Do the media need more regulating?

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This was published 12 years ago

Do the media need more regulating?

By The Question

THE COMMENTATOR: JONATHAN HOLMES

So what's your particular grouse?

Do you think the media is too fond of invading your privacy? Well, then you should support the Australian Law Reform Commission's call for a legislated right to privacy. The media will hate it, and with good reason: it will give one more weapon to the rich and powerful to control what is said about them, but won't do much for ordinary folk.

Clockwise from left ... Johnathan Homes, Chris Chapman, Cheryl Kernot and Malcom Farnsworth.

Clockwise from left ... Johnathan Homes, Chris Chapman, Cheryl Kernot and Malcom Farnsworth.

But the media has themselves to blame. A succession of blatant invasions of privacy (the fake ''Pauline Hanson'' photographs, the outing of NSW Transport Minister David Campbell) showed the mainstream media don't understand ''the public interest'' - and in the latter case, nor does the regulator, ACMA.

Do you want to ensure that voicemail-interception, ''blagging'' private information, and bribing policemen doesn't go on here? Well, make sure the laws are clear and leave it to the regulator - the police.

Do you want to impose fairness and accuracy on newspapers, by regulation? Dream on. The ABC Act mandates that its news be impartial and objective. Hordes of viewers insist it isn't. The ACMA is supposed to enforce a code of practice which mandates factual accuracy and diverse viewpoints on commercial talkback radio. That's a joke.

Newspapers have never been regulated in Australia. To my mind there's no pressing reason to start now. It would be terrific if we had more media diversity in Australia but News Ltd owns all those newspapers because Rupert Murdoch paid more for them than others. Insist he divests himself of them now, and not only would the Commonwealth have to pay squillions of your money to compensate News Ltd, but you'd struggle for buyers. Newspapers are not flavour of the year in investment terms.

Besides, in time, the mainstream media will become less powerful, and our sources of information more diverse. Already, few people under 40 read a hard-copy newspaper or listen to talkback radio.

Our moguls are getting weaker. The new media world may be less coherent, less able to keep tabs on our rulers; but it will be more diverse too, and less able to concentrate political power.

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Regulation to impose accuracy and fairness would be a cure worse than the disease. In any case, technology and the markets will soon cure it for us.

Jonathan Holmes is the presenter of ABC TV's Media Watch program.

THE REGULATOR: CHRIS CHAPMAN

If Julia Gillard's advice to the media is "don't write crap!" then mine would be, "don't break the law!" The media are undeniably crucial to a free and vibrant democratic society, but this does not give journalists, or their bosses, licence to act outside the very laws elected parliaments have created.

In a number of cases, parliament has decided to fetter the principle of open communication, be it to protect the privacy of Family Court hearings, to stop defamation, or to halt the promotion of cigarettes.

And of course, like all Australians, the media must act within the law.

I will presume we can all agree about the insidiousness of phone hacking and paying police for information. But, far more challenging, will be how best to balance the principle of open communication with the rightful expectations of citizens, including that the media will act responsibly.

These challenges will be particularly vexed in a digital world, where the public are now serious generators of good - and not so good - content, and where large international players such as Google, Apple and Amazon house their content in offshore servers, often with little connection to Australia.

Throw in the extraordinary social network phenomena of Facebook, Twitter, mobile apps and smartphones, and it is apparent that technology is outpacing many of the controls that have governed media and communication.

The Australian government has recognised this, and its Convergence Review is now looking directly at these issues. We, at the ACMA, have identified more than 50 "broken concepts" where the regulatory framework is under stress.

I am on the record about the need to analyse this in the widest context of a global, all-digital, all-IP (internet protocol) world.

Where to draw the boundary lines is the key question. I believe this will be driven by a group of enduring "citizen" concepts, which will continue to shape community expectations and guide regulation. These include diversity, access, taste and decency, localism, privacy, fairness and accuracy, and, of course, ethical behaviour.

Whatever is in the new rule book, the media will need to retain the trust of their audiences. A key indicator will be an explicit and determined commitment by media organisations to strong and contemporary codes of conduct. And, as is abundantly clear from the ACMA's Reconnect the Customer telco inquiry, that these must be tied with independent and well-resourced processes to ensure compliance.

Chris Chapman is chairman of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

THE FORMER POLITICIAN: CHERYL KERNOT

We need a combined solution: the protection of privacy through privacy law; regulation to enforce media diversity through tight cross media ownership rules; a new single body which oversees all media and reflects the media convergence realities of the present and the future; and a standard rigorous code of practice, which is required of all journalists and has meaningful sanctions. These sanctions should apply to individual journalists as well as to the media organisation.

Privacy laws could deal more effectively with the stalking, the trespass, the unreasonable intrusions - denying the daily oxygen to the trashy "scoops" of tabloids and current affairs television. Privacy laws could also include prison terms for the third-party pedlars who profit from the sale of private information, and for journalists who knowingly take receipt of such personal data.

In France, the 1970 law protecting the individual's right to "respect for one's private life" was extended in 1997 to the "right over one's image". It works.

Codes of practice are ignored by many and enforced unevenly. Even talkback radio hosts are subject to a code of practice requiring an attempt to present significant viewpoints in matters of public controversy. The enforcer, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has exercised no proactive "authority" in this respect.

And that's one of the problems: the system relies on others to make complaints. Self-regulation does not encourage pro-activity, just adjudication. This needs to be reversed. So, too, does the unethical trend of rushing to publish unchecked assertions first and worrying about accuracy afterwards. The 24-hour media cycle is no excuse for the reversal of the onus of proof. Assertions are repeated and no correction can ever have as much impact.

Many citizens cannot navigate the complaints processes, nor afford legal representation. Those factors have led in Sweden to a system of citizen ombudsmen, and in Britain to a civilian body that oversees its police force and which had a role in calling for the resignation of its second most senior police officer.

Since 2009 the Australian Press Council has ensured it has a simple majority of public members and is pursuing more independent sources of funding.

The current focus on fixing standards, transparency and accountability can only be beneficial, but media regulation will not prevent cosiness between those seeking to trade in power. Other more transparent processes should deal with that.

Associate Professor Cheryl Kernot is director of social business at the Centre for Social Impact, UNSW, and a former Democrats and Labor politician.

THE BLOGGER: MALCOLM FARNSWORTH

It was almost funny watching the Murdochs appear before the Commons select committee. Nobody saw anything. Nobody was told anything. It was delegated. This is a big company, you know.

Collective ignorance, amnesia and blindness ruled. Convenient deniability was a clear sign that these people hold the rest of us in contempt.

I laughed when I read that British politicians are now concerned about Murdoch's 40 per cent domination of the newspaper market. In Australia it's closer to 70 per cent. In some capital city markets there is no competition at all.

More broadly, vast swathes of the news and entertainment business are concentrated in the hands of a dwindling number of companies.

If war is too important to be left to the generals, then the vital news and information business is too important to be left to a handful of proprietors. It's a vital part of our culture.

Ethics cannot be legislated. When it arises, media chicanery should be handled by existing law. Paul Keating may be on to something in his call for a tort of privacy. But we do need regulation in the form of revamped laws that prevent concentration of media ownership.

We were supposedly on that path with Keating's ''prince of print'' and ''queen of the screen'' laws. But takeovers, closures and technological developments have rendered them irrelevant.

Just as our political system disperses power between federal and state governments, bicameral parliaments and the judicial system, so should media power be dispersed.

The corrupting influence of a dominant corporate culture has been on display in Britain, where the police, political parties and politicians have been compromised.

That some politicians have suddenly found the courage to speak out is no cause for celebration. As in Australia, the cosiness of powerful relationships built on a mix of acquiescence, favours and intimidation needs to be challenged.

The digital breakdown of the media's traditional business models is already doing part of the job. But power is adept at renewing itself. The colonisation of the digital world is taking place.

That threat is best met by federal laws which prevent media monopolies. Then the abuses of a few won't have the pervasive effects we see now.

Malcolm Farnsworth is a freelance writer and teacher. He blogs at AustralianPolitics.com. Twitter: @mfarnsworth.

Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU

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