The Stalinist nightmare of the media regulating itself
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Stephen Conroy’s self-regulation proposals for the print media could ultimately save it from the very fate media companies are currently complaining about.
It’s been sad watching the decline of Kim Williams, once the smartest, most visionary and most innovative media executive in Australia, the man who turned Foxtel 1) digital and 2) profitable in the face of a regulatory framework designed (in essence, by his competitors) to permanently hobble it.
Since he’s taken the big chair at News Limited, however, it’s almost as if the spirit of Harto has possessed Williams, turning him into a caricature of a News Corporation exec. Thus have we lost one of Australian media’s best and brightest.
In his hysterical reaction to the rather tame, and possibly unpassable, media reform package released by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy yesterday, Williams has wrecked whatever remaining credibility he had on the issue of media regulation.
What Conroy has proposed on newspaper and online standards is that the print media’s self-regulatory mechanisms actually do what they say they do, a proposal that has resulted in him compared to the great dictators of history — although not, apparently, Hitler — by Williams’s publications. The print media’s self-regulatory bodies — the Australian Press Council or the West Australian’s DIY job — would have to demonstrate they actually do what the industry says they do — provide independent self-regulation. “All the people who say the Press Council is a toothless tiger haven’t been bitten by it,” News Ltd’s Campbell Reid said in June last year.
If that’s the case, there should be no problem with the Press Council being recognised as such. But Williams’ position is the Press Council should never have to demonstrate it lives up to the claims made for it by newspapers, that we can just take the word of the outlets that pay for it.
Conroy’s alternative, is that if media self-regulatory bodies don’t live up to the claims made by News Ltd, member media companies lose their privacy and consumer law exemptions. The media, currently, has a blanket exemption from the requirements of the Privacy Act and is allowed to engage in “misleading and deceptive conduct” under the Competition and Consumer Act. Imagine a media company open to litigation if it engages in misleading and deceptive conduct like any other company!
What all this fulmination disguises is broadcast journalists already operate under direct government regulation of the kind that Williams decries. Believe it or not, the government can actually tell broadcasting licensees what they can and can’t put to air. And it compels them to get together as an industry and register a code of practice about issues like journalism standards that is enforced, with direct sanctions, by a government-appointed regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority. In short, Stalin is already here and controlling news outlets far more influential than Williams’, and has been doing so for generations.
Strangely, when Williams was running Foxtel, he had no problems with the journalism provided to his company by Sky News, his primary news and current affairs channel provider. Indeed, it’s fair to say he held, and holds, Sky News in very high regard. Yet its journalists labour under the yolk of direct government regulation.
And is Conroy proposing a level playing field between print and media journalism, bidding to impose the same sort of direct government regulation imposed on broadcast journalism on print? No, Conroy’s proposal is purely self-regulatory, and not even administered by agovernment-appointed body like ACMA, but by a bipartisan appointee.
If Williams were serious about protecting a free press, he would speak out about another, far clearer threat: the government’s proposed national security reforms, including data retention. Under the EU data retention model favoured by Labor, journalists’ confidential sources have already been tracked down and revealed by the Polish government using telecommunications data. The proposal is a direct threat to a free press. But the only substantive coverage the issue has received in Williams’ newspapers was an absurd rant by Greg Sheridan to the effect that data retention was the only thing between Australia and mass murder.
One of the lines being run in opposition to the Conroy proposal this morning is that there’s no problem with regulation of print media that needs fixing. That’s not a view shared by voters. At the end of 2011, Essential Research asked voters if they thought the quality of newspaper regulation was good or poor. Only 20% of voters thought it was good, 25% thought it was poor. In July 2011, it found 48% of voters thought there needed to be more regulation of the media.
By trying to insist newspaper self-regulation actually works, Conroy is in fact giving the industry a chance to avoid actual regulation, or even the “co-regulation” that currently applies to broadcasters. Because if we get a government that decides to act on the apparently widespread conviction among voters that we need more direct government regulation of the media, it really will be a threat to a free press.
News Ltd seems to be going out of its way to make the govt’s case for it.
When you see such comically overblown reaction to a fairly mild “reform” it becomes fairly clear that some form of regualtion is required.
Your name’s well and truly on a list, now, Mr Keane. But when News Ltd. does it , it’s funny.
Bernard. People who self publish allegations identifying perceived corruption are entitled to as much freedom of expression as the law currently permits us all. Main Stream Media is not alone. We are all restrained by the same laws of defamation, slander and injurious language. What a surprise when you find out the truth is not always a defense when someone accuses you of publishing that truth with the intention of adversely affecting a persons ability to earn a living. Should we get what we promulgate wrong. Why is it Main Stream Media seems to be ignoring every person with a computer and internet access who publishes? Minister Stephen Conroy an elected representative is interfering with the rights and freedoms of every Australian. I believe Labor fear the real freedoms of public trust journalist, unleashed by the WWW. Edward James
“independent self regulation” with a government commissar in charge…
This article disgusts me. Free speech is the right that allows every other right to come to fruition. What on earth could any publisher write that would require government intervention of this nature rather than free speech in response?
Because Sky News labours under the “yolk” as you put it of direct Government regulation it is even better if you and your colleagues do too?
This legislation is so dumb, vague and pointless that the minister responsible virtually admits it will not and cannot be passed.
On a related note, it is fascinating that this minister thinks that the executive branch of government can hand the legislature legislation which the parliament is not allowed to debate or amend. This strikes me as even more totalitarian than the attacks on the media.
Crikey: the turkey voting for Christmas
Jimmy, News Ltd are demonstrating that they have the right to ridicule elected politicians, because that is indeed their right and ours as free citizens. I’m glad they went ridiculously over the top. It is exactly what politicians deserve when they try to undermine a free press.
A ‘free press’ that’s owned, unprofitably, for the political advantages of its owner is not a ‘free press’, but a tool to corrupt democracy.
Which “politicians”? It would be all Right if they used their resources to treat both sides of the political divide the same, whenever they screwed up.
“Free press” that stifles freedom of speech, of views they don’t like, by editing them out?
Yes. Precisely that. Never mind commenting on the Theatre of the Absurd that is the News Ltd (and the 2GB/2UE axis) reaction, nor even the argument that so much influence owned by so few media moguls is tantamount to a kind of dictatorship. The Media’s biggest and most glaring failing is in its abject, miserable neglect in even reporting on (let alone properly tackling) government plans on data retention and allied issues - blatant double standards and a complete abnegation of the press’ mandate to report the truth without fear or favour.
Our “free press”, dominated as it is, has been corrupted by it’s vision of it’s own (unelected) omnipotence.
I look forward to Gerard Henderson taking the Tele to task for the ludicrous hyperbole of comparing Conroy to Stalin, et al. Gerard? Are you there? Gone rather quiet…
By the way, for the benefit of the Tele’s readership, it is not pronounced “hyper bowl”.
Bernard, I am almost sure you meant yoke not yolk, as in egg, but then again, perhaps what is supposed to be a working animal control device, is about as effective as a runny egg?
You got it, fractious.
Working twisted “hyper bowl”is how our trustworthy Labor Prime Minister leader of Labor Nationally said it, so it must be right! Not Edward James
…. where are the super-cons ….?
klewso Where are the constituents who are interested in pursuing honest open government on behalf of Australians everywhere ? Edward James
If the press were truly under the yolk that would explain the egg-on-their-collective face constantly. Little blunders like unstable, minority government, daily leadership challenges conjured out of shell thin fragments, promoting the convoy of Incontinence, .. need I go on?
Edward James - lots of places, if you care to look.
I was living for 20 of my adult years under communism, both my parents were journalists. I know what it means “public interest” and how the government will control the freedom of press using the so call “independent” institution but appointed by government (Gillard comparison with judges is frivolous – members of this institution not appointed for life, not protected by the Constitution) to control what can be printed. Only naïve (or still existing lovers of left utopia) believe that this will not restrict the right to criticise government of the day. Freedoms of speech mean freedom to publish anything and be only exposed to defamation laws.
On the other hand Labour is suicidal to advocate laws like this – whole press will be strongly advocating for the change of government as opposition is promising to scrap it.
Free speeech is not a right it is a priviledge. Communication is two way whereas Journalists generally see it as one way - News Ltd in particular. If you disagree you are ridiculed/vilified/ or censored. The Letters page of the Austarlian are contrived and a check of the so called writers show that these people do not exist. The media in this country is a mess, it is poorly trained, mostly ignorant and their writing style and readability is woeful. Compare Australian Journalism with that of the Washington Post/ NYT/ and the Guardian to illustrate the point. Other than Crikey I now gain my news form these papers similarly views on business and sport. The UK Daily Mail is better than the News Ltd rabble and at least it is entertaining. The ABC will continue to dominate serious newsgathering and Alan Jones has at last has realised he is irrelevant. The TDT spoof this evening just proves that the gutter has long stretched to Commercial TY as well. The Stalin image is a joke, Putin may have had more relevance to a modern reader on press manipluation. Williams posing as Citizen Kane bare chested on a horse surrounded by blondes ……………. good 1930’s stuff but isn’t it 2013? We know how the Free Speech of the 1930’s ended up?
Lech L - you miss the point. We already have “journalism” (if I dare disgrace the term by associating it with News Ltd and certain others) in this country that mouths what a very small number of people (none of whom were elected) think is in “the public interest”. Secondly the very minimal reforms proposed rely largely on the vague notion of “self-regulation”, which is what we already have, and which has (and still is) failing the public interest test. You rightly point out the ill effects on society of propaganda posing as public information, yet then fail to see how a virtually unfettered and marginally regulated media ownded by a very few private concenrs has led to the same outcome a dictatorship or a Cold War style “communist” government would produce - an extremely limited diversity of ownership and thus diversity of opinion and analysis, and a very limited scope for open debate.
Freedom of the press” is another of the principal slogans of “pure democracy”. And here, too, the workers know — and Socialists everywhere have explained millions of times —that this freedom is a deception because the best printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule over the press remains—a rule that is manifested throughout the whole world all the more strikingly, sharply and cynically—the more democracy and the republican system are developed, as in America for example. The first thing to do to win really equality and genuine democracy for the working people, for the workers and peasants, is to deprive capital of the possibility of hiring writers, buying publishing houses and bribing newspapers. And to do that the capitalists and exploiters have to be overthrown and their resistance oppressed. The capitalists have always use the term “freedom” to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death. And capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion. In this respect, too, the defenders of “pure democracy” prove to be defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the rich control over the mass media. They prove to be deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible, fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement. Genuine freedom and equality will be embodied in the system which the Communists are building, and in which there will be no opportunity for massing wealth at the expense of others, no objective opportunities for putting the press under the direct or indirect power of money, and no impediments in the way of any workingman (or groups of workingman, in any numbers) for enjoying and practicing equal rights in the use of public printing presses and public stocks of paper.
News Limited, Kim Williams et al must take us all for fools. They aren’t defenders of free speech, they are defenders of their own self interest, and nothing else. And I should be worried about having a government appointed regulator deciding what I read (which is how the criticics are describing it), instead of what the editor of media company owned by an unelected, self-appointed, self-interested media owner(s) decides? Because all they care about is balanced debate and the public interest - what BS.
I am really sick of all these “former victims of communism” openly declaring Australians to be so backward and stupid about democracy as to be about to lose their hard won freedoms, just because the same bunch of paranoid, insulting, backward, fucking peasants say so.
Learn the bloody history of your adopted country, you slimy ingrates and show some respect.
Australia, and New Zealand led the world on the development of democracy.
These countries bled themselves dry fighting tyranny.
They don’t need and never have needed any lectures on the dangers of communism from anyone.
The real problem has been known since Edmund Burke declared the parliamentary press gallery to be a “Fourth Estate”.
That is, the press are unelected politicians who cannot be sacked by the voters.
So don’t give us your feeble fucking messages about living under communism while at sane time you remain wilfully blind to the history of your adopted country, and do start instead to wake up to press control, not by your elected representatives, but by people who are beyond your democratic control.
Stand up for democracy, “former victims of communism”, by educating yourselves, learning the language and history of your adopted sanctuary, start to grow a backbone and abandon your forelock tugging abasement to authority.
You are in Australia now, you clowns, start showing some signs that you understand just where you are.
Assimilate to your new surroundings instead of polluting them with these constant, ugly, ignorant and arrogant accusations against your fellow citizens.
Australians have suffered enough from corrupt, money hungry migrant escapees from despotic regimes who have treated Australians’ easy going, egalitarian democratic traditions as a blank cheque to cheat and thieve their way to the top, only to turn around and spit on their hosts with poisonous contempt.
We won’t read about you in the press because for them you are all just “useful idiots”and are happy to beat up all your bleating fear of your neighbours; for everyone else you are worse than useless, and your paranoia is poisonous to democracy.
This is what fifty years of direct observation as a Non-Australian tells me about you.
Since News Corps many propaganda outlets have gone all in on the silly hyperbole, so can we: just remember what happened to Goebells, Kim!
Hamis, all you can do is insults because you have no knowledge of how the political systems actually work and how democracy has been lost (Hitler was democratically elected).
The problem is that the author, you and fellow travellers are completely naive. Unfortunately this is my experience with native Australians who cannot think outside the square, imagining working of the state as the ideal of political system. Giving government control over print media will always lead to control of what can be published. If the current government does not like what press is printing there is nothing to stop ALP to start its own newspaper and even distribute free.
Today I read interesting comment in Australian that the whole “public interest” law is designed to fail so Labour can start attack on “media barons” before the election. Let’s wait and see
I note that despite the apparent free hand the Sydney Telegraph editorial staff have with their paper, they conveniently chose to leave off the Chinese leadership from the rogues gallery of tyrants controlling the press that Stephen Conroy joins. Because we all know the the press in China is free - Rupert told me so. He reckons they are good to do business with.
The problem that Conroy’s legislation is trying to address is that the Australian public is now collectively so ignorant that governing in their collective interest is impossible, because those with wealth and power and self interest can simply purchase the required amounts of political will from the commercial media.
Advertising is the cause of this situation - no regulation is going to change this, and no Australian government would ever be allowed to ban advertising completely. Maybe all they can do is simply wait for commercial media to die, but in the mean time provide citizens with tools and knowledge to remove all advertising from online content and back it up with a government sponsored advertising campaign to make people aware of the risks.
Something like “Every Advertisement is doing you damage”
seriously? - you missed Mao
They missed the contemporary, present regime - with their present control.
I guess when you work in a company which relies on you double-guessing your boss to stay in employment, the thought of another layer of scrutiny other than the toothless tiger Press Council must seem oppressive. Especially one which might make you subject to the Privacy Act if you don’t comply.
Hysteria just about covers this reaction. Except for the paranoid bits.
If only we actually had a free press…one that was truly neutral, not acting in the interests of maximising its own profits, which whilst quite a legitimate pursuit is certainly not conducive to the admirable goals of freedom of speech that everyone is spruiking.
Personally I think the media should be subject to the privacy laws etc, the same as the rest of us.
There are 3 issues I see with the legislation.
1. What’s the problem? While there’s a compelling case in the UK with journalists hacking into the phones of dead children, UK != Australia and there’s no evidence of the same being done here. In fact it’s quite the opposite. One of the key criticisms in the UK was of how close the media was to the Government, which allowed them to get away with it for such a long time. No-one can make the same argument here. “News Ltd. too close to Gillard Government…” don’t make me guffaw.
2. How it was handled. News reports (which must all be lies obviously, right?) are that it was “manhandled” through the Cabinet process without nary a word of debate, or a chance other than Gillard’s select “Kitchen Cabinet” to actually read the document. There was even a vote to stop it which was simply scuttled. Once again, Labor does what Labor does. Which doesn’t involve much thinking apparently. Lack of consultation, lack of debate… Mining tax anyone? And here we have a Government boasting about how many pieces of legislation it can get through - only for it to bring up a piece of legislation that will die on the floor (and most likely kill the Government along with it).
3. Stephen Conroy - you know, that guy who wanted to (and still wants to) censor the internet. All I can think is Conroy must have a video of Gillard with a goat or some other horrible thing and that’s the only way he’s able to blackmail everyone in Labor into supporting it blindly. Either that or he too (like Gillard) is a Liberal mole, secretly planted by them to undermine and destroy the Labor party once and for all. Surely this guy can’t be serious? By the way, this is the same guy who sells the NBN with great lines about how it will allow us to connect our washing machines to the internet so we don’t lose any more socks or something.
Special Bonus Issue #4. Newspapers. You mean to say people still read those things?
Here’s my prediction (because predictions are fun):
- With the Obeid inquiry in NSW, HSU etc… It will be portrayed as a bad Government trying to ‘cover-up’ its problems.
- The media censorship line will stick like super-glue (with his internet plans, Conroy has form in this area).
- The legislation will fail in Parliament (exposing the Government to “what were they thinking” syndrome).
- More leaks from the Labor side about how bad the legislation is and how they can’t believe Gillard and Conroy still went ahead with it.
- It will look like an incompetent Government which simply doesn’t know what it’s doing (yet again).
- The next Newspoll in a fortnight’s time will have the Government back to where they were a fortnight ago (confirming the pattern of a Government that starts to get ahead, only to mangle it up).
The News Ltd. reaction reminds me strongly of some of the dodgier workplaces I’ve attended when temping, whereby the days before a scheduled visit by WorkCover would see a mad rush of panic and fear while management sorted out all the possible breaches that had existed sometimes for years.
I’m not a fan of the old “you’ve got nothing to fear if you’re not doing anything wrong” cliché, but it feels hard to avoid in this instance.
Also tricky to evade is the feeling that Mr Willians knows full well exactly what PIMA would entail. Why his papers don’t report factually on this, I’ve no idea (whistles innocently).
Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood is also against the proposal, but seems to be carrying on in a far less hysterical and childish manner than his Holt Street competition. Perhaps the harbour views provide a more calming influence.
The fact that radio shock jocks can continue to spread their vile and frequently totally wrong views under the current broadcast media regulations speaks volumes as to the government’s desire to “shut down dissent” or “murder free speech” or whatever the catchphrase du jour is among the Australian branch of the Tea Party.
Lech L - last time I checked Mao is dead and Murdoch hasn’t done business with him. Or do you know something I don’t?
@John64 Do you really think that little Stephen Conroy or the little Australian government are really in control of their own destiny? You really don’t see other forces behind this at all? You can’t look at Roxon’s departure and read between the lines?
BTW, I note Kim Williams called for mature, sensible debate on the matter yesterday. Look at the latest pile of excrement dished up by the Tele today. The “apology” to Stalin is at the very least in appallingly bad taste. They’ve used the death and misery inflicted on millions during his regime so they can mock someone who doesn’t play by their rules.
Australians need to learn to defend their democratic freedom against the likes of Lech.
Perhaps the Morrison protocols can be applied.
Ordinary decent and democratic Australians need to know if they are living next to someone who thinks that they are “communists” and are plotting politically to “suppress” Australians.
A greater abuse of the good nature of the Australians who invited these paranoids into their country post WWII would be hard to find.
We could go chapter and verse on the poisoning of the body politic these desperadoes have wrought.
We see it in the steady grinding corruption of the democratic processes in either of the major parties, especially with the branch stacking.
The cynical manipulation of the “rules” to oust the sitting ACT Liberal Senator is just the last of a long series of travesties perpetrated usually with the victims being traduced as “communists”.
It was even done with Baillieu.
But if you don’t believe in democracy the ends justify the means.
I’m not an Australian so don’t have to be polite about the source of the poison.
Poisoning people whom I understand and admire, ordinary, real Australians who are being systematically preyed upon by what are, essentially, money and power hungry gangsters.
Dear moderators, do not hesitate too block these two previous posts. Not many may share my half-century of direct observations, but I am genuinely sickened by what has become of Australian democratic traditions under the onslaught of whom I regard to be ignorant and arrogant vandals from whom Australians appear to have had little immunity. Those migrants who do not fit this unfortunate mould already know who they are, understand this vandalism and are beyond any implied criticism. The others have not earned the right to complain about their original hosts, that breach of common decency is what drives my extreme views.
“It’s been sad watching the decline of Kim Williams, once the smartest, most visionary and most innovative media executive in Australia, the man who turned Foxtel 1) digital and 2) profitable in the face of a regulatory framework designed (in essence, by his competitors) to permanently hobble “
Well Bernard I am certainly not of the same view as you about Kim Williams and Foxtel. Everything in the media in Australia ends with “opoly”.
Foxtel once a oligopoly now is a duoploly and in some area a monopoly.
I understand 86 % of the newspapers are controlled by News. Everytime something independent and successful starts Murdoch just throws a bag of money at it viz. Bus Spectator.
The guy is a rolled gold meglomaniac and narcissist a la Berlusconi.
So we hand him the reins on the distribution of information!
Poor fella my country!
Lech L
“Giving government control over print media will always lead to control of what can be published”
Well derrr… yet again you miss the points raised in the original article, and those raised by commenters. Where is the “government control” in the proposal to insist that the self-appointed “self-regulatory” body actually do its self-appointed job? If tehy do not or will not, what difference does it make whether the dominant narrative of ~90% of the print and TV media is imposed by a government or a media owner plutocracy?
Aghast (well, on reflection, not surprised) to hear the ABC News Breakfast crew cover the hysterical reaction to the media laws. Every major paper’s front page was shown (sans any idea of how many owned by News Ltd) with special description of the infamous Conroy = assorted nasty dictators. This from a crew who routinely sneer and snicker about the NT News running stoopid croc front page stories. The cheery male talking head opined that “News Ltd has just about given up trying to persuade the government”. Persuade? It has become glaringly obvious that there must be an ABC directive along the lines of “don’t ever, ever accuse news Ltd of anti-Labor bias”. I’ve lost count of the number of times the ABC Brekky central crew have had News Ltd types on the show to chat about their take on the papers’ front pages. The ABC’s definition of news is “whatever is on the front page of the Australian”. That day Letita Burke was on the segment and announced that the issue was “freedom of the press!” Not in the opinion of newspaper proprietors, it just was.
Labour “under the yolk”??? Methinks ye have over-egged this piece!
If the media are still going to be regulating themselves aren’t they then the Stalinists?
Conroy seems to be setting this up so as to fail now, ahead of the election, and get the pain and press criticism over as quickly as possible with only a temporary downward blip in the polls.
He hopes it will die the death as did his Internet censorship idiocies.
I guess those are The Party instructions. It is the faceless strategists in The Party who are the threat to democracy.
Media self regulation on show this morning - at the Age online ‘Ministers turn on PM’ by Peter Hartcher.
Not only was it frog shit - readers had no opportunity to tell him so - no comments available.
When I was ‘there’ 453 people were reading the article. After the past mth of ‘Fairfax’ trying to tear Gillard down by conjecture, innuendo, speculation - enough is enough.
Gina Rhinehart doesn’t get another red cent out of me.
Self regulation has been found to be nothing short of useless. News Corp have been hacking phones and lied for years about it. Editors and executives have been sacked, jailed and charged and the paper in the UK shut down in shame.
The High Court in Australia has found that staff have lied, distorted the truth and fabricated news articles.
The Australian Presss Council has found that they have run stories that are “gravely inaccurate, unfair and offensive”
To all hating News and paper media concentration - the proper solution for ALP would be to start own newspaper and fight in the commercial arena - see how many people will buy it or if it would be distributed for free how many would read it. Start own “Pravda on Yarra” because now they can not even rely on The Age to not criticise this incompetent government.
As usually ALP is trying to confuse (remember “Fair Work” – same name for the registration authority and conciliation tribunal) having “public interest” in 2 different places. Nobody even Doug Cameron could define it means in relation to judging published material. It is what the government at the time thinks it is. The idea of replacing 75% rule with “public interest” in relation to mergers replaces clear rule with “the government appointed person e.g. super nanny Roxon, to allow companies we like to take over regional media but companies which criticise the government need not to consider any new acquisition”.