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May 2008 - Volume 20, No.2
News in brief - May 2008 News by email News by email Press Council publications will sent by email to those who ask for delivery in that form. If you want the News sent direct to you (in pdf format) please send an email to info@presscouncil.org.au with subject line 'News by email' and you will be placed on the direct email list. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index APC Prize There will be no Essay Prize in 2007-2008. As in previous years, the Council will be making a series of awards for outstanding scholarship through the various journalism departments and faculties at Australian tertiary institutions. The Council is endowing a prize worth $300 this year, either for outstanding achievement in a course directly related to the study of print journalism, particularly in the area of ethics, or for a particular piece of work in that area. For more information on the APC Prize, its history and future [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Today Tonight In the February 2008 News, an article on the Manock case carried comments that misrepresented Today Tonight. The Council acknowledges that the program is accurately classified as being a 'current affairs' program and was well within its rights in defending a claim brought against it. The Council apologises for any hurt occasioned by the comments. The first paragraph of the article has been changed in the on-line version and now reads: Channel Seven's high-rating, prime-time current affairs television program, Today Tonight, has on occasion been accused of sensationalism. It is certainly no stranger to controversy, nor to litigation. On 5 March 2004 Channel Seven broadcast a promotion for a forthcoming edition of Today Tonight. Displayed on the screen was an image of forensic pathologist, Dr Colin Manock, while the voiceover recited the following words ... [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index In the Office The Assistant to the Executive Secretary, Emma Boreland, has left the Council to pursue opportunities in the magazine industry. We wish her well in her career. Melanie Maroun is the new Assistant and this is her first full-time position. Mel's job includes a number of roles around the office, including receptionist. Press Council Office Manager Deborah Kirkman celebrated her fifteenth anniversary with the Council at the April/May meeting. Among her many roles, Deb is primarily responsible for the processing of complaints and their mediation, once they have been accepted for processing. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index On the Council Retired Press Council member John Morgan has penned his memoirs, Then and Now. In nearly 50,000 words, Morgan tells of growing up in England with Welsh as his first language, World War II, his military service and his career as a journalist, including his 25 years of service on the Australian Press Council. He writes warmly of his family: his wife, Freda; children Sue and Huw, and grandsons Jack, William and Ned. A polymath, Morgan writes knowingly about, among other topics, World War II, which he witnessed as a child; about sailing, space, Australia, China, and, vintage Morgan (his friends would say), flying, which he ranks after family and migrating to Australia as the fourth great event in his life. The 86-page memoir is available at www.lulu.com by searching for "John Morgan." It was published by Coal Cracker Press of Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Planning Days 2008 The Council is holding its fourth triennial Planning Days, on 31 July and 1 August, with the following main objectives:
Reports on the three earlier Planning Days and a summary of the changes that have occurred in the Council's objects, role, principles and procedures as a result, can be found on the Council's website, http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/about/planning.html [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Review of the Statement of Principles One of the major topics for the 2008 Planning Days is a review of the current Statement of Principles (a copy of the current Statement of Principles is on this website.) The Council last reviewed the Principles in 1996, although it has made changes to principles five and six since then. The Council is calling for submissions from the reading public, and from journalists and editors, as to any changes to the Principles that might be made to make them more generally useful as a yardstick for dealing with complaints. Submissions can be sent to the Council by email to info@presscouncil.org.au to be received by Wednesday 16 July 2008. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Visit to New Zealand The Press Council travelled to New Zealand in early March for its regular meetings and to meet with the New Zealand Press Council. These meetings took place on 12 and 13 March 2008. The Council was most appreciative of the efforts of NZ Press Council Secretary Mary Major who shouldered most of the burden of organising the NZ end of the visit. In addition to some informal contacts and a joint dinner, the two Councils discussed more formally a number of matters of mutual interest. One impetus for the visit was a recent review of the operations of the NZ Press Council. The review had recommended a number of changes, many of which would see that NZ Council operate more like the Australian Press Council in a number of areas. The Chairs of the two Councils, Professor Ken McKinnon and the Hon. Barry Paterson, chaired the joint meeting. Amongst the issues raised and discussed were questions about whether dissents and minority reports should be included in adjudications; complaints' hearings; the use and efficacy of the legal waiver; mediation; ways of dealing with vexatious complainants; and fast-track procedures. The two Councils also discussed the legal and political environments in their respective countries and the main threats to press freedom, as well as how they might assist other press/news councils in the Asia-Pacific region. While in Wellington, the two Council held a joint public meeting, The Press and the Right to Know Under Siege: Are press freedoms under threat? Under the chairing of the Hon. Justice Tony Randerson, Chief High Court Judge, the speakers included Emeritus Professor John Burrows, QC, co-author of Media Law in New Zealand, Professor Ken McKinnon, and the Hon. Barry Paterson, QC, Chairman, New Zealand Press Council. For more information on protection of journalists' sources on this website: Protection of Sources page. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Indonesian Press Council visit Five members of the Indonesian Press Council, led by Vice Chairman, Dr. Sabam Leo Batubara, travelled to Australia in April 2008. While here they met with the Australian Press Council and attended committee and Council meetings. Other members present were Bambang Harymurti, Wina Armada Sukardi, Wikrama Iryans Abidin and Abdullah Alamudi. Also present was the Council's secretary, Lukas Luwarso. There was a detailed discussion with members of the Indonesian Press Council on matters of mutual interest, including developments in Timor Leste and threats to press freedom within Indonesia. Australian Press Council members sought details on the operations of the Indonesian Council and how its members were appointed. The Indonesians sought clarification of aspects of the Australian operations following their observations of, and participation in, the Complaints and Policy Development committees. Additionally, the Australian Council's Executive Secretary Jack Herman met further with Lukas Luwarso and IPC member Abdullah Alamudi to discuss the administrative arrangements for the Council. During the discussions with the Indonesian Press Council, reference was made to court action being taken by Time magazine, seeking to reverse a large judgment in a defamation case brought by former Indonesian leader Suharto. The Council agreed to join the IPC in an amicus curiae brief related to this action. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index AFL bans AAP photographers In 2007 the Australian Press Council had correspondence with the Australian Football League (AFL) over its media policy. The Council expressed concern at the accreditation policy employed by the AFL that saw it exclude photographers from overseas news agencies from its list of accredited journalists. In response to the Council's concerns with what looked like an attempt by the AFL to commercialise the reporting of news, the AFL said, inter alia: To assist rural newspapers who do not have the resources to provide their own photojournalists, the AFL accredits 12 AAP photographers. The photos provided by AAP are free of charge to rural newspapers, provided they are used for editorial purposes and are not for resale. In April 2008, the Council wrote again to the AFL expressing surprise that, this year, it has decided not to accredit AAP photographers. In the light of the league's decision also to accredit photo-journalists from other publishers only on the basis of a continuance of their current arrangements for syndication of images, thereby not allowing for the supply of images to rural and regional publishers that previously relied on AAP, what conclusion can the Press Council come to other than that the AFL is seeking to commercialise the reporting of the game by making the publications that previously relied on AAP use AFL Photos for any pictorial coverage of the game. Major sporting events are undoubtedly legitimate news. Actions by sporting bodies that threaten the ability of the press freely to report news are inimical to the standards of press freedom to which Australian society subscribes. Last year the AFL justified the exclusion of overseas agencies by referring to the accreditation of AAP. This year it has disaccredited AAP. The Council asks, is there any reason to believe that the AFL will not go further in its attempts to control the legitimate reporting of public events? Which journalists or photojournalists will it next exclude? The Press Council is seeking the advice of the AFL as to whether there is any good reason for the exclusion of AAP photographers, and thus for the deprivation of its rural and regional clients of an independent source for news images from AFL games. Editor's note: There is a certain irony that many of the media clients who formerly relied on APP for AFL news images are in the very Queensland regional areas into which the AFL is seeking to enter, with a club in Brisbane and the prospect of a second Queensland club based on the Gold Coast. Cutting off the main supplier of news images to rural and regional newspapers in northern NSW and south-east Queensland seems to be a counter-productive move from sports administrators with a reputation for the efficient running of their sport. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Timor Leste The Press Council has been invited by Kolkos (The Commission for Media Law) in Timor Leste to participate in a workshop aimed at collecting different perspectives on questions relating to the drafting of a media law in that emerging country. The workshop will take inputs from government, church and NGOs on topics such as freedom of expression, broadcasting law and press self-regulation. The Council's involvement follows a visit to Timor Leste by Gary Evans, an editor member of the Council. One particularly worrying development was the possibility of a move towards the incorporation of criminal defamation in any legislation. The Council is seeking AusAid assistance in getting delegates to Dili for the workshop in late June. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Reporting of children's courts The Press Council has written to the NSW Attorney-General to express its concerns with the recommendations in the report of the Legislative Council Standing Committee on Law and Justice: The prohibition on publication of names of children involved in criminal proceedings. In the Council's view many of the recommendations, particularly recommendations one and four, are unlikely to improve the situation and may make it worse. It therefore suggests that the government take no action to implement either recommendation one or recommendation four. Additionally the Council is concerned that no recommendation has been made to ameliorate the negative impact on reporting of matters of public interest and concern of the 2004 and 2007 amendments to the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act. In the Council's view, the government should immediately amend the Act to return it to the position that existed before the 2004 and 2007 amendments. The Press Council has no major concerns with the philosophy underlying the committee's report. It agrees that there is a greater impact on juvenile offenders who are named as a result of their involvement in criminal proceedings and that the current regime of restricting such information unless a judicial officer specifically releases it is a reasonable one. Indeed, before the 2004 amendments were introduced to the Act, the press expressed no reservations about the operations of the provisions restricting the naming of juvenile offenders. It is the 2004 amendments, and the 2007 changes to them, that have caused difficulties, and this is a problem not addressed adequately by the committee in its report. The 2004 amendments effectively prohibit the identification of deceased child victims in order to minimise the trauma to the family of the deceased, especially surviving child siblings. Problems with the amendments, which were passed without adequate consultation with the media, led to the 2007 changes. These allow for the senior available next of kin (SANoK) to give permission for the deceased child to be named. The media submissions, in writing and orally, to the committee pointed out some of the anomalies in these changes. For instance, until a charge is laid, the press can report matters, including the name of the deceased child. A number of these cases have involved matters of significant public policy, especially related to the performance of the Department of Community Services. The effect of the amendments is that the press can report these matters, with names, up to the time that charges are made, and then has to cease reporting them, unless permission is obtained from the SANoK. The press is far less likely to report when no names can be used. Reports that omit names are likely to have less impact. Thus, matters of public interest and concern are kept away from the arena of public debate, to the detriment of proper public scrutiny. But the anomalies inherent in the 2004 and 2007 amendments go further. The ostensible reason for non-publication of the names of deceased children is protection of their surviving siblings. No such consideration is given when the victim (or alleged perpetrator) is an adult, yet the impact on surviving siblings or children is just as great. No consideration is given in the Act for those deceased children who have no surviving siblings. In such cases, what is the public policy benefit in maintaining the prohibition? In cases where names are used before a charge is laid, for example, in a police announcement of the identity of a person they are seeking to assist them with their inquiries, the public may never be made aware of the fact that someone has been apprehended and charged because of the effect of the 2004 amendments. The SANoK mechanism does not address the concerns with the 2004 amendments, and creates some problems of its own. In cases where one or both of the parents of the deceased child is charged with the crime, or is already incarcerated, there may be no SANoK available, so the prohibition favours only the person charged with the crime, surely a contradiction of the rationale for the openness of the adult courts. In cases where there may be a SANoK who may not be a member of the immediate nuclear family of the deceased child, attempts by the media to discover the identity of such a person, and to seek their permission as per the Act, may involve a greater invasion into the privacy of grief than would have occurred if the prohibition did not exist. The committee may have considered these anomalies but its recommendations indicate that it did not fully understand them. When it was pointed out to the committee that NSW is out of step not only with comparable overseas justice systems, and with every other state and territory jurisdiction in Australia, the committee's response was not to consider that NSW might have got it wrong, but to assert that NSW alone has got it right. The committee recommends that the government seek to bring all the other states and territories into line with NSW, rather than bring NSW in line with the rest. An example of the sort of reporting that would be prohibited in NSW is in The Australian of 14 May. In the notorious case of a toddler dumped in a South Australian mineshaft, allegedly by his father, a matter that reflects on a significant public policy area, the application of mental health orders, the newspaper was able to report the father's court appearance without the necessity of invading the privacy of the toddler's mother in order to do so. The committee's other response to the anomalies created by the fact that matters of public interest may be reported prior to charges being laid, and then suddenly not, if no SANoK can be found to give permission, is to suggest that the prohibition be extended backwards to a time before charges are laid. Under the committee's proposals the media will be asked to apply a test of 'reasonable likelihood'. If it is reasonably likely that a charge will be laid, then reporting of the name of the alleged offender (or of a deceased child) should not be used. There might be some arguments to support the idea with respect to the naming of those arrested but not yet charged, but thought needs to be given to the impact such an extended prohibition would have on the investigation of the case, in particular with the publication of material released by the police aimed at seeking public assistance in finding a possible offender. In cases where the matter involves the naming of deceased children, rather than the naming of a possible juvenile offender, the argument is even less persuasive. In cases involving significant public policy questions, including those involving the Department of Community Services, the prohibition on the use of names where there is a reasonable likelihood of charges being laid at some future point would impede the investigation of the matter and would impede public debate on matters of clear public interest. One final issue that the committee does not adequately address: the timing of any proceedings to seek the exercise of the judicial discretion to release the names of juvenile offenders. At the present time, the Act provides that such discretion can only be made at the time of sentencing. The application by Herald Publications for the naming of the K brothers, none of whom can be named because two of them were juveniles at the time of their crimes, indicates the problem. In this matter there was a series of related trials. Some of the brothers were sentenced in adult courts and others in children's courts. By the time all the actions had been finalised, and the Herald sought the exercise of the judicial discretion, so that both the adult and juvenile offenders could be named, it was ruled to be too late because it was no longer at the time of sentencing. In many of the cases involving serious crimes where the release of names might be thought appropriate, there will be a similar complexity of matters to be considered by the judiciary. Some thought might be given to an amendment that would allow for an application for the exercise of the judicial discretion at a time when all matters have been completed. An example of a UK case, where the release of the name of the deceased, comments by her family and the identification of the juvenile accused were important aspects of a story about an obvious matter of public interest, juvenile binge dinking and concomitant violence, can be found at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-547708/The-haunting-picture-Sophie-Lancaster-beaten-death-Goth.html. In this case the release of names was at the time of conviction, not sentencing, and it is a case that may not have been reported in NSW, to the detriment of the public interest, particularly had the victim herself been a juvenile. For more information on the Council's views on courts and contempt [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Raid on Sunday TImes In May 2008, the Council wrote to the WA Premier Alan Carpenter to express its condemnation of the police raid on the offices on of the Sunday TImes. The Council holds the view that searches and seizures of material held by journalists is only justified in extreme circumstances:
The raid on the Sunday TImes to seek material related to a story published in February - a story that may have embarrassed a senior Minister of the government but was otherwise unrelated to any serious breach of the law - does not meet any of these criteria. In fact, it would appear that the only justification for the raid was a clumsy attempt to try and identify the person who may have leaked the story to the Sunday Times journalist. As a former journalist the Premier should have been well aware of the importance of leaked material in exposing crime, corruption and incompetence in both the public sector and the private sector. Heavy-handed attempts by governments, and their operatives, to seek to identify and intimidate whistle-blowers say much about the government making such an attempt. In any case, it would seem very late in the piece for such a raid to take place, many months after the initial story was written. While the use of such intimidatory force may appeal to some elements in the government, or in the bureaucracy, a raid at the end of April concerning an article written in February seems more Keystone Kops than CSI. The Council is aware that, under the previous federal government, the AFP spent $2 million and over 2,100 man-hours in a five-year period trying to track down public interest whistle-blowers in the federal public service. Is a state ALP government going to copy their example? The use of first the CCC and now the police Fraud Squad in attempts to stifle whistle-blowers does not contribute towards the free and responsible discussion of matters of public interest and concern in the press. The WA government has in the recent past sought the assistance of the Council in ensuring that reporting about the government is responsible. The Council now seeks the government's assistance in seeking to ensure that the press in Western Australia is free from unnecessary intimidation in its attempts freely to report matters of public concern. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Freedom of Information 1. In March 2008, the Council made a submission to the Independent Review of the Freedom of Information Act 1992 (Qld), the Executive Summary of which read: Freedom of Information in Queensland is in need of significant revision. Amendment to Freedom of Information must address three main areas of concern: The full submission has been posted to the Council's website at: http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/fop/fop_subs/foiqld.html 2. Later the same month, the Council wrote to the NSW Ombudsman seeking from him a formal review of the NSW Freedom of Information Act 1989. The Executive Summary of that submission read: The media has three areas of concern with regard to FoI: The full submission has been posted to the Council's website at: http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/fop/fop_subs/foinsw.html The NSW Ombudsman has subsequently undertaken a formal review of NSW FoI law and practice. 3. In early May, the Council's Chairman, Professor Ken McKinnon, and Executive Secretary, Jack Herman, met with Senator John Faulkner to discuss with him his government's pre-election promises to introduce changes to the laws and culture of FoI. Those undertakings included the abolition of Conclusive Certificates; the introduction of the post of federal Information Commissioner will be established; and the establishment of open and accountable government. The Council endorsed those objectives and argued that to achieve open government, the following are necessary:
After constructive discussions of the government's intention to introduce legislation to change FoI laws in line with the government's election commitments, the Senator agreed to meet with the Council and other interested bodies to discuss further changes to the law and culture of freedom of information at the federal level. see also [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Sexualisation of children The Press Council made a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts' Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children in the Contemporary Media Environment. The submission's Executive Summary read: Images of children which appear in print publications are regulated by the Classification Act and Regulations The full submission has been posted to the Council's website at: http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/fop/fop_subs/kids.html [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2008 Index Conciliated 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 conciliation, by agreement with the parties. Below are some examples of the matters recently settled in these ways.
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