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November 2006 - Volume 18, No.4
News in brief - November 2006 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 2006 Index APC Prize There will be no Essay Prize in 2006-2007. As in 2005-2006, 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 2006 Index On the Council Professor Ken McKinnon has been Chairman of the Council since November 2000. His second three-year term was due to expire this month. Having spoken to all members of the Council, Vice Chairman Professor H P Lee proposed that Professor McKinnon be appointed to a third three-year term, commencing in November 2006. The Council supported the proposal unanimously and by acclamation. Australian Associated Press has nominated Selina Day, its Editorial Manager (Logistics), as Phil Dickson's alternate, replacing the recently retired Col Burgess. Selina Day began her career in Perth in 1983, writing for newspapers including the Post group before being offered a position with Australian Associated Press (AAP) in Sydney in 1987. In 1999, she was appointed acting bureau chief of AAP's Brisbane bureau and in 2000 took up the position of Bureau Chief in Perth which she held for almost four years. She returned to NSW in 2003 as Deputy Bureau Chief of the Sydney office and the following year was promoted to Filing Editor, overseeing quality and consistency in AAP's editorial output. She was appointed Editorial manager (Logistics) in 2006. For more information on the Council membership [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index State of the News Print Media
An article looking in detail at the report is in this issue of the News. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index High Court's FoI Decision On 6 September, the Press Council issued a press release expressing its dismay at the High Court 3-2 decision to dismiss the appeal from Michael McKinnon, FoI Editor of The Australian, against the Treasurer's refusal to grant access to information on the first home buyer's scheme and the impact on tax-payers of bracket creep. The Council was participated in the case, having lodged an amicus curiae brief in support of the case for better access under Freedom of Information (FoI). In the Council's view, the decision indicates that FoI law, as well as FoI practice, needs urgent reform. As a first step in a process towards achieving those ends, the Council is publishing, in this issue of the News, several articles on the way ahead from McKinnon's case, including an introduction, analyses of the decision by the Council's Vice Chairman, Professor HP Lee, and its Policy Officer, Inez Ryan, as well as articles by noted FoI experts Dr Moira Paterson and Rick Snell. For more information on FoI, and the Council's views, go to [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Annual Report No. 30 The Press Council in its thirtieth annual report, issued on 20 November, suggests that the position of free speech in Australia has badly deteriorated over the past few years, but that the decline has been piecemeal so that there has yet to be the recognition of how badly traditional rights to access to information of public interest and concern have been eroded. In his Foreword to the report, the Council's Chairman, Professor Ken McKinnon notes
The Council has become increasingly busy over the last few years in matters relating to maintenance of the capacity of the print media to report matters of public interest freely, fully and fairly. Restrictions on journalistic access and on the availability of information to the public have increased. The willingness of governments and government departments to meet their responsibilities to keep the public informed is noticeably decreasing. They use an increasing array of strategies and tactics to inhibit or prevent access. The report details a number of the current attempts to restrict reporting on matters of public concern, and on the Council's efforts to deal with these, in areas as diverse as freedom of information laws, the use of suppression in Australian courts, legislation aimed at combating the threat of terrorism, and the increased use of spin and leaks by governments and other institutions. These developments have seen Australia drop to thirty-fifth on the league table of press freedom issued by Reporters sans Frontieres. In addition to its activities in dealing with threats to a free press, the Council encourages a responsible press by dealing with complaints from the public about newspapers and magazines and the annual report demonstrates that fewer complaints received by the Council are now dealt with by means of an adjudication. Many more complainants have their matters mediated successfully by the Council or are satisfied by actions taken by the publication. Over 52 per cent of all complaints are now settled amicably in these ways. In 2005-2006, the Council received 420 written complaints. (Many other complainants do not proceed to a formal complaint after telephone call or email to the Council leads to contact with the publication that settles their concerns.) Very few of these needed an adjudication from the Council and there were 30 such findings issued, of which 17 upheld the complaints in whole or in part. The major areas of complaint continue to be inaccuracy (25 per cent) and imbalance - particularly the non-publication of letters to the editor - which accounts for about 20 per cent of complaints. There was an increase in the sensitivity of readers to confronting images and material alleged to have disparaged ethnic or religious groups - these totalling about 12 per cent of all complaints. Complaints about invasion of privacy by the press were, again, a minor component of the complaints received (around 5.5 per cent). During the year the Council was also compiled the inaugural State of the News Print Media in Australia report. This has now been printed and is available from the Council's office. Also included in the annual report are detailed statistics on the formal complaints received by the Council, a report on its activities during the year and circulation figures on all major publishers, provided by the publishers themselves. Copies of the report are available from the Press Council office and a pdf of it has been posted to the Council's website Extracts of the report on the website: [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Ownership In the August issue of the News, there was a brief report on the development of proposed changes to cross-media ownership rules. In September, the Minister for Communications tabled legislation to effect the government's proposed changes. These Bills were referred to the Senate Committee for Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts for inquiry. Despite the limited time frame between tabling of the Bills and the committee's two-days of hearings, the Council made a submission on the Broadcasting Service Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006 and related bills. Its Executive Summary read:
The complete submission has been posted to the Council's website (http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/fop/fop_subs/bsa06.html). The Council was invited to give oral evidence to the committee at its hearings but, due to previous commitments, the Council's Chairman was unable to attend on either day. The Senate made some changes to the legislation, which will have the effect of further limiting the capacity for cross-media ownership, by restricting control to only two out of three platforms (print, free-to-air-television and radio) in any market. But the Bills retain requirement for newspapers to register cross-media interests with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and mandate disclosures of conflicts of cross-media interests in newspapers, with ACMA responsible for enforcement of these provisions. While the Bills were before Parliament, the Council's Chairman and Executive Secretary met with Senator Helen Coonan (the federal minister) to discuss the proposals. One aspect that was covered was the Minister's apparent commitment to continuing self-regulation of the press, and her assurance that she saw no regulatory role for ACMA in regard to the print media. There was also discussion about the use of "rip and read" reports from regional newspapers on local radio (an issue that has been raised with the Council by regional editors and subsequently raised with ACMA), and the new legislation's references to greater local content. The Chairman expressed concern that the requirement for increased local content in news would just lead to more 'rip and read'. The Minister said that she was intending to look further at this issue before introducing the new guidelines in 2008. The Council discussed the legislation as passed by the Parliament and agreed that it should await the introduction of the new regulations on registration and on declarations of conflict of interest and see how they pan out in reality before expressing any views on the possibility that they will lead to de facto government regulation of newspapers. For more information on media ownership [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index ACMA The Chairman the Executive Secretary also met with the ACMA Chair in October to discuss the cross-media ownership proposals and the demarcation between the Council's remit and the authority's, especially in respect to material published on the Internet. For the meeting, it is apparent that ACMA is primarily concerned with licensed media and is less interested in the Internet and news websites. They expressed an interest in Press Council adjudications and guidelines in relation to journalistic standards. It was agreed that ACMA and the Council would engage in a continuing dialogue with regard to intersecting areas of interest. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Smithton complaints Arising out of a series of complaints about the coverage of an horrific car accident in Tasmania, the Council issued four adjudications that are published in this issue of the News [1333, 1334, 1335, 1336]. Those adjudications address the concerns the complainants had with the reporting in the local daily and Sunday newspapers. The complaints also raised issues of a more general nature about the behaviour of those newspapers, of other outlets and of journalists. The general issues raised by the complaints remain before the Council and would be subject to further consideration by the Policy Development Committee to see whether some guidelines on the coverage of such events in small communities requires any guidelines from the Council. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Privacy The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC), which is conducting an inquiry into the operations of the federal Privacy Act, has released an issues paper on privacy law. It contains a reasonably large section on the exemptions to the Act, including the media exemption. Although invasion of privacy by the media was not a major issue shown up by the ALRC's own surveys, nor was it an issue that a recent Senate Committee inquiry into the Act thought worthy of mention, nonetheless it was an issue that the Council, which administers the Privacy Standards for he Print Media, established to meet the requirements of the exemption, will respond to. Responses to the Issues Paper are due by January. The ALRC will subsequently release a discussion paper for further consultation before its final report to the Attorney-General, due in early 2008. For more information on privacy, and the Council's views [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Therapeutic Goods Complaints Resolution Panel The Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council has developed a new scheme for dealing with complaints about Therapeutic Goods advertising, through a Complaints Resolution Panel. The process includes a reference of the matter first to the Press Council, in the case of the print media, and to an appropriate body for the electronic media, to see if the matter involves bona fide news reports rather than ad. The Council agreed to take part in the scheme, which will see it deal with any complaints that refer to bona fide news or commentary and the Complaints Resolution Panel deal with any that arise from advertising. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Conferences The Council's Executive Secretary chaired a session on media coverage of drugs and drug-related issues at the Australasian Amphetamines Conference in Sydney on 12 October. The session involved 5 journalists and 5 community representatives, and went over about 90 minutes. The session went well and the Council's guideline on reporting of drug-related stories (http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/activities/guides/gpr246_2.html) was commended by several speakers. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Articles The Council was asked to do an article for the newsletter of the Institute of Arbitrators and Mediators, covering its complaints, mediation and adjudication processes. The Council's Office Manager, Deborah Kirkman, wrote the article, which has been accepted by the IAMA for publication. [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index Guardianship tribunal The Queensland Law Reform Commission (QLRC) issued a discussion paper, Confidentiality in the Guardianship System: Public Justice, Private Lives, on proposed reforms to the Guardianship and Administration Act 2000 (Qld). The reforms relate to the legislation's confidentiality provisions. The Council's Policy Officer, Inez Ryan, drafted a submission arguing that section 112(3) of the Act, which prohibits the publication of information concerning proceedings of the Guardianship Tribunal, should be either repealed or amended to allow the publication of information concerning proceedings unless the tribunal issues a suppression order. A further issue for consideration was whether newspapers should be able to publish identifying information or only "de-identified" information. At the end of October, the Press Council made a submission to QLRC, the Executive Summary of which read:
The complete submission has been posted to the Council's website (http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/fop/fop_subs/guardian.html). [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 Index 2007 program The Council is well advanced in its preparations for some public events in 2007. Its March meetings are to be held in Perth on 22 and 23 March, with a Public Meeting on Thursday evening 22 March, with Chief Justice Wayne Martin as the main speaker. Further details of the event will be published in the February News but West Australians interested in attending the event can contact the Press Council office and they will be informed of the details when available. The 2007 Annual Address is scheduled for 10 May in Sydney. The Address will be delivered by David Kirk, CEO of Fairfax Media, at a lunch to be held in the Tearoom of the Queen Victoria Building. Mr Kirk will speak about the impact of Convergence and the new media on established media companies. The lunch will be open to the public and those interested in attending can register their interest with the Press Council office and the details on time and costs will be forwarded to them when they are finalised. For more information on the Annual Address and previous Addresses [ return to top ] Return to APC News 2006 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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