Changing you bastards: On Seven and Molly Lord

After I read of the news of Seven 7’s social media blunder today, I sent out an email to my journalists. I gave them a link to Mumbrella’s story on it and told them this: Channel Seven are in the poo after deleting comments from their Facebook page. Lesson for us: Never delete a user comment from Facebook (or any social media) just because it is critical of us or our actions. Hiding criticism only makes matters worse – and it becomes the story.  Instead, we should address any criticism directly.  There is only two good reasons to delete Facebook comments: they are either defamatory or are offensive to community standards (if in doubt, let me know).

Later on, I thought of at least two more reasons to delete comments. Firstly, if there is an obvious unintentionally blunder on your own copy found immediately (call it the five second rule). Secondly if the comment is spam.  I’m sure there are other rules out there, but I stand by what I wrote to my people: don’t hide criticism. Criticism is a central plank of media behaviour but everyone notices the industry has a glass jaw when the tables are turned.

Channel Seven had the tables turned in a big way yesterday. Their Seven News Sydney Facebook page received a comment from Linda Goldspink-Lord. Goldspink-Lord announced herself as the mother of Molly Lord who was killed in an accident last week.  Molly was just 13 when she came off a quad bike in Kembla Grange, NSW. Most of the press called a “freak accident”, but as someone who has ridden on these things, I know it could easily happen. 

Goldspink-Lord said Channel Seven had found out very early on about the accident and their reporter was on the scene while the girl was still laid out on the ground.  While up to this point,  the reporter was doing his job, he overstepped when he went around the grounds – without permission. He was looking for an angle as was the Channel Seven helicopter overhead. It grabbed pictures of Goldspink-Lord sitting with her dead daughter which it aired before she had time to notify relatives. Goldspink-Lord was incensed. Channel Seven didn’t care – after all, they had all this great footage.  But they were not prepared for Goldspink-Lord’s public rebuke. “Channel 7 you are a disgrace and what should have been a private moment between a mother and get (sic) daughter was exploited for the sake of a story. You Bastards."

Channel Seven may not have liked it but its Facebook audience lapped it up. The comment was liked by 32,000 people. There were almost two thousand comments as the story span out of Channel Seven’s control.  Then they deleted the comment.  It was far too late, many had saved it for posterity and other media were onto the story. And on every story on Seven News Sydney’s own Facebook page, the conversation was hijacked by those pointing out the network's sordid role in the Goldspink-Lord business. 

Around 11am today, Seven admitted defeat.  Chris Willis, Director of News, 7 Sydney issued a statement. It read: Ms Goldspink-Lord’s comments were removed from our site in error. We apologise for that. Taking into account her understandable distress over the coverage of Molly’s death, I did ask for the footage to be taken down. That happened but unfortunately her remarks were deleted as well. They are now being restored to our Facebook page. I would also like to stress that we have re-examined our reports into Molly’s tragic death and can find no video showing Ms Goldspink-Lord hugging her daughter. We were not the only television station to visit the family’s property. Our reporter did go to the house but left immediately he was told the family wished to make no comment. Our reporters and camera crews know that grieving families have to be approached with sensitivity and compassion.

Social media commentator Lauren Papworth was spot on when she said this was corporate karma. “Transparency & accountability arent just nice to haves they are part of everyday reality,” she said. But she was on less certain ground to hail Seven’s defeat as the end of “news gathering in its traditional form”.  Seven may be a little more careful in future but in their desperate battle for ratings with Nine, will still most likely stop at nothing for a story. They will remain "you bastards".

The behaviour of these juggernauts is one of the main reasons why the Australian public’s trust in the media is the lowest in the developed world.  It is also why I see trust as the number one issue facing the industry.  Forging trust, particularly in social media where it is second nature, is critical to ongoing health. There is nothing substantial wrong in news gathering in its traditional form (other than there is not enough people to cover all of the news that needs covering) – it is dealing with the commercial pressures that dictate the selection and presentation and distortion of that news where the major problems lie.  That is where an inter-active audience can be of most help. Social media can shame wrongdoers of journalism – and we shouldn’t flinch from it.  But it remains a long way from replacing it.  

Grog rations

After reading some of Grog’s Gamut’s first posts since The Australian journalist James Massola revealed his name, I was struck by the quality of the personal detail which informed his arguments. While it was always there to some degree, it seemed Grog suddenly had more freedom to back up opinions with detailed events from his life. As a result, I tweeted last night “Reading @grogsgamut's blog with added personal experiences makes me think @jamesmassola may have actually done us all a favour.”

Grog, who has also returned to twitter, replied to me promptly: “@derekbarry they were always there - you just didn't know my name.”

I didn’t dispute either of these points. But given the way his story was "always there" I was far from surprised the pseudonymous blogger was outed when it happened. Grog’s recent rise to prominence allied to the hints about his life in his work, made me sure sooner or later his identity would be revealed. He also tempted fate by trusting Massola not to reveal something he told him months ago. And surely he knew the writing was on the wall when he appeared at Canberra Media140 in September as embedded blogger “Greg”.

I was out of the country at the time so I missed that conference and I also missed much of the heat of the Twitter firestorm generated by “#groggate”. While it was good to see social media flex its muscles against the arrogance of older players, I thought it was amusing how enthusiastically they used the journalism cliché of “-gate”.

Yet I was still angry when I heard the Australian had outed him for no apparent reason. I foresaw the likely consequences of the article - his employers would force him to cease blogging and Australia would lose a useful critical voice. Though I’d never heard of the name of “Greg Jericho”, I’ve known about the blogger called “Grog’s Gamut” for some time. His bio was of a Canberra public servant who admitted he looked nothing like his Ralph Fiennes icon. Yet this unknown part-time writer was fast becoming one of the sharpest political writers in Australia. He excelled himself in his daily coverage of the 2010 election coverage. His 31 July tour de force “bring the journalists home” article attacking poor journalistic practices caused an ABC review and put him in the wider news. But it was the Murdoch empire that was Grog’s real target and it was only a matter of time before they would launch a counterattack.

Grog said he told Massola his name ten months ago, but it wasn’t until 27 September that he was “unmasked”. Massola's article and that of his boss Geoff Elliot who defended him became notorious in the Twittersphere and a matter of much derision. While some of the criticism was over the top, neither journalist can have much complaint. They failed the basic test of newsworthiness, completely botching the justification for the outing, because there was none.

Massola’s first sentence, which should be the most important, revealed nothing new. “The anonymous blogger who prompted Mark Scott to redirect the ABC's federal election coverage is a Canberra public servant,” he wrote. It served only as a false rationale for the name in the second sentence: “Greg Jericho, a public servant who spends his days working in the film section of the former Department of Environment, Heritage, Water and the Arts.” Massola passed the blame to twitter speculation for the revelation and then attempted to justify it by saying Grog’s bias might impact the “impartial and professional” way the APS is run.

The unmasking did not sit well with the Twitterati (not least with Grog himself). They blasted Massola for his abuse of privilege, false emphasis, lack of principles and lack of care of the consequences of his actions. Massola had violated a social norm and The Australian's Media section editor Geoff Elliott was forced to come out and defend him. Elliot only succeeded in making matters worse with his pompous tone. “If you are influencing the public debate, particularly as a public servant, it is the public's right to know who you are,” he said. “It is the media's duty to report it.”

Elliot never made it clear why the public had such a right nor why it was his job to inform the public about that right, particularly when that paper has a long history of pseudonymous publication. It is not difficult to read between these few terse lines of an experienced news curator to see News Ltd’s purely political line at work aimed at destabilising a potentially dangerous enemy in a manner that was borderline unethical.

Fortunately the Australian Public Service proved Elliot and me both wrong. After a couple of weeks of silence, Grog was back online this week. He may not “deserve anonymity” that Elliot summarily stripped him of but he certainly deserved to have a voice. His employers took into account he steered well clear of his own policy area in his writing. They took the sensible position no one of reasonable mind could confuse Grog’s views with those of his employers.

Reading the newest Grog/Greg musings shows he remains fiercely partisan. His opinions haven’t changed but I detected a greater willingness to use life experiences as collateral because now he could do so without fear of consequence. Though Grog has denied this, it was this new explanatory power I sensed which made me think Massola had, quite unintentionally, done us all a favour.

Cameraman takes the rap for Nine's shoddy practices

On Wednesday last week, Channel Nine Melbourne sacked one of its news cameramen Simon Fuller after an incident on the streets with a man named Gad Amr on 1 April. On that day Gad’s son Omar Amr, 19, was released by Melbourne Magistrates Court on strict bail conditions after being accused of a riot in the suburb of Oakleigh last month in which drag-race fans trashed a Bob Jane T-Mart store. Amr and two fellow defendants Hussein Alameddine and Aziz Elbayehare are due to reappear in court on 27 July. (photo: ABC)

The Oakleigh riot was instigated by the cancellation of a proposed Easter drag race at Calder Park which was sponsored by Bob Jane T-Marts. On 19 March Disappointed fans took to the streets to protest the decision but became violent when it came upon a Bob Jane T-Mart store in Oakleigh. The store was torched and looted and the owner was lucky to escape with minor injuries. Hundreds of drag racing fans trashed the store, broke windows and stole car parts from inside, forcing bystanders to flee for safety.

Although the three charged on 1 April were all middle-eastern, there was no suggestion the riot was in any way racially motivated. However it is likely the Amrs felt they were being unfairly treated as Channel Seven and Nine camera operators followed them down the street after their court appearance. Such behaviour by camera operators may be unedifying, but it is hardly unusual. The pedestrian parade is a staple of TV news court reporting usually with the suspect / victim covering their face as they walk away quickly from the camera.

It is difficult to say exactly why this case differed from the thousands like it that have taken place near Australian courthouses. Occasionally they turn violent if the victim feels the camera crews have taken too many liberties but mostly people just try to get away from the situation as quickly as they can. The situation is unlikely to change any time soon as news directors insist on footage from this charade as part of their court coverage. It was Channel Nine cameraman Simon Fuller’s job to follow the Amrs out of the court room and grab footage of Omar for that night’s news.

When confronted by Gad Amr and asked to stop filming, Fuller’s automatic reply was “I’m just doing my job”. Fuller was mostly right. In following Amr down the street he was doing his job. The question is whether he was “just” doing that. In the footage of the incident dissected by Media Watch Jonathan Holmes said “at most he needed a couple of shots of the pair. You'd think he'd have got enough by now.”

So why did Fuller keep shooting? It would appear from that moment on, it became personal for Amr and Fuller. Amr came close to Fuller as if threatening (this was the only footage of the incident shown by an opportunistic Channel Seven whose own camera operator was also following the action). Fuller became defensive saying “You don't touch me” and “You don't touch people” before retreating to his Nuremberg Defence of “We're just doing our jobs.” As Holmes said “You don't touch people. But it's fine, apparently, to stick a camera in their faces for minutes on end while they walk down a public street.”

As the argument continued, it degenerated further into a swearing match. The son Omar, called Fuller “a fucking knuckle” to which Fuller replied “you fucking terrorist”. It is likely that this insult cost Fuller his job. After Media Watch got hold of the footage and contacted Channel Nine, they were told Fuller was “stood down pending the completion of an investigation”. Two days later he was sacked.

In my view, Fuller was a scapegoat. There was much he did wrong. He filmed the Amrs for too long but probably figured his employers would love the image of the aggressive middle easterners attacking an “innocent” media person. (The irony is that this is exactly what rivals Channel Seven and Ten did with the footage while Nine did not show any of it.) His racist attack on the Amrs of “fucking terrorist” was incredibly stupid and unsurprisingly provocative though the Amrs' own behaviour (particularly the son Omar’s) in the incident was not beyond reproach either. However it could be argued Fuller's obscenity was heat of the moment stuff that could have been dealt with a rebuke and a personal apology to the Amrs.

I believe Fuller is now unemployed not because he did all those things but because his behaviour was publicly revealed. He besmirched Nine not because he overstepped the mark but because he was caught making a racial slur. I very much doubt Channel Nine no longer condone camera operators “just doing their job” when they invade the privacy of people walking down the street. Individuals need to be responsible for their actions, but their employers must be clear about what is expected of them. Fuller, in my view, is a scapegoat for rotten corporate practices. Nine will feel good about themselves but they will continue to harass members of the public in the interest of news ratings.

For a vigorous rebuttal of my take on this, I am indebted to Jo White, an American-based Australian journalist, critic and researcher who goes by the online name of Mediamum. When I called Fuller a scapegoat on Twitter, White said he got what he deserved and it was people like him that gave journalists such a bad reputation. “What he did was unethical, reprehensible and about as bad as journalism gets,” wrote White. “He should have been sacked fifty times.” White said he got involved in the story, abused his position and denied the “terrorist” slur was a heat of the moment offence. “The problem is each Journalist should take responsibility for their own actions and not hide behind employers,” she wrote. “Sacking Fuller won't solve the problem. But it gets rid of one albeit small representation of it.”

Two months in: Thoughts of a new journalist

In the preface to his book “Not for Publication”, ABC journalist Chris Masters noted how the practice of journalism was imprecise. Masters said journalists are constantly in a rush “calculating the odds of what will become objective truth, based on limited primary information and intelligence.” Faced with this apparently insurmountable difficulty, Masters concluded that journalists survive only by “being right more often than not”. In this world of limitless possibilities and limited time and information, it is judgement that sets apart a good journalist from a mediocre one. (photo of Roma Saleyards by Derek Barry)

Barely two months into my career as a journalist, I have no idea yet which side of the fence I’m going to end up on. I’m confident that in the dozens of stories I’ve written so far I’ve been right more often than I’ve been wrong. But the wrong ones are more memorable because they have consequences that you know about. Very few people ring in to tell you how wonderful such and such a story was (though it has happened and I’m delighted when it happens). But I always know when I get it wrong. People ring in, write in or arrive at the office telling me exactly how and where I got a matter wrong. I’ve had people in tears, people irate, and people shaking their head at the obvious venality of journalists and all because I printed something in the newspaper that was wrong, or misquoted someone or misspelt a name or missed a vital detail.

Imprecision is a daily hazard in a busy environment. And the fact is that much of the news I report has unsavoury consequences for someone, so I can face abuse even when I get the facts right. The other day, a young woman crashed her car into a bottle tree on a nearby street. The car was a write-off but the woman wasn’t seriously hurt. We found out about it and took some photos of the ambulances and police. Someone told us her name and we printed that in the story including an eye-witness account that she was seen running across the road to where her boyfriend works.

Today the lady appeared in the office with her Mum and both were visibly upset and angry. The girl said we had made a laughing stock of her and “everyone knew about it”. Her Mum wanted to know why we printed the name when other reports didn’t have that detail. I defended the story as factually accurate and said we were duty bound to our readers to print the name if we knew it. After 15 minutes of heated discussion, they left slightly mollified but still very unhappy.

Are newspapers really that powerful still that my words can have such a reaction? The answer is obviously yes. I was in a pub last night where I struck up a conversation with a young Canadian lad who had just started in the oil industry here in Roma. He was initially willing to have a friendly chat but when I told him I was a journalist, he immediately clammed up. “I’m not allowed to talk to the media,” he told me. I wasn’t after him for a story but both he and I realised the conversation was finished. The oil and gas industries are not alone in their press paranoia. All the big companies and government departments here have similar rules. No-one from council (except the mayor, CEO and communications officer) can talk to me, nor can anyone from the department of health.

And so when there is a problem such as that arose last week at Roma Hospital with mass resignations of doctors, I found it difficult to get at an objective truth of what happened. I couldn't speak to anyone at the hospital and got shunted to a media unit in Brisbane where I got a carefully crafted, bland and heavily spun message that only vaguely approximated to the truth. It may not have been Queensland Health’s fault that the doctors resigned but their caginess in providing an answer only serves to increase suspicion there is a problem. And so media policies designed to keep an organisation “on message” usually turn out to be counter-productive. Journalists and the public become cynical when constantly provided a diet of unrelenting positivity. And those with a genuine grievance within the organisation will spill the beans anonymously (as has happened at Roma Hospital) and often with a lot more openness than if they were allowed to speak freely on the record.

I’m making it sound like I am not enjoying myself here and nothing could be further from the truth. I love the town and I am delighted people are reading my work and engaging with it. I get a kick out of that and hope that The Western Star is providing a genuinely useful service of describing Roma and the surrounding district to itself. But in the absence of objective truth, I certainly need to develop a thicker skin about criticism and get over my unrealistic desire to please everyone. It is simply impossible. But some things are possible. Getting people’s names right 100 percent of the time would be a useful start. It would not only eliminate a lot of criticism, it is also a basic courtesy to the reader.

Dealing with rape: Kyle and Jackie take the fall for Austereo

(photo by Ghindo)

Last night I wrote on Justin O’Brien’s speech at QUT about how business needed to embrace ethics to avoid the next financial crisis. O’Brien said it needed to be done holistically and not only does corporate culture need changing but so does that of the governments, the lawyers, the economists, and the media too. Unsurprisingly, this is a rather large ask. The Austereo affair involving Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O'Neil shows the low base we are currently working from.

Radio 2Day FM station owner Austereo have successfully used schadenfreude to gain audiences for several years, and Kyle and Jackie were brilliant at it. The pair knew exactly how much you could get people to laugh along when someone slipped on a banana skin. The trick was making sure those falling never got the sympathy of the audience. To make it work, the radio station bribed the victims to go on air and be ritually humiliated. That way it could be said that when the victim got hurt, it was their own fault.

Kyle and Jackie’s particular brand of on-air schtick made them very popular. 11 percent of the Sydney audience enjoyed what Sandilands called their “having fun flashing around some boobs and willies.” This eleven percent contributed greatly to Austereo’s very tidy bottom line which encouraged management to conveniently overlook the occasionally untidy outcomes. Such as that of the two Cambodian sisters whom Austereo paid to re-unite in Australia on the condition they play a game of luck. If they lost the game, the overseas sister would be sent home without a meeting. As exposed by Media Watch last night, the sisters did lose the game and their teary fate was decided on the capricious whim of the hosts to whom they were encouraged to wheedle and beg. Great radio perhaps, but deeply distressing for those involved.

But occasionally victims fight back. Last week a terrified 14 year old girl was treated shabbily by her mother, strapped to a lie detector test by the station, and asked on air by Kyle about her sex life. Somehow in the middle of that terror, the young girl changed the power dynamic. By openly telling Sydney’s largest rating radio program she was raped at twelve, she stunned the hosts out of their idiocy and turned them into the butt of the story. Sandilands’ infamous not sequitur response was proof positive that rape is a consequence of men using the notion of 'not knowing' as a device to absolve blame. On Thursday he told The Punch her revelation stunned him and he did everything to get her off the air. Plausible deniability.

But neither Kyle not anyone else asked why the girl got raped. Perhaps the answer is buried in this dirty little secret: Australia is one of the worst countries in the world for rape, person for person. There are almost eight rapes for every ten thousand people in Australia. Only South Africa and the Seychelles have higher rates among 65 of the world’s highest developed countries.

According to the ABS’s 2005 figures there were 329,000 sexual assaults in Australia that year. Yet the same report said that in the 12 months prior to survey that 44,100 people aged 15 and over – 0.3 percent of the population - were victims of at least one sexual assault in 2005. It was not possible to view the data for those aged 14 and under. But even accounting for the fact that some of the missing 285,000 were multiple victims, the data would suggest that perhaps large proportion of those missing sexual assaults occurred on those under 15.

But there is no profit for Austereo in finding out the truth behind these numbers. The owners of 2Day FM station rely greatly on Kyle and Jackie’s grubby behaviour for its market success. The lucrative Sydney station is responsible for close to $45 million, almost a fifth of Austereo’s total ad revenue. Sandilands and O’Neill’s breakfast program is a ratings winner with 11 per cent of the audience and drop of one percent can hit the bottom line by $5 million.

The affair has been a good kick up the arse for Austereo CEO Michael Andersen. He announced last month he is standing down in 2010. Andersen had been in the job for six years and his reign roughly coincided with the rise of Kyle and Jackie. All three have made plenty of money in that time. Austereo’s EBITDA in 2008 was $94.7m (up from 2007’s $88.3). Last year's annual report puts down its growth “the strength of its on-air personalities, coupled with a focus on the topics that really matter to people.”

This week Austereo and Andersen were the unwelcome focus of some of those topics that really matter to people. Of first importance in this case is the allegation of rape and that needs to be tested in the courts. But given the gender discrimination and patriarchy in law, there lies a more potent question beyond of how society manages to cure that particular cancer. This is a matter for all of us to consider.

Businesses such as Austereo may believe this is not something that concerns them. But they were made to think otherwise when the complaints started to target Optus over their sponsorship arrangements. Faced with big business loss of face, the writing was on the wall for Kyle and Jackie. It remains to be seen whether they become scapegoats or are symptoms of a new ethical approach. The signs are not good for virtue ethics. Given that Austereo have gutted their newsrooms and ACMA would appear to be a toothless regulator it is difficult to see where cultural change is going to come from.

Perhaps the most hopeful sign is that 89 percent of the audience didn’t listen to that crap.

Law professor calls for ethical approach to solve financial crisis

Irish law professor Justin O’Brien told a public lecture in Brisbane tonight that the cause of the global financial crisis was a failure of ethics. Speaking at QUT Gardens Point, O’Brien said the financial services bloodbath was no accident and could easily be repeated if all parties including governments, business, lawyers and the media do not change their ethical behaviours.

Justin O’Brien was promoting his new book called “Engineering a Financial Bloodbath: How Sub-Prime Securitisation Destroyed the Legitimacy of Financial Capitalism”. He is a research professor at QUT’s Faculty of Law & Faculty of Business and the lecture investigated the origins and implications of the securitisation crisis that swept the world in 2008.

He began by exploring the roots of financial capitalism in three books that all emerged towards the end of World War II. The 1944 Hayek book “The Road to Serfdom” promoted free market economics and was the inspiration for Thatcherite and Reaganite reforms. In comparison Karl Polonyi’s The Great Transformation written around the same time argued that laissez-faire capitalism causes massive social dislocation. Joseph Schumpeter explored a third approach in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy that saw capitalism transforming into advanced socialism.

The warning from these books was that economics would become detached from society with the rise of the market economy. This disconnect was almost complete by the middle part of this decade with the rampant greed disguised by the boom times. O’Brien disputed that the crisis that began to emerge in late 2007 was a “perfect storm” or that “there was no one to blame”. The problem was that almost everything that happened was legal and regulatory bodies did little except follow formal rules and principles. Those rules were interpreted within specific corporations for their own maximum advantage without any thought of the ethics involved.

Flawed governance mechanisms enhanced the need for short-term profit at the expense of the large picture. There were flawed financial models including securitisation (the process that re-packages assets into securities which are sold to investors). No one came out of it well. There were few internal controls, poor quality attestation by auditors, a lack of legal due diligence, poor calls by rating agencies, and a lack of investigation by the fourth estate. Social norms were destroyed by rampant greed.

The result is an electorate (particularly in the US, the UK and Ireland) where no one knows why the crisis happened. The anger is palpable and political and economic trust has been badly eroded. O’Brien said the focus needs to shift from government to governance to accountability to responsibility and finally to integrity. This requires inter-disciplinary collaboration and a move to behavioural economics. O’Brien discussed the New Institutional Economics (NIE) framework which frames economic activity in the wider social sphere.

What was needed is integrity which is a cluster concept consisting of actions, values and ethics. For example, lawyers can not simply get away with just knowing the law. There are moral and social responsibilities. O’Brien suggested three approaches. Firstly there is Kant’s categorical imperative which states that people’s actions should always correspond to a universally applied rule and people should never use people for our own benefit. Secondly there is the utilitarian approach that looks to the consequences of actions. Securitisation was not wrong in itself, said O’Brien, the problem was the way it was used. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, there is virtue ethics with its emphasis on the moral dimension.

Only when all three ethical approaches are used can the sins of omission, commission and collusion that caused the GFC be tackled. O’Brien noted that the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) has recently completed a review of its operations focussing on outcomes. But its success depends on business embracing its reform agenda. O’Brien called it ASIC's reform a “Trojan Horse” for moving forward. All professional groups, he said, must recognise ownership for ethical failure and look towards a new code of conduct. Companies must work with the regulators to weed out problems, which although possibly legal, have ethically difficulties that might contain the seed for the next crisis. Quite simply, said O’Brien, it was a moral issue.

Hartigan apologies over fake Hanson photos

News Ltd’s Australian CEO has admitted his newspapers were wrong to publish nude photos they falsely claimed to be Pauline Hanson. Speaking at an Australian Right to Know coalition conference in Sydney, John Hartigan said there were two tests of judgement the editor had to make when publishing the photos. Firstly, were they in the public interest and was it an invasion of her privacy. And secondly were the photos genuine. “Regrettably, it failed the test,” he said.

I assume by that last remark, Hartigan means it failed the second test. However, without seeing the transcript of the speech, I am not sure if he addressed the News Ltd failings on the first point. Because even if the 30 year old photos were genuine (which they are not), it is arguable that they were a strong invasion of privacy. And as lawyer Helen Dale argues, this matter could be the test case which has the potential to lead to the development of a tort of invasion of privacy in Australia.

The photos, published on 15 March, also failed the public interest part of the test. Why is it important what Hanson was doing when she was a teenager? The initial News Ltd answer to that question was “That's for our readers to tell. That will be determined by the number of people that buy the paper.” The speaker, Helen McCabe (deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph) had made the old mistake of confusing the public interest with matters of interest to the public. The impact of titillation on circulation had trumped ethical responsibility.

But while the boss was apologising yesterday, Hartigan’s minions were muddying the waters about who was responsible for the mess. The News Ltd stable was claiming yesterday that doubts had “emerged” about Jack Johnson’s credibility. They were also blaming the middleman who put Johnson in touch with the Sunday Telegraph. According to this week’s Media Watch, Johnson began his move into the public eye a few weeks ago when he was searching for someone to buy his photos. The man he found was Sydney’s most notorious paparazzo Jamie Fawcett.

Fawcett met Johnson and showed interest in the photos. He commissioned veteran British tabloid journalist Frank Thorne to interview Johnson and write a story to sell with the pictures. Johnson had demanded anonymity from Fawcett but Thorne told him [Johnson] this was impossible. During the interview Johnson also made the ludicrous claim he had destroyed compromising photos of Therese Rein. Thorne was becoming suspicious and tried to tell Fawcett of his concerns. But Fawcett went ahead anyway and emailed the fake Hanson images to News Ltd, which they published a day later without checking any of the key facts. Fawcett promised Johnson $10,000 for selling the photos.

A day later, Hanson denied the photos were of her and the story quickly unravelled. In an interview with Sydney’s 2UE radio breakfast program last week, Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen said: “I knew on Saturday when I had those photos and I knew that if I published something like that and they're wrong then I'm in huge trouble.” They also withheld payment of the $10,000 to Johnson until he could provide them the original slides. Johnson has not yet obliged.

This week, the Sydney Sunday Telegraph took a very late decision to admit it was in the wrong. Neil Breen spoke directly to Hanson: I’ve said all week that I’d be the first person to apologise to you if you if it were proven the pictures we published last weekend were not of you. I am now convinced we have the proof they were presented to us as part of an elaborate con. So Pauline, I am sorry. We should never have published them."

The Sunday Herald-Sun also printed an apology. They say the paper was conned by Johnson and Fawcett but admitted “that does not absolve us of responsibility for the decision to publish the photographs.” The paper called it a serious error of judgement and accepted they did not check basic facts about the photographs and Johnson’s background prior to publication. “We acknowledge Ms Hanson was right all along - and we were wrong,” said the Melbourne paper.

But in the same edition, the Herald-Sun launched the counter-attack against Johnson. They said Jack Johnson not only offered the faux-photos of Hanson to “paparazzi agent Jamie Fawcett”, but also offered similar photographs of Kevin Rudd’s wife Therese Rein in exchange for cash. Rein was supposedly posing in lingerie next to the Sultan of Brunei - a claim, says the paper, “that was plainly ridiculous”. They painted Johnson as a loser: “a desperate figure who lives on a public-housing estate in western Sydney”.

The Sunday Telegraph went further and plastered a picture of Johnson on their front page. They also said that Fawcett did not disclose the information about the supposed Rein photos to The Telegraph. “If he did,” they said, “the paper's approach to the pictures would have been quite different.” But my guess is that the paper didn’t want to investigate too hard. They were happy knowing they were onto a circulation winner once they combined the themes of “Hanson” and “nude”. Johnson is now a convenient whipping boy for their gamble.

Andrew Landeryou is also keen to blame Johnson for the debacle. On Vexnews he claims the fake Hanson pictures are sourced from a 1982 Danish porn magazine. The female’s name is not known but she apparently appeared alongside an actor whose stage name was “Long Dong Silver”. While the provenance of the name is obvious, Landeryou coyly suggests he would “rather not know.” However he is more straightforward in defending the Telegraph for printing the photos. “Those keen to denigrate the Sunday Tele…should consider carefully whether it is the criminal who is to blame in a fraud case or the victim of the fraud,” he said. “The newspaper’s mistake should be kept in proportion.” No, Andrew - the mistake is perfectly in proportion; it is, like Long Dong, a whopper.

Peter Singer Lecture in Brisbane

This evening I joined several hundred others attending a lecture by the philosopher Peter Singer. Singer was speaking at a Brisbane 2009 Ideas Festival event at the State Library of Queensland. The event was timed to launch his new book "The life you can save: Acting now to end world poverty". The book is about what people in the Western world should be doing about the crisis of the extreme poor.

The 62 year old Australian born Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University's Centre for Human Values. He also lectures at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Introducing him tonight, the Vice Chancellor of Griffith University Professor Ian O’Connor described him as “one of Australia’s greatest thinkers” and someone who in his 25 books has set the agenda in ethics and causes his audience to ponder their own role in the global community. O’Connor said there was a congruence in his material and the way Singer lives his own life and all royalties from the sale of the new book were going to Oxfam.

Singer then took the stage and said he was honoured to speak at the first public event of this year’s ideas festival. He said his contribution would be a discussion of what our obligations are to those people living in extreme poverty. Singer said this was something he had thought about all his professional life. He tackled the subject in one of his earliest articles “Famine, Affluence and Morality” (ppt) which was published in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs in 1972 and said it was a “novel idea at the time” for philosophers to tackle the issues of the day.

The article was published just twelve months after the crisis in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) which was agitating for independence from the western wing. Millions fled the violence into India which at the time did not have the resources to feed them. The richer nations were not giving nearly enough to sustain them. At the time Singer was living in Oxford and employed by the University. He felt that by giving money to Oxfam, he personally could do something to help the Bangladeshi people who were in “desperate straits”. This began a lifelong commitment of giving to the aid agency.

Meanwhile the 1972 article began to be discussed and its ideas reprinted elsewhere. It kicked off a debate that Singer followed closely. He returned to the topic in his 1979 book Practical Ethics. More recently he realised that the issue had risen in the public consciousness and that given the amount of recent literature he would devote an entire book to the subject. Singer said “the time was right” to bring attention to the matter as the capacity of the developed world to combat poverty had drastically increased in the last 30 years.

Singer then challenged the assumption that think global poverty is always going to be with us and there is not much we can do about it. However the World Bank (which defines extreme poverty as living on $1.25 or less a day) says that in the last 30 years the proportion of the world’s poor has halved from 40 percent of the total population to 20 percent.

These people have no buffer for when things go wrong. All it takes is a poor harvest or an illness in the family to push them over the edge. The most heartbreaking aspect of this poverty, said Singer, is knowing a child is sick and a cure is available but not being able to afford it, or travel to where the cure is available. The lack of a small amount of money can ruin lives. This is where the West can make a difference, says Singer. Everyone he meets in the US or Australia has spare resources. “If you drink bottled water or juice wherever there is a tap, then you are spending money on luxuries,” he said. "We all have the capacity to contribute to organisations that promote sustainable development and help people get out of poverty in their own ways".

Singer then addressed the question of how much money people should donate. Should they donate all of their discretionary spend, or keep going until they themselves are on the poverty line? That would be heroic, he said, “but not something I would do myself”. Singer suggested that those earning up to $105,000 a year should donate one percent of their income. Above that it should be scalable; beginning at five percent while those above $250,000 should donate 10 percent. He said that if this scale was commonplace, it would easily raise the amount economist Jeffrey Sachs said would be needed for the world to meet the UN Millennium Development goals established in 2000 which aimed to halve world poverty by 2015.

Singer urged Australians to go to the website associated with the new book where they could pledge to meet the standard donation based on their income bracket. Singer said a hundred people had already pledged (and there were 149 at the time of writing a few hours later) and he expects this number to grow exponentially as the book is released in the US next month and Europe in the months after. By pledging, Singer said, people will also help change the public standard of what is involved in living an ethical life in a world of great affluence and extreme poverty.

Singer concluded his talk by taking questions from the floor. One person asked why he concentrated on individual donations and not those of governments. Singer responded by saying that while Australia’s aid budget had gone up from 30c to 32c in every $100 under the current government, it was still below the pre-election pledge of 50c, and well below the $1 donated by the likes of Sweden. Government aid is often also tied to conditions or goods and services purchased in the country and is also usually locally directed. Australia, for example, gives hardly any aid to sub-Saharan Africa. By contrast, individual aid to NGOs is usually better targetted.

Another good question related to motivation: why should I donate? Singer said that some people donate because “it is the right thing to do”. Others want to prevent bad things from happening the world. He also cited Henry Sidgwick’s “point of view of the universe” which enables people to lift themselves out of their own perspective. Finally he acknowledged an egoistic element in that helping others gives people’s own lives meaning. Singer called this practice “enlightened self-interest”.

Another questioner asked Singer whether anyone in Australia qualifies in the category of “extreme poverty”. Singer said no, even the poorest here are entitled to financial support. There is a social security net that provides a certain standard of health care, safe drinking water, and shelter. Together these entitlements put them above the extreme poverty line. The extremely poor are mostly in Africa (50 per cent of the total population) and also in the South Asia sub-continent (33 per cent – but largest overall in absolute numbers). The very poor, as UNICEF states, “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.” Singer is on a mission to change that.

Abortion and moral equivalence

The Irish Medicines Board (IMB) has warned women against buying the abortion pill RU486 online. RU486 or Mifepristone is widely available in the UK under strict medical supervision but is not authorised for use in Ireland. However Irish women have now started to illegally purchase the pill online avoiding the need to travel to Britain for an abortion. The IMB and customs officers have been monitoring packages coming into Ireland on a continuous basis.

The drug has been promoted by Rachel’s Vineyard, a group which offers weekend retreats for healing after abortion. The group’s director Bernadette Goulding said the drug is used frequently in Ireland. "I've had young women coming to me who would have taken that drug,” she said. “The women would have taken the tablets themselves and aborted at home.” The strictness of Ireland’s anti-abortion laws means that over 6,000 Irish women travel to Britain every year to terminate their pregnancies. Abortion is proscribed by article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution which was amended by referendum in 1983 to read “"The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right."

However Ireland is far from being the only country where the abortion debate rages. The UK is examining its first legal change on the subject in twenty years. The Daily Telegraph reports that “hundreds of MPs” are to vote to lower the abortion limit to 20 weeks. Abortion has been legal in Britain (but not Northern Ireland) since 1967 and has allowed abortion under 28 weeks to avoid injury to the mother or existing children. In 1990 the time limit was reduced to 24 weeks for most cases to reflect improving medical technology. Now further advances are driving the push to reduce it again to 20 weeks. Labour pro-lifer Joe Benton said, "I do think many more MPs…will vote for 20 weeks because late abortion seems less acceptable now that the viability of the foetus is much better as a result of advances in medical science."

Despite its reputation as America’s biggest hot button issue, it is pleasing to note that it is not resonating with the southern voters of Virginia despite attempts by Robert G. Marshall to make it the centrepiece of his campaign for the Republican nomination for Senate. Marshall is one of three Republican hopefuls looking to replace retiring Senator John W. Warner. Marshall has tried to exploit the pro-life community telling people they are "not conservative enough" if they support abortion in cases of rape and incest. But a party insider told the Washington Times that if the Republicans focus solely on this issue, they are “going to get our clocks cleaned”.

Here in Australia the abortion debate has been as passionate as anywhere else despite most opinion polls showing overwhelming support for the right of a woman to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. The 2006 decision for the Therapeutic Goods Administration to approve RU486 rather than the Liberal Health Minister Tony Abbott prompted a stormy and emotional parliamentary debate and conscience vote. RU486 is not an abortion drug however, it kills the foetus, though it may have adverse health effects on the mother.

Abbott, a strong Catholic, had publicly criticised the abortion rate in Australia saying in 2004 that 25 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion three quarters of which were funded by Medicare. After that year’s election he announced a desire to limit taxpayer-funded abortion. Abortion is state law in Australia so Abbott could not directly intervene to change abortion law but the federal government could have stopped the Medicare funding. In the end, however Abbott was rebuffed by his boss John Howard who was aware of the potential electoral repercussions. Abbott later said he did not support removing the Medicare safety net and supported abortion that was “safe, legal and rare”.

This is not a view shared by the leaders of Abbott’s Church. Pope John Paul II’s 1995 Evangelium Vitae declared all direct abortion to be a “grave moral disorder”. But the reality is that community views are not so clear cut. As the Jesuit Frank Brennan puts it in his book “Acting on Conscience”, the majority of citizens do not morally equate the “disposing of a beaker full of embryos” with partial-birth abortions on “near viable foetuses”. Problems emerge over the decision of where to draw this line.

Brennan argues that the pro-choice and the pro-life lobbies are actually in agreement in that they both refuse to countenance that there is a moral difference between the two extremes. For the pro-choicers, partial-birth abortion (usually over 20 weeks) is permissible no matter what the tangible and visible effects while the right-to-lifers argue that community revulsion over partial birth procedures should be translated into a blanket ban on all direct abortion. As Brennan says, it becomes a “winner take all argument” where either all is permitted or none.

Brennan also castigated the stance of the American bishops who threatened 2004 Democrat (and Catholic) presidential nominee John Kerry with excommunication for his pro-choice stance. For some US bishops, Kerry’s stance was a greater crime against conscience than non-Catholic George W. Bush’s reluctance to waive executions as governor of Texas or his decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003. These bishops urged Catholics not to vote for Kerry. Brennan pointed out that “singling out voters for Kerry from voters for Bush is so morally selective as to be political, being perceived to be partisan”.

The case against abortion in the US is undermined, says Brennan, by the numbers of Catholics having and performing abortions. Even if Roe v Wade was overturned, it is unlikely that many jurisdictions would recriminalise all abortion from the moment of conception precisely because there is no moral consensus on when a life begins. There is a big difference between the withdrawal of an embryo from the womb and what Brennan emotively calls the “dismembering and killing [of] a near viable foetus who is only days and inches from a life protected by law and respected by society”.

Toohey returns Walkley in protest at permit system changes

Today’s Media section of The Australian led with the story of journalist Paul Toohey returning his Walkley award in protest at the proposed code of conduct for journalists entering and reporting on Aboriginal communities. Toohey, the newspaper’s Northern Territory reporter, said he sent back his award to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) which represents journalists. Toohey said the MEAA was “actively working against media freedom in favour of what it mistakenly believes are the interests of Aborigines”.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin had asked the MEAA to provide input to legal changes proposed by the new Labor government. The union response was a draft code of conduct which would require journalists to report to Aboriginal Councils and police when they enter Indigenous communities. The MEAA has called Toohey’s protest a beat up and said the new code was not “an onerous requirement”.

The story began after Howard’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough’s NT intervention last year when he scrapped the permit system to visit Aboriginal lands. He was supported at the time by NT journalists who believed that the system encouraged secrecy and lack of accountability. However the MEAA advocated retention of the system. The Rudd Government has now wound back some of Brough’s initiatives and brought back an amended permit system. Critically, governments and journalists would be excluded from the rule.

However the government did want to see a code introduced to govern journalist conduct. The MEAA outlined their idea of a code of conduct in a letter to the government released on 7 March, which said the proposed changes would allow journalists access to Aboriginal community subject to “certain conditions”. It proposed journalists carry proof of their occupation, report to the police and the council on arrival in the community, respect sacred sites, respect privacy, and attend a seminar on cultural sensitivities.

Toohey objected to two of these conditions. He said reporting intentions to the police and council could be counter-productive if the journalist was there to investigate the authorities. Toohey asked “would the MEAA suggest to correspondents in China that they should first consult authorities before seeking out Tibetan dissidents?” He was also scathing of the requirement to attend a cultural seminar which he called “meaningless bleeding-heart bullshit that won't teach anyone how to talk with a fellow human”. Toohey believes it should be sufficient for journalists to follow the 12 point MEAA Code of Ethics when visiting Aboriginal communities.

Writing for Crikey, Margaret Simons believes Toohey is overreacting. She says the code has not yet been approved and in any case would be voluntary. She also says the majority of the code is not objectionable. The only point in the code Simons didn’t like was also picked up by Toohey. This is the need to report to police and council and informing them what they are doing in the community. Defending the move, Fairfax NT reporter Lindsay Murdoch (who drafted the recommendations) says the reference to the police is negotiable but argued that informing the council of a journalist’s presence is current practice.

Meanwhile Simons called Toohey’s protest “premature and melodramatic”. Toohey won his award for magazine feature writing in 2002 for an article called “Highly Inflammable” in the Weekend Australian Magazine about the scourge of petrol sniffing in Aboriginal communities. In his article, Toohey explored the links between petrol sniffing and consequences such as aggression, violence (including murder), theft and property damage. These in turn bring most sniffers in front of the justice system.

In 2001, Toohey told ABC’s Media Report that working in Darwin has given him a different sense of news. He said that a lot of that news came from the 35 per cent of the Territory’s population which was Aboriginal. He said he was conscious of being a white reporter working in black communities. “In a lot of these communities, people would never have seen The Australian for instance,” he said. “Sometimes you feel a little guilty about using the information they've provided you, guilty in the sense that they don't know what they're up for here, but you try and explain that”.

Suicide Tourism: A one way ticket to Euthanasia Central

Germans are flocking across the border to Switzerland looking for the right to die. Switzerland is one of the few European countries where euthanasia is legal. Since 1942, Swiss doctors can terminate a life if three conditions are satisfied: documented proof of the existing disease, the lack of protest from relatives and a signed contract, confirming that the decision is voluntary and invariable. Because the service is not limited to Swiss citizens, a suicidal tourism trade has developed for those who don’t need the money for a return ticket. Four companies have been set up to perform the service for about €5,000 and one of the companies Dignitas say that 120 of their 196 customers in 2006 were from Germany where the laws are tougher.

Germany is not the only jurisdiction that is less forgiving than the Swiss. In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Robert Latimer is serving a life sentence for killing his disabled daughter during what he says was an act of compassionate euthanasia. Latimer openly admitted his “guilt” and two juries convicted him of second-degree murder in the 1993 death of his 12 year old daughter, who was a 12 year old quadriplegic functioning at the level of a three-month-old. Latimer killed her by leaving her in his truck with the motor running and a hose from the tail pipe extended into the cab, while the rest of the family was at church. Critics of leniency for Latimer worried that a Supreme Court “soft” decision would send a signal that euthanasia was acceptable. The Supreme Court upheld the life decision in 2001.

Mercy killing is also illegal in India. In 2004, the Andhra Pradesh High Court rejected a plea from K. Venkatesh, a former national chess champion battling a neurological disorder, who asked to be taken off his life support system. Because of Venkatesh’s case and others, an MP named C.K. Chandrappanhas introduced the Euthanasia (Permission and Regulation) Bill, 2007, in the Indian parliament. If passed, it would provide for a humane and painless death of an individual suffering from an incurable disease. “If there is no hope of recovery for a patient, it is only humane to allow him to put an end to his pain and agony in a dignified manner” said Chandrappanhas.

The Indian bill has incurred the wrath of right to life groups such as the Bangalore-based Respect for Life India. They say the bill is unacceptable both from an ethical and moral standpoint. Right to lifers emphasise the “killing” aspect of euthanasia. According to the ACT Right to Life Association in Canberra the choice is stark “for euthanasia to occur, there must be an intention to kill.” They claim palliative care can now effectively relieve almost all severe pain and significantly relieve emotional distress.

But long-time voluntary euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke disagrees. Nitschke was instrumental in the short-lived Northern Territories legislation that was the world’s first Voluntary Euthanasia (VE) law in 1996. Under this law a terminally ill person could to get help from their doctor to die. Four of Nitschke’s patients used this law in the eight months before it was overruled in the Federal Parliament. Nitschke believes the law was overturned by “godbotherers” and a fundamentalist, all-denomination Christian lobby that are small in number but large in influence.

Nitschke is a doctor and therefore well aware that euthanasia is not mentioned explicitly in the Hippocratic Oath. The closest it has to say on the subject is “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel”. Nor is the position of international human rights law on the matter explicit or clearly defined. Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” Roman law and later English common law forbade both suicide and assisting suicide.

The arguments around euthanasia took on a new meaning in the 19th century with the availability of anaesthesia. New York was the first legislature to specifically ban the practice. Today some of the most liberal laws apply in the Netherlands where doctors have immunity from prosecution providing they have complied with a number of 'rules of careful practice'. Dutch acceptance of this practice has been put down to a number of factors including a mature public discussion of moral issues, a secular society, a sense of individual responsibility, the Royal Dutch Medical Association's approval, trust for the medical profession and universal medical coverage.

Euthanasia raises ethical, moral, religious, philosophical, legal, constitutional and human rights issues. Common arguments against include the danger that euthanasia is not only restricted to the terminally ill, it can be used as a health care cost containment, people could be pressurised into accepting it, and it is a rejection of the importance and value of human life. Meanwhile those in favour cite the unbearable pain of sufferers, the right to facilitate the end of this suffering and forcing people to stay alive against their wishes. According to deacon Michael Pershin, a priest of the Moscow Patriarchy, “the phenomenon of euthanasia becomes possible when the meaning of life is pleasure”. According to Nitschke, it's "an absolutely vital and important decision that an individual has".

Wentworth A-Go-Go: The Overington Affair

The intriguing battle for Australia’s smallest and wealthiest seat has rarely left the news since the election was declared. The inner eastern Sydney suburb seat of Wentworth contains the wealth and razzle of Darling Point, Double Bay, Rose Bay, Vaucluse, Bondi Junction and Kings Cross. Its sitting Liberal MP and Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull is a serious contender for the next Liberal leadership contest. But he is in great danger of losing his seat if the likely Labor landslide materialises. He is defending new boundaries on a slender margin of 2.5 per cent and his campaign has been bedevilled by the Tasmanian Pulp Mill decision. Labor candidate George Newhouse is a good chance to win aided by his former girlfriend Danielle Ecuyer. She is standing as an independent anti-mill candidate and is likely to direct her preference flow to her estranged boyfriend.

The complexity of this seat was turned up a another couple of notches this week. One issue was the legality of Newhouse’s candidacy which was challenged on a technicality. Under electoral law, a candidate must not be receiving payment from any government office for at least 24 hours before the formal declaration of a nomination. This morning the ABC reported NSW Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney saying she did not receive Newhouse's resignation until 2 November, the day of the nomination. The Liberals wanted this investigated. Later today Burney offered a correction saying she had accepted his nomination on 22 October though the letter was stamped 2 November. Allegations of 'smear tactics' have begun.

However for farce this could not compare with the story which was partially revealed by ABC’s Media Watch on Monday. It reported the extraordinary intervention of The Australian’s journalist Caroline Overington into Wentworth’s campaign. Overington had written several articles about the campaign commenting on the Ecuyer-Newhouse relationship as “the crashing of their feelings on the rocks of a federal election campaign” which “has become the talk of the white-hot electorate of Wentworth”. Overington also suggested the reason for the pair’s break-up may have been differences over the pulp mill decision. Overington had an ongoing email correspondence with Ecuyer throughout the campaign. In late October she emailed Ecuyer asking her who she was going to preference in the election. Ecuyer responded saying it was too early to tell.

Then Overington replied again to Ecuyer reminding her she had only four weeks to decide. Overington then asked her to redirect her preferences away from Newhouse and towards Turnbull. According to the email, Overington said “he’d [Turnbull] be a loss to the parliament and George – forgive me – no gain” signing off with a smiley emoticon. Ecuyer was not happy about the email and wrote to ABC's Media Watch saying she was “disgusted to have been lobbied by a journalist from The Australian for my preferences”. Ecuyer also said Overington offered her front page coverage if she gave her preferences to the Liberals.

Overington strongly denied she was trying to influence preferences and said the email was a running joke between her and Ecuyer. Ecuyer has failed to see the funny side and said yesterday she may make a complaint to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) According to yesterday’s rival Fairfax publication the Melbourne Age, Overington also said it was part of The Australian's "king-maker campaign" to play a role in the election of both Coalition and ALP candidates.

Today the Fairfax newspapers released more of Overington’s emails including ones to the Labor candidate George Newhouse. These emails showed Overington flirting with the Labor man saying “now you are single, I might even make a pass at you.” Newhouse cautiously responded that she had previously criticised him as "short, dark and Jewish" and besides, she was married. Overington upped the ante by replying “Not married, me. Separated five months ago. I might like short, dark and Jewish, you never know”. Later the exchange turns a bit more aggressive as Overington desperately sought an interview ending with “We're out the front of your house, and your office, just so you know”.

Overington's home newspaper, The Australian, quoted Malcolm Turnbull saying Overington was entitled to her opinion. "She's not part of my campaign team obviously," he said. Meanwhile writing in today’s Crikey, media commentator Margaret Simons found the whole affair “icky”. In Crikey Simons said there was “no excuse for her behaviour” and it was “out of line, and unethical”. When contacted by Woolly Days, Simons expanded on what she meant. “Although the correspondence with Ecuyer was the most legally significant,” she said, “I find the Newhouse e-mails more disturbing because of the use of sexual come-ons in the context of a relationship of power”.

Nevertheless Simons is a fan of Overington’s work. In Simons’ influential new book about the Australia media, “The Content Makers”, she wrote a substantial piece entitled "speaking truth to power", which praised Overington’s penetrative series of articles to expose the AWB Iraqi kickbacks scandal. “In 2005,” Simons wrote, “Caroline Overington held the government to account”. Overington went on to win an investigative journalism Walkley award in 2006 for her AWB stories. Now it is Overington’s turn to be held to account. Simons told Woolly Days “it gives me absolutely no pleasure to criticise her”. Despite the criticism, The Australian said it has no plans to stop Overington from writing articles about Wentworth. A News Ltd newspaper knows a good thing when it sees it: the seat of Wentworth is likely to remain a perpetual story-machine until election day.

Media ethics: Who was to blame for Cronulla?

This essay will examine the events surrounding the Cronulla riots of 11 December 2005. It will discuss how the story broke and demonstrate the media chain reaction that made the riot inevitable. It will then examine the role of the media in the immediate aftermath of the riot. While there were many media reporting on Cronulla (TV, radio, press, internet news, weblogs) the essay will concentrate on the key roles played by Sydney’s highest-rating radio breakfast announcer and Sydney’s highest-selling newspaper. This essay will show how these media hid behind their public sources to implicitly encourage the events that followed. The conclusion will show that poor ethical practices in both media were justified to further commercial interests.

The sequence of events were caused by a crime. On Sunday 4 December 2005, two surf lifesavers were attacked and injured on Sydney’s North Cronulla beach. The wire service AAP broke the story. Their initial report was that “two young surf lifesavers have been bashed in an attack by a large group at a beach near Sydney” (AAP 5 December 2005). Other than conflating “large group” with “four people”, the report was a model of ethical hard news journalism. There was no unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics. An attack on lifesavers, the iconic symbol of Australian beaches, was itself an angle for a major story. But there was a second angle. The four men the police were looking for were Lebanese Australians.

It was Alan Jones who exposed the second angle. Jones does the influential breakfast slot on 2GB radio where he gets 16.4% of the radio audience. That amounts to 182,000 radios tuned to his program in the Sydney region every day. That Monday a caller “Bill” rang to say he had seen the news on Channel Nine about the “horrendous bashing”. “Bill” continued, “…gang acts on the beach at Cronulla yesterday. I mean, what type of grubs do we have in this...?” Jones finished the sentence for him:
“What kind of grubs? Well, I'll tell you what kind of grubs this lot were. This lot were Middle Eastern grubs. And you're not allowed to say it. But I'm saying it.”

The “you” Jones mentions, are journalists whose second commitment of their code of ethics forbids them to emphasise “race, ethnicity, (and) nationality”. Jones put himself outside the pale as he knew it would mean the angle could now be open spoken about. And it was the only real angle on offer - the lifesavers were not on duty at the time of the attack. That fact was buried as the media frenzy grew in the week that followed. Now that Jones had done their dirty work for them and named the “Middle Eastern grubs”, the Daily Telegraph could now join in.

The Murdoch owned Telegraph is Sydney’s biggest selling daily newspaper. It sold 403,000 copies in the first six months of 2004. They missed the story entirely on Monday but on Tuesday they splashed the headline “Fight for Cronulla: we want our beach back”. The article described the attackers as a “group of thugs” but also quotes surf lifesaving Sydney rescue services manager Stephen Leahy who said it was common for Middle Eastern men from Western Sydney to taunt Cronulla surf lifesavers. This disingenuous quote left readers in no doubt as to the identity of the “thugs”.

By Wednesday, the Telegraph had posted Luke McIlveen on the job. His prior front page exclusives on both Schapelle Corby and Ivan Milat were exposed by Media Watch as foundless. Although the quality of McIlveen’s reporting may be suspect, his sensationalism is a major weapon in their circulation war. This is the Janus view of news media. The media have both business and public utility aspects. McIlveen was brought in for the business aspect. Immediately he uncovered a history of beach thuggery and found one interviewee who was “harassed and assaulted by thugs of Middle Eastern descent”. The article concluded with a plea from the newspaper for follow-up information from the public. “Have you been harassed at the beach? Tell us at…” (McIlveen and Jones 2005). The newspaper was not interested in good news about Cronulla.

By Thursday the Telegraph was in full flight. There were reports of a second incident on the beach on the Wednesday and the newspaper printed six Cronulla articles on the day. They offered the “grim possibility” of future ethic based attacks and quoted a “disturbing” SMS which advocated “Leb and wog bashing day”. In each article the Telegraph reporters used the third journalistic ethical commitment (“aim to attribute information to its source”) as a way of avoiding conflict with the second commitment on ethnicity. They pushed the story hard on Friday and Saturday, setting the scene for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unlike journalists, the newspaper is not bound by the code of ethics. Its quest for healthy circulation figures breeds a desire to publish stories that have “sensational impact that titillates readers”.

While the Telegraph reported that police and political leaders were calling for calm, they also reported NSW State Opposition leader Peter Debnam on the Friday. He was not advocating calm: “Debnam called for police to be given permission to take a zero-tolerance approach to youths who threatened to turn Cronulla into a battleground. These thugs need to be arrested and locked up," he said.” Debnam was indulging in wedge politics. Wedge politics preys on prejudice and fear and involves so-called ‘dog-whistle’ messages using outwardly reasonable language that nonetheless carries a very specific message to the target audience. The Telegraph was tacitly approving the transformation of a fight among youths into a ethnic battleground.

Jones too was firing up his audience to gain radio ratings. After feeding them with Middle Eastern grubs on the Monday, he warmed to the topic in the days that followed. On the Tuesday, a caller rang in to recommend vigilante action and Jones did not demur. He told his listeners he "understood" why the offensive SMS text went out and he read it on air. This form of empathy is known as a schema theory. People form stereotypical models of their world to help them cope with the flood of new information they receive on a daily basis. These models are called schemas. While schemas are beneficial in handling vast quantities of new data, they are negative when over-generalised and lead to stereotyping and prejudice. Jones’s schema was coming home to roost. By Thursday he was reading out anonymous emails detailing how Cronulla’s beaches were “taken over by scum” and although he carefully cautioned his listeners not to take the law into their own hands, he warmed to listeners who had exactly that intention. Jones was in breach of the first item of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) ethical code “(do not) give distorting emphasis”. As a result there were three complaints to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in the week before the riots. However the ACMA has not acted on these complaints. Their website states “The primary responsibility for ensuring that programs reflect community standards rests with radio and television stations”. The Australian Press Council is also an ineffective watchdog and frequently seen as a captive of the industry. Internal MEAA disciplines are also weak and application is limited to its members. Its procedures are secret and the ultimate sanction is dismissal from the union. Such a threat would be idle for a wealthy broadcaster like Jones given his consistently scant regard for the ethical code.

Unsurprisingly, given the encouragement of the media, events transpired as dismally predicted on the Sunday, December 11. There were 10 arrests on the day and a small number of injuries. The riot provided a rich diet of stories for the Telegraph for the entire following week before tapering off when the violence was not repeated. Journalists’ role in the communication process has fundamentally shifted in the modern era. They no longer decide what information the public should know but instead help audiences make sense of it. They function as “forum leaders”. The forum leaders at the Telegraph gave full warts-and-all coverage of the riot on the Monday. It deemed the day “a national disgrace”. They blamed alcohol and hate but did not point to any media failings. Instead it turned the temperature up: “youths of Middle Eastern descent have warned of pay-back” (Daily Telegraph, 12 December 2005).

And as gangs looked to pick out innocent victims on the train, Jones’ pre-riot suggestion seemed eerily prescient, “invite one of the biker gangs to be present in numbers at Cronulla railway station when these Lebanese thugs arrive, it would be worth the price of admission to watch these cowards scurry back onto the train for the return trip to their lairs”. Jones himself was not around to face the consequences of his actions. He had scurried back to his lair by going on holidays commencing Monday 12 December. That left 2GB picking up the pieces left by their star broadcaster. They claimed that two thirds of calls coming into station supported “what happened” in Cronulla. But it was the absent Jones’s on-air exhortations that turned a mild dispute into an explosive issue.

The Telegraph too shares the blame. It had a vested commercial interest in making the story bigger. And its journalism never looked at the root causes. There are three levels in construction of journalism. Level 1 is reactive (observation and fact). Level 2 is reflective; dealing with the how and why of events. Level 3 is analytical and involves the identification of trends and possible underlying causes. It is only at these higher levels of inquiry do journalists challenge initially “authoritative” accounts of events. The Telegraph Cronulla coverage rarely operated at level 2 and never at level 3. Two questions they never asked: 1. Are the beachside communities of Sydney’s south some kind of cultural tinderbox? and 2. How are we to manage public behaviour and etiquette in contested public spaces to allow respect for all? These are level 3 questions. But the Janus view is unlikely to allow Telegraph journalists the space and time to aspire to that level. They are among the sections of the news media that thrive on shock, horror and human drama. Circulation pressures will drive the market and journalists will face increasing pressure to shape their product to information-and-technology rich elites with the possible consequence of a general downgrading of news involving the poorer sections of the population unless they happen to have an impact on the wealthy.

Both the Telegraph and Jones’s employer 2GB will continue to shape their product according to their audiences. Both shaped the outcome of the Cronulla riots with their practices and neither are signatories of the MEAA code of ethics. Nor were the ACMA or Press Council effective in issuing sanctions against their actions. Arguably the most effective regulator is the one with the least powers – ABC’s Media Watch. Its power lies in the fact that ethical breaches are screened on national TV when journalists know their colleagues are watching. It will be needed. Ethical standards are likely to remain contested ground in whatever future holds for the media.