6. Content: Is election coverage biased?
Introduction to the studies.
The question of whether press coverage of elections is biased or fair and balanced is a perennial one for the Press Council. There have been allegations against several newspapers, one of which (Adjudication Nos 74 and 75) contributed to the decision of News Limited in the early 1980s to suspend its membership of the Council for six years. In the 1970s and 1980s, the allegations of bias emerged largely from the left but, in the past 15 years, allegations of bias have been just as likely to emerge from the right. In fact, during one recent federal election, within ten days, accusations of bias were levelled at the same newspaper first by a partisan of the ALP, then by the Liberals and, finally, by the Australian Democrats.
The Council has raised with academics during research meetings the possibility of obtaining more evidence on this question of bias in election coverage. In 2006, it decided to sponsor research on the reporting in one newspaper in each state of the three state elections to be held in late 2006 and early 2007. Two of the studies were of The Courier-Mail's coverage of the 2006 Queensland election and The Age's reporting of the Victorian elections. The proposed study of coverage of the 2007 NSW election in The Australian is not yet complete.
Reports on the research, conducted by Harry Dillon of Charles Sturt University (the Queensland election) and Associate Professor Ian Richards at University of South Australia (the Victorian election) are published in this section of the Supplement.
Harry Dillon explains the methodology used in the Queensland report. It was adapted from a method pioneered in election studies at Canada 's McGill University 's Institute for the Study of Canada and used in reports such as its analysis of the 2006 Canadian federal elections (http://media-observatory.mcgill.ca/pages/2006election.html).
Findings
Both researchers are unequivocal in their conclusion that, in terms of coverage, balance, and fairness, in neither the tabloid nor the broadsheet did they find any evidence of systematic bias towards one political party. The conclusion from the Victorian report is representative of both studies. "As a result, regular readers of The Age were presented with a comprehensive and generally balanced coverage of issues and policies, parties and personalities."
The Courier-Mail has taken some issue with parts of the report on its coverage of the Queensland election, noting particularly that the paper had covered the issues central to the election in the months leading up to the election period, and a brief response from the newspaper's editor has been included at the end of the report on the research. A more detailed response has been published in the November APC News.
Even though there was no evidence of bias, there were other conclusions about election reporting likely to be of interest to the Council, the press and the public. For example, there is clear evidence in both studies of a trend toward presidential-style election campaigns. The reporting and commentary tends to concentrate on the leaders of the major parties and their activities, diminishing the attention paid to the other candidates (including members of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet) and other parties, and, sometimes, the issues being debated. The Queensland study used a sporting analogy for the way in which elections are reported, seeing concentration on the leaders as stressing the contest rather than the issues and the debate. A corollary of this concentration on the leaders is the evident increase in close control of the flow of information. Because the activities of the leaders have become the focus, the release of policies is confined to material offered by the leaders; frequently Ministers and their shadows are not made available to explain or respond to questions on the impact of the proposed policies.