Media Councils in the Digital Age

Media Councils in the Digital Age An inquiry into the practices of media self-regulatory bodies in the media landscape of today dr. Raymond A. Harder Universiteit Antwerpen Researcher Pieter Knapen Vlaamse Raad voor de Journalistiek Project supervisor No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher and author. The content of this publication is copyrighted and the right to use the content rests with the authors and the publisher. Author: Raymond A. Harder Supervisor: Pieter Knapen Publisher: vzw Vereniging van de Raad voor de Journalistiek © vzw Vereniging van de Raad voor de Journalistiek International Press Centre, Residence Palace 3-217, Wetstraat 155, 1040 Brussels, Belgium This publication is produced with the financial support from the European Commission grant under DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology. The content of this publication does not reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in the report lies entirely with the author and publisher. Table of contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 2 Some notes about terminology ....................................................................................................... 3 Method .................................................................................................................................................... 5 Scope of the study ........................................................................................................................... 5 Measured variables ......................................................................................................................... 5 Data collection ................................................................................................................................. 6 Analysis ............................................................................................................................................ 6 Findings ................................................................................................................................................... 8 Resources ........................................................................................................................................ 8 Maintaining independence ............................................................................................................. 9 Scope of the media councils’ work ................................................................................................ 11 Making it easy to complain ........................................................................................................... 13 Fairness, checks and balances ....................................................................................................... 15 Power and impact.......................................................................................................................... 16 The future for the media councils ......................................................................................................... 18 Appendices ............................................................................................................................................ 20 Appendix A. European Union countries and media council status ............................................... 20 Appendix B. European Union candidate states and media council status .................................... 23 Appendix C. Non-EU countries surveyed ...................................................................................... 23 List of tables Table 1. Media Councils' staff size and employment security ................................................................ 8 List of figures Figure 1. Media councils' annual budgets ............................................................................................... 9 Figure 2. Time restrictions for submitting a complaint ......................................................................... 14 1 Introduction Over the years, journalism as a profession has developed its own guidelines of moral and ethical conduct. Codified in international charters like the 1954 Bordeaux Declaration, the 1971 Munich declaration of the Duties and Rights of Journalists, the 2019 Global Charter of Ethics for Journalists, as well as in national and even media outlet-specific Codes of Ethics, simple and abstract guidelines help journalists ensure that their reporting is fair and ethical. The simplicity of the guidelines is deliberate, as they should be applicable in the messy day-to-day practice of the journalistic trade. It would be impossible to specify rules that fit each and every possible situation, so the question ‘how should we report in this situation?’ is always a matter to decide for the journalist. But what if someone disputes that the journalist made the right decision? What if they contend that they did not act in accordance with the spirit of the ethical guidelines? It is obvious that one cannot go to court for these matters. The main reason is that the ethical guidelines go beyond the law, they are more specific and demand more from journalists than merely ‘not violating the law’. For instance, while it is not unlawful for a journalist to present something that one knows to be false as truth, it is clearly unethical behaviour that undermines the very purpose of the journalistic profession. In other words, where the law is the outer boundary that defines what is and what is not allowed, journalists’ ethical guidelines narrow down what ‘ought to’ and ‘should not’ happen. One might argue that in that case, these more stringent guidelines should become part of the law and be applicable by judges. However, this is problematic because of the nature of journalism itself. After all, in our society, journalism functions as one of the institutions that keeps check on powerful actors. Journalistic media follow governments, politicians, elites, and corporations, and report on their actions and wrongdoings. In the case that the ethical guidelines would be part of the law, the fact is that the legislators would be the ones defining the rules for the institution that is supposed to be its watchdog. In various countries around the world, we see how authoritarian regimes have instituted rules that make genuine journalistic reporting impossible, in an attempt at preventing inconvenient truths from becoming public knowledge. At the same time, we know that misjudgements happen in the profession. Also, we know the enormous effects that media reporting can have – both on society, as well as on a personal level. Even if the reporting is factually accurate, the lives of people could be devastated when ethical guidelines are not respected (think of a report about a criminal that delves into their family history, thereby implicating people who may well have nothing to do with the criminal acts in question at all). There need to be ways in which the power of media can be held in check, without the legislative body being that power. It is within this context that we should regard the institution of the media council as a self-regulatory body for journalism. At its core, a media council is a way for journalistic media to regulate journalistic conduct. It provides the opportunity for anyone (the public at large, from laypeople to celebrities and politicians, but also organisations like corporations, NGOs and governments) to lodge a complaint against a specific publication in the media when they feel that a journalist or editor has breached a deontological principle in that particular report. That complaint is then considered by a body of stakeholders, who will consider both sides of the argument, and decide whether, according to them, the moral guidelines of doing journalism were respected in the process. The difference between a legal court and a media council, obviously, lies in the fact that the latter cannot punish or sanction a misbehaving journalist or media outlet1. Its corrective power rests mostly on two principles: that of the expert review, and that of self-shaming. With ‘expert review’, we refer to the weight it has when well-respected individuals (peers at other media outlets, academics, lawyers, experts, or representatives of the public) arrive at the conclusion that one’s reporting was unethical. By ‘self-shaming’, we mean that media outlets 1 Though there are a few exceptions, as we will see later on 2 publish the media council’s decision when one of their publications is judged to have violated the commonly accepted ethical standards. It is generally not possible to coerce media to publish this, which makes it all the more powerful when media do dedicate some precious bit of bandwidth (be it in print, in broadcast media, or online) to tell their own audience that they did something wrong. The efficacy of media councils rests on outlets and journalists cooperating with the procedures and respecting the councils’ decisions. The way in which these procedures work differs to a great extent between the different media councils in various regions. In the present study, for the first time, we made a comprehensive assessment of where these differences can be situated. To do so, we did 34 interviews with representatives of media councils and discussed topics like the complaint handling work

Load more