Media Inquiry AUS 2011

Chris Warren addresses the Finkelstein Media Inquiry

Monday, 21 November 2011

Media Alliance federal secretary Chris Warren made the following address to the Finkelstein Media Inquiry on Wednesday, November 16, 2011. 

Good morning – and thanks for inviting me to take part in your inquiry.

Unlike a lot of our colleagues in the news media, we don’t think this inquiry is either “unnecessary”, or “a joke” or even “a Greens-led witch hunt against News Ltd”.

We’ve been on the record for some months as supporting this inquiry for two main reasons. And these are the main crises besetting the news industry in Australia: a crisis of trust and a financial crisis.

I’d like to talk about both: they are intertwined.

The bond of trust that has always existed between the public and the news media has been put under a tremendous amount of pressure in recent years. Survey after survey shows journalists to be towards the bottom of the heap when it comes to public respect.

Obviously a portion of this is hot air. How many times do you hear people say they don’t believe what they read in the newspapers? But there’s no doubt that people’s trust in journalism is slipping. A survey we did for our report on the future of journalism, Life in the Clickstream, found that one-third of people believe the quality of journalism has declined over the past five years.

Episodes such as the News of the World phone-hacking scandal have washed over Australia, undermining people’s regard for the craft of journalism, even though they are repeatedly reassured that Australian journalists don’t indulge in those practices.

In fact, the truth is that this is more a problem of perception than reality. Australian journalists who work to the Media Alliance Code of Ethics are generally pretty good at knowing where to draw the line: there have been few episodes of egregious bad behaviour in this country.

But our audiences are voting with their feet – or rather their eyeballs. Until the past year or so, newspaper proprietors could point to generally flat circulation figures and say to themselves that their mastheads were holding up very well compared to countries such as the US and UK, where circulation and readership of major newspapers is in freefall.

In our submission we have reproduced a graphic sourced from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development which shows that while the UK newspaper market has shrunk by 27 per cent and the US by 30 per cent, Australia’s newspaper market has shrunk by only three per cent.

But that was based on 2009 numbers. The past two years have seen circulation decline gathering pace. It’s now averaging more than 3 per cent per year – with the Sydney Morning Herald recording a year-on-year drop of more than 7 per cent in the latest audit.

We’ve seen the way this has worked overseas and shudder at the prospect of double-digit drops in circulation to come – because that’s what is happening in the UK and US.

The falls in circulation are bad for newspaper companies’ bottom line – but what is even worse is what is happening to advertising revenue, which is hugely down – and portions of which, like classified advertising revenue, are disappearing altogether.

This is putting intense pressure on newsrooms where journalists are already having to do more work to cover the new platforms they are publishing on.

We’ve seen short-sighted management decisions to cut costs by making large numbers of staff redundant. We estimate that the staffs of national and major metropolitan newspapers have shrunk by more than 700 people since 2007.

Inevitably, calling on a shrinking workforce to do more with less is leading to errors, both in print and online.

The other noticeable effect is that newspapers are increasingly filling space on their pages with comment, which is much cheaper to produce than factual stories. This too has a negative effect on people’s perceptions of the media. Rather than journalists telling them what has happened, we are increasingly telling them what to think, which is divisive – and tends to cause resentment among readers.

So, as the revenue from circulation and advertising declines, news organisations shed staff, leading to a fall in quality – which in turn causes further declines in circulation and advertising.

It’s a vicious cycle.

The other problem for journalists is that there is a public perception that they are accountable to no one.

If people want to complain about journalists, they are confused as to how to do it and what they can expect to see in the way of redress. The Media Alliance has long operated an ethics panel which hears complaints about breaches by individual journalists of the Media Alliance Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which is the central set of rules by which individual journalists are bound – and which in turn protects them.

It’s our experience that most people don’t know who to complain to. We send a great portion of our complainants on to the Australian Press Council or to ACMA, if they are about a journalist who is not an Alliance member, but many of those people do not know much about either body.

This is why we are arguing for reform of the Press Council to make it a complaint hearing body for all news media: a one-stop shop – if you like – for people with a grievance about journalism.

The Alliance is an enthusiastic member of the Press Council and recognises its continuing value.

We think a reformed Media Council should work on an opt-in basis – the idea being that membership is a guarantee of quality journalism performed in an ethical way. The Media Council should not supplant the media organisations own complaints procedure – rather it should audit that complaints procedure and act as a kind of quality assurance body – only stepping in to solve or mediate particularly tricky or sensitive complaints, or to act in the event that a media organisation goes rogue.

We don’t believe there should be fines – it would inevitably complicate matters and would be most likely to introduce lawyers, which would delay the outcome of proceedings. One of the key things about a reformed complaints procedure should be speed of response and outcome.

We also think fines would hurt small online start-ups far more than established mainstream news organisations.

The main industry code should remain the Journalist Code of Ethics, which was developed by journalists and is effectively owned by journalists rather than their employers.

It has worked well for more than 60 years and is as relevant to journalists working in the digital age as it was in the days of linotype and hot metal.

The other thing I wanted to touch on briefly are the ways in which governments can help journalism.

This is a discussion that has taken place in many other countries where they have discussed different ideas for helping to fix the broken business model – and to make it easier for new players to get started.

You will already have heard many times that News Ltd newspapers control 70 per cent of the circulation in Australia. We’d like to make it easier to grow the other 30 per cent.

Our submission has listed many ideas being investigated in other countries:

• Getting rid of GST on newspapers and newspaper advertising – or using the revenue to fund non-profit start-ups.
• Amending the tax code to help newspaper companies become not-for-profit, or low-profit organisations
• A levy on Internet Service Providers, which have been called the “free riders” who make billions of dollar each year from content they have not had to fund themselves
• Funding journalism in schools and universities to help young people get the news habit – survey after survey shows they are losing this and they, after all, are the future of demand for our services
• The government should also look into ways of protecting copyright on journalists’ work

These are all just ideas at the moment, but we believe that it’s absolutely vital that the community has a chance to investigate ways of helping journalism survive and prosper.

The Age newspaper raided in hacking probe

The Age newspaper raided in hacking probe

• by: Nick Leys
• From: The Australian
• December 16, 2011 12:00AM

THE Age newspaper last night won a Supreme Court injunction against the removal of computer equipment by Victoria Police following an eight-hour raid on the paper's offices to investigate allegations that journalists had illegally hacked into an ALP electoral database.

Detectives from the Victoria Police e-crime squad executed a search warrant on The Age all day yesterday, seizing computers and documents. Last night the newspaper took out the injunction against Victoria Police in the Supreme Court, blocking the removal of computer equipment.

In the raid, six detectives held lengthy discussions with editor-in-chief Paul Ramadge, Fairfax lawyers and a number of IT staff. Computer hard-drives and hard copy files used by investigative reporters Royce Millar and Nick McKenzie were examined, and it is understood police seized some material from the equipment.

The injunction will be challenged by Victoria Police in the Supreme Court today. Despite assurances they are co-operating with police, The Australian understands two of the journalists are yet to respond to written requests for information from a Victorian electoral act parliamentary committee.

The detectives arrived at Fairfax's Media House headquarters and were met by Mr Ramadge. The investigation relates to allegations the journalists broke the law when they accessed an ALP database of electoral information before last year's state election.

The Australian last month revealed Victoria Police's intention to interview the journalists, Mr Ramadge and senior editor Mark Baker. It was also revealed they would be asked to appear before a parliamentary inquiry to explain themselves.

Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood yesterday vigorously defended the journalists at the centre of the criminal investigation, arguing they had broken no law and had conducted themselves ethically.

In a statement, Mr Ramadge said the police were receiving full co-operation, and the newspaper stood by its reporters. He said he believed they had acted in the public interest when they revealed the details of the database.

Detective Sergeant John Manly said outside The Age: "We appreciate your interest in this investigation but because it is an ongoing investigation I cannot say anything more at this point in time."

Mr Hywood said the journalists were "ethical professionals, and I am completely confident that they investigated and reported this story in an entirely proper way. It would be extremely disappointing if quality journalism, the public interest in the story and the integrity of what we stand for, including protecting our sources at all costs, suffers because powerful individuals didn't like what we revealed."

Mr Ramadge said they had "grave concerns over the risk that our sources for the report may be identified". "We protect our sources at all costs. It is a code that cuts to the heart of everything we do as journalists. It is about trust. It is about ethics. If the sources for this report are identified through the police searches, even inadvertently, it will be a dark day for journalism," Mr Ramadge said.

"The reporters who wrote the story published on November 23 last year acted entirely appropriately. They were approached by someone with legitimate concerns about the content of the database. That source provided authorised access to the database.

"This was a story with significant public interest - a powerful, highly influential organisation (the ALP) collecting private information on voters without their knowledge and giving campaign workers, including, it seems, volunteers, access to it." Mr Ramadge claims that The Age discovered, via a whistleblower, that the ALP was collecting and storing personal information about members of the public, unbeknown to those individuals, "and we reported, carefully and precisely, what those files contained without breaching any person's privacy". "The files included personal health and financial information the sensitivity of which we respected."

In November last year The Age revealed the ALP was holding the personal details of tens of thousands of Victorians in a database that was being accessed by campaign workers.

As research, it conducted searches of prominent Victorians, including former police commissioner Simon Overland, barrister Peter Faris QC and radio presenters Neil Mitchell and Jon Faine.

Last month, a Victoria Police spokesman said: "An investigation is under way and if those individuals have not been spoken to yet, then they will be spoken to as part of this investigation."

It is understood the warrants executed seek access to the computers and notes of a number of Age journalists, including Millar. Police are also seeking the telephone records of several reporters over the four days leading up to the publication of the story last year.

It is understood police are seeking to identify which reporters accessed the ALP database from their computer terminals. Police also want to try to identify the person who allegedly provided any reporter with the password to access the database.

The vice-president of Liberty Victoria, Anne O'Rourke, said journalists should not break the law. "Hacking is a criminal offence - whether it's in the public interest or not it is illegal," she said.

Chris Warren addresses the Finkelstein Media Inquiry

Monday, 21 November 2011

Media Alliance federal secretary Chris Warren made the following address to the Finkelstein Media Inquiry on Wednesday, November 16, 2011. 

Good morning – and thanks for inviting me to take part in your inquiry.

Unlike a lot of our colleagues in the news media, we don’t think this inquiry is either “unnecessary”, or “a joke” or even “a Greens-led witch hunt against News Ltd”.

We’ve been on the record for some months as supporting this inquiry for two main reasons. And these are the main crises besetting the news industry in Australia: a crisis of trust and a financial crisis.

I’d like to talk about both: they are intertwined.

The bond of trust that has always existed between the public and the news media has been put under a tremendous amount of pressure in recent years. Survey after survey shows journalists to be towards the bottom of the heap when it comes to public respect.

Obviously a portion of this is hot air. How many times do you hear people say they don’t believe what they read in the newspapers? But there’s no doubt that people’s trust in journalism is slipping. A survey we did for our report on the future of journalism, Life in the Clickstream, found that one-third of people believe the quality of journalism has declined over the past five years.

Episodes such as the News of the World phone-hacking scandal have washed over Australia, undermining people’s regard for the craft of journalism, even though they are repeatedly reassured that Australian journalists don’t indulge in those practices.

In fact, the truth is that this is more a problem of perception than reality. Australian journalists who work to the Media Alliance Code of Ethics are generally pretty good at knowing where to draw the line: there have been few episodes of egregious bad behaviour in this country.

But our audiences are voting with their feet – or rather their eyeballs. Until the past year or so, newspaper proprietors could point to generally flat circulation figures and say to themselves that their mastheads were holding up very well compared to countries such as the US and UK, where circulation and readership of major newspapers is in freefall.

In our submission we have reproduced a graphic sourced from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development which shows that while the UK newspaper market has shrunk by 27 per cent and the US by 30 per cent, Australia’s newspaper market has shrunk by only three per cent.

But that was based on 2009 numbers. The past two years have seen circulation decline gathering pace. It’s now averaging more than 3 per cent per year – with the Sydney Morning Herald recording a year-on-year drop of more than 7 per cent in the latest audit.

We’ve seen the way this has worked overseas and shudder at the prospect of double-digit drops in circulation to come – because that’s what is happening in the UK and US.

The falls in circulation are bad for newspaper companies’ bottom line – but what is even worse is what is happening to advertising revenue, which is hugely down – and portions of which, like classified advertising revenue, are disappearing altogether.

This is putting intense pressure on newsrooms where journalists are already having to do more work to cover the new platforms they are publishing on.

We’ve seen short-sighted management decisions to cut costs by making large numbers of staff redundant. We estimate that the staffs of national and major metropolitan newspapers have shrunk by more than 700 people since 2007.

Inevitably, calling on a shrinking workforce to do more with less is leading to errors, both in print and online.

The other noticeable effect is that newspapers are increasingly filling space on their pages with comment, which is much cheaper to produce than factual stories. This too has a negative effect on people’s perceptions of the media. Rather than journalists telling them what has happened, we are increasingly telling them what to think, which is divisive – and tends to cause resentment among readers.

So, as the revenue from circulation and advertising declines, news organisations shed staff, leading to a fall in quality – which in turn causes further declines in circulation and advertising.

It’s a vicious cycle.

The other problem for journalists is that there is a public perception that they are accountable to no one.

If people want to complain about journalists, they are confused as to how to do it and what they can expect to see in the way of redress. The Media Alliance has long operated an ethics panel which hears complaints about breaches by individual journalists of the Media Alliance Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which is the central set of rules by which individual journalists are bound – and which in turn protects them.

It’s our experience that most people don’t know who to complain to. We send a great portion of our complainants on to the Australian Press Council or to ACMA, if they are about a journalist who is not an Alliance member, but many of those people do not know much about either body.

This is why we are arguing for reform of the Press Council to make it a complaint hearing body for all news media: a one-stop shop – if you like – for people with a grievance about journalism.

The Alliance is an enthusiastic member of the Press Council and recognises its continuing value.

We think a reformed Media Council should work on an opt-in basis – the idea being that membership is a guarantee of quality journalism performed in an ethical way. The Media Council should not supplant the media organisations own complaints procedure – rather it should audit that complaints procedure and act as a kind of quality assurance body – only stepping in to solve or mediate particularly tricky or sensitive complaints, or to act in the event that a media organisation goes rogue.

We don’t believe there should be fines – it would inevitably complicate matters and would be most likely to introduce lawyers, which would delay the outcome of proceedings. One of the key things about a reformed complaints procedure should be speed of response and outcome.

We also think fines would hurt small online start-ups far more than established mainstream news organisations.

The main industry code should remain the Journalist Code of Ethics, which was developed by journalists and is effectively owned by journalists rather than their employers.

It has worked well for more than 60 years and is as relevant to journalists working in the digital age as it was in the days of linotype and hot metal.

The other thing I wanted to touch on briefly are the ways in which governments can help journalism.

This is a discussion that has taken place in many other countries where they have discussed different ideas for helping to fix the broken business model – and to make it easier for new players to get started.

You will already have heard many times that News Ltd newspapers control 70 per cent of the circulation in Australia. We’d like to make it easier to grow the other 30 per cent.

Our submission has listed many ideas being investigated in other countries:

• Getting rid of GST on newspapers and newspaper advertising – or using the revenue to fund non-profit start-ups.
• Amending the tax code to help newspaper companies become not-for-profit, or low-profit organisations
• A levy on Internet Service Providers, which have been called the “free riders” who make billions of dollar each year from content they have not had to fund themselves
• Funding journalism in schools and universities to help young people get the news habit – survey after survey shows they are losing this and they, after all, are the future of demand for our services
• The government should also look into ways of protecting copyright on journalists’ work

These are all just ideas at the moment, but we believe that it’s absolutely vital that the community has a chance to investigate ways of helping journalism survive and prosper.

Content and competition in a changing media world

By ABC's Mark Scott

Posted November 25, 2011 15:28:56

Photo: There is now a need to create content that can hold its own against competition of remarkable scale. (Thinkstock: Ingram Publishing)

Talking with an old colleague of mine from Fairfax a little while back, I was reminded that the Sydney Morning Herald was making millions of dollars of profit every week 10 years ago - but that this year, it may be lucky to make any profit at all.

We all know how it happened - the collapsing business model. Audiences luxuriating in free online content from around the world. The classified migration. The new options for display advertisers.

What is significant about it, in hindsight, is that you could see it all happening at the time.

And perhaps some of it was allowed to happen. Because a decade ago, the internet was with us, fast broadband was coming and the signs were all there.

And the debate a decade ago, after the tech bubble of the late '90s had popped, was all about time and scale. How much time would we have? Were the predictions overstated? Wouldn't the new markets inevitably settle around the old players?

But when you are making so much money, there is so much to lose. And that money, that profit, those audiences that you are holding - there is a security that comes with all that, which makes you think there will be time to do all you need to do. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

This year in Australia, we have seen the single biggest drop in audiences for the main television channels that they have experienced in 50 years. Fortunately for the broadcasters, that audience has largely migrated to the new free-to-air multi-channels created for digital television.

But look at those audiences move.

Look at those habits change.

Look at people embrace new choices that more appropriately match what they've discovered they want.

For the best part of 50 years, five channels was just fine.

But not any more.

At the ABC, we have done some extensive work this year on what the media landscape looks like 10 years from now - with ubiquitous fast broadband, seamless global release of content, vast archival availability, countless entertainment sources and a totally personalised viewing schedule.

Of course we don't know precisely what 2021 looks like, but we would be in denial if we didn't get a real sense of it, just from what we can see now. I would hope that what we've learned over the past decade at least is that "business as usual" until the future does take shape and is here doesn't really qualify as a strategy. Delay, like denial, is dangerous.

The audience watching catch-up television through the ABC's iview is 10 times what is was less than three years ago - and our research suggests only a third of the Australian public knows what it is. Its potential growth is enormous.

Every month, new opportunities are being created to watch iview on big screen television - through devices like Fetch-TV and the X-BOX. And most TVs being sold now have broadband connections, allowing easy access to internet content through a television experience.

We can see that streaming and downloads will kill the video store. But what does that broadband connection mean for broadcasters?

At my own media test lab called "home", I watch my daughters store programs they want to watch, have content downloaded on demand and totally individualise their viewing experience.

And if you are still asking what's on television tonight, you are just showing your age.

It's what you've got to show, not how and when it is shown, that is the real game.

Television has been a wonderful platform for so many years. Aggregating vast audiences, who really had nowhere else to go. Yet, more literally than for many other industries, this is a burning platform now.

We will need to create content that can hold its own against competition of remarkable scale. Our ability to create programming that demands to be watched tonight will be limited. News will still do so, as will live sport - as the price of broadcast rights show. And there will be special programs, pumped and promoted to build high engagement around pseudo-events such as Masterchef, that will also do the trick for a while before each fad inevitably fades.

What the ABC has demonstrated with iview is that an audience is there for great content, well curated and delivered in an accessible format. Our research suggests that when audiences discover iview – they love it, they use it, they keep coming back to it. More than ever, with the iview app, Australians are taking a tablet and going to bed. And this summer, when iview comes to the iPhone, so many more people will have a choice of 500 of our programs to watch on the bus.

I do worry about the industry though.

There is every suggestion that Australians love Australian content on television. But that content has been delivered at its current levels through a regulatory framework that will be challenged by convergence.

No-one doubts that the complex set of arrangements that currently sustain Australian content levels - quotas, expenditure requirements, tax incentives, funding through screen agencies, the ABC and SBS - will need to change in a converged environment.

The ABC has argued in its submission to the Convergence Review that we will need to find something at least equal to it, if not better - if we are not to witness a serious decline in Australian content.

The findings of the Convergence Review on local content will prove very important. They will be seeking to ensure some parity in Australian content rules in a world in which YouTube will be delivering content on what looks like television channels on your television set. Such a regulatory framework will be challenging to conceive and execute.

But internet programming will increasingly be received and experienced as television - on a big home screen or a mobile one. Television as internet and internet as television - wherever the internet goes, so too goes an advertising superpower: Google.

This can only add to the challenges for the advertising-supported television services. And that means challenges for Australian content, so much of which has always depended upon those services.

I think it's disappointing that to date, Australian free-to-air television networks have not been able to work together to create a local version of Hulu - a place where so much of what is on television is available for catch-up and personalised programming where it is available.

With free-to-air currently holding a market share of more than 80 per cent of primetime TV viewing - and with the example of iview - this could have been a blockbuster in terms of positioning for a fast broadband world.

And it would have been a great defensive play for when a Hulu actually lands here to offer seamless broadband viewing with fresh and archival global content. And defensive against the deep pocketed ambitions of a Foxtel, backed by Telstra and a few other significant household names in Australia's media.

The ABC did offer to make the iview architecture available to enable this.

And we would look to find ways to have the iview content up on this new site, as well as keeping iview.

It hasn't happened so far.

To date, audiences are still more lucrative in front of linear television, with the volume of advertising that can be sold in that forum.

And if there is to be catch-up content, the idea of putting it alongside a competitor's content on the same service can seem like it's a bridge too far.

There are rights issues, management issues, technological and revenue issues. And let's face it, it can be difficult to get competitors to work together.

I hope we can.

Ten years ago I was on the executive of a newspaper company, Fairfax.

Now and again I ask myself: those of us who were editors, publishers, and senior executives - did we do enough? Was there enough challenging, questioning, experimentation - enough innovation - to best equip us for what lay ahead? To be best positioned for an uncertain future.

The answer is always no.

It's a lesson I often draw on when I am talking at the ABC - that in broadcasting, as in newspapers, not properly preparing ourselves for the impact of a fragmenting world will come at a great cost.

I recognise there are differences between what happened to newspapers and what may happen to broadcasters.

I expect that in a decade from now, traditional linear radio and broadcasting will still be reaching big numbers. That advertisers will still be drawn to the aggregation of the largest mass audience available.

But broadcasters will have to work much harder to attract audiences and advertisers and earnings - particular the much sought-after younger audiences who bring in the cash. And the ABC will have to work harder to have content that is relevant and compelling - that commands an audience in a media environment of vast choice.

We know our future will not depend on our platforms. They'll be robust for a while yet. Our future will depend on delivering compelling content and program offerings: distinctive, high quality, Australian content of wide appeal and of specialist interest. And our future will also depend on us relentlessly making that programming available to audiences to consume how and when they like.

This is an edited text of a speech given by the managing director of the ABC, Mark Scott, today to the 2011 Walkley Conference in Brisbane.

Radio 2GB breaches rules on factual accuracy and presentation of significant viewpoints

23 November 2011

Sydney radio station 2GB has breached the commercial radio codes of practice by failing to present factual material accurately and by not making reasonable efforts to present significant viewpoints.

The breaches relate to certain segments of The Alan Jones Breakfast Show broadcast in February 2010. During the segments, Mr Jones was highly critical of the operation of native vegetation laws and their administration by the (then) New South Wales Department of Environment and Climate Change.

The ACMA found that 2GB did not present nor take steps to present more than one significant viewpoint about the operation and administration of native vegetation laws in NSW.

‘The codes require licensees to make reasonable efforts or give reasonable opportunities to present significant viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance,’ said the ACMA Chairman, Mr Chris Chapman. ‘Licensees can do this either within the same program or across similar programs but merely presenting substantially identical viewpoints is not sufficient to satisfy the code.’

The ACMA also found that one of the segments contained a factual error.

The complainant also alleged 2GB breached the code rule against broadcasting material likely to encourage violence for its own sake but the ACMA did not uphold this complaint.

The ACMA is in discussion with 2GB about its response to the breaches.

Holden cancels Sandilands sponsorship after on-air mauling of female journalist

DEBORAH SNOW

SMH 24 Nov, 2011 03:00 AM

THE head of one of Australia's largest media-buying companies has warned that other advertisers could start to walk away from radio station 2Day FM following car manufacturer Holden's cancellation of its sponsorship of the top-rating Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show yesterday.

The chief executive of media agency Universal McCann, Mat Baxter, said a savage on-air attack by broadcaster Kyle Sandilands against a female print journalist could trigger more backlash from advertisers.

He said Sandilands had moved recently from being ''shocking to offensive, and when that happens advertisers start to get nervous and look at whether their brand is potentially at risk of being damaged in that environment''.

Sandilands has a history of provoking outrage, including making attacks on the appearances of women who have attracted his ire. On Tuesday he lashed out at News Ltd journalist Alison Stephenson after she disparagingly reviewed his latest television venture, Kyle and Jackie O's Night with the Stars.

Sandilands called the journalist a '' fat slag'' and a ''little troll'', criticised her hair and breasts and warned her to ''watch your mouth or I'll hunt you down''.

Despite repeated calls, station management refused to comment on the radio star's behaviour. Holden then took the extraordinary step of withdrawing its advertising from the show late yesterday.

The senior manager of product communications at Holden, Kate Lonsdale, said Sandilands's show was ''no longer in line with Holden's core values and as a result we have taken action to withdraw our sponsorship - effective immediately''.

The owners of 2Day FM, Austereo, have already been given an amber light over Sandilands's on-air conduct. In late 2009 the Australian Communications and Media Authority took the rare step of attaching extra conditions to the station's licence, after public fury erupted when Sandilands quizzed a 14-year-old girl strapped to a lie detector about her sex life. The girl revealed on air that she had been raped.

Last night an online petition calling for other advertisers - including Vodafone, The Good Guys, Blackmores and Fantastic Furniture - to withdraw sponsorship from the show had drawn more than a thousand signatures.

 

NOW, here are Mr Sandilands's comments in full:

“Some fat slag on news.com.au has already branded it a disaster. You can tell by reading the article that she just hates us and has always hated us … What a fat bitter thing you are. You’re deputy editor of an online thing. You’ve got a nothing job anyway. You’re a piece of shit.

“This low thing, Alison Stephenson, deputy-editor of news.com.au online. You’re supposed to be impartial, you little troll. You’re a bullshit artist, girl. You should be fired from your job. Your hair’s very ’90s. And your blouse. You haven’t got that much titty to be having that low-cut blouse. Watch your mouth or I’ll hunt you down.”

Deborah Snow, Scott Ellis

SMH November 25, 2011

THE federal government has become the latest big advertiser to dump 2Day FM's Kyle and Jackie O Show as the social media storm caused by shock jock Kyle Sandilands' latest gaffe continued unabated yesterday.

Last night, the station's owners, Southern Cross Austereo, issued a ''sincere apology'' for Sandilands' actions saying it was ''assessing internal systems and process''.

In a statement, the federal Department of Finance said the government's media placement agency, Universal McCann, had ''immediately removed all booked Australian government advertising activity scheduled in any radio program in which Kyle Sandilands was host''.

''Given the nature of Mr Sandilands' comments, program content featuring him … was viewed as inappropriate to carry [government] advertising.''

At least a dozen other advertisers have announced they are pulling out of the top-rating breakfast show, a heavy-hitter in Southern Cross Austereo's stable.

Sandilands offered a partial apology yesterday for his remarks on Tuesday, in which he attacked a News Ltd journalist, Alison Stephenson, as a ''fat slag'', made derogatory comments about her breasts and hair, and warned her to ''watch your mouth or I'll hunt you down''.

But he immediately undercut his apology by adding, ''I'll attack any journalist that attacks me that I think is unfair.''

Sandilands' manager, Andrew Hawkins of King Kyle Holdings, would not comment on the withdrawal of advertisers.

Late yesterday, Southern Cross Austereo's chief executive, Rhys Holleran, announced he was taking up the matter with Sandilands, who has nearly 1 million listeners in Sydney every morning, and is reputed to earn more than $2 million a year. One industry insider said it would be commercially unrealistic for the station to sack him unless the show went into the red.

It is unclear how much of a financial hit the station's owners are taking as some advertisers are simply removing their spending from the Kyle and Jackie O Show and parking their dollars with the same station later in the day.

Last night an online petition calling on advertisers to pull out of the show had garnered more than 13,000 signatures.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/government-joins-sponsors-dumping-sandilands-20111124-1nwyi.html#ixzz1efIUCJsD

The Advocate has a problem with this story: by pulling its ads, is the Government dictating what can and cannot be broadcast by implicitly threatening a financial penalty if certain comments are broadcast?

Does this constitute a breach of free speech?

Sandilands is providing his audience with nothing of value, but he is entitled to be a fool ... even if his entitlement stems only from his long practice as a galoot. It says a lot about his audience that they take his utterances as being of value.

But is it government's business to rectify that?

Government might be better off providing better teachers in schools so that the next generation might have a chance to judge realistically what is of value and what is not; that would be better than trying to restrict people from saying what they have been led to believe by their inadequate teachers.

8 November 2011

A submission to the media inquiry

Eric Beecher

The following submission was made today to the Finkelstein Media Inquiry in Melbourne.

I am currently involved - as a shareholder, active participant and in two cases as a director - in four independent Australian media enterprises*. These companies are mainly engaged in creating online journalism supported by commercial business models. I have also worked in senior editorial positions in daily metropolitan newspapers in the past, so I have a perspective on the relative challenges confronting old and new media, as well as journalism, in an environment of uncertainty and change.

The following views are my own. They address the main issues raised in the Inquiry's Terms of Reference.

1. THE FUNDING MODEL FOR QUALITY JOURNALISM

Financially sustainable quality journalism is an integral element of Australia's democratic society. Although that sounds very much like a motherhood statement, I'm not convinced that many people in or outside the media industry actually understand what it means or how it is funded.

What it means

Without "quality journalism", a democratic society would lose its greatest source of independent scrutiny. Most of the exposure of institutional corruption, incompetence or maladministration is the work of reporters and editors. Most of the reporting of the institutions and arms of democracy is carried out by journalists. Most of the discussion and analysis of community, societal and global issues and ideas is initiated and stimulated by the media. Alongside parliaments, the bureaucracy and the courts, it is the lifeblood of a functioning democracy.

So what is this holy grail known as "quality journalism"? I would define it as the journalism that reports and analyses the institutions of democracy – governments, parliaments, the public service, courts, police and army, academia, business, science, education, media and other key institutions. It is the journalism that investigates and interrogates those institutions and their issues on behalf of society. It is the journalism that fertilises society with ideas, commentary and analysis. And it is journalism that needs to be conducted responsibly because it operates under a tacit public trust.

In considering the role and funding of so-called quality journalism in society, it's also relevant to realise that much of the editorial content produced in Australia - entertainment, lifestyle, sport and consumer journalism, for example - does not fall under this definition. Not all journalism is quality journalism in the context of the media's role in a civil society.

How is it funded and can it last?

The model that has funded large-scale quality journalism for the past century is in the process of unravelling.

Newspapers, the primary producers of quality journalism in the commercial sphere for the past century, are losing their primary source of profit – advertising revenue – to the internet, at vastly lower profit margins. And their circulations relative to the size of the population have been falling for decades, making them a far less pervasive medium.

In fact, the impact of this defective business model on journalism is already well underway. In the current transition period from print to online, nearly all large newspapers have been constantly culling their editorial resources in response to falling profits.

The viability of the business model that has supported the investment by traditional media organisations in quality journalism is in jeopardy. It may have already broken.

Are there proven commercial models to replace it?

There is no business model in Australia (or anywhere in the world) that can profitably fund a digital news organisation employing hundreds of journalists to produce quality journalism on the scale currently operating in major newspapers.

There are business models that fund smaller, targeted online news organisations to produce quality journalism. The companies in which I'm involved publish a range of websites that cover politics, big and small business, investment, city and regional issues, property, power and influence, technology and the environment. Between them, they employ some 60 full-time editors, reporters, commentators and sub-editors. Each day those websites create and publish around 100 original stories. Combined, they reach an unduplicated audience of around 1.2 million Australians a month. And they are commercial and mainly profitable, drawing revenue from advertising and subscriptions.

Independent journalism enterprises like this are rare in Australia. I am extremely proud of our websites and the standards they achieve, and aspire to, but at this stage of the media revolution it would be unrealistic to believe that the "segmented digital audience model" can replace the "mass media model" as the funding source of large-scale commercial quality journalism. That's because a great deal of the "quality journalism" that is essential to our system is uncommercial and has been subsidised by publishers who have historically invested part of their profits towards such benevolence. The days of subsidised benevolence, I fear, are drawing to a close.

Which raises a fundamental question: should the civic journalism that nourishes our democracy be left entirely in the hands of the marketplace – and of the public broadcasters – or should it be protected in some way because of its importance to our democratic operating system?

In considering this question in the Australian context, governments and policymakers should think very hard about the consequences for the country of a commercial market failure of the historic large-scale newspaper funding model for quality journalism.

If major media organisations continue to downsize their investment in journalism in response to declining profits, and companies like ours are able to replace only parts of that important form of journalism, could there be a tipping point at which commercial media can no longer be relied on to supply the "quality journalism" that keeps the democratic operating system running?

To take a practical example, The Australian newspaper recently closed down its excellent monthly Literary Review because the government and university funding that sustained it was withdrawn. On the same basis, will other forms of existing quality journalism become commercially unaffordable and disappear from the marketplace of news and ideas? Is there something alarming about the fact that a company as large and profitable as News Limited can't afford to subsidise a valuable vein of quality journalism?

I'm not proposing that governments should own newspapers or news websites. But I am suggesting that, as in France, Australian governments should engage in serious discussion and analysis of the potential collateral damage that could be inflicted on our civic society if expensive commercial-sector quality journalism is no longer viable.

Although the standards of the best of today's Australian journalism are high, the small size of our market means there isn't much of it around. There is very little margin for error for sustaining good journalism as media models unravel.

In reality, there are only four newspapers in Australia that make a significant investment in quality journalism: The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Financial Review. It is no secret that all of those four papers have seen their profitability fall substantially in recent years. All are owned by two public companies which are under constant shareholder pressure to improve their financial performance. Losing any of those four newspapers, or losing slices of their investment in journalism, would seriously diminish the absolute output of quality journalism in this country.

Some free-market purists argue that quality journalism should operate on a supply-and-demand basis like any other "product". Others rail against the idea of government funding of public trust journalism.

But is quality journalism really just like any other product or does it also have another crucial purpose that is less commercial – and even noble? And if that's the case, and as its business model unravels, is it possible that quality journalism has ended up in the wrong funding bucket as an accident of history?

The reality is that there are many important parts of a civilised society that would not exist if they weren't publicly funded – museums, libraries, theatre and opera companies, public art galleries and many other cultural institutions. Maybe quality journalism is about to move into the same category.

There are already several arms-length mechanisms used by governments to fund important societal and creative activities that point to ways that government support for journalism could work. These range from the ABC and SBS to independently-constituted arts and cultural funding bodies to tax breaks to independently-administered industry assistance schemes.

And because digital journalism requires relatively small levels of infrastructure compared to the traditional media cost structures, the quantum of funding that would be needed to create meaningful journalism enterprises would be at the level of arts funding, not ABC funding.

The relevant question is not: "Is government funding of public trust journalism a bad idea?" The relevant question is: "What kind of country would we have if the commercial funding of quality journalism was devalued to the point where it no longer fulfilled its historic watchdog role?"

2. DIVERSITY OF OWNERSHIP OF NEWS JOURNALISM

Australia has the highest level of concentration of ownership of news journalism in the developed world. One company, News Limited, owns more than 70 per cent of daily and Sunday metropolitan and national newspaper circulations. In four cities - Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin and Hobart - that figure is closer to 90 per cent.

It has been argued that the arrival of the internet has "democratised" journalism and reduced the barriers of entry to media ownership. This is technically true, but in practice the arrival of the internet has actually extended News Limited's domination of news journalism in Australia. This is because the websites affiliated with the company's daily newspapers have much larger audiences than their newspapers and have become the dominant or near-dominant news websites in their communities.

In South Australia, for example, News Limited owns the only daily newspaper, The Advertiser (daily average circulation 184,000**), the only Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Mail (circulation 284,000**), almost all suburban newspapers, one of two national newspapers, and the state's largest news website, Adelaide Now (1,913,000 monthly unique browsers***). There are very few journalists working in South Australia who aren't employed by News Limited, and there are very few consumers of journalism who don't read News Limited's print or online publications. A similar situation applies in Brisbane, Hobart and Darwin.

In my view, the most constructive way to reduce News Limited's unhealthy 70 per cent domination of news journalism is to focus on ways to enlarge the 30 per cent it doesn't own. This could be done – as it is France, on a large scale – by the creation of independently administered government incentives that foster media start-ups and innovative commercial journalism ventures. This approach, possibly using an independent funding mechanism like the Australia Council, could allocate grants on a project basis (to independent publishers as well as ventures such as The Australian Literary Review), would expand the diversity of ownership of independent journalism.

And yes, I realise I am not a disinterested party in making such a case.

3. REGULATION AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE AUSTRALIAN PRESS COUNCIL

There is an urgent need for greater accountability by, and regulation of, the Australian print and online media.

Public disdain for journalism has never been greater. Fewer people trust or believe the media.

Intrusive, deceptive, arrogant and unprofessional behaviour by a small segment of the mainstream media occurs regularly in Australia. This kind of behaviour erodes the credibility of all media and reduces respect for the role of good journalism as a responsible check and balance in our democratic system.

The commercial pressures on Australian media companies, as a result of the breakdown of "old media" business models, are intense. This can push owners, editors and journalists beyond the boundaries of acceptable editorial behaviour, as demonstrated so gruesomely by the phone-hacking activities at the News Of The World in London over recent years (which were exposed, in the face of constant denials, by dogged investigative journalism by The Guardian).

Editors and journalists don't need to hack phones to act improperly. They can do it by invading privacy, publishing reckless material, distorting the truth, infiltrating their news columns with opinions, doctoring pictures, demeaning ideas or people they don't like or pursuing personal and political vendettas.

And they can do it by failing to understand the culture of the world of digital media, in which the concept of the "gatekeeper" has been replaced by the concept of "the audience". Media outlets today not only have the technological capability to publish instant responses from their audience – within minutes, under a right-of-reply entitlement – they also have a moral responsibility to do it.

The old paradigm of only correcting or apologising under pressure, and then doing it as slowly and inconspicuously as possible, should now be seen as reckless behaviour by media organisations, who are no longer regarded as reputable if they do not have open and accountable mechanisms for readers to respond to bad editorial behaviour or mistakes.

The current system of self-regulation of journalism by the Australian Press Council, in my view, is window dressing designed to give the appearance of serious regulation. It is a cumbersome and bureaucratic process that is barely known or understood by audiences, is painfully slow to respond, does not encompass all print and online media, does not require publishers to openly admit their mistakes, and produces pedantic adjudications that are almost hidden from readers. Its credibility is strained even further by the fact that it is majority funded by News Limited, the company that owns most of Australia's mainstream news journalism.

A revitalised Press Council could and should be the body to regulate print and online journalism in Australia. It should cover all print and online journalism, lift audience awareness of its existence and role, improve response times to address complaints, publish adjudications that people can understand, ensure publishers place those adjudications in a prominent position, force publishers to admit when they are wrong, and broaden its funding base to avoid perceptions of conflict of interest. This could be addressed by these steps: 

• Create a mechanism to encourage all online and print publishers of journalism to join the Press Council, regardless of size or financial capability.
• Build audience awareness by requiring all participating publishers to display information about the council and its role prominently (with links to details) on home and front pages.
• Require publication of a right-of-reply or a correction to reader complaints within one day in a prominent position in the newspaper or website.
• If a publisher refuses to publish a right-of-reply or correction within one day, and is later found by the council's adjudication process to have published inaccurate or inappropriate material, the publisher will be obliged to publish a correction or apology in plain English, as mandated by the council, prominently on its front page in print and online.
• The Press Council to be funded by the Federal Government, not by the media companies who are the subject of the council's regulation. This is because a) such a mandatory complaints, corrections and right-of-reply system is in the nation's interest because it will contribute to media transparency and accountability; b) it will ensure all media companies can participate, not only those who can afford it; c) independent funding will remove the perception of conflict of interest which is created when self-regulation is partly or mainly funded by one of the biggest companies to be regulated.
• Government funding to be managed appropriately and judiciously at arm's length (like the ACMA model).  

Unless the media puts its own house in order, transparently and aggressively, there is every chance over the next few years that governments and courts, under pressure from the disillusioned consumers of journalism, will do it for us.

- - - - -

*These are my media interests:

Private Media. Publishes Crikey, The Power Index, Smart Company, StartUp Smart and Property Observer).

Australian Independent Business Media. Publishes Business Spectator, Climate Spectator, Technology Spectator and Eureka Report.

Solstice Media. Publishes Adelaide InDaily.

Echo Publications. Publishes the Byron Shire Echo, Tweed Shire Echo and Echonet Daily.

**Audit Bureau of Circulations, June 2011.

***Neilsen Online, August 2011.

- - - - -

Eric Beecher is publisher of Crikey.

 

Media Alliance welcomes inquiry

Friday, 16 September 2011

 

The Media Alliance welcomes the federal government’s announcement of an inquiry into the Australian media.

The inquiry, announced this week by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, will look closely at the way the media is changing, and examine strategies to strengthen and support ethical journalism in the country.

It will focus on print media regulation and online publications. It will also examine ways to strengthen the independence and effectiveness of the Australian Press Council (particularly in relation to online publications), as well as the effectiveness of current codes of practice in Australia.

Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren said: “The Alliance has for some time called for an examination of the impact of technological change on traditional media organisations.

“As we have shown in successive Future of Journalism reports, technological change has eroded the traditional business models for journalism, and it is vital that we canvass the ways in which the traditions of quality journalism can be supported and extended into the future.

“The Alliance also welcomes the examination of the ways new media can operate ethically and in the public interest. Great journalism is ethical journalism, whatever the medium.”

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance has begun drafting its submission to the inquiry and will be inviting comments from members.

The terms of reference for the inquiry are thus:

a) The effectiveness of the current media codes of practice in Australia, particularly in light of technological change that is leading to the migration of print media to digital and online platforms;
b) The impact of this technological change on the business model that has supported the investment by traditional media organisations in quality journalism and the production of news, and how such activities can be supported, and diversity enhanced, in the changed media environment;
c) Ways of substantially strengthening the independence and effectiveness of the Australian Press Council, including in relation to on-line publications, and with particular reference to the handling of complaints;
d) Any related issues pertaining to the ability of the media to operate according to regulations and codes of practice, and in the public interest.

Alliance welcomes media inquiry

Christopher Warren <[email protected]> to [email protected]

Welcome to your weekly . This week:

-Alliance welcomes media inquiry
-Access to asylum seekers
-Vote on Fairfax Agreement
-Consulting with News Ltd
-ABC conflict of interest policy
-Negotiations approach at Reuters
-No metro pay at the Hawkesbury Gazette
-Country non dailies

Alliance welcomes media inquiry: The Alliance welcomes the announcement of an independent inquiry into the Australian media, particularly into the impact of technological change. As our Future of Journalism reports have shown (http://bit.ly/h5mc ) it is vital we canvass the ways in which the traditions of quality journalism can be supported and extended into the future. The Alliance has begun drafting a submission to the inquiry. Read more http://bit.ly/pRWqMi

Stephen Conroy's media circus is an exercise in revenge

• By: Paul Fletcher
• From: The Australian
• September 16, 2011

THE recent announcement by Broadband and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy of an independent inquiry into Australia's print media raises many questions.

If an inquiry is needed, why is it confined to the print media as opposed to many other forms of media including free-to-air television, pay-TV, radio and the booming online sector?

Could it be because this is as close as you can come to having an inquiry into News Limited without expressly stating that you are targeting that company? A large share of the print media in Australia is owned by News, whereas its interests in sectors outside print media are relatively limited (certainly compared with News Corporation's main overseas markets). How will the restriction to print media (and we are told "online publications") work in practice? In other words, what is included in the scope of this inquiry?

Related Coverage

• Media probe may vet the ABC The Australian, 16 hours ago
• EDITORIAL: Media inquiry terms double up Courier Mail, 16 hours ago
• Brown dismisses media 'witch hunt' claims Herald Sun, 16 hours ago
• Inquiry to scrutinise ABC online The Australian, 1 day ago
• Conroy suggests single media regulator The Australian, 1 day ago

Will the inquiry cover the sites of, for example, Sky News or the Nine Network, each of which has text news stories as well as multimedia content? Indeed, the mix of content on these sites is pretty hard to distinguish from the mix on sites run by News Limited, Fairfax and other print media. That is convergence at work.

If not, how can this inquiry be justified from a competitive neutrality point of view? Why would it make sense to have, for example, a complaints mechanism that deals with an online-only text story on the site of TheAge.com.au but would not deal with a similar story on the Sky News site?

What is the conduct to which this inquiry is directed? The fact it is headed by a lawyer, former Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein QC, suggests it is designed to look at whether there has been misconduct by newspapers, which are not adequately regulated.

Is there any evidence of such misconduct having occurred in Australia? Certainly there has been a phone hacking scandal in Britain, but why would that be sufficient to justify an inquiry in Australia in the absence of credible allegations here?

Yet another question suggests itself. Conroy says this inquiry will deal with the impact of technological change; that is, migration to digital and online platforms on the business model of newspapers. But why is this necessary when he already has an inquiry to consider these issues: the convergence review announced in December last year and due to report next year.

The terms of reference for that review state, correctly, that media and communications regulation needs to be reconsidered because convergence and the growth of the internet are challenging traditional media business models.

The business model most squarely challenged is the traditional newspaper.

Fewer people are reading and buying newspapers. Figures released last month showed the total weekly circulation for Australia's main metropolitan and regional newspapers was down 4.2 per cent in a year, from about 20.4 million copies to 19.5 million.

This is a long-term trend. In the 10 years to 2009, total annual newspaper sales in Australia fell steadily, from about 1.04 billion to about 990 million.

The fact fewer people are buying and reading newspapers is only one part of the problem.

The other is that the newspapers' classified advertising revenues, which cross-subsidise journalism, have largely been lost to specialist providers such as Seek in recruitment and realestate.com. au in property. It is no wonder that Fairfax Media's results, announced last month, contained the statement, "Fairfax Media is aggressively responding to structural changes in the media landscape." Newspaper companies' management teams in Australia and across the world are working frantically to see if they can reshape their businesses to find a sustainable new model.

There is much talk about distributing newspapers on iPads but the challenge is whether customers will pay for what they have been getting for free.

Newspapers have a commercial interest in surviving but there is a public interest, too. In democracies newspapers have long had an important role to inform citizens, to foster debate and critique policy proposals. If newspapers disappear and nothing replaces them there is a risk citizens will be less well informed, and our democracy will suffer.

If you wanted to maximise the survival chances of Australian papers, why would you distract them by requiring them to front up to a second inquiry with terms of reference that significantly duplicate the work of the convergence review?

In reality, despite Conroy's rhetoric, this review is not about convergence or new business models.

Labor and the Greens have complained long and loud about the coverage they receive from the News Limited papers. This inquiry is an exercise in retaliation, designed to lead to the imposition of new regulatory burdens on News Limited papers, with those operated by other companies to suffer collateral damage.

It is a political exercise pure and simple. For anyone who cares about the role of newspapers in our democracy, this new inquiry is the last thing we need. It should be cancelled immediately.

Paul Fletcher is a federal Liberal MP.

16/09/2011 5:11:54 PM

Media inquiry to test print regulator

From Capital Circle (The Australian) Thu 15 Sept 2011

Labor's media inquiry has divided commentators, with some arguing it goes too far and others that it doesn't go far enough.

Julia Gillard will meet with the Resources Advisory Council today. The PM spoke to ABC Sydney this morning about her carbon tax package, currently being debated in parliament. Asked if she had failed to sell the need for the package, Ms Gillard said she was "always happy to accept responsibility for my role and actions'', but added there had been a "huge fear campaign" to distort the facts of climate change. She was "very confident that people will find the world same on July 1'' after the tax comes into effect. Tony Abbott spoke to Alan Jones on 2GB this morning about the carbon tax package, continuing his attack on the government. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Greens Leader Bob Brown both hit the airwaves this morning to talk about the media inquiry.