Crikey, he says, is a “pest” on the same scale as radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands. The reason is that editor Jonathan Green and I had the temerity to complain to the Press Council about the publication of the supposed Pauline Hanson photographs by News Limited tabloids  last March.

Now, I am grateful to Day. As followers of this blog (how are you both?) will know, I have been largely absent for the last six months, while finishing a book (details here, out next March).

As my co-author and I laboured to meet the publisher’s deadline, I had been feeling guilty for not keeping readers up with the latest on Crikey’s Press Council complaint. The complaint, lodged last March, was reported on at length at the time, and the text of the complaint was reproduced on this blog.

Day seems to have missed all that. He writes as though the news is fresh, and that Crikey’s pestishness has been all in the last week. Thank you Mark. You have given me the hook I need to bring readers up to date with what is now old news.

But first, Day’s column. There are a few logical leaps, with the main one being to equate a complaint to an industry self regulation body with the behaviour of Sandilands in humiliating ordinary people on air.

Leaving that aside, Day’s main charge against Crikey is hypocrisy. The argument? Day points out that Crikey’s founder, Stephen Mayne, was often inaccurate. Mayne himself might describe this as fair cop. Day also says that Mayne had an engaging Quixotic quality.

But the modern day Crikey? Day’s main complaints are that we are boring, that we criticise News Limited too much (ask Fairfax about that) and that we maintian “a constant Crikey commentary on the imminent death of newspapers and the dazzling future of the web.” What a sin.

Even if you agree with him on these charges, why this makes it hypocritical for us to lodge a complaint against News Limited publications is not quite clear.  I don’t follow the logic. And some would see little ‘ol us taking on the might of News Limited as an example of exactly the kind of scampishness that Day seems to have grudgingly admired in the early Crikey.

The whole point of our complaint, by the way, was the privacy issue. The complaint was lodged before it was clear that the supposed Hanson photos were not Hanson at all. We argued that even if they were Hanson, no editor should have published them, because of the breach of privacy involved.

There was no allegation of illegality or hypocrisy involved. The photos were supposed to have been taken before Hanson entered public life, and in the privacy of a hotel room. What on earth possessed News Limited editors to regard themselves as entitled to publish such material? That was the nub of our complaint – privacy, not factual accuracy.

Anyway, to bring readers up to date, early in August I got a letter from the Executive Secretary of the Press Council, Jack Herman, saying that he did not intend  “processing the matter further as a complaint”.

The reasons were that the newspapers concerned had admitted error and apologised, and that ours was a “third party complaint”, which the Council does not normally accept when pursing the matter is likely to  “lead to the further invasion of the privacy of those reported on.”

I guess that is all fair enough by the letter of the Press Council procedures, and I am not going to whinge about it too much, other than to point out that while News Limited editors have admitted they were wrong to publish the Hanson photos, the error they have admitted is getting the identity wrong. They have said nothing about privacy. Indeed, they have continued to suggest that if the photos had been Hanson, it would have been just tickety boo to publish them.

Herman’s letter also told me that the Chairmanof the Press Council, Professor Ken McKinnon, intended to address the matter in the Press Council’s Annual Report.

This morning Herman told me that the draft of this report is presently with the Council, and should go to the printer within weeks.

I await it with interest.

In the meantime, I am b-a-a-ack writing for Crikey on media. All tips appreciated. Send to Margaret@MargaretSimons.com.au

Well, today ACMA has done it, or rather not done it, again.

In Investigation Report 1912, the regulator has made a finding against an episode of the Channel Nine program A Current Affair broadcast, wait for it, in July 2007. That is, nearly two years ago!

Justice delayed is justice denied. How is any process that is so slow moving meant to act as a meaningful deterrent or means of regulation? Producers can live or die, reporters can move on, before any penalty is applied. The process becomes a joke.

And in this case, there is no meaningful penalty. Because ACMA is in discussions with the industry over the relevant code of practice, no action will be taken in the matter – despite the finding that A Current Affair presented factual material innacurately and failed to correct significant errors of fact!

How on earth does the fact that discussions are underway about the Code alter the situation here? Is it suggested that the new code will say that misrepresentation and failing to correct errors is okay?

The complaint concerned a segment called “Foreign Doctors”, which suggested that patients were being put at risk by doctors who did not have the same level of education and traning as their Australian educated counterparts. As the presenter said:

“Australia relies on overseas trained doctors, but after a series of scandals, can we trust them?

The complainant was one of the so-called foreign trained doctors who was mentioned in the program. In fact, as he told ACMA, he possesses all relevant Australian qualifications. Channel Nine tried to get out of this by saying that  he did have foreign qualifications as well, so they weren’t actually wrong.

ACMA wasn’t buying it, finding that the program failed to present material accurately by omitting the information about the doctor’s Australian qualfiications.

Channel Nine has promised to include the findings in its regular training programs for news and current affairs, and conduct immediate training in relation to the findings for A Current Affair staff. I wonder if anyone ever follows up to see if this has actually been done? In my experience, commercial television newsrooms aren’t all that big on training.

But to take so long over a complaint, then to fail to administer even a slap on the wrist makes our broadcasting regulator look irrelevant.

The correspondence mainly concerns his complaints and my responses, but it has also included a few things that add to the material on the public record.

I asked him if I could publish the correspondence in full – my preference. That’s not going to happen, but I do have permission to add a few tidbits to what is known.

Baxter says that It is “nonsense” to say that the new national features editor, Alan Oakley, has been given two weeks to plan the rationalisation.  “Oakley won’t have even been to meet with all the print and online editors in his first two weeks.”

From this I surmise (though without confirmation from Baxter) that implementation of the changes is some way off.

Additionally, Baxter denies that the plan is to create syndicated features with slight changes, as reported by both me and The Age.

(More recently, the Australian Financial Review 30 Seconds column asserted yesterday that the plan was to “merge the features sections of News Ltd’s tabloid papers…to create a national section”.)

Baxter says details of News Limited’s plans are not being given out so as not to tip off competitors.

Baxter repeats previous assertions that the production of features is not moving to Sydney and that there is “no plan that envisages we don’t have features staff in Melbourne.” He also says – and I think this is the first time this specific assurance has been given – that Melbourne based features staff are not going to be relocated to Sydney.

It should be said that some of this contradicts accounts by News Limited insiders of what they have been told internally. But Baxter says that  what others say they have been told  is wrong.

For these reasons, as well as the cogency of his arguments, his critique of Hartigan’s weekend article arguing against the Australian Law Rrform Commisison’s privacy report deserves to be read.

As I commented yesterday, Hartigan’s claims that self regulation is sufficient have been undermined by his own mastheads running the so-called Pauline Hanson pictures. Timmins gives other examples as well, and points out the safeguards to protect the public interest in the ALRC report.

Certainly, Hartigan’s opening paragraph to his weekend article sounds hollow in the wake of the Hanson photographs.

“WE are all entitled to privacy. It serves no one for personal information to be exposed about our health, private financial affairs and so on. If there is no legitimate public interest in someone’s affairs, then that information should — and largely does — remain private.

Except, it seems, when sex and the possibility of circulation gains combine.

It has also been suggested that she leaked them.

None of that matters, really, when it comes to the ethics of the decision to buy and publish them. It was an outrageous thing to do – totally indefensible, and the various lame and self-interested attempts to justify the publication by Robyn Riley among others are nothing short of pathetic.

How is what a political candidate did in the privacy of a bedroom when she was a teenager any business of ours? No laws were broken. No hypocrisy has been exposed. There is no public interest.

But most of what can be said about the outrageousness of this publication has already been said by others. I want to draw attention to some wider, grave implications.

It is no secret that at the moment the higher courts are gagging for test cases on privacy, and the Australian Law Reform Commission report on the matter is in play. This could lead to real legal restrictions on what the media can publish. But how will the media look arguing against such restrictions when it publishes photos like this, with no good reason whatsoever other than titillation?

And what about the poor old Australian Press Council? News Limited is the biggest single provider of funds to the Council. News Limited claims to respect and be guided by its principles. Well, the  Council  has  a fair bit to say about privacy:

1. Collection of personal information

In gathering news, journalists should seek personal information only in the public interest.

In doing so, journalists should not unduly intrude on the privacy of individuals and should show respect for the dignity and sensitivity of people encountered in the course of gathering news.

Public figures necessarily sacrifice their right to privacy, where public scrutiny is in the public interest. However, public figures do not forfeit their right to privacy altogether. Intrusion into their right to privacy must be related to their public duties or activities.

Similar sentiments are expressed in just about every ethical code applying to journalism, including News Limited’s own Code of Professional Conduct.

So will we see the Press Council admonish News Limited? I hope so, whether or not a complaint is received. If not, why not?

As for News Limited, I wonder whether CEO John Hartigan was consulted before these pictures were published, and how he feels it reflects on the Right to Know campaign that he has spearheaded. The Right to Know campaign argues against restrictions on freedom of speech. It is an admirable venture, although I won’t be the first to point out that it has concentrated on freedom more than on the responsibility that goes with it.

The fact that News Limited has published these pictures would suggest that the notion that freedom entails responsibility is not widely understood within the organisation.

I’d say that News Limited has just handed the enemies of media freedom a giant free kick. It has undermined its own campaign, its own moral standing and its own authority at a crucial time. Given that for all its faults, News Limited is one of our main defenders of press freedom, we all may live to regret this stupid, craven act of publication.

Inside Story, regular readers will recall, is the newish online publication that has managed to strike up a hard copy publication deal with the Canberra Times – as reported here.*

Sweet begins by talking about Simon Holding, the man who has spent the last four years carrying  out the University of  Sydney’s  survey of health issues in the media.

“Over that time, he has learnt much about how the media covers health issues, and the impact of that coverage. He’s seen how it is enlisted in campaigns to have medicines listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, for instance, and he is bemused by the disproportionate number of stories about breast cancer. “It is massively over-represented in the coverage relative to the numbers affected, compared with other cancers,” he says.

On the other hand, there are so few stories on Aboriginal health that they don’t rate as a major category. Instead Aboriginal health is the thirty-sixth sub-category, with 255 stories at last count. This places it just behind wild animal attacks, with 286 stories, and cosmetic surgery, with 296, but ahead of rural health, the forty-eighth sub-category, with 194 stories.

Interesting facts. The whole thing is worth a read.

* Declaration: Inside Story is published by the Institute of Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, where I am employed part time. I also write for Inside Story.

Today is an exception. ACMA has found that Channel Nine broadcast racist material in a news item about changes to the baby bonus scheme aimed at parents with gambling and addiction problems.

The ACMA report can be read here.

The finding concerns a news program screened on 19 March last year. According to ACMA’s report on the complaint, it opened with a reference to “deadbeat parents who blow their baby bonus on drugs and alcohol” and then cut to visuals of Aboriginal people, together with references to the quarantining of welfare payments in the Norther Territory. The segment closed with more footage of Aboriginal families.

Channel Nine argued the report was merely factual, but ACMA found that the segment gave undue emphasis to race and treated Aboriginal families with less sensitivity than other parents featured in the item.

Channel Nine has gotten off with a promise to incorporate the findings into its regular program of training for news staff.

He says:

As The Post’s new ombudsman, I am its internal critic. My job is to represent the interests of readers, hold The Post to high standards and explain its inner workings to an often-suspicious public.

If I do my job well, readers will be empowered, and The Post will be more accountable, trusted and essential.

I’ve been guaranteed extraordinary independence for my two-year term. My contract ensures that I’m “not subject to the editorial control” that The Post exerts over its staff. That means I can take some hard shots at the newspaper without fear of being sacked.

The Washington Post was the first newspaper to appoint a readers ombudsman back in the journalist-as-hero days of the early 1970s.

No Australian media organisation has adopted the idea, although The Sydney Morning Herald tried briefly in 1989 by appointing George Masterman QC to deal with readers’ complaints. The idea was that Masterman would investigate complaints and report within the pages of the newspaper. The whole scheme was publicised with a front page article on 6 March 1989, and more than 100 complaints were received in the first few months.

Soon the scheme was in tatters. Masterman wrote two reports critical of editorial staff, and the union (then the Australian Journalists’ Union) intervened and black banned first the reports, then the whole project.

The problem was the scheme had been set up without staff being consulted. Yet when there was trouble, management was not prepared to push the issue by publishing in the face of a union ban.

By 1991 the scheme was dead.

Could things have worked differently, if staff had been consulted and brought on board? After all, the union runs its own judiciary committees on ethical matters, although it must be said that the dual role of industrial advocate and professional association policing standards has never been an easy one.

Alexander makes the point in his inaugural column that many USA newspapers that tried having an ombudsman have dropped the idea as editorial budgets have been slashed. The Washington Post persists, despite the fact that the newspaper is not making money at the moment.

In the present climate, no Australian media organisation is likely to give the Ombudsman model another go.

Following on from all this, an idea occurs to me. Why doesn’t a big media organisation – and the ABC might be best placed to do it – spend some real time and resources asking the public what sort of things they want from journalists over the months and years ahead, during which bushfires will continue to be a big story.

We need new ideas on how to do the job of reporting. Something that goes beyond the cliches in which everyone is either a hero or a victim.

As I say in the Crikey e-mail, I have never known a story that so intimately involves us all. Everyone in Victoria, it seems, is either directly affected or knows someone who has lost their home or their life.

If we believe what we say – that journalism is important and a force for good – then we should have the courage to ask what, in this situation, journalists can be for.

The second judgement went against the Leader because it failed to publish a correction, though the Press Council also makes it clear that the reporters should have worked a bit harder in trying to contact the mother of the young man concerned before doing a profile of him after his death.

As for The Age, it declined to publish an apology, because it denied that it had implied that Danby was involved in fraud. The Press Council agreed with The Age.

(The links on the Press Council site for these adjudications are currently leading to the wrong documents, but I have notifed them and I am sure it will be fixed soon. UPDATE: HAS NOW BEEN FIXED. In the meantime, here is Adjudication 1414 concerning the Leader, and here is Adjudication 1415 concerning The Age. )