AUSTRALIAN PRESS COUNCIL Annual Report No. 32 Year ending 30 June 2008 Suite 10.02, 117 York Street SYDNEY NSW 2000 Australia Telephone: (02) 9261 1930 or (1800) 025 712 Fax: (02) 9267 6826 E-mail: [email protected] Internet: http://www.presscouncil.org.au/ ISSN 0156-1308 Australian Press Council Annual Report 2007-2008 Contents Chairman’s Foreword ...........................................................................3 Free Speech Issues Report on free speech issues ................................................................ 5 Charter of a Free Press in Australia ................................................... 23 Adjudications and Complaints Adjudications Nos 1362 - 1396 ......................................................... 24 Adjudication publication details ........................................................ 45 Complaints/adjudications 1976-2008 ................................................ 46 Index to Adjudications ....................................................................... 46 Complaints/adjudication statistics 2007-2008 ................................... 47 Complaints not adjudicated ............................................................... 50 Changes in principles and procedures ............................................... 51 Statement of Principles ...................................................................... 52 Privacy Standards for the print media ............................................... 53 Complaints procedure ........................................................................ 55 Other Council activities Administration and activities ............................................................. 56 General Press Releases Nos 280 - 282 .............................................. 62 Press Council Publications ................................................................ 65 The Council Changes on the Council ..................................................................... 66 Council members as at 30 June 2008 ................................................ 67 Code of Ethics for Council members ................................................ 69 Council Meetings 2007-2008 ............................................................ 69 Elected and appointed officers of the Council ................................... 69 Statement of Financial Position ......................................................... 70 Publishers’ Statistics ........................................................................... 71 Graphs ................................................................................................. 90 Annual Report 32 was edited by Jack R Herman 2 Annual Report 2007-2008 Australian Press Council Ken McKinnon Chairman’s Foreword Chairman Has the access of Australian citizens to accurate, fair and balanced information improved? Well, the answer looks like a curate’s egg. There are some signs that things have improved. Others look as if they may be about to improve but patience and a slow-motion camera is needed to catch any movement. The Council The Council has worked hard on its own processes, with reasonable success. The increase of eight per cent in the number of complaints to the Council is best read as a sign of a more active newspaper-reading community. Whether the impetus is actually a more active, critical readership of newspapers, ready to fire off a complaint to the Council, or mostly the upshot of improvements in complaints handling, particularly speed of processing, instituted by the Council just over a year ago, is not clear. Complaints are handled more quickly because of new response protocols. Stronger efforts are being made to ensure complainants are concise, to the point and responded to within a short time (using email where possible). Council staff members are now empowered informally to nudge parties in the direction of a mediated or conciliated outcome, either taking the initiative themselves A tort of or using a trained member of the Council. Twenty-five complaints were satisfactorily resolved privacy, this way. without Even without these new measures fully in place, the average time taken last year, from receipt of providing complaints to completion, improved from 28.07 days to 26.8 days, and the time taken to complete somewhere in adjudicated complaints from 96.74 days to 87.14 days. national legislation an over-riding Freedom of the press guarantee of Notwithstanding the strong support for the Public Right To Know campaign from the combined freedom of Australian media during the year, positive government responses have been few. communication, The promises made by the incoming Labor Government in the election campaign of late 2007 and strong re- have not yet eventuated. So far there has mostly been reiteration of promises for reform of the affirmation of legislation, but little or no improvement of processes or of attitudes governing freedom of the media’s information. Journalists report no improvement in Commonwealth Departments (with the partial role of exception of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet) or the states. Attitudes have not providing the changed. Resistance, time delays and excessive costs (such as charging aggressively for notionally public with extensive decision-time) continue without change. information it has the right to know, The press and privacy would be a On another issue, the apparent tension between a free flow of information to the public and travesty. proper preservation of privacy has not unduly affected the Press Council’s work. The Council, which is responsible under existing laws for handling privacy complaints against the print media, has received very few such complaints. It is a matter of considerable importance, however, that privacy legislation is being re-considered by the Australian Law Reform Commission, and in some states. The recently completed ALRC review of privacy law proposes a tort of privacy. A tort of privacy, without providing somewhere in national legislation an over-riding guarantee of freedom of communication, and strong re-affirmation of the media’s role of providing the public with information it has the right to know, would be a travesty. 3 Australian Press Council Annual Report 2007-2008 Chairman’s Reform of information from the courts Foreword The oft-stated mantra that the courts exist both to ensure that justice is done, and is seen to be done, is at odds with the frequent impenetrability the print media experience in trying to report the courts. In one direction at least there are some encouraging signs of new possibilities. The mountain of unnecessary suppression orders that the courts collectively have amassed, which urgently needs cleaning up, is at last being tackled. Sadly, the total number, and even the full reach of this pile, is not known, not even within each state (because the fact of their existence might have been suppressed and judges have not always remembered to lift them when the need passed). Prue Innes, a member of the Press Council, Jane Deamer, a member of the Public Right to Know audit team, and others will study what needs to be done to ensure that orders are only made in well-defined categories and limited circumstances, for stated and limited purposes, for a defined time, on a nation-wide basis, that they are established and up-dated electronically and are accessible 24 hours a day for use by editors who need to know at the time an edition is going to press. The study has been commissioned by the Public Right to Know campaign for the Standing Committee of Attorneys General. The It would be sad if that were to be the only reform courts would consider in the near future. traditional Justice cannot be seen to be done if the media are unable to report court proceedings easily and reluctance of accurately, including the preliminaries. For that to happen, court processes need substantial people in overhaul. Both judges and Directors of Public Prosecutions owe a duty to the public, as well as power to the parties to an action, to explore better way of informing the public. As it happens the Crown confide in the Prosecutors in the UK have shown the way, allowing evidence given in court to be reported on public the news or in the press, with pictures and video, as early as that night. The sky has not fallen in through the and the public is better informed. I do hope we will soon get some senior jurists in Australia who media is understand the need and respond with more openness. further inhibited by Summary increasing Summing up, the picture is one of quite slow adjustments to the many and various ways of numbers of communicating that are now available. The traditional reluctance of people in power to confide spin in the public through the media is further inhibited by increasing numbers of spin merchants, merchants, who in a time of fluid ethics, often resort to half-truths and lies. The truth is harder to get at. who in a time Reporters often get offered a bunch of twaddle and are prevented from getting directly to authentic of fluid sources such as, say, the mayors of municipalities, politicians, or the CEOs of major companies. ethics, often resort to half- In short, as Kipling would say, the Great Game is still on. Those who have knowledge, especially truths and powerful knowledge, don’t want to share it any more than they are forced to. The public has a lies. The truth right to know and governments should come clean about information they hold. Our public is harder to institutions and laws are not well