A Matter of Opinion (II)

In the August issue of the News, the Council's Chairman discussed issues arising from a Media Watch report on a Press Council adjudication. Media Watch Executive Producer, David Salter, takes issue with those views.

[Editorial note: The story so far: In May, the Press Council issued Adjudication No. 723 which dismissed a complaint against The Country Leader over an opinion piece written by Richard Wright of the NSW Farmers' Association in a column headed "News from NSW Farmers". On Media Watch in early June, Stuart Littlemore criticised the Council's decsion in the matter. At its June meeting, the Council considered the criticism and and came to the conclusion that the criticism was unfair. Its conclusion was based, partly, on the fact that it believed that Media Watch, rather than giving the Council's reasons for dismissing the complaint, quoted out of context from a letter sent by the Council's Executive Secretary (who has neither a voice nor a vote on Council) to the complainant.

As a result, the Council's Chairman wrote to Media Watch suggesting that a follow-up or clarification might be warranted. No such follow-up was broadcast. Instead, the program's Executive Producer, David Salter, wrote a letter responding to Prof Flint's request. Prof Flint used parts of that letter in putting his views on the use of opinion columns in newspapers and how the Council's Statement of Principles applies to them.

In response, Mr Salter has sent a letter suggesting that a follow-up or clarification might be warranted, enclosing an article responding to Prof Flint's article. In fairness, and in the light of the Council's principles, The Press Council News can see no reason why such an opportunity for reply should not be given.]

How amusing that the Chairman can commandeer more than a page of the Australian Press Council News (August 1994) to accuse Media Watch of neglecting context, and blithely ignore or evade the central context of the issues at stake.

Let's put the record straight. My letter to Professor Flint (which he quotes so selectively) was in response to a letter of complaint he wrote to me as Executive Producer of Media Watch.

Readers of the News should note some significant factors:

• It was the Chairman who first proffered the woolly sentiments of Oliver Wendell Holmes "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the world") not me.
   
• Professor Flint repeats the explanation as given in the Council's adjudication that a contributing reason why the complaint had not been upheld was that the complainant had declined the newspaper's offer of a "right of reply". This concept defies any test of rationality.
  
  In what way would such a reply, voiced by an individual, have diminished or neutralised the general offence of the original article? How does the com-plainant's decision not to submit a response lessen the offence to the point where the Council is absolved of any obligation to uphold the complaint? And what, pray, would be an appropriate "reply" to the outrageous claim that AIDS was "God's myxo"? A denial?
  
  Further, the complainant may have declined the offer on grounds which bear no direct relation to the content of the article. For example, he may have been fearful of vilification, discrimination or reprisal on the basis of his identity being associated with a defence of homosexual concerns. (In any case, there is no such thing as a "right of reply". Newspapers do not - and cannot - conduct themselves like High School debating clubs. A genuine "right" is pre-existing and unconditional on external grant. It does not materialise only when offered by an editor).
   
• If the Council is not "upset" that we quoted from a letter written by the Executive Secretary, then why does the Chairman persist in describing that letter as "Personal and Confidential", and elsewhere as "private and confidential". (And since when does a letter written by the senior public officer of the Council, on Council letterhead, concerning Council business and signed "Executive Secretary" constitute "private" or "personal" correspondence?)
   
• The Chairman neglects to quote the substantive points of my letter, particularly those which attack the Council's illogical and disingenuous reasons for dismissing the original complaint. So much for "context".
   
• Professor Flint now resorts to the lazy debater's trick of attacking Media Watch and myself for views we have never held or expressed. We do not propose suppression of speech, but to equate freedom of speech with freedom of the press is a foolish and misleading notion. Freedom of speech is an individual democratic liberty; freedom of the press is a virtually meaningless phrase. That "freedom" is conveniently restricted to those who own or control a press, and should only exist within the framework of moral responsibility and legal constraint.
   
• Insofar as it is relevant at all, the Chairman's meandering survey of what he considers to be the recent history of "bigoted speech" is peculiar indeed. To somehow extract cause-and-effect relationships between the words and deeds of the "Communist Party" (which one? where?) and the Nazis reveal a confused and misleading view of world events.
  
  On the one hand the Chairman seems to be claiming that Communist rhetoric and the suppression of racist "speech" (he means publications) did nothing to stop the racist tensions which have now erupted. What he neglects to add is that during this official anti-racist period, the USSR and Yugoslavia were virtually free of racist violence. What does he want: words or blood?
  
  Yet in the same breath, the Professor sees positive value in the Nazi's explicit racist propaganda! Deeds not words, Mr Chairman. The Nazis never said they would wage global warfare and seek to exterminate Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. The gulf between what the Nazis said and what they did cost 30 million lives.
  
  Next, the Professor's curious and absolute claim that non Anglo-Irish immigration from Europe since the 1940s "was made only because these sources were inadequate". Never heard of refugees, Professor, or displaced persons? The first group were fleeing from your Nazis, the second mostly from the new Communist governments of Eastern Europe.
   
• The Chairman, on behalf of the Council, "begs to differ" from our view that the press plays an active role in peddling prejudice. He differs but does not contradict. Instead, the Professor trundles out a familiar line often attributed to Voltaire but for which there is no conclusive evidence that it ever passed his lips. (He certainly did not write it.) Yet that doesn't stop the Professor from placing the sentence in full quotation marks. The Chairman's penchant for borrowing the thoughts of his more illustrious predecessors is no substitute for a reasoned rebuttal.
   
• Media Watch has never - and will never - advocate "controlling opinions" as Prof Flint suggests. It is concerned with what is published. The manner is, in many ways, as important as the content. Our contention in the "God's myxo" matter was that publication of an unreasonable opinion expressed in a deliberately offensive manner deserved condemnation from the Council.
  
  
• The Adjudication claimed that these views "are clearly those of a by-lined columnist with the approval of a major interest group". No evidence to support this claim of "approval" was offered. In the Professor's letter, this defence was qualified to "... said to be vetted and approved by a significant community group" (our italics). Note that "are" has become "said", "major" has become "significant" and "interest group" has become "community group".
  
  
• In the Professor's article in the News, the revisionism continues. Now the blame is quietly shifted to the newspaper which "believed the column was written on behalf of, and vetted by, the NSW Farmers' Association". Well, which is it? It is difficult to hold much faith in a process of adjudication which can state something as fact, but whose Chairman then admits this assumption was a matter of "belief" taken on trust from the most interested party, namely the newspaper which was the subject of a complaint.

The thrust of the Media Watch item was quite simple. If the Press Council did not feel that the "God's myxo" article was sufficiently offensive to uphold a complaint against its publisher, then we wondered what useful role the Council sees for itself in these matters.

Notwithstanding the clutch of feeble justifications outlined in the adjudication and in the Chairman's subsequent letter and article, its failure to condemn this grossly offensive column only serves to encourage the view that the Council is the timid and toothless lapdog of our press proprietors.

David Salter

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