he argued that "if the complaint is lodged by a third party it should be necessary for the complainant to establish a public affront by the newspaper to justify the upholding of the complaint".

Prof Pearce concluded the session with a few questions on the breaches of privacy. "Is privacy being overwhelmed by technological developments in such a way that it has become a meaningless concept that Press Councils can no longer adequately protect?". And, "should Councils approach these issues from the point of view of the public interest and be prepared to condemn newspapers that have acted improperly in the public interest and use this as their touchstone rather than the more questionable and indefinable concept of invasion of privacy?"

see also
Index on privacy material

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