Letters to the Editor

Justice P B Sawant, President of the WAPC, responds to Professor Dennis Pearce's criticisms of the association in the November 1998 News.

Professor Pearce's further comments follow.

Don Gunnand Frances Henke take issue with Paul Murray's comments in the August News on whether there are imperatives in metropolitan and rural newspapers.

Jason Beck, editor of the South Gippsland Sentinel Times, comments on the Council's rejection of a complaint about a photo of a crime scene published in The Age, Melbourne, and calls for a Council policy on 'graphic' images.

 

Justice Sawant's letter

The article which you have published in the November 1998 issue of the News, as well as the reactions of some organizations and newspapers are based on a complete misunderstanding of the proposals passed by the Executive Council of the WAPC in Istanbul.

In the first instance, there is no reason to believe that the Transnational Complaints Mechanism (TCM) is proposed to be confined to the complaints by the governments against the media in other countries. The complaints may be made by individuals and institutions as well. The participants in the debate may have given illustrations of governments complaining to the TCM on specific occasions to prove the need for such mechanism. Surely, the illustrations cannot and do not cover the entire area of complaints. You are also right in your assumption that the proposed TCM will deal with both print and electronic media.

You are not correct in your presumption that the international code of ethics which the WAPC seeks to draft will be applicable to the media world-wide. It will be a model draft of ethics for the benefit of those who may like to adopt it, with such modifications and additions as they may deem necessary to suit their conditions. It is not intended to make it compulsory for any country or Press/Media Council to follow it.

Secondly, a survey of the code of ethics framed by different Press/Media Councils shows that there are several common ethical guidelines adopted by them. The code which is undertaken by the WAPC to draft will contain only such ethical guidelines as are common to the code of ethics of all the Councils. It is difficult to understand what rational opposition there can be to such a code of ethics. Should not the TCM decide complaints with reference to the commonly accepted principles? What objection can there be to decide complaints according to such principles?

If your article is read correctly, you are agreeable to the following proposal:

to draft a model for an independent Press Council, including a code of ethics [by which is meant a statement of principles that might be used by the Press Council to adjudicate complaints] for a free and responsible press and a set of procedures for such a council, based on established codes and practices, which can be used by the Association when its advice is sought by individuals or organisations seeking to establish an independent Press Council.

There is no difference between the code of ethics which you are speaking of here and the code of ethics which the WAPC proposed to draft. The Press/Media Councils which the WAPC has in mind are all independent and the proposed code is meant to promote a free and responsible press.

It passes one's understanding as to how and why the two proposals are being opposed even before perusing the code of ethics which is yet to be prepared by the WAPC and also the mode of its administration at the transnational level.

[Professor Pearce replies: In response to Justice Sawant's letter, I can only reiterate the views of the Australian Press Council set out in the article to which he takes objection. Correspondents to the Council from a range of sources in Europe and North and South America have echoed these views.

There is a very great difference between the preparation by a body such as the WAPC of a model set of principles and procedures for use by individuals and bodies wanting to form independent national or regional press councils and its promulgation of a general code of press ethics to be applicable to both national and transnational media. The former lies in the hands of individuals or a body dedicated to press freedom. The latter is able to be used by governments as a means of stifling press freedom.

That there was a difference between the two ideas was clearly recognised by the delegates at the WAPC meeting in Istanbul because they established separate working groups to look at and report on each proposal.

The fear of misuse of a code prompted its rejection by representatives of the press at the WAPC conference in Istanbul and in later commentary. The WAPC would ignore at its peril the views of those in the field (those it is supposed to protect).

As far as the Transnational Complaints mechanism is concerned, it is clear that the initiative to establish it comes from countries in which there is a concern from some quarters about the reporting of internal strife. Critics of the WAPC have accused it of failing to recognise this.

The Australian Press Council, other WAPC members and other press organisations not affiliated with the world body believe that the WAPC should concentrate its attention on what it is qualified to do and what its own objects mandate that it should do - encouraging and assisting the establishment of free and independent press councils. They are reluctant to see it venture into fields that attract extensive criticism of its actions by the very body that it sees as its role to defend - the free press.

We look forward to further debate on these issues at the Conference of the WAPC to be held in Brisbane on 22-23 June 1999.]

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From DON GUNN, editor, The Kyneton Guardian

I refer to the August issue of the News, which carried my story, headed 'Crime and Punishment', and the commentary by the editor of The West Australian, Paul Murray.

I am grateful to both the News and to Mr Murray in initiating what I believe should be an ongoing debate over appropriate ethical standards, but I wish to take issue with the wide-brush approach Mr Murray takes in his commentary on my actions.

There was a seminal line in the American TV soapie Dallas, in which the scheming JR is caught out by his brother, the 'nice' Bobbie, in mid-nasty-plot mode. If I paraphrase, a shocked Bobbie asks JR how he could do such a thing. "Once you forget your conscience, Bobbie, the rest is easy".

Where does Paul Murray's conscience lie? It seems to me that he mounts an argument which has at its centre something held dear by tabloid editors but which is qualified in other sections of the media; the public interest and right to know.

My position is that these are extremely important considerations to how a free press functions, but they should never be regarded as pervasive. Circumstances may well qualify them.

For instance, in the case in point, where the right to know is invoked, I believe a fundamental question associated with it also involves the public interest. One of the considerations which persuaded me in the course I adopted was 'in whose interest is it that this matter be fully known'? As Magistrate Alsop makes clear, it would have been easy for me to ride the tabloid gravy-train in the matter. The consequence, given the circumstances in the case, most probably would have been the failure of the man's business and the loss of employment for the four other people depending on its continued survival.

What public interest would have been served? Four more people on the dole? For what purpose? Mr Murray's right to know looks a bit thin.

As for 'canards' of who gets closer to their readers, I confess I have never visited the offices of The West Australian. I have visited the offices of both The Age and The Herald Sun. Both have stringent security which protects both editors and journalists from the uninvited walk-in protest. The moral environment is surely not different. Access to those who make critical decisions which effect the life of others is.

Anyone can walk into my office. If the same situation exists for Mr Murray, well and good, but I know we are immediately answerable to our readers, none of whom, incidentally, found reason to complain at the treatment the man and his story had been given.

Mr Murray's critique is an unfortunate invitation to journalists and editors to join the 'we aren't responsible for what we write or choose to write about' school. Its luminaries regularly appear in unfortunate prominence in research polls conducted which rate professions and the esteem in which the public holds them. My problem is that the rest of journalism wears, by association, the same odium.

In over 15 years of court reporting for the three newspapers I edit each week, the case in question represents the sole occasion on which the approach I took has been taken. It is an exception, made so by exceptional circumstances. The difference between my attitude and that espoused by Mr Murray is that my mind is open to the possibility that there may be an exception, his appears to be closed to it.

Publish and be damned? ... once you forget your conscience, the rest is easy.

see also
Index on courts and contempt material

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From FRANCES HENKE, senior journalist, Cranbourne Independent

I would like to challenge Paul Murray's claim of "illogical drivel" to the 'canard' that rural newspapers are closer to their readers than the metropolitans. He condemns himself with the words: "the angry farmer Don Gunn meets in the main street is the livid Cabinet Minister that the editor of The Herald Sun sits next to at lunch or the furious company director the editor of The Australian Financial Review runs into at a cocktail party".

In big organisations there are secretaries, rostered days off, out of town assignments, multi-storey buildings with lifts and security officers which can deflect the wrath of the public and protect editors, their big staffs of journalists remote from decision making.

Phones, faxes, e-mails, snail mail don't compare with the every minute of every day delightful and dreadful 'interface' with the public which allows rural and suburban journalists to understand how people feel, know what they are doing, what they actually want from their papers.

Rural journalists also meet the MPs, the ministers, the company directors (rarely over lunch or at cocktail parties) but when your office is a shop front with plate glass windows anybody can walk, storm or break in - and over 35 years I have worked in city, rural, suburban and overseas postings - it is a different story.

I have had to calm a lunatic threatening to "knock my fucking block off" (which as a small, 55 year old female, alone in the office after dark, was terrifying); had a brick through the window; been told by a senior sergeant that since our building had a fire rating of less than 12 seconds, not to write a story about an amphetamines factory in the hills might be more prudent.

In 35 years that was the only story I've backed away from publishing. I made up for it by telling everybody of use I met (fortuitously during an election campaign) ... eventually something was done.

Responsible journalism is looking at how every story will affect the community, the people concerned.

Yes, we are in the disclosure business. Not everything is disclosed despite Mr Murray's own warm inner glow. I can think of several issues which "fearless" metropolitan papers have backed away from in recent years for reasons of political correctness, business or political pressures. (Examples are: 'advantage taking' by aboriginal residents of South Coast NSW; national energy sources and costings; evidence of the invalidity of the Australian Constitution).

Perhaps Mr Murray has been to too many cocktail parties and lunches. Real life is back on the street.

see also
Index on courts and contempt material

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from JASON BECK, editor of the South Gippsland Sentinel Times

A tabloid country newspaper with a circulation of 10,000 publishes a front page black and white photo of a dead road accident victim, covered by a sheet. The Press Council rules, in a 9-8 vote, that the paper was wrong.

A broadsheet metro with a circulation in the hundreds of thousands publishes a full-colour front page photo of a slain police officer, his body uncovered, with a large pool of blood flowing from the body. The Press Council rules, in a 9-8 vote, that the paper was right.

Implicit in these decisions is the inference that the country paper made the wrong decision in a small community ... yet a far more graphic photo can be circulated nationally.

As the editor of the country newspaper in question, the Council's decision leaves me at a loss.

For the record, the victim in our case came from outside our circulation area.

In previous decisions, the Council has made much of the anonymity of victims ... yet there could be no question of anonymity in the case of the slain policeman.

Similarly, it seems to believe that the dead victims of foreign wars do not disrupt our delicate sensitivities in the way that deaths in our own nation do.

This seems to be to be a terrible way of treating death as a matter of geography, rather than humanity.

The situation seems to have quite a parallel with the recent debate in this publication on court reporting in small communities. I would argue that the same principles apply. A pedophile in Oodnadatta is surely no different to a pedophile in Sydney.

Do I really do my readership a service if I pretend, as the Press Council seems to suggest, that my readers do not commit crimes or die in car accidents ... because they live in the country?

The Press Council says The Age's decision was in the public interest, and I would agree. But I would argue that our photograph could affect the road toll. I would be amazed if The Age's photo were to have any effect on the tendency of criminals to kill police.

And is that not the real definition of public interest?

The Press Council does us no favours with these inconsistent, split decisions, and clearly needs a policy to avoid such contradictions in the future.

As a young editor, their most recent decision now leaves me in limbo. The unspoken inference is that I can't be too controversial ... until I move to a bigger paper. Then, apparently, the gloves come off.

For the record, I think The Age made the right decision. I think my newspaper made the right decision as well. The point, I would argue, is that we are either both right ... or both wrong.

At the time of publishing our photo, I wrote to readers of how we in the industry wrestle with such issues.

I don't know if the editor of The Age loses sleep over the decisions he has to make on a daily basis; but I know I do.

And I know that, with its latest decision, the Press Council has just made those decisions far more, not less, uncertain ... and those sleepless nights more, not less, common.

[Jason Beck took up the editorship of the South Gippsland Sentinel-Times at the age of 24. He is the second editor in the newspaper's history.]

see also
Index on privacy material

Return to APC News 1999 Index

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