This week Communications Minister Stephen Conroy revealed the terms of the Independent Media Inquiry which has been generating controversy for a number of weeks now. In particular one of the Terms of Reference which is of particular relevance to online journalism was ‘the ways of strengthening the independence and effectiveness of the Australian Press Council, including in relation to on-line publications, and with particular reference to the handling of complaint’.
As Tim Dick from the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out in this article (http://www.smh.com.au/national/no-one-to-turn-to-when-online-gets-out-of-line-20110916-1kdvf.html) a major flaw with the Press Council regulatory system is the fact that articles published online that do not belong to a print media organization are not regulated by the Press Council. This means that if someone reads a story published online and is offended or wishes to make a complaint, that person can only take it up with the website itself and unless there is a possible legal action e.g. defamation etc, the website is entitled to deal with it however they like, which might mean doing nothing.
This is an interesting problem as some people believe that less regulation makes for better quality journalism e.g. Greg Hywood, chief executive of Fairfax Media who said in Dick’s article that independent journalism flourished in a less-regulated environment. However, with no regulatory organization in place for dealing with online stories can websites really be trusted to self regulate?
I’m still on the fence with this one. Really I think that a journalist should be able to write without fear of reprisal, after all its part of the job to report things that some people don’t want reported but at the same time the floodgates are way open for ethical breaches if no one is there to regulate what gets published online.
It will be interesting to see what the inquiry eventually determines.
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment