Jonathan Holmes
OPINION: SYDNEY (ABC / Pacific Media Watch): The stark realities of power don't change much. And a genteel power struggle is being played out at the Media Inquiry being conducted by Ray Finkelstein QC.
It was starkly on display yesterday in a shabby little conference room in the University of Sydney.
Finkelstein is an affable fellow. There were plenty of smiles and even a few jokes at the first day of his inquiry's Sydney hearings yesterday. Yet it's clear that he's impatient with the media's insistence that it should not be regulated or held to account. Any suggestion that the media should be compelled - by law, by sanctions, by institutional pressure - to abide by its own ethical rules would be a gross assault on the freedom of the press, he keeps being told. And you can see he's not buying it.
He had before him the secretary of the journalists union, the Media Alliance, Chris Warren; a former chair of the Australian Press Council, Professor Ken McKinnon; and a trio from Fairfax Media, Australia's second-biggest newspaper company, including CEO Greg Hywood.
The three had very different views about the future of self-regulation in the Australian media. Chris Warren favours a one-stop shop, a glorified Press Council which would have the remit to handle complaints about breaches of journalistic ethics on whatever platform they may occur - television, radio, print, or online.
New plans
Ken McKinnon, like his successor Julian Disney, insists that the Australian Press Council can't do its job without better funding, perhaps at least in part from government. And it shouldn't be a mere complaints-handler, but a champion of press freedoms, an upholder of press standards, and a leading publisher of media research.
Greg Hywood reckons the status quo is fine and dandy. "What's the problem we're here to solve?" he kept asking Ray Finkelstein. Fairfax sees no problem. It reckons the Press Council is doing a fine job, with ample funding, and that Fairfax Media is doing an even better job for its readers; everyone should just relax. The last thing Australia needs is the government getting involved in regulating the press, let alone (as some suggest) giving aid to Fairfax's potential competitors.
But all three (and for that matter, so far as I could gather from afar, most of those who appeared at the Melbourne hearings last week) agree that a statutory regulator; or compulsory membership of a non-statutory media council; or giving that council the power to levy fines on recalcitrant news organisations; or power to insist that a correction or apology be run on page 1; any element of compulsion, in fact - which after all is part and parcel of most regulatory regimes - would be too hard, or counter-productive, or would encroach on the sacred principle of a free press.
No prospect
I should make it clear that, on the whole, I agree with them. As I've argued before, it doesn't work well when the ACMA tries to regulate broadcast journalism. I see no prospect at all for satisfactory compulsory regulation of the print and online media - and no justification for it either. But maybe that's because I'm another journalist. Finkelstein, a judge, is clearly harder to convince.
All day long, he kept up a rain of questions. Just to give a flavour, here are some of them:
To Chris Warren of the MEAA:
"Your proposal is to give responsibility to a new organisation and make membership voluntary. I'm troubled by the idea that you have an important set of principles by which journalists should abide (the Media Alliance Code of Ethics), and then make regulation of it voluntary."
Again to Chris Warren:
"I have been asked to look at the Weston affair (for more on this see this episode of Media Watch), in which some newspapers ran a campaign against the Chief Commissioner of Police in Victoria, according to the OPI, without checking the facts. In the end it led to him leaving office. Is it appropriate for journalists to do those sorts of things and do that kind of reporting and not to be held to account?"
To Ken McKinnon, who was baulking at the idea that the Press Council should be able to 'require' that a newspaper run an apology or correction, as well as the printing of its own rulings:
"Why should press freedom be so sacrosanct that you can't correct error or right wrong? Why shouldn't the Press Council be able to say legitimately 'bad luck, just do it'?"
And again to McKinnon, who was insisting that membership of the Press Council should remain voluntary:
"Is there a reason that media organisations should decide for themselves whether they should abide by the standards that the Press Council has drawn up with them?"
There was plenty more in like vein. To judge by his questions - and perhaps, with an experienced judge and barrister, that is a dangerous thing to do - Finkelstein believes the press is getting away, if not with murder, then certainly with regular breaches of its own commitment to fair, balanced and accurate journalism. And that somehow it should be "required" to do better.
Council demand
And yet that isn't, to me, the most fascinating power struggle going on at this inquiry. What's become crystal clear is that both the present chair of the Australian Press Council and his predecessor - Julian Disney and Ken McKinnon - believe that to do any kind of a reasonable job, the council needs more money and more power; and that the media barons who up to now have been the council's paymasters have no intention of giving it either.
I wasn't in Melbourne for Julian Disney's appearance before the inquiry last week. But the Australian Press Council has put in a long and detailed submission. It includes some quite radical suggestions: that the council should be much better funded, so that it can conduct its own investigations into matters of controversy; that some of the money could well come from government; that it should have the power to insist or require that newspapers publish its rulings with due prominence, perhaps on page 1; that in extreme cases it might need a disciplinary body that had the power to levy fines; that it should probably be the body to adjudicate on complaints about all journalism, no matter the platform.
It's a pretty naked grab for substantially more power by Disney. And in their evidence yesterday, both Ken McKinnon and Greg Hywood made it clear that he can expect short shrift from the publishers and editors-in-chief who are the council's present paymasters.
Funding cut
During his term as chair of the APC, Ken McKinnon pushed hard for the right to conduct research into media issues worldwide. The council published annual surveys of the state of the Australian media. For his pains, the newspaper companies cut the council's funding by 20 percent.
Professor McKinnon told the inquiry:
"On the funding side, none of it was good. The attitude was to give us the least money possible and let's cut off the things we don't want - there's a need to tackle the money issue and the number who work for it if you want an effective council."
(According to Julian Disney, the APC has a permanent paid staff of two and a half people).
McKinnon described a lunch at which a prominent editor had said to him: "If you promise not to uphold any complaints from my paper we would double our subscription, is that a deal?"
(After the hearing, Professor McKinnon confirmed to me that the editor had been joking. That wasn't at all clear in the hearing. But the point was, McKinnon said, that editors really hate adverse rulings. So they are an effective sanction. Fines and suchlike are unnecessary).
And, said McKinnon, it was a bit silly to worry that government funding would influence the council's rulings and behaviour, because "proprietors are equally interested in influencing outcomes".
Ray Finkelstein interjected: "Maybe more so?"
To which McKinnon responded: "I had a discussion with (News Ltd CEO John) Hartigan that he thought we were too tough."
Fairfax denial
As for Greg Hywood, CEO of Fairfax, even though he had not been in that or any other media job at the time McKinnon was chair of the APC, he had no doubt about the value of the good professor's research into the media.
"Everyone is always looking at the state of the media; the politicians do, we do, there's no lack of analysis. Whether the best use of the APC's time is to have another look is questionable - it's there to be the third arm of the complaints procedure."
Hywood denied the Press Council was short of money or needed more. He was horrified at the very thought that it might have the power to insist on a ruling or a correction appearing on page 1. That's the editor's prerogative, he said.
To which Ray Finkelstein asked:
"Is an editor's position so important that it's impossible to envisage a situation in which he or she might be told where and what to publish?"
And Hywood replied:
"I'm CEO of the company and I don't tell editors where to put stuff."
Political stunt?
Between the professors and the judge on the one hand, and the media bosses on the other, there's a gulf. To Hywood, and even more, I'm sure, to News Ltd, the whole inquiry is a political stunt, responding to a scandal on the other side of the world.
But to Ray Finkelstein, anyone sitting through even one day at the inquiry comes away feeling, it's a chance to tell the media that its performance isn't as great as it thinks it is, and that either it agrees to shape up, or someone's going to do the shaping for it.
This morning, Margaret Simons, a caustic and perceptive critic of media performance, and of News Ltd in particular, will be followed immediately by News Ltd itself - represented, rumour has it, by Big Harto himself.
I can hardly wait.
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