Chapter 7
Credibility
In his book, Media Ethics and Accountability Systems (Transaction Publishers, 2000), French journalism professor Claude-Jean Bertrand refers to the plethora of formal and informal systems that seek to guide the ethical conduct of both journalists and publications as "Media Accountability Systems" (MAS). The Australian print media have a number of such guiding systems in place, yet the public attitudes to the credibility of the press, judged on the basis of the few publicly available contemporary measures, are not reassuring for the press.
Formal press accountability
Company ethical practice codes
The press has both industry-wide and company specific codes of ethics that govern its ethical behaviour. Most media organisations have formal codes of practice, such as the News Limited Professional Conduct Policy (most recent edition, March 2006) and The Age 's Code of Conduct (November 1999)
Other companies with published codes of practice include Australian Associated Press and The Canberra Times . These codes cover such areas as accuracy, misrepresentation, privacy, confidential sources, harassment, grief and distress and personal information.
Australian Press Council Code
Even in the absence of such company specific codes, all print media organisations are covered by the Australian Press Council's Statement of Principles, a set of ethical guidelines that mandates the accepted standards of responsible reporting and publishing, including requirements for the prompt and appropriately prominent correction or clarification of or apology for harmful inaccuracies or singling out individuals or groups for unfair criticism
The Press Council accepts complaints from any reader about alleged breaches of its principles and seeks to mediate a settlement of any complaint on terms satisfactory to all parties. Where that does not succeed, the Council will, at the complainant's request, and after all parties have had an adequate opportunity to comment on the other's submissions, adjudicate the complaint.
There are many informal enquiries and requests for guidance about ways of obtaining redress that staff handle informally in the daily round. Of the more than four hundred complaints that reach the stage of being officially handled, some are solved by cooperation, mediated by individual members of Council or staff trained in mediation, between the newspaper and the complainant, until an outcome being satisfactory to both is achieved. Table 16 sets out the comparison between the years 2005-2006 and 2004-2005 and the trend of complaints over the preceding seventeen years.
Details of the statistics are to be found on the Press Council web-site at the statistics overview page. As might be expected most (60 per cent) of complaints come from individuals and most (55.3 per cent) relate to national and metropolitan newspapers (regional dailies 13.5 per cent, country and suburban 18 per cent, and magazines six per cent).
The main reasons are inaccuracy (13.7 per cent), unfair treatment (10.4 per cent), imbalance (9 per cent) and ethical standards (6.0 per cent).
| 2005- | 2006 | 2004- | 2005 | 1988- | 2005 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How handled | No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | ||||
| Refused as inappropriate | 62 | 14.7 | 64 | 14.5 | 920 | 14 | ||||
| Referred to other organisations | 13 | 3.1 | 18 | 4.1 | 342 | 5.2 | ||||
| Withdrawn for legal action | 29 | 6.9 | 19 | 4.3 | 298 | 4.5 | ||||
| Not followed up | 35 | 8.3 | 48 | 10.8 | 1010 | 15.4 | ||||
| Withdrawn after correspondence | 120 | 28.4 | 102 | 23.1 | 1342 | 20.4 | ||||
| Mediation | 98 | 23.2 | 103 | 23.3 | 1280 | 19.5 | ||||
| By press release | 0 | — | 0 | — | 9 | 0.1 | ||||
| By adjudication* | 61 | 14.5 | 88 | 19.9 | 1308 | 19.9 | ||||
| Other action | 4 | 4 | 0 | — | 62 | 1 | ||||
| Total disposed of | 422 | 100 | 442 | 100 | 6568 | 100 | ||||
| Carried forward to next period | 49 | 51 | 51 |
| *Results of Adjudications: | 2005-2006: | 23 upheld; | 21 upheld in part; | 17 dismissed; | 0 other; | 2004-2005: | 19 upheld; | 19 upheld in part; | 47 dismissed; | 3 other; |
| 1988-2004: | 378 upheld; | 194 upheld in part; | 710 dismissed; | 26 other |
The Council's sole sanction is the prominent publication of its adjudication by the cited newspaper or magazine.
The Press Council also administers the Privacy Standards for the print media to which the overwhelming majority of the press publicly subscribes. Under the media exemption to the federal Privacy Act, only those media organisations that subscribe to such a set of standards can claim exemption and then only when engaged in journalism.
The Council deals with complaints under the Privacy Standards in exactly the same way as it deals with complaints about breaches of its Statement of Principles, except that in cases of privacy it allows complaints from the immediately affected parties only.
Journalistic codes
Journalists who are members of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance are subject to the Journalists' Code of Ethics and to the disciplinary hearings of the AJA Judiciary Committee of the MEAA. An adverse finding by the Judiciary Committee can result in a fine or suspension from the union.
Informal press accountability
Critical self-scrutiny with the press The ethical behaviour and accountability of the print media are also subject to review by a number of informal self-regulatory systems. The press itself, through news reports, opinion articles, editorials and letters to the editor conducts a reasonably thorough review of the ethical standards practiced by various organs. There is a weekly Media section in the national daily, The Australian, which brings together much of this review and criticism. In other publications, such review is on a less regular basis.
ABC press critiques
The material within the press is supplemented by review and criticism from the electronic media and on the Internet. The national broadcaster (the ABC) carries two weekly reviews of media policy and practice, Media Watch on television and The Media Report on Radio National.
Internet and Blog-site critiques
On the Internet, crikey.com.au carries regular commentaries on the press in its Media section. As in the print media, other electronic media outlets and Internet news websites carry, from time to time, reports and commentary on the print media and its practices. These are supplemented by commentary in a large number of Australian-based blogs.
Public attitudes
There is a paucity of contemporary information in Australia on the question of public attitudes to newspaper credibility. There are no specific data on the question although a number of recent Morgan surveys and polls have included questions that provide some guidance in particular areas.
When the next State of the Print Media report for Australia is written, there will be a need for new, specific polling that will address some of these questions.
Earlier Australian studies, including ones published by Professor John Henningham, Dr Julianne Schultz and the Bond University Journalism School, have included analysis of some polling of public attitudes to the press but their data are dated.
A recent study by the RMIT Journalism Department and a Melbourne University doctoral thesis by Denis Muller addressed questions of journalists' attitudes to the print media, a question that lies outside the remit of this study, which addresses public attitudes.
The credibility of journalists
Roy Morgan International conducts an annual poll of the ethics and honesty of a number of professions. Newspaper journalists is one category of the poll.
While nurses, pharmacists and doctors have consistently topped the poll, journalists have been nearer the tail of the field with advertisers, real estate agents and car sellers. Over the last decade the poll has shown the following responses for a "high" or "very high" rating on ethics and honesty for a number of comparable professions, the most recent being published in November 2005.
| Occupation | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lawyer | 32 | 29 | 29 | 26 | 34 | 29 | 32 | 30 | 31 | 33 | 32 |
| Talk back radio announcers | 18 | 14 | 17 | 17 | 21 | 17 | 19 | ||||
| TV reporters | 13 | 12 | 11 | 12 | 14 | 12 | 18 | 18 | 17 | 19 | 17 |
| Federal MPs | 9 | 13 | 9 | 7 | 13 | 11 | 16 | 18 | 17 | 20 | 15 |
| News Journalists | 8 | 7 | 7 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 13 | 9 | 12 | 12 | 11 |
Believability of the print media
According to a Morgan poll released in December 2005, 71 per cent of Australians believe media organisations are more interested in making money than in informing society and 67 per cent believe the media generally is not objective enough.
In addition the majority of Australians do not trust newspaper journalists (63 per cent), talk-back radio hosts (57 per cent) and TV reporters (53 per cent) to tell the truth.
Despite this 60 per cent of Australians believe the media overall is a force for good in the world and only 34 per cent distrust big international TV chains such as BBC, CNN and Fox.
As to which medium is turned to first, free-to-air television (FTA TV) is the first choice for most people with newspapers playing an important role in several categories.
The following data indicate that, while television is where people go to get breaking news, newspapers are far more likely to be their primary source of information when they are seeking analysis of the news rather than the reporting of it.
| Breaking news on global events: | FTA TV 54 percent; newspapers 6 per cent |
| Breaking news on events in Australia: | FTA TV 56 per cent; newspapers 11 percent |
| Breaking news in Asia Pacific News: | FTA TV 48 per cent; newspapers 17 percent |
| Global political background and analysis: | FTA TV 42 per cent; newspapers 23 percent |
| Australian political background and analysis: | FTA TV 41 per cent; newspapers 27 percent |
| Views and opinions of people like me: | FTA TV 28 per cent; newspapers 26 percent |
Sources of information
According to a different Morgan poll of November 2005, 48 per cent of Australians say that television is their main source of information, for 22 per cent it is newspapers, 19 per cent radio and eight per cent the Internet.
The importance of the various media varies on a State-by-State basis. A majority of people in South Australia/ Northern Territory (56 per cent), Queensland (54 per cent) and Tasmania (53 per cent) say television is their main source of information followed by New South Wales (50 per cent) and Western Australia (49 per cent).
Victorians (36 per cent) were the least likely to view television as their main source of information and much more likely than any other State to identify newspapers (32 per cent) as their main source of information, whilst Tasmanians were more likely than other States to nominate Radio (26 per cent) as the medium that is their main source of information. Western Australians (12 per cent) were the most reliant on the Internet as their main source of information followed by New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia/ Northern Territory (8 per cent each) and Tasmania (2 per cent).
Respondents were then asked: "Which daily newspapers (i.e. Monday to Friday) are a must read for you?" Respondents were then asked: "Which weekend newspapers (i.e. Saturday and Sunday) are a must read for you?'
Across all states, Australian "Opinion Leaders"17 view those daily newspapers that are a "Must read" quite differently than a cross-section of Australians. "Opinion Leaders" in most States viewed The Australian and The Australian Financial Review in the top three that they must read daily, whilst a cross-section of the whole population was more likely to identify State and regional newspapers as important to them.
When asked which weekend newspapers they viewed as a "must read" a cross-section of Australians was more inclined to mention State-based tabloid newspapers while "Opinion Leaders" largely identified state broadsheets and The Weekend Australian.