Public Meeting Feedback

The Australian Press Council has surveyed the opinion of three groups at recent meetings and seminars: a group of (mainly) young journalists, attending the first case studies seminar in Melbourne (see Prof Flint's report elsewhere in this issue); a group of editors of, and writers for, tertiary newspapers at an NUS conference on media ethics; and the attendees of the Council's public meeting, Public Figures and the Press, held at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba. This last group was largely journalism students at the University.

There were 51 responses from the Melbourne meeting; 28 responses from Toowoomba and 25 from the NUS meeting. The figures below are an aggregate of the three meetings.

While the general attitudes to the media and freedom of expression have not been fully analysed, some preliminary figures show interesting results.

The concepts of the Press Council itself and Press Council adjudications were viewed favourably, with comments ranging from useful to very valuable. There were few respondents who thought the Press Council was of little value or almost worthless, although there were a number who did not respond to the questions at the NUS meeting. There were mixed views on the composition of the Council and a tendency to think that there were perhaps too many publishers representatives on the Council. The young journalists were strongly of the opinion that there too few journalists on the Council and the other two groups thought the public under-represented. (Some publishers' representatives are working or former editors or journalists.)The majority believed that the Press Council had an important role to play in defending freedom of expression.

Two interesting sidelights emerged. First, attendees at the NUS conference were almost equally balanced on whether Australian defamation law frequently stops the media reporting matters of public interest. This question was not on the earlier questionnaires given to the other groups. Second, at least two respondents, without prompting, noted that they found the title "Chairman" (prescribed by the APC Constitution) offensive.

Jack R Herman

For more on feedback,
see the APC Survey of Complainants.

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