News in brief - February 2003

Australian Press Council Prize 2003

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

In 2003 the topic is:

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?

Following the remarks made by the judges for the 1998-99 Prize and a decision taken by the Council, entries are invited from Tertiary students (as at 30 June 2003) only. This year, there will be no Prize offered in a secondary schools' section. The word limit for essays is 2,500 words.

Winners will be selected by a panel of three judges and prizes of up to $2,000 will be awarded.

The final date for receipt of submissions is 30 June 2003.

At the request of the previous judges, the Council specifies that it would prefer entries that demonstrate some effort to research the topic and argue it seriously. It also requests that entries be typescript and double-spaced. No formal entry form is required.

The Australian Press Council reserves the right not to award a prize/s.

INQUIRIES:
The Executive Secretary
The Australian Press Council
303/149 Castlereagh Street
SYDNEY NSW 2000

Tel: (02) 9261 1930 or (1800) 02 5712
Fax: (02) 9267 6826

email: info@presscouncil.org.au

For the guidance of entrants, the Council has posted on its website some comments from the judges of the 1994 Prize and of the 1998 Prize, which were of the same format but with a different essay topic. A different approach can be seen in the judges' comments on the 2000, 2001 and 2002 Prizes also posted to the website.

see also
Prize overiew.

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On the Council

The Council has appointed as a new member of the panel of editors, Gary Evans, formerly of Queensland Newspapers. There he was from 1985 to 1998 the Editorial Manager of the company, overseeing all the publications within the group. He was primarily responsible for dealing with complaints (including Press Council matters) for the Courier-Mail and the Sunday Mail. During his newspaper career, Gary acted as Chief of Staff of the Courier-Mail from 1978 to 1985; was Queensland correspondent for the Bulletin and Time from 1975 to 1980; and reported on the Vietnam conflict for both the Herald and Weekly Times and Fairfax. He was the Chair of the Combined Newspaper Copyright Committee for several years, during the major discussions about journalist copyright, following the media monitoring cases of the early 1990s. Gary is currently CEO of the Princess Alexandra Hospital Foundation, a position he has held since his retirement in 1998.

The Council is advertising for a Public Member position in NSW or the ACT, with nominations to close in early March.

Community Newspapers of Australia (formerly the Australian Suburban Newspapers Association) has again regularised its membership of the Council. Its new representative is Gene Swinstead, manager of Sydney's Cumberland Newspapers. His alternate will be John Booth AM, owner-editor of The Weekly Times, an independent suburban newspaper published in Sydney's Hunters Hill.

Judy Taylor, a Public Member alternate from 1987 and a full member since 1993, ended her third three-year term as a Public Member in November 2002 and has retired. Judy has been invited to remain affiliated to the Council in an 'emeritus' capacity and will continue, with Wendy Mead, to co-ordinate the training of new Public Members in mediation techniques.

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Annual Address 2002

The Chief Justice of New South Wales, the Hon. James Spigelman, gave the Australian Press Council's inaugural annual address on freedom of speech on 20 November 2002. Chief Justice Spigelman was a civil rights activist in the 1960s who, with Charlie Perkins, led the freedom rides for Aboriginal rights. He was senior advisor and principal private secretary to Gough Whitlam when he was prime minister from 1972 to 1975.

As a barrister, he was the leading counsel in the Lange and Levy cases after which, in Lange, the High Court confirmed unanimously that the Constitutional implication of freedom of speech in political matters extended to defamation matters.

Chief Justice Spigelman's address, The foundations of freedom of the press in Australia, was attended by about 150 people in the Banco Court of the NSW Supreme Court. A report on the speech can be found elsewhere on this site.

The 2002 Annual Address can be found on the Chief Justice's website.

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Change in the Principles

The Council (with the agreement of the Constituent Bodies, the publishers and editors) has agreed to a new principle governing matters of offensive material in newspapers and magazines. Previously the principle referred to questions of 'taste' but this has been re-written to provide a more comprehensive principle on such matters:

6. Publications have a wide discretion in publishing material, but they should have regard for the sensibilities of their readers, particularly when the material, such as photographs, could reasonably be expected to cause offence. Public interest should be the criterion and, on occasion, explained editorially.

Additionally, in order to clarify its meaning within the principles, the Council has added a note to the Statement of Principles, defining 'public interest' as used in the principles:

Note: For the purposes of these principles, 'public interest' is defined as involving a matter capable of affecting the people at large so they might be legitimately interested in, or concerned about, what is going on, or what may happen to them or to others.

The redrafted Statement of Principles is posted on the Council's website.

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ASIO Terrorism Bill

In November, the Press Council expressed its concern that proposals contained in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Bill 2002 would have an adverse effect on media reporting and on the public's right to information on matters of public importance and concern in Australia. The Council was also concerned about its wider ramifications on freedom of speech in Australia. The Bill seeks to obtain information about putative terrorist acts in Australia by empowering ASIO to seek warrants which allow the detention and questioning of persons who may have information that may assist in preventing terrorist attacks or in prosecuting those who have committed a terrorism offence.

The Council noted the Government's intention that the powers to detain and question be used only as a last resort, and in extreme circumstances. Nevertheless, it was concerned that the proposed legislation enables journalists to be detained on the mere suspicion that they hold information that may relate to terrorist activity and that they may be held incommunicado and questioned, without legal representation, for 48 hours.

The Council has further concerns with aspects of the Bill: its provision of a strict liability offence for failure to appear for questioning; jailing for up to five years for declining to give information or produce a record; the reversal of the burden of proof when a particular document is not produced.

The Council stressed that journalists are bound by their code of ethics not to reveal confidential sources of information. It was a matter of concern that the Bill might place journalists in a position of conflict with this professional obligation. While the main code of ethics provides that "substantial advancement of the public interest or risk of substantial harm to people allows any standard to be over-ridden", the Bill provides no scope for journalists to maintain undertakings of confidentiality without being exposed to a lengthy jail term.

The Council's concern about the impact of the Bill on journalists and their ability to report was matched by its concern that a broader public interest is at stake: the free flow of information essential to a functioning democracy. Freedom of speech is widely recognised as fundamental to democracy. In Australia in particular, this has been recognised in relation to matters of government and politics, with the High Court of Australia acknowledging an implied right to freedom of speech in relation to those matters. It has also been recognised as a relevant factor by courts in considering whether to order journalists to disclose confidential sources.

The Council called on the Parliament in its consideration of the Bill to ensure that, in its desire to enact laws to protect Australians from the threat of terrorism, it does not create a threat to the freedom of speech, and of the press, through laws which provide the security forces with powers which may threaten the established freedoms which are a cornerstone of a liberal democracy.

The House and Senate could not agree on amendments proposed in the Upper House and the Parliament adjourned for Christmas without the disagreements being settled.

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Submission

The Australian Press Council has made a submission to the UK House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, on its reference on "Privacy and Media Intrusion". The committee is looking, in part, at the role of the Press Complaints Commission as a self-regulatory body of the print media.

The Council argues for the benefits of press self-regulation through press councils independent of government and against any attempts to impose statutory controls on the press through privacy legislation, particularly in countries which have no express constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. It notes the position of the UK Press Complaints Commission (PCC) as an independent press self-regulatory system which helps encourage the development of a free and a responsible press, not only in the UK but internationally.

Self regulation

The Council notes that self-regulation works in Australia because the newspaper and magazine publishing industry is committed to it. Key to this commitment is the Council's Statement of Principles. These Principles are recognised by individual publishers within their codes of practice as integral industry standards. It also noted that press councils combine high standards of ethical reporting with a free press, unencumbered by statutory regulation. In accordance with the Statement of Principles, however, freedom of the press is a freedom that must be used responsibly. The Australian Press Council believes that any statutory controls undermine the freedom of the press. The Council also recognises that without an express Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and a free press, a statutory regime could be misused by the corrupt to stop newspapers from reporting in the public interest. Self-regulation has none of the problems of such laws - yet still provides a system in which publications are committed to the highest possible ethical standards.

International developments

The Australian Press Council, in co-operation with the Press Complaints Commission and similar bodies, fosters the development of independent press councils as a way of assisting a free and a responsible press in developing countries and in emerging democracies. The Australian Press Council's actions are largely taken in the Asia-Pacific region, whereas the PCC is more concerned with Europe and Commonwealth countries in Africa. While press freedom can tend to be taken for granted in developed democracies like the UK and Australia, it is not always so straight-forward in smaller countries. Governments try to influence or control the media for their own purpose. They have often imposed statutory controls, sometimes through a body misleadingly called a 'press council'. Genuine press councils, like the APC and the PCC, are truly independent of government and have representatives of the industry and of the public on them.

The continued independence and effective running of the PCC and the APC are important pour encourager les autres and the imposition of statutory controls on any aspect of the press or the PCC would be seen as encouraging some of the less savoury elements in developing nations to impose more controls on their own press.

Privacy legislation in Australia

In 2000, the Australian Parliament introduced legislation to govern the privacy of personal information held by private organizations. This legislation was to complement similar provisions already extant governing the privacy of personal information held by government departments and instrumentalities. During the debate on the legislation, and after strong submissions from the Australian Press Council (with support from the then Chair of the PCC), the government agreed that any such legislation would and should recognise the unique role played by the press in providing information of public interest and concern in a democracy. As a result a media exemption was included in the legislation. The exemption means that media organizations (defined in the Privacy (Private Sector) Amendment Act) involved in the process of journalism would be not be governed by the privacy legislation, provided that they were publicly committed to a set of Privacy Standards. Subsequently, the Press Council has developed such a set of Standards which are now the standards applying to the vast majority of print media outlets.

The Council notes that in Australia the major concern expressed by people about privacy matters is with databanks and the collection and comparison of personal information about them between databases. Concern with intrusions into privacy by the media is rarely mentioned. (The NSW Privacy Commissioner who receives and deals with complaints about intrusions into privacy has noted in his last three reports that fewer than 1 per cent of complaints arise from intrusion by the media) The Council believes that, in the UK, the major concern of the average voter would be with databases, and information held and shared by government departments, not with media intrusion.

Central to the work of the Council and to the Statement of Principles (and to the work of the PCC and its Code of Ethics) 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". The Council is concerned with proposals for statutory protection of privacy because, far from protecting the vulnerable, they are aimed largely at the protection of the rich and powerful who already have sufficient means to ensure their own protection. In the UK, the second Calcutt report drew most of its examples of alleged press intrusion into privacy from incidents involving the Royal Family and, in Australia, Senate Committees expressing similar concerns have drawn largely on alleged invasions into the privacy of Members of Parliament. It has been said that one role of the press is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. It might well be argued that the call for statutory privacy protection demonstrates that among some members of the 'comfortable' the press is doing its job in exposing matters of public interest and concern.

The full submission can be found on this website.

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Press councils internationally

Former Press Council Fellow, Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand, is co-ordinating a new website dedicated to independent press councils. Sponsored by the UK PCC and by the Council of independent press councils in Europe, the site is located at http://www.presscouncils.org.

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Mediated Complaints

The Council office tries to solve matters by direct contact with the publication concerned. This often leads to a settlement of the matter satisfactory to both parties. On rare occasions, a Public Member of the Council will convene a face-to-face mediation, by agreement with the parties. Below are some examples of the matters recently settled in these ways.

• An ethnic community newspaper published an article about a former asylum seeker murdered subsequent to his deportation. The paper alleged that the member of a Government body, who had recommended deportation, had done so knowing that the result would be extremely adverse for the deportee. The secretariat mediated between the parties. The newspaper and the complainant settled on a form of words, and the agreed retraction and apology were subsequently published in full to the complainant body's immense satisfaction.
   
• The headline to an article in a metropolitan newspaper was false. The editor's response did not satisfy the complainant, who referred the matter to the Complaints Committee. At the hearing, it became apparent that a late settlement of the complaint was possible. A Public Member of the Council conducted a mediation with the parties. The complaint was settled by the publication of a clarification, together with a letter to the complainant from the newspaper confirming its concession of the inaccuracy.
   
• A country newspaper published an article about a local action group. The group wanted a correction of what it viewed as inaccurate information in the article. At the suggestion of the Council office, the paper offered, and the complainant accepted, space in the letters page.
   
• Another country newspaper published a photograph of a complainant, giving her an inaccurate designation in the caption. The designation was provided by a third party, and the paper published it in good faith. Following Council intervention, the paper published a correction of the inaccurate caption.
   
• A regional daily misreported the comments of a local councillor. After an inquiry from the Council, the paper admitted that it made an error by the omission of the word "not", thereby entirely altering the councillor's comments. A correction was published.
   
• Another regional daily published an article on the death, in a road accident, of the complainant's brother. The article implied that the deceased brother had been responsible for the accident. A formal mediation with a Press Council member was held. The parties reached an agreement that the paper would: (a) sponsor an annual high school award in memory of the brother; (b) provide a written personal apology to the family; and (c) at the conclusion of the trial of the other driver, publish a suitable article and a correction of the original article.
   
• A country newspaper published an article about a traffic fatality. The complainant, the employer of one of the victims, complained that the article invaded the privacy of the grieving family. The paper apologised for any distress caused to the family, and promised to take bereaved families into consideration when writing articles of a similar nature in future.
   
• A metropolitan newspaper published an article on Meningococcal Disease and stated that it was due to a virus. The complainant, a medical practitioner, pointed out that the paper was incorrect, and that Meningococcal Disease is due to a bacterial infection. The paper compiled a briefing note on Meningococcal Disease, which was circulated to all reporters and sub-editors.
   
• A complainant had a financial windfall in a magazine competition. She gave the magazine permission to publicise her win. A local, country, newspaper picked up the story and re-published it. The complainant believed that the newspaper invaded her privacy. Although having not done anything wrong, the paper (through the Press Council) provided a personal apology to the complainant for any distress.

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