The Australian denounces Press Council as chair Disney rejects claims of conflict of interest
Julian Disney
The Australian newspaper has taken aim at the Australian Press Council (APC) and its chairman Dr Julian Disney, claiming he has a conflict of interest in a complaint currently before the regulator because he once spoke at the same function as the subject of the complaint.
In an editorial over the weekend the News Corporation newspaper accused Disney, who is stepping down from the role at the end of the year, of having a conflict in a complaint before the council involving a report by the paper which that former Labor federal minister Arthur Gietzelt had been a secret member of the Communist Party.
“We cannot speak for our stablemates, but this newspaper has lost confidence in APC chairman Julian Disney and deplores the direction in which he has taken the council,” the newspaper wrote in the editorial on Saturday. “The APC has become erratic in its rulings, unmoored from its foundations, ponderous and serpentine in its procedures, sidetracked by its chairman’s peculiar tastes and political predilections and ineffective as a body that promotes good practice.”
Last month the Council took the unusual step of giving an “expression of considerable concern” over the handling by the paper over incorrect reporting of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last September, and its delays in correcting errors when they were pointed out.
In a statement the APC rejected the paper’s claims, with Disney stating: “The only possible contact of which I am aware is that Sen Gietzelt apparently spoke at a public meeting in 1988 at which I was also an invited speaker. If there was any contact between us it would only have been for the purpose of being introduced to each other.“
“The newspaper conjectured that other contacts might have occurred more than twenty to thirty years ago when I was President of ACOSS and a member of government advisory committees. So far as I am aware no contacts of that or any other kind occurred at any time.”
The unusual statement from the APC and its chair came after The Australian chose to breach the confidentiality process in Council adjudications lambasting the organisation for its recent decisions which have seen the newspaper and its sister titles breached on a number of occasions.
In its media section on Monday the newspaper said newspaper publishers might want to consider forming a new body along the lines of Western Australia’s Independent Media Council which was launched as a rival to the APC by West Australian Newspapers in 2012, as new rules meaning members would have to give four years’ notice before they could withdraw from the APC were introduced.
However, in a statement to Mumbrella this morning a spokesman said: “News Corp Australia has made commitments to its funding and membership of The Australian Press Council and those commitments remain in place.”
The APC’s statement, written by executive director John Pender, noted the damage the breach of confidentiality over the current complaint around Sen Gietzelt could have on future complaints.
“These (confidentiality) obligations are essential to protect the interests of both the complainant and the publication in the fairness and integrity of the process. Their breach in any particular case adversely affects the confidence with which all other complainants and publications can engage in the Council’s processes,”said the statement.
Nic Christensen
News Corpse the bully. Boringly predictable. Good distraction to move the industry on from their decline in……well, everything. Unless you believe the EMMA numbers of course !!
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“The Australian Press Council was established in 1976 and is responsible for promoting good standards of media practice, community access to information of public interest, and freedom of expression through the media.” – The APC Website.
Well of course the right wing, propaganda, tea party machine, aka The Australian, is having a pop at the APC’s chief. Responsibility, good standards and freedom of expression is something you would not associate with the LNP’s PR machine The Australian, nor any of the other rag’s, which come out of the News Corp stable.
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Disney can’t see past his own bias.
Good on The Oz for calling him out.
‘Boringly predictable’, Frank Black, is your by-the-numbers comment, straight from the one-eyed lefties’ handbook.
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@ Robbo … as is yours, straight from the rabid right propaganda sheet that is the Oz.
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How is it left wing to point out circulation, subscriptions and therefore revenue are in free-fall ? Only left wing folks read annual reports ??
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The Oz has made no case for Disney to be considered in any way partisan. The editor’s comments make him appear foolish.
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Two NSW LNP pollies resign today due to, for want of a better word; being dodgy. Smh is reporting it on their homepage this evening, not venomously, just doing their job. Does news.com.au have a mention anywhere on their homepage……………….. What do we think guys? Silly question?
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zumabeach, how about some facts, rather than the ‘rabid right’ fallback?
Have you actually read the articles in the weekend Oz?
Rabid right, one-eyed lefties, swingers, it wouldn’t matter: any reasonable person can see the picture ain’t right. If you think it is, you’re the one with bias.
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…and anything any reasonable person says won’t change that.
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Attack the ABC, and now attack the APC, sounds like an attack on democracy.
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If only The Australian put as much effort into reporting facts as it does in attacking anyone who is not from the mad right it would be a good newspaper. It now seems that not even those running News Corp support what is going on within The Australian.
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The Australian isn’t a newspaper anymore, it is a private newsletter from Murdoch to members of his fan club. I stopped buying it in 1989 after the paper printed an editorial saying that people with AIDS deserved it and saying that the “non-righteous” were trying to shift the blame onto others. I found out years later that that editorial and the others which followed were written by none other than Tony Abbott.
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So Robbo, what’s it like working at News?
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The Oz realised that they were not going to get away with their disgraceful, inaccurate and unbalanced reporting in this matter, so have decided to have a childish tantrum and threaten to “take their bat and ball and go home.” Rather than being honourable (yes, I know, laughable when used in the same sentence as News Corp or the Oz) and acknowledging they got it wrong, they’ve launched an attack to try to cover their arses if and when an adverse finding comes down.
[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy for legal reasons]
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@ Robbo … This may shock you to the core, but I worked on the Oz for a number of years. It was once a fair-minded newspaper but Mitchell, under Rup’s instruction, of course, turned it into the propaganda sheet that it is today. Ninety plus per cent of the hacks who work on it just do their day to day jobs and get on with their lives. The ones promoted to positions of editorial authority know the drill – they commit to the cause, signing on become Mitchell’s neo con commanders and commentators. It’s toe the company line or you’ve suddenly got a new career subbing the greyhound results. Simple as that.
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@ Robbo … This may shock you to the core, but I worked on the Oz for a number of years. It was once a fair-minded newspaper but Mitchell, under Rup’s instruction, of course, turned it into the propaganda sheet that it is today. Ninety plus per cent of the hacks who work on it just do their day to day jobs and get on with their lives. The ones promoted to positions of editorial authority know the drill – they drink the neo con Kool-Aid and commit to the cause, signing on to become Mitchell’s ommanders and commentators. It’s toe the company line or you’ve suddenly got a new career subbing the greyhound results. Simple as that.
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@ Robbo … This may shock you to the core, but what zumabeach has written is true. You might not believe it, but everyone who has worked on the Oz over the last decade knows it is.
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