1. Introduction to the 2007 Supplement
The year since the Australian Press Council published the initial State of the News Print Media in Australia Report 2006 in October 2006 has seen enormous changes in the Australian media landscape, necessitating this supplement to bring the state of the news print media up-to-date.
The transition, evident at that time, towards making news available on-line, involving the convergence of print, photography and video to tell vital stories, has since become the settled way forward, although metropolitan companies are well in advance of regional and rural companies in implementing the new business model. So strong is belief in a multi-media future that companies are drastically changing newsrooms (and sometimes company locations) to better realise their new business models.
The new newsroom generally groups Internet and print editors around the same table. Editors feed news continuously to the most suitable medium or channel, often initially on-line and not reserving lead stories to the next day's paper edition. Print editions have been forced to make complementary changes often now devoting relatively more space to explanation. Journalists and editors are having to learn new skills suited to the demands of the different media. So far, however, the print versions of newspapers are still to a large extent setting the agenda for other media, especially radio and TV.
The changes made necessary by technological developments have been accompanied by other changes, especially the changes made in long-standing Australian media law in February, which allow both consolidation of media companies and greater foreign ownership. For newspapers, the changes in ownership laws have resulted in the merger of Fairfax and Rural Press, and more consolidation of fewer regional newspapers and fewer owners.
Circulation and readership numbers for printed newspapers (without adding in Internet figures) are still holding up better in Australia than in most other urbanised countries. Year-on-year there is very nearly a steady state position overall, with a slight decline Monday to Friday in tabloid newspaper circulation around Australia.
Blogging associated with newspaper websites (as well as blogging on a variety of sites) has markedly increased. Newspaper sites have already found that it is essential to maintain editorial oversight and to be willing quickly to take down any comments outside the standard considerations of fairness and balance, not to mention those that are possibly defamatory. The Press Council is widening its remit to include news sites that have or wish to gain reputations for accuracy, fairness and balance. The Council will accept applications for membership from those willing to abide by both its long-standing principles, and privacy standards, and willing to police some additional blog "etiquette" requirements, covering civilised discourse, an absence of threats and extreme language, currently being finalised.
A significant development has been the unprecedented initiative taken by newspaper proprietors, acting collectively, to establish a new organisation, The Newspaper Works, to reaffirm to advertisers in particular that newspapers offer them a better and more influential platform than other media and, complementarily, to improve total newspaper circulation and readership. The new organisation has also undertaken, in conjunction with polling organisations, to try to improve the techniques used to measure circulation and readership of print editions and to measure newspaper website traffic accurately.
During the year, Rupert Murdoch, whose world-wide company, News Ltd, owns over 100 newspapers including key titles in Australia, has insisted that content is the key to the future. In pursuit of this belief, at least in part, News has made a successful takeover bid for the powerful Dow Jones Corporation, widely respected for the quality of its offerings. The unanswerable question at this point is whether the consequence will be more quality content feeding into Australian newspapers, whether any such news source will be at the expense of local reporting, or, alternatively, result in expanded Australian journalistic resources.
In Australia the quality of the content of daily newspapers is presently being debated around two topics, separation of news and comment, and media ethics. There is increasing criticism of the way newspapers often fail to make a clear distinction between objective reporting of the news and comment on it, that is, journalists apparently actively seeking influence, whether in politics, business or sport. A perennial debate, but one brought into sharp relief in a national election year. For the Press Council, the most interesting aspect is the absence in some newspapers of evidence of clear editorial policies and enough editorial leadership to ensure readers can always distinguish between fact and opinion.
Media ethics have had an extended airing as a consequence of the Australian Treasurer being "outed" after claiming to have been misrepresented in comments made when speaking "off-the-record" to three journalists over dinner two years ago. The incontrovertible evidence that has emerged so far is that there are tangled relationships between politicians and the journalists who report politics, in this case in Canberra, but no doubt equally in State parliaments, without readers of newspapers always knowing the worth of reported information or the ethical background being made clear.
The Press Council's contribution to understanding the balance in the reporting of elections is included in this Supplement, in the form of research reports on the Victorian and the Queensland elections held in late 2006. The basic intent was to gather empirical data relating to the coverage, balance, fairness and possible bias of newspapers in election periods, but the research goes further with evidence of such matters as a longer-term trend toward presidential-style elections, where reportage centres on the leaders and where there is close control of the flow of information. The studies add other information about the small amount of open debate and that ministers and their opposition shadows are much less well reported. The coverage illuminates the main issues in each state, even to the point of the newspaper, in the absence of opposition advocacy, analysing issues that ought to be addressed. No evidence of bias was found by the analyses.
Another significant development during the year, again involving media proprietors collectively, has been a resolve to conduct a full Public Right to Know audit of the many restrictions on freedom of the press that the Council has been monitoring for years and which it covered in the 2006 Report. Due to its adjudicatory responsibilities the Press Council is not the appropriate body to carry advocacy into lobbying, but it is very pleased that action to overcome restrictions is being taken since trends in the availability of information that the public has a right to know particularly from governments have again been negative in the last year. There is not really any chance that the accumulation of restrictions can be reversed in the context of the forthcoming federal election, but a start might be possible.
The excessive security measures associated with the recent APEC meeting (September 2007) also underlined the risks to democracy and freedom of movement arising from action taken for the right reasons, if it is subsequently left in place and kept available for less admirable use.
The year has seen one other important development worthy of mention here. International sporting organisations have for some time sought restrictions on free access by journalists to sporting contests and associated press conferences, including an attempt, aborted at the last moment, to limit accreditation and/or charge fees for those covering the cricket test match series in Australia in 2006-2007. Apparently world sports bodies are confident that their product is so important that everyone should pay for the information about it, or that it would not matter if newspapers stopped covering sporting events. The public interest is not part of their thinking.
This year the trend accelerated with a strong push to restrict accreditation and coverage of the current Rugby World Cup contests. A coalition of the major organisations, including international wire services, resisted the Rugby proposals, stating that they would not cover the event at all unless less restrictive accreditation could be negotiated. Even though negotiations went down to the day of the first match, sanity prevailed. A fairly favourable compromise was reached for the World Cup and negotiations are to continue to ensure reportage of world sporting events can continue. The compromise does not mean that the trend has been stopped, simply that a skirmish has been won, with more battles to come.
Overall, it has been a landscape-changing year. Many changes are in their initial stages, without their eventual effect on the State of the News Print Media in Australia being able to be forecast in any detail.