What’s in the ‘public interest’? Why the ABC is right to cover allegations of inappropriate ministerial conduct

Mick Tsikas/AAP

Alexandra Wake, RMIT University

Immediately after ABC’s Four Corners aired allegations about the conduct of government ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter, questions were raised about whether the report was in the “public interest”.

The Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, said on Q&A that Porter was “trashed” by the program, adding

What the ABC has done tonight is that it’s crashed through some media barriers and created new media barriers. How far do we go in terms of our definition of the public interest?

We need to be very careful about the damage we do to people’s reputations here and ask ourselves is that an accurate portrait or was it a caricature?

Asked about the story in a Senate committee before the story aired, ABC managing director David Anderson defended it as “absolutely” being in the public interest.

It goes to conduct of ministers, ministers of the Crown, to be held to the highest standard in society. That’s the nature of the story.

Porter has denied the claims made against against him. He had earlier discussed considering legal options against the ABC, but played that down in an interview yesterday.

---

Read more:
Why a code of conduct may not be enough to change the boys’ club culture in the Liberal Party

---

Even tawdry stories are in the public interest

Despite Porter’s protestations, the ABC clearly had an obligation to air a story that contained allegations of ministerial misconduct (however tawdry).

News reports about politicians, sex and booze are as old as time and have brought shame to many a politician, from the former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to Deputy Labor Leader Gareth Evans and the UK Secretary of War John Profumo.

The one clear duty of journalism is to hold those in power to account, and that appears to have been lost on those members of government as they reportedly attempted to pressure the ABC, its managers and journalists, over the broadcast.

Barnaby Joyce became embroiled in a scandal over his affair with his former media adviser.
Lukas Coch/AAP

Standards for those in government

Many ethical issues arise from the broadcast, the attempt to pressure the ABC and the legal threats that have followed.

Even before the program had made it to air, the ABC’s management found themselves under attack, with an excruciating Senate Estimates Committee hearing a couple of hours before the broadcast.

But it certainly wasn’t a quick piece of “gotcha” journalism with a blurry photo at its centre. The Four Corners team have an exacting process to their work. For this story, the ABC said they interviewed 200 people over several months. They also contextualised the story beyond the two central politicians to raise real concerns about the place and safety of women who work in Parliament House.

Anderson also said the allegations had been thoroughly sourced and checked legally. Those named in the story were given “ample” opportunity to respond.

Moreover, while the so-called “bonk ban” on ministers having sexual relations with their staff was only introduced by Prime Minister Malcolom Turnbull in 2018, Cabinet ministers have had rules governing their behaviour since John Howard first established a public ministerial code in 1996.

Turnbull says he warned Porter about ‘unacceptable’ behaviour with a young female staffer.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

Members of the Morrison Cabinet now sign up to a code of conduct which says they will “act with integrity” and be “open to public scrutiny and explanation”.

Specifically, there is no grey area in these ministerial standards on the point of sexual relationships with staff:

2.24. Ministers must not engage in sexual relations with their staff. Doing so will constitute a breach of this code.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison pointedly said this week that neither Porter nor Tudge were in breach of his code of conduct.

But allegations of sexual misconduct and power imbalances, even historic ones, are still clearly a cause for community concern, and cannot not be ignored by journalists or political leaders. Such matters are no longer private affairs between consenting adults.

Just ask the complainants at AMP, the former CEO of Seven in WA, or even former US president Bill Clinton.

---

Read more:
AMP doesn’t just have a women problem. It has an everyone problem

---

Action should be taken

Regardless of the salacious allegations made on the Four Corners program, there is also a point to be made about the hypocrisy of politicians who market themselves as having “family values” and demand others follow “Australian values”.

Certainly, it is not edifying to watch details of alleged impropriety by politicians broadcast on television, and it’s uncomfortable that such stories inevitably impact those who are innocently caught up in the furore (particularly partners and children).

Tudge did issue a statement saying he regretted his actions “and the hurt it has caused my family”.

---

Read more:
Is Canberra having a #metoo moment? It will take more than reports of MPs behaving badly for parliament to change

---

But with this story, Four Corners has not only produced a program that has interest from the public, it is also in the public’s interest.

There are many questions to be answered from the ministers named in the story and also those who knew about the allegations and did nothing (or even worse, promoted them).

The real outcome of this program should not be a defamation case, but rather action from Morrison. Questions over ministerial conduct are important. This is certainly a matter of public interest.

Alexandra Wake, Program Manager, Journalism, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bad politics shouldn’t sink good ideas for public interest journalism

Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University

The Senate inquiry into the future of public interest journalism began as a gleam in the media-trained eye of Labor senator Sam Dastyari. It ended on February 5, 11 days after he left parliament, his political reputation in tatters over his conduct in relation to Chinese donors to the Labor Party.

This suggests the inquiry’s recommendations are unlikely to get much traction, but the very real issues it was investigating remain unresolved. How did quality media get into such a pickle and what can be done about it?

The three main developments that fed into the inquiry were: proposed changes to media ownership restrictions; the collapse of the business model that has for years sustained print media’s profitability; and the rise of “fake news” and its influence in the 2016 Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump.

The government had made two previous attempts to change the media ownership laws created in a pre-internet age. But the effect of the changes, which were finally passed in 2017, has largely been to protect existing mainstream media companies while failing to encourage new entrants into a highly concentrated market.

Meanwhile, according the journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the collapse of the business model has prompted mainstream media companies to lay off around 25% of journalists between 2012 and 2017.

Media companies have cut costs but have been powerless to stem the flood of
advertising revenue to global behemoths Google and Facebook. Google’s market capitalisation is about half Australia’s gross domestic product, the Senate report notes.

The business model problem remains. As a result, the loss of journalistic talent and experience has led to significant gaps in reporting, especially in courts, state parliaments and local and regional reporting, according to the Civic Impact of Journalism research project.

Lack of resources has also made news organisations increasingly vulnerable to “fake news”. Indeed, it was the growing alarm about “fake news”, coupled with yet another round of redundancies at Fairfax Media, that provided Dastyari with the public and political impetus to begin his inquiry.

In addition to Dastyari, the inquiry lost two of its most knowledgeable members – Greens senator Scott Ludlam, who resigned from parliament over his dual citizenship, and Nick Xenophon, who resigned to contest a seat in next month’s South Australian election.

The Coalition government was always unlikely to pay much heed to a Labor-chaired inquiry, but in its 149-page report the senators have grappled with important public policy issues. Their eight recommendations are:

1. Adequately fund public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS.

2. Guarantee future funding for community broadcasting.

3. Embed digital media literary in the Australian curriculum.

4. Extend deductible gift recipient status to not-for-profit news media organisations who engage in public interest journalism.

5. Ask Treasury to do modelling on extending tax deductibility to all
   Australians who subscribe to news media outlets engaging in public interest
   journalism.

6. Ask the Australian Law Reform Commission to conduct an audit of current laws that hinder journalists’ ability to report on national security and border protection issues.

7. Review defamation laws.

8. Expand legal protections for whistleblowers and other confidential sources for journalists.

These ideas are all worthy of further debate. The final three recommendations all tackle crucial press freedom issues. The call for adequate funding for the ABC and SBS follows sharp cuts under the past two Coalition governments. The community broadcasting sector has also been treated with disdain.

Teaching children the value of public interest journalism, and how to distinguish it from what the public is interested in, would be a good first step to developing a generation of more savvy media consumers.

The middle two recommendations tackle the vital question of how to pay for quality journalism. One recommendation supports not-for-profit outlets while the other would potentially benefit media outlets that rely on subscriptions. The latest in a long line of industry hopes for finding a sustainable business model is to build subscription numbers.

The senators rejected submissions from numerous people and organisations recommending some form of direct subsidy from government, either for existing media companies or to encourage new entrants.

There are clearly issues here of potential government interference in editorial independence, but the senators overlooked three points. First, many other countries around the world already provide direct subsidies, as is detailed in chapter five of their report. Second, there is evidence that editorial independence can be safeguarded. Finally, there is a long history in Australia of directly subsidising the news media industry, as outlined in both this report and the Finkelstein media inquiry in 2012.

The Public Interest Journalism Foundation has suggested the government extend the model of the Australia Council and set up an independent body to fund journalism. This also seems a good idea.

Whatever happens to these recommendations, the clock is ticking. If public interest journalism continues to be starved of resources, journalists’ ability to unearth maladministration or corruption will be winnowed even further. Of course we won’t see it, because journalists won’t have been able to tell us.

As Bob Woodward of The Washington Post observed:

The central dilemma in journalism is that you don’t know what you don’t know.

Imagine a world where we didn’t know about the Watergate scandal that Woodward was first to uncover.

Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

US MINISTER PLACED IN JAIL FOR QUOTING BIBLE TO JUDGE

The Washington D.C.-based Becket Fund, a nonpartisan interfaith public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions, announced on Tuesday that a coalition of a dozen religious and civil rights groups have joined in asking a Michigan court of appeals to release a Christian minister accused of “threatening” a judge with a Bible verse, reports Catholic News Agency.

Rev. Edward Pinkney originally appeared in court for his involvement in fighting the requisition of public lakeshore by Whirlpool Corporation. Pinkney was placed under house arrest, but because he wrote an article in the Chicago-area People’s Tribune quoting the Book of Deuteronomy to say that God would punish the judge for his “wrongdoing,” the court decided to send him to jail.

After the article appeared, the trial court judge recused himself. The subsequent judge found that Pinkney’s comments were “threatening” and revoked the minister’s probation period sending him to prison for three to 10 years.

The civil rights coalition, which includes the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the American Jewish Congress, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, and Liberty Legal Institute, among others, filed a friend of the court brief asking the appeals court to overturn the trial court’s order.

“The First Amendment was designed to protect ministers speaking religious truth to political power,” said Eric Rassbach, the Becket Fund’s National Director of Litigation.

“From the colonial preachers who decried British tyranny, to the abolitionist ministers of Massachusetts to Martin Luther King Jr., our country has a proud history of allowing ministers to hold government officials to account. A court can’t punish someone for saying that the judge broke God’s law.”

“Judges don’t get to decide whether prophecies are true, even when those prophecies apply to them. Courts should stick to the law and leave theology to people of faith,” added Rassbach.

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Sales People

I have a real problem with salespeople, whether they be those that ring you on the phone or harrass you at the front door of your home. This type of real-life SPAM is just too much for me. I really have it in for it. If I want to buy something, I’ll go to your shop, give you a call or visit your online shop. I don’t need the hassle of a commercial invasion of my privacy.

Thankfully now you can get your name on a register in Australia – set up by the Australian Government – to say you don’t want telephone sellers ringing you at all hours of the day. They are supposed to listen to that. The likely scenario is that I’ll be getting increased stormtroopers at the door as a result of the register. I had my first vacuum cleaning contractor taking up that option today (they used to phone).

With the register, there are so many exceptions to the ban on people ringing those who have added their name to the register, you wonder if there is really any point to it in the long run. Why would anyone enjoy the prospect of political parties ringing you to try and convince you to vote for them – this is allowed because it is in the public interest. I have no interest in a politician ringing me and saying, ‘I’ve taken this extraordinary … (as John Howard did in the last election).’ I’m sure we will hear him trying to convince us why it is in the public’s best interest to return the government in the coming election via my telephone. If I have to ring message bank to hear that I wonder if he will be pay the bill as I didn’t ask for the disturbance? Unlikely, as the money raised from such ventures has gone to pay for his advertising via this medium in the past anyhow – you can’t win. Perhaps I can give him a call and explain to him why I have taken the extraordinary step to call him at his residence when he is relaxing at home and let him know how much I dislike many of his policies ~ I don’t think he would see the irony somehow. He certainly didn’t enjoy the ‘Chaser’ team replaying his message to him everywhere he went one day recently.

Salespeople – give us a break.