Pauline Hanson and the Crikey Complaint

Now that the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Neil Breen, has apologised for running the so-called Pauline Hanson photographs, is that the end of the matter?

In particular, will the Australian Press Council decide that it need no longer consider the complaint on privacy grounds made by myself and Crikey editor Jonathan Green?

I hope not. While Breen has admitted that he made a mistake, the central issue of privacy has not been addressed. Indeed, as Peter Timmins points out, Breen suggested in his apology that if the photos had been of Hanson, then it would have been perfectly okay, and in the public interest, to run them. Breen said:

“she was a public figure, running for election in Queensland in a return to front-line politics, who had written a detailed book about her life in which she laid her private life bare” and “(t)he paper believed – and still believes – there is massive public interest in Ms Hanson’s life.”

That’s a very different understanding of the public interest to that encapsulated in the Press Council principles.

“For the purposes of these principles, “public interest” is defined as involving a matter capable of affecting the people at large so they might be legitimately interested in, or concerned about, what is going on, or what may happen to them or to others.

Obviously since the photos were not of Hanson, her privacy was not actually breached. Yet clearly Breen and the other News Limited editors who published the photos thought that it was okay to breach her privacy. They published in the belief that this was what they were doing.

Does the fact that someone has published a book about their life and is running for political office mean that they are entirely fair game? I think not. The photos, the editors believed, were taken in the privacy of a bedroom long before Hanson ran for political office. They were nobody’s business. They should not have been published, even if they were of Hanson.

Meanwhile, The Weekend Australian has had a go at the ABC’s Media Watch program and Crikey over our stance on this issue, suggesting that because we are part of the media, we should defend the media against regulation at every turn.

I would reply that if the members of a profession are not prepared to hold each other accountable, then we damage any claim we have to remain free of regulation. The media is not, or should not be, a secret brotherhood in which nobody ever blows the whistle or steps out of line. If it ever becomes such a thing then the case for government regulation will be strengthened, not weakened. Self regulation can only work if the members of the profession are fair dinkum about it, and prepared to call fouls.

I support and admire News Limited’s work in spearheading the Right to Know coalition. That doesn’t mean that News Limited is always right, that the Right to Know coalition is not itself a fitting subject of scrutiny, or that the Australian Press Council should not be asked to adjudicate on significant matters to do with privacy and the public interest.

The Australian accuses Crikey and Media Watch of creating a “cause celebre out of a woman their respective organisations have vilified for years”. Well, pardon me. I rather thought it was the publication of the photos that made this a cause celebre.

I don’t think I have ever vilified Hanson, though I may have criticised her. But surely it doesn’t need stating that the principle of privacy has nothing to do with Hanson’s politics?

The question of to what extent a public figure is entitled to privacy comes up again and again. Breen apologising for being conned simply doesn’t cover it.

The privacy issues remain a fitting matter for a Press Council adjudication. I hope we get one.