Watch the watchdog
Wendy Bacon
July 24, 2011/the AGE
Illustration: Matt Golding.
It's time for a serious debate about media freedom and the right to privacy in Australia.
ON THURSDAY, with News Corporation awash in allegations of criminality and failed corporate governance, I sent an email to John Hartigan, the chief executive of its Australian arm, News Limited.
Hartigan was in damage control. He had hastened to reassure local audiences that illegal practices such as phone hacking were not used in Australia and, in order to make sure of this, that he would carry out an independent internal audit of editorial spending.
But that missed a vital point. While no one was suggesting that phone hacking was occurring in our far-from-competitive media scene, News is a vertically and horizontally global media company.
This means that even if you were not a News of the World reader, if you bought News Ltd papers here, you could still read News of the World ''scoops'' about, say, the sexual activities of Jude Law, who is now suing The Sun and News of the World for hacking his phone.
News Ltd papers in Australia had continued to draw on News of the World stories even after the phone hacking scandal became a serious issue.
This was just one issue I had in mind when I emailed Hartigan some questions. They included: Do you consider that bias by newspapers in cities where only one company owns a newspaper could ever be an issue? How do you monitor whether fair means of reporting the news are being applied across the company? What auditing or monitoring mechanisms do you apply? Are there occasions when you do take up matters of bias with editors? Do you think that it would be a good idea if the Australian Press Council became an independent body with funding from both media and other sources, including government? ...<cont>
