There was a little political cross-dressing in the Senate this week.
The Senate Select Committee on Information Technologies, chaired by Liberal Jeannie Ferris, brought down its report on Monitoring Australia’s Media. The report looked at how complaints about media performance are resolved.
The Government members — normally proponents of self-regulation funded by industry and letting industry and the private sector get on with it — proposed a statutory Media Complaints Commission, funded by the taxpayer.
The Labor Party members — normally the proponents of government intervention and busy-bodying — dissented saying industry self-regulation was working and there was no need for a Whitlamesque let’s-set-up-a-commission approach.
Is there a need for a complaints commission as set out by the committee (see panel for its findings)?
The extraordinary thing about the committee’s proposal is that it apparently received no public demand for it. It seems to be a creature of its own conception.
There is a fair amount wrong with the Australian media and changes can be made to the way complaints are dealt with, but a government commission seems a diversion of public money to deal with a problem that is not there, or at least is not very serious. The money would be better spent on health and education.
The committee concluded there is a lot of public disquiet about media conduct. That is probably right. Regular surveys suggest the public thinks journalists are scumbags on par with used-car sellers. However, lots of people still watch TV, listen to radio read newspapers and buy cars. There is also a lot a public apathy. There are avenues for complaint, but if there are thousands of aggrieved people out there, they complain only in their hundreds.
The committee was right to point out defects in the present system of self-regulation. And there are some. But they can be fixed without a government-appointed body. The committee was right to suggest there was disquiet and that media organisations could improve their performance. But if the media is that bad, the committee was mighty short on examples. Indeed, it seemed to have more examples of media self-regulation failing from Britain than Australia. And though we share the same language and legal system, our print media at least is utterly different, particularly print. In Australia it is regional with a lot of home-delivery and high-volume classified ads. It means loyalty and reliability are important. In Britain it is national with head-to-head competition for lots of street sales which means big circulation wars based on sensationalism. The committee’s reliance on the British experience (which included video evidence from the chair of Britain’s Press Complaints Commission, Lord Wakeham) was foolish and irrelevant. A different remedy for a different beast.
The recommendations of the government members on this committee have to be seen in the light of the usual antipathy between government and a free media. Whether it is Labor or the Coalition in government, they detest the media. It at least explains why government members who are opposed to government intervention in virtually every other aspect of Australian life – telecommunications, provision of unemployment services, medical insurance etc – should recommend that a government body should oversee media complaints.
That said, we in the media, are our own worst enemies. In the past couple of months for example, we have had media commentators up and down the country urging the Government to say sorry for the stolen generations. It is appalling hypocrisy. When did you last hear an apology on radio or television for anything. You see them in print from time to time. But they are often couched in legalese and often only extracted only on threat of lawsuit.
The newspapers in this country should for once and for all put and end to the justified accusation that errors are more prominent than apologies. We should put all corrections and apologies on Page 1. There would be nothing shameful about it, particularly after it became standard practice. If we did that we would be on much more solid ground in calling for changes to the insidious defamation laws which give remedies only to those who can afford to risk the legal fees.
Something good might come from this committee’s recommendation for a government-appointed body. The very fear of it might get some media organisations to improve their act. It might also get the Press Council and broadcast media watchdogs to improve.
By and large the Press Council works well. But it has a few short-comings. It should deal with complaints more quickly; it should publicise its presence and rulings more so people know they have an avenue for complaint and feel they will get a remedy. It means more funding and co-operation from the newspapers. Each newspaper should agree to run all rulings on their conduct in full with a pointer from Page 1.
The other remedy — action against an individual journalist for breach of the media union’s code of ethics — is of no value to the public. The hearing is an industry closed shop and not binding on the publisher. The Press Council should start making rulings on the conduct of individual journalists.
Again we have media hypocrisy. We call for open hearings into the conduct of other professionals. It should apply to ourselves.
But the system is not so damaged that it needs a government watchdog. The Press Council as a watchdog has teeth, but it is on too short a tether. Broadcast watchdogs have bark but their bite is under test as we watch the 2UE fall-out.
The saving grace for the public is that the media, of its nature, works in the open. Mistakes cannot be buried for too long, as in other professions. But still unless we improve our performance in dealing with complaints we will continue to get calls for government oversight like we did last week.