Regulation of broadcasting in Australia in the past two decades has been pitiful. Self-regulation has resulted in falling standards. The report by a panel set up by the Australian Broadcasting Authority into cash for comments at Radio 2UE involving and agreements between presenters John Laws and Alan Jones with large corporations shows the short-comings. Worse, Laws and Jones have continued to attract large audiences despite all the adverse publicity relating the cash-for-comments scandal. It indicates that the public needs a regulator to control the excesses of broadcasters because the marketplace is not doing it either.
The panel made recommendations to the authority which presumably it will adopt. They were little more than to slap 2UE on the wrist with a feather considering the panel found 2UE guilty of five breaches of the Broadcasting Services Act and 90 breaches of the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice. It said 2UE should institute a training program on the obligations of the holders of broadcast licences; it should disclose on air commercial arrangements with sponsors if material about the sponsor is being broadcast; it should keep a public register of those agreements on their internet; it should make sure the separation of advertising and editorial matter is clear. None of those things is beyond what would be expected in any event of a commercial broadcaster, with perhaps the exception of the public register.
There were no penalties recommended for Laws and Jones. The authority has no power over presenters, only licence holders.
Clearly there is a need to review the Broadcasting Services Act to give the authority more teeth.
It is bad enough that these two presenters will get away with making millions of dollars from plugging various commercial causes when their audiences thought they were independent. But the cash-for-comments affairs goes wider and deeper. In the past half decade or more these two presenters have been the most popular and successful in Australia. As a result they have been monitored by politicians and political parties to feel the pulse of opinion in Australia. Having felt the pulse of opinion, the politicians go on to shape policy based at least partly on that opinion.
A good example has been attitudes to the banks. The Australian Bankers Association had an agreement with John Laws. After the agreement was signed Laws went softer on the banks. Politicians might then get the false impression that people were less concerned about bank practice, so government might be less inclined to regulate or more inclined to allow bank mergers.
This episode has at least resulted in politicians being more reluctant to go on the Laws and Jones show. But before we pat the inquiry on the back, we must recognise that the inquiry did nothing to expose the misdeeds or Laws and Jones. No; that was exposed by Richard Ackland on the ABC’s Media Watch program. As is often the case, it requires journalists to shine the initial spotlight into shortcomings and malfeasance. (Laws, incidentally, quite rightly regards himself as an entertainer, not a journalist) The follow up inquiries with their bevies of lawyers usually are about containing the fall-out.