Submission from the Australian Press Council to the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission Inquiry into Police Radio Communication Access.

22 June 2004

Executive Summary

The Australian Press Council is opposed to the exclusion of the news media from access to the Queensland police radio system. The monitoring of police radio by journalists makes a significant contribution to ensuring that the police service is accountable to the public. By scrutinising police activity the media provide the police with an incentive to behave with integrity and commitment. That scrutiny would be dramatically reduced if journalists were unable to monitor police activity by listening to police radio messages. The information which is disseminated by police media units cannot provide a satisfactory substitute for that which is currently derived from police radio, and relying on police media units facilitates the manipulation of the media for the purposes of propaganda.

Media Access to Police Radio

The Australian Press Council is concerned that the proposed restriction of media access to police radio could significantly impact upon the public's ability to be kept informed on matters of public interest. While the Council recognizes the risks associated with unsecured communications, it believes that media access to police radio is an important channel for the flow of information to the public regarding crime, policing and other events potentially affecting the public interest. As such, police radio provides a unique window through which the public can scrutinize police activity, thereby making a significant contribution to accountability. By making such a significant contribution to the transparency of police activity, media access to police radio provides police officers with a greater incentive to perform their duties with integrity. In the absence of such close scrutiny some less conscientious officers may be tempted to allow their standards of conduct to lapse.

Advocates of the restriction of media access to police radio argue that press briefings and media liaison officers can satisfy the needs of journalists for information currently sourced from police radio. However, this view is premised on a number questionable assumptions.

This view assumes that police will always anticipate the public interest in a particular matter and consequently pass the relevant information on to the media. It does not acknowledge the distinct roles and objectives of journalists and police media officers, who will inevitably hold diverging priorities and often contrary notions of what constitutes newsworthiness.

Advocates of the restriction of media access to police radio further assume that police will pass on all information which is appropriate for disclosure and will not inappropriately withhold information. This fails to recognise that police may fail to pass information on to the media in order to camouflage inefficiency, to prevent criticism of their operational practices, or for other invalid reasons. Police may also inappropriately delay disclosure of information. Even if police pass on a substantial amount of information to the media via liaison officers, there is a risk that the information which ultimately reaches the media via the media liaison office gives a partial and therefore skewed or misleading impression of situation.

In his report into police misconduct in Queensland, G.E. Fitzgerald made several observations on the nature of the relationship between police and the media which caution against relying on either police media units or upon leaks to disseminate information to journalists and to the public. Fitzgerald describes the process of news gathering and the secrecy of government as being complimentary, thereby allowing governments "to exercise substantial and often disproportionate influence on what is published in the media [and enabling] the media to be used by politicians, police officers and other public officials who wish to put out propaganda to advance their own interests and harm their enemies" .. Significantly, the Fitzgerald Report warns that police media units can be used "to control and manipulate the information obtained by the media and disseminated to the public" . Of particular concern in the context of the question of media access to police radio communications is Fitzgerald's comment that the police media unit, in addition to having the function of providing information to the media, has "historically also served a purpose to deflect and combat criticism of the force, irrespective of whether or not that criticism was well based", and his observation that media relations staff have been used by senior police officers to leak false information to journalists.

In an ideal world police media units would act purely as a conduit through which information passed freely and without obstruction. But in the real world police media units can and do act as a filter, choosing what information will be passed on to the media and when that information will be released. The officers who manage police media units must inevitably be subject to the organisational culture of the police force and may at times find a conflict between their sense of loyalty to the organization and their public duty to disclose information in the public interest, particularly in those instances where the organization's behaviour has been such as to warrant public criticism. In order to prevent these processes from acting to interfere with the accountability of the police to the public, it is essential that there are alternative sources of information which can be used to counter the monopolisation of information by police media units. The monitoring of police radio scanners is an important mechanism by which journalists can obtain information which has not been pre-digested and packaged.

The primary reason which has been cited as justifying a secure police radio system is that allowing general access presents a significant threat to the security of police operations, by allowing offenders to monitor police communications. However, police have alternative methods of communication available to them for sensitive communications. If it is considered that a secure radio system is necessary, an exemption should be made for media organizations which enables them to continue to monitor police radio communications for legitimate newsgathering purposes as they have done in the past, while excluding others. Such a compromise would facilitate the continuing scrutiny of police activities and yet effect a significant improvement in security.

The removal of media access to police radio communications has a very real potential to cause a reduction in media scrutiny of police activities and a consequent erosion of public accountability of the police. For these reasons the Council is opposed to the removal of media access to police radio.

See also

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