THE Attorney-General, Duncan Kerr, for the media “”to evaluate its performance in reporting criminal activities” following reportage of the recent kidnapping and siege near Grafton.
His concern is not misplaced. The “”performance” of some sections of the media in that case was precisely that _ a performance. It was not legitimate reporting in the public interest. Interviews with criminals and victims during the commission of a crime can rarely, if ever, be justified. Journalists are there to report events, not involve themselves in them. They should, obviously, help people in danger or immediate need if they find themselves in the position to do so. For example, upon arrival at a car accident, common decency says journalists, like anyone else, have as a first duty to save life over the duty to report events. They should call an ambulance, and in the case of crime, call the police. And when the professionals arrive, they should stand back and report.
The active seeking out of victims and criminals during the commission of a crime can only risk lives and hinder police. The telephone interview by Mike Willessee of a boy while he was being held captive cannot be justified.
That said, there is a difference between acknowledging that the police and other trained professionals should have total control over contacts with victims and criminals during the commission of a crime and in its immediate aftermath and surrendering total control over the flow of information about events.
Mr Kerr said that the eight Australian Governments had been considering the issue for some time and hoped that the media would take part in a series of meetings with officials and police. That is a worthwhile suggestion. That sort of discussion can only lead to greater understanding by police and media of each others’ aims and requirements. It will also be worthwhile for electronic and print journalists, producers, news directors, editors and others to look at present codes of ethics to see if they are appropriate and if they are being obeyed.
Mr Kerr has not suggested that regulations are needed. Nor are they. Regulations cannot possibly foresee every future circumstance nor hope to prescribe detailed rules of conduct to cover every event. Moreover, detailed regulation tends to result in those being regulated to look to the regulations as the definitive statement of what they can and cannot do. It invites the exploitation of loopholes and a mentality of: “”It wasn’t in the regulations so it must be okay.”
Broad self-regulating codes of ethics can be more effective. Those that went over the top in the Grafton case received the opprobrium of their peers and the community at large, which should help prevent recurrence. Enforcing regulations with fines and jail, on the other hand, has the opposite effect: creating martyrs and “”heroes”, and perhaps sparking copy-cats.
Mr Kerr has asked the Australian media to look at a part of a self-regulating Canadian broadcasting ethics code. It says reporting should be done in a way that does not knowingly endanger lives, hamper attempts by authorities to conclude the event, offer comfort, support or provide vital information to the perpetrators, or involve contact with perpetrators or victims during the course of a criminal event.
This seems to be a sensible starting point for discussion.
Isolated breaches of self-regulatory ethics codes should not be met with threats of regulations with criminal sanctions; only persistent, wholesale breaches would warrant that course, and there is no evidence of that in Australia at present. The case for regulation has nowhere near been made out.