Making the Media Accountable:
The Role of Press Councils

To mark its twentieth anniversary, the Press Council invited Prof Claude-Jean Bertrand to deliver an address on the role of press councils. Jack Herman reports.

After studying "media accountability systems" (MAS) for over twenty years, Professor Claude-Jean Bertrand considers a press council the best of them provided it fulfils all its functions and provided it does not stand alone - meaning it must help other MAS to set up and co-operate with them.

Prof Bertrand of the Institut Francais de Press, at the University of Paris, was delivering the Press Council's Twentieth Anniversary Address, Making Media Accountable: The Role of Press Councils, at the NSW State Library on 25 October 1996.

In his speech and in questions after, he made it clear that he was talking about press councils in general and not about the Australian Press Council in particular. He noted that his attendance that day at a full meeting of the Australian Press Council had been his first chance to observe a press council in operation and to have first hand experience of the Australian Press Council.

Prof Bertrand thought a press council the best MAS because it is a permanent and independent institution which brings together the businessmen who own the means of information, the journalists who have the skills of informing, and the citizens who have the right to be informed.

"This association may be as important by what it implies as by what it does: it means that no longer is it accepted as normal that a news medium be used as a cash register or a propaganda mill by people who happen to have wealth or clout. By joining a press council, proprietors acknowledge that their employees are entitled to a voice in the product. And journalists acknowledge that media consumers also are entitled to express their views."

He saw a press council as a "two-headed watchdog", that can both protect the media from political interference and protect the public from mediocre service. A press council can adapt to various contexts and to various levels of society. But it is almost the only MAS to stand at national level. Also, he said, a press council provides services that few other institutions can:

• as an ethics coach, it works not in the abstract but in everyday life;
• as a non-official court, it can be simple, fast, flexible, inexpensive;
• as a defender of freedom, provided it protects its independence and earns public respect, it then can wield a power that is great yet harmless.

Role of a press council

According to Prof Bertrand, a press council can only hope to contribute to the improvement of the media if it fully assumes two basic functions.

1. Improve the media, "which cannot just mean to point the finger to a few misdeeds that some individual took the trouble to complain about. It means to ensure good service for every group in the population." That involves three further tasks for the press council:

• monitoring the media to discover distortions and omissions - "This is more important than receiving complaints particularly because most of media manipulation is by omission, which the public cannot spot and react against";
• initiating inquiries into media misbehaviour even if nobody has complained; and
• promotion of media training - "Only true, highly competent, professionals can provide the needed services. Only they can acquire autonomy, endure criticism, and accept public access to the media". The public too should be educated, sensitised to issues - starting at school.

2. Defend the freedom of the press, "Progress in the media is predicated on their obtaining and preserving their independence". This can be done by:

• fighting against the encroachments of political powers - representing the media vigorously in government circles, speaking on behalf of the industry, the profession and the public;
• fighting against encroachments of economic powers - by watching ownership concentration and publishing the observations.

Prof Bertrand noted that the statutes of the British Press Council specified that it was to watch the evolution of media ownership and warn of any undue concentration. It never really bothered - and neither have other press councils.

Press councils today

In looking at the situation of press councils extant today, Prof Bertrand noted that there were fewer than 30 of which only 21 include non-media members (which he considers crucial). Of those only 13 are national. Press councils exist in fewer than 20 nations out of the present 180 plus nations in the UN and over the last 20 years, some councils have died, as in the US and Portugal - and few new ones have appeared, mainly in new democracies, like Chile or Estonia. Most councils now alive are located in northern Europe and countries with an Anglo-Saxon heritage.

According to the professor, nearly all report that they have not had much impact on the improvement of media.

Because he has noticed that even well-informed people are a little confused about what a press council does - leading to unwarranted criticism, he defined a press council as "a group of people whose concern for the quality of media leads them to use what moral influence they have on public opinion to improve it".

Three sorts of bodies which call themselves press councils were identified by Prof Bertrand.

"Pseudo-councils", which call themselves press councils but are not since they include representatives of the government. Sometimes, all members are appointed by the Executive and meetings are chaired by the Minister for Information. The main mission of such bodies is to muzzle the media. So they do great harm to the image of the press council.

"Semi-councils", which take on some of the functions of a press council but cannot do it well since they do not include any representative of the public (except perhaps the chairman). "At best, they have been set up jointly by media-owners and journalists, as in Austria. Quite often, they represent only one group, publishers in Denmark, journalists in Switzerland." He noted in particular the Japanese shinshashitsu, or commission for contents evaluation, which was set up by the publishers' association. It consist of seven experienced newsmen who scrutinise the contents of all dailies and report on violations of the code of ethics. All major dailies also have such a shinshashitsu. Some also deal with complaints from readers.

The true councils, which contain both media people and non-media people, in varying proportions. Normally the media people usually are delegates from their associations. True press councils exist or have existed at three different levels, national, regional and local. Regions like Minnesota or Quebec are larger than nations like Israel or Holland: their councils are quite similar to national ones. Local councils are different. Under that name, they have existed only in the US (with one Canadian exception), but elsewhere probably under other names. Their main purpose is not to investigate complaints and defend press freedom: they are closer to liaison committees, meetings of local citizens and media executives to discuss issues of interest to both.

Problems of press councils

"Some see them as part of the permanent plot of governments against press freedom; some see it as a PR ploy of owners to avoid State regulation; and a few look upon it as a fantasy of utopians," Prof Bertrand observed.

He outlined the problems that press councils have which result in there being so few councils and in people ignoring or disliking them.

"For one thing, a Press Council can only survive in particular environments. It needs a liberal press regime; a country where parties alternate in power; where there's neither a tradition of blindly trusting the Law and the courts nor, on the contrary, a pathological dread of government; and a country with relatively prosperous media, and professional newspeople who can take criticism, and an enlightened public."

For a press council to function properly, and win the respect of both journalists and citizens, solutions must be found to several problems, Prof Bertrand asserted. "These have often been underestimated, probably because the founders had so much trouble merely getting all protagonists to join and work together."

There is a wide difference of views in the various groups interested as regards what a press council should be:

• governments want a press council that would muzzle the media without them taking unpopular measures to do it;
• some owners would like an inactive press council whose only purpose is to deprive the government of an excuse to regulate their money-making;
• some journalists would like a press council that would protect them against politicians and proprietors but would not expose them to public criticism.

Everywhere a press council has been considered, it was perceived by people in, or close to, the media world as useless and dangerous.

Some deficiencies

Prof Bertrand noted that, in general, press councils were perceived to:

have a lack of teeth

"According to a quick survey I did about 10 years ago, the most obvious weakness of which observers of press councils were aware was lack of teeth. Just publishing negative judgments, they feel, is not enough."

be limited in scope

"Two thirds of councils are only concerned with the print media, or even just newspapers, at a time when most people get most of their news from broadcasting and when television is the medium most inclined to ethical misbehaviour. Secondly, even when their constitutions set many other missions, nearly all devote themselves to just one of their missions, that of fielding complaints. Third: complaints are not numerous and quite often futile as compared to the real sins of the news media: I mean, sins of omission and long-term distortion."

suffer a lack of money

This is one immediate reason why a Press Council cannot assume all its functions and which partly accounts for its lack of consideration and visibility. The cause of it: proprietors often are the only source of funds and what most want is to maintain the status quo at minimum expense.

survive in obscurity

"To me it seems obvious that owners and journalists are not only reluctant to let a press council assume its functions, but also wish to keep it in the shadows." The council can only use its main weapon, publicity, if the media decide to publish the its judgments and, generally speaking, put it in the limelight.

He noted, "The worst cause of failure is that obscurity. Nowhere are common people actually hostile to press councils. Even in those countries that do have a council, most people outside the media world do not know what a press council is. That is a terrible flaw since the purpose of a press council is to recruit the public in the fight for press freedom and media quality."

The message of hope

Prof Bertrand finished by outlining how press councils can improve their image and effectiveness. First he attempted to dispel some myths, noting that

• the British Press Council was not the best in the world and should not be considered so;
• a council can be created by law and still be independent and efficient, as in India;
• a council does not have to be toothless. The Swedish Press Council fines newspapers that are found guilty of misbehaving and other acceptable sanctions could be devised;
• a council should not believe its only function is to deal with complaints: it might not even be its major function.

He then argued that a press council should obtain enough money for it to assume all its functions, to operate fast and to be known. The money should be used, among other things, to monitor the media via, for instance, a university research team.

In his view, a press council must speak on behalf of all media and of all the producers and consumers of media (except advertisers and politicians). "All press councils should be tripartite and even if only bipartite, be open to non-media people in the proportion of a third to half."

As a precondition for a press council to function properly is that it obtain the support of the public, a major goal of a council should be to get known. "One way to get noticed is to become more numerous, to aim at breaking the isolation of the Press Council, which I think has never been done. First it should encourage the establishment of other press councils at all levels. Ideally, press councils should exist at each end of the continuum: there should be local press councils in every city and at the other extreme, there should be international press councils for transnational media."

Press councils are not the only MAS: "there are at least 30 other types, consisting in individuals or groups, texts or broadcasts, and various processes: e.g. ombudsmen, media reporters, liaison committees, critical reviews, workshops, ethical audits, etc. What should be done is set up a network of MAS. No MAS can have a strong immediate effect - but all together can have a vast long-term influence.

"So a Press Council should encourage the creation of a network of MAS: it is uniquely capable of that because it represents the three major protagonists. In a vast, loose network of MAS, Press councils would undoubtedly stand at the major intersections."

Conclusion

Prof Bertrand said that the fate of mankind lies in the hands of the media. It was a dramatic way of putting a simple chain of thought: mankind is in jeopardy unless democracy reigns everywhere; there is no democracy without informed citizens; media inform people.

"So improving the media, making them more socially responsible, is part of our struggle to save the planet. The newsmedia possess a triple nature: industry-public service-political institution. As a Fourth Estate, the people in charge of them are not elected. Nor are they appointed after obtaining degrees or being evaluated. As a public service, nearly all are commercial and, to a large extent (at least in the print media) unregulated. As a vital sector of business (a nervous system of society and the provider of most entertainment), it is largely unsupervised.

"That is a unique situation - so existing laws and market forces play an excellent part in ensuring good service. But they are dangerous. Ethics and MAS have become indispensable. As I see it, press councils and other MAS are signs of a revolution and, to some degree, agents of change. Slow change. (True revolutions take time.)

"A new press regime seems to be developing in which freedom of the press becomes the right to be informed and to communicate. What was a privilege of media owners is becoming a right of all citizens, including journalists."

Jack Herman

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