AUSTRALIAN PRESS COUNCIL Annual Report No. 30 Year ending 30 June 2006 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 2005-2006 Contents Chairman’s Foreword ...........................................................................3 Free Speech Issues Report on free speech issues ................................................................ 5 Charter of a Free Press in Australia ................................................... 24 Adjudications and Complaints Adjudications Nos 1292 - 1321 ......................................................... 25 Adjudication publication details ........................................................ 45 Index to Adjudications ....................................................................... 46 Complaints/adjudications 1976-2006 ................................................ 46 Complaints/adjudication statistics 2005-2006 ................................... 47 Complaints not adjudicated ............................................................... 50 Changes in principles and procedures ............................................... 53 Statement of Principles ...................................................................... 56 Privacy Standards for the print media ............................................... 57 Complaints procedure ........................................................................ 59 Other Council activities Administration and activities ............................................................. 60 General Press Releases Nos 267 - 271 .............................................. 65 Press Council Publications ................................................................ 70 The Council Changes on the Council ..................................................................... 71 Council members as at 30 June 2006 ................................................ 73 Code of Ethics for Council members ................................................ 75 Council Meetings ............................................................................... 75 Statement of Financial Position ......................................................... 76 Publishers’ Statistics ........................................................................... 77 Graphs ................................................................................................. 98 2 Annual Report 2005-2006 Australian Press Council Ken McKinnon Chairman’s Foreword Chairman The Press Council has had a good year, the highlight being the passage in February 2006, in the last State/Territory of agreed national revisions to Defamation Laws. This completed a very satisfying six-year campaign for modernisation of those laws initiated by the Press Council. At the core were reforms addressing speedy making of amends that restore improperly traduced reputations, while defending the obligation of the press to report truthful matters in the public interest. While there are still cases being decided by the courts under the old laws, there is already evidence that the reformed laws will deter money-seeking litigation and have a positive effect on public discourse. Of course, as this annual report details, most of the Council’s attention throughout the year has necessarily been focused on the bread and butter issues of adjudication of complaints and freedom of speech issues. The Council has also, however, broken considerable new ground via its initial study of Australian news print media (published as State of the News Print Media in October 2006), including its initial content-analysis of Australian newspapers. Compared to the US, for instance, our papers present a higher proportion of short reports and rely very often on Australian single sources without balancing or corroborating comment. newspapers The study did not support the dire predictions made recently by American and UK media are meeting commentators of the demise of newspapers within relatively few years. Circulation declines the general have steadied. It is still the case that over half of Australians over fifteen read a newspaper challenges of daily, rising to sixty-five percent for Sunday editions. improving quality head- That is not to say that Australian newspapers will be different from the rest of the world in on, with having to re-plan their futures. It is fairly clear that unique quality will become one of the revised biggest issues determining whether readers continue to buy a particular newspaper. News layouts and aggregation Internet sites are already competing for readers’ loyalty. Also, on present changes of trends it would be folly to rely on old assumptions about what the readers regards as type, more quality news services. separate full- This kind of quality is an elusively hard attribute to pin down. Trenchant, highly specific colour quality judgments of the kind made in New Zealand recently are unlikely to be to be at the sections and core. Under the headline NZ writing quality slipping (PANPA Bulletin, June 2006), the magazines, report said that excellence in news writing was pretty rare last year, as were tight and other introductions. Grammar is no longer fashionable, writers of some features are more format interested in themselves than potential readers and much feature writing is formulaic and changes. predictable. Newsrooms Australian newspapers are meeting the general challenges of improving quality head-on, are with revised layouts and changes of type, more separate full-colour sections and magazines, reorganizing and other format changes. Newsrooms are reorganizing journalistic resources and acquiring journalistic audio and video suites. Newspaper websites are quickly becoming multi-platform by resources increasing the number of audio, video and blog possibilities. and acquiring audio and While editors claim that it is an expertly organized view of the world, including interesting, video suites. surprise information, that readers want and will continue to get from newspapers, the question is whether today’s view of that will be enough. The challenge is to do better than Internet news sites. Success will surely depend upon readers remaining confident that they are receiving better-edited, more reliable, more authoritative, and more consistently balanced information. The polls that report disturbingly high proportions of the public assessing newspapers as lacking in accuracy and indulging in unfair reporting, must be remain a cause for concern. 3 Australian Press Council Annual Report 2005-2006 Chairman’s Too few papers readily admit, much less compensate for, errors of accuracy, fairness or Foreword balance, without prodding via the Council complaints process and adjudications. On another front, is news gathering really as vigorous it used to be? Three delivered newspapers and on-line reading of many others does not provide me with much variation in what and how Australian matters are reported. Press galleries seem to seize on the same topics, report too much spin unquestioningly and report it in the much the same way at about the same length. Independent minded, skeptical journalists, who do not hunt with the pack, are as rare as hens’ teeth. Nor is there a more comforting picture in opinion pages. Most of those pages now present a heavy diet of partisan political opinion; the same writers constantly pushing the same old, boring political lines. Civility, reasoned argument and elucidation are not found as a matter of course. It is as if editors believe that readers want partisan polemics as their sole diet. And, it is hard to escape the impression that there are more editorials, written at greater length and more pompously even than in the past. Who reads them? It might be salutary to poll how many people read, let alone are influenced by, editorials. The most frequent The most frequent editorial response to questions about the future of newspapers is still editorial that they know what the public wants because they have daily to win the readership that response to ensures their papers prosper. Something more than that answer may be required for a questions prosperous future. about the It must be emphasized that external forces are tough to overcome. For instance, the future of Commonwealth Government’s recent changes in media ownership law will not even newspapers maintain, much less foster, a diversity of voices in the print media. is still that That horse has already bolted. Ownership of over ninety-five per cent of Australian they know newspapers is in the hands of five companies, to one of whom independents invariably what the sell if they want to leave the industry. Within company-owned newspapers, profitability is public wants increasingly dependent upon reducing expenses, particularly the cost of generating content, because they inevitably leading to the employment of fewer journalists and more intra-company have daily to generation and dissemination of standardised content. win the readership The old saying about concentration being aided by the threat of execution on the morrow that ensures applies. Newspapers, whatever the current state of their circulation, are having to think their papers outside the old square. prosper. Finally, as the report notes, the whittling down, bit by bit, of the long tradition of press Something freedom in Australia, the erosion of the right and obligation