SPARK AND CANNON Telephone: Adelaide (08) 8212-3699 TRANSCRIPT Melbourne (03) 9670-6989 Perth (08) 9325-4577 OF PROCEEDINGS Sydney (02) 9211-4077 _______________________________________________________________ PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION DRAFT REPORT INTO THE BROADCASTING SERVICES ACT 1992 PROF R.J. SNAPE, Presiding Commissioner MR S. SIMSON, Assistant Commissioner TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS AT SYDNEY ON WEDNESDAY, 8 DECEMBER 1999, AT 9.01 AM Continued from 7/12/99 Broadcasting 1162 br081299.doc PROF SNAPE: Welcome to this third day of the hearings in Sydney on the draft report of the Productivity Commission on broadcasting. Copies of the draft report have been available since 22 October and if anyone present has not received a copy and would like to have one, they should contact members of the commission staff who are present. As in the case of earlier hearings, transcripts of these hearings will be made and should be available on the commission's Web site within three days of the relevant hearing. Copies will be sent to the relevant participants. At the end of the scheduled hearings today I shall invite any persons present to make oral presentations should they wish to do so. And now I turn to our first participant for the day and ask him to identify himself for the transcription service and then to speak to his submission. MR GIVEN: My name is Jock Given and I'm the director of the Communications Law Centre. PROF SNAPE: Jock, I'd just better mention that the microphone is transcription only and it's not amplification. MR GIVEN: Okay. PROF SNAPE: We've tried to rearrange the room so the acoustics are a bit better. MR GIVEN: Okay. Thank you. The response we're making to the draft report only addresses some specific issues where we thought that perhaps our interests were particularly relevant, particularly given some recent experience in relation to the 2UE inquiry which we think has highlighted some issues which may be especially relevant to the Productivity Commission's terms of reference. We begin by addressing the recommendations on codes and standards, much of which we would broadly support. The proposed objective to promote public interest and freedom of expression, no difficulties with that. We think that's a good idea. As you'll see from our submission into the 2UE inquiry, which I understand you've already received, but we can provide further copies of as well, one of our recommendations there was that the Broadcasting Services Act should be amended, it's objects should be amended to include a further new object, being to ensure effective disclosure to audiences of relevant interests, including contracts, arrangements and understandings held by licensees and their employees, independent contractors, suppliers and sponsors. To us the 2UE process has highlighted some fairly significant gaps in the Broadcasting Services Act as it stands at the moment, both in the self-regulatory arrangements, but we think the policy problems identified are big enough that they deserve a legislative response and that's one of the arms of that. That's on 10.1. 8/12/99 Broadcasting 1163J. GIVEN 10.2, no difficulties with all of that. We think that's all fine. 10.3: broadly our concerns I guess with 10.3 and 10.4 are just a little bit with how far those recommendations go. We think that the basic model of codes and standards is a quite good one but that there is a graduated level of response or graduated level of regulatory intervention. There are areas which are relatively well handled by self-regulatory arrangements and where the sanctions that apply only apply essentially after a history of breaches. But there are program standards where a more direct, a more intense sanction might be appropriate in the event of any kind of breach. Now, the 2UE process I think has highlighted that for us again. I think we would think that if there is a failure to effectively disclose a relevant interest of the kind that we talked about in that, we think it would be appropriate for there to be the possibility of an immediate response to that, an immediate sanction to be imposed where that situation arises. We wouldn't, however, want to see immediate sanctions imposed in every area where we felt a news/current affairs/talkback entertainment, whatever we would call them, presenter or announcer made an error of fact in providing information. We don't want to see governments or regulators necessarily finding journalists or on-air presenters for inaccuracies of fact. We do, however, think it's appropriate that they might have a more direct sanction of that kind where they fail to disclose relevant interests to their audiences. PROF SNAPE: An immediate correction? MR GIVEN: I think it's going to depend on the nature of the error that is made. Basically I think the culture of journalism and the processes that are in place to handle that don't always work as well as they should. We support the recommendation that there be a greater attention to on-air corrections, publication of information where breaches are found. We think that kind of thing is good, helps the transparency of the process, perhaps helps the broadcasters to take it a little more seriously, but we're just very wary of scaling up too much the nature of the government regulatory response where people are doing things which are part and parcel of the daily business of journalism which is sometimes making errors. MR SIMSON: Can I just interrupt there for a second. In the context of both 10.3 and 10.4 the reason we recommended the way we did in the draft is because on the evidence that was presented to this inquiry it is extremely rare for any correction ever to be made on commercial television. MR GIVEN: Yes. MR SIMSON: Extremely rare. So I don't think it's adequate to suggest it's all part of the cut and thrust of journalism and so on. Basically we've had evidence that strongly suggests that it is extremely rare. In the case of one network they said it's policy not to make corrections. And so what we've basically got is a non-practice here, and that's the reason why we were perhaps tighter than you thought we should be. 8/12/99 Broadcasting 1164J. GIVEN MR GIVEN: The issue for us is only that judgments about what is accurate and what isn't accurate in relation to news and current affairs are going to vary a bit. There is going to be quite reasonable disagreements about particular matters. The argument will not be about a journalist saying something happened when it didn't happen. That may well be appropriate for - - - MR SIMSON: Straight factual inaccuracy. I'm not talking about comment. I'm talking about straight factual inaccuracy. MR GIVEN: No, but that's what I mean. If you've got a situation where someone says that the Prime Minister said X yesterday and he didn't say it - - - MR SIMSON: Let's not worry about the Prime Minister so much because he's a big enough fellow to look after himself, and he's a politician, after all, but what about the more important case of an ordinary citizen - and this is again the thrust of some of the evidence we had last time - who is maligned or defamed or whatever? MR GIVEN: We think the practices in the broadcasting industry at the moment could be better in publishing, acknowledging errors where they have occurred. My concern is just that there is a great difference between a person who is shown in a news bulletin or described in a news bulletin to have done something that they didn't do, and someone who is shot in a certain way which they believe may marginally misrepresent their place in a particular environment. MR SIMSON: Mr Given, look, just so we're clear on this, we're not talking about things at the margin. We're talking about errors of fact and just for the record we're not responding - this recommendation was not a response to the 2UE inquiry. In fact I can't remember the exact timing on this but I can assure you that the recommendation we made here was in direct response to the evidence we'd received at our inquiry. It had nothing to do with 2UE. We're not talking about things at the margin here. We're talking about what seems to be a practice of the networks not to correct basic errors, so there is no practice. We're not talking at the margin (indistinct) or we're not talking about a prime minister, we're talking about basically a non-practice to correct errors, and so that tells us the system is not working, and that's why we went harder on this. You're saying the system is working or the regulatory system is working. All we're saying is that's not what we were told at our inquiry. MR GIVEN: I'm simply cautioning against putting in place a system - - - MR SIMSON: Well, what do we do? MR GIVEN: A system where we necessarily assume that a sanction which is appropriate in certain circumstances is going to be appropriate in all circumstances. MR SIMSON: Tell us what to do. Tell us what to do, because it's not working at 8/12/99 Broadcasting 1165J. GIVEN the moment. We've come up with a recommendation. Tell us what to do to get these networks correcting errors on air.