Press council on notice over freedom

Journalists will be watching how Matthew Ricketson pushes out the boat on a free media.

As an editor I had my first experience of modern journalism education in 1992 when asked to address first-year students who had come into the News Limited headquarters in Sydney’s Surry Hills. I put a lot of effort into my talk as a new editor would. I then took questions from the 60 students present with their lecturer.

First question? “How can you live with yourself working for Rupert Murdoch?” Seriously. I fixed the fresh faced 19-year-old with a death stare Julie Bishop would envy. “Well I think if you really want to be a journalist you should be grateful that the man who employs more English language journalists than anyone else in the world is an Australian,” I said, glaring at the lecturer who looked embarrassed at what was obviously a setup question. The gulf between journalism and journalism education has widened since my degree in the early 1970s. A veneer of intellectualism cloaks what was once an up-market trades course. An old staffer from The Oz, Matthew Ricketson, now professor of journalism at Canberra University, summed up the problem when he was trying to settle a dispute between me and one of his former lecturers, Julie Posetti, in 2010. Matt explained in an email that journalism educators needed good relationships with the industry to secure jobs for their students, but had a secondary role as observers and critics of the media.

Ricketson is, almost by accident, now in conflict with the best reporter I have worked with, Hedley Thomas, winner of five Walkley awards including a Gold Walkley for the Dr Haneef story in 2007. He has since then produced three series that are his best work, none of which has been rewarded by the Walkleys. These were the Wivenhoe Dam series that forced a Royal Commission to reconvene and remake its findings after the Brisbane floods of 2011, his examination of former PM Julia Gillard’s role in the AWU slush fund affair and his long probe of the business interests of Clive Palmer. Hedley has resigned from the journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, because Ricketson has been appointed the union’s representative on the Press Council. A passionate advocate for his profession, Hedley’s move followed that of Liam Houlihan, editor of the Geelong Advertiser and one of the few editors in the country who had remained in the union. Both left the MEAA because of Ricketson’s role in the Finkelstein Inquiry into media standards, established in 2011 by Gillard’s former minister for communications Stephen Conroy. Ricketson was asked by Conroy to join Melbourne QC Ray Finkelstein as a professional adviser on the inquiry, which recommended the establishment of a government-funded News Media Council to regulate the print, broadcast and online media. It was a recommendation the union, all major media groups and most of the profession regarded as anathema. Ricketson was asked late last year by the MEAA to represent the union at the Press Council.

Ricketson: Who should run media body?

The union is adamant, as is Ricketson, that he will be bound by the MEAA’s support for industry self-regulation. Hedley’s position, like mine, is linked to the news events of the time: as then editor-in-chief of this paper and the person who assigned Hedley to the slush fund story we realised the significant moves in ramping up action against the media throughout 2011 followed successive revelations by Hedley on the role of Gillard as a partner at Slater and Gordon in the early and mid-90s in setting up a slush fund for her then boyfriend Bruce Wilson. Anyone doubting the close links should read Hedley’s dissection of Gillard’s media censorship links to the slush fund story published on November 16, 2013. Ricketson says he has no real position on the slush fund story and little knowledge of it. He did not remember criticisms he (in The Australian) and other journalism educators made of this paper’s reporting of the Building the Education Revolution and he had read none of the academic economic work supporting that criticism. He also had no position on the progressive media’s hounding of Tony Abbott after the 2013 election. Think ABC, Fairfax and onion eating, which merited no more than a gossip par. He could not explain why he, Meg Simons and many others had criticised News Corp’s coverage of the Rudd and Gillard governments but said nothing against the far more strident coverage of Abbott by Fairfax and the ABC. Hedley says he does not know Ricketson and his decision is nothing personal. But he believes a lack of “current journalistic experience” should have disqualified Ricketson. He says the core mission of the union, the Press Council and the journalism academic had to be to push for more press freedom. Ricketson agrees and says he only took the Finkelstein role because the Press Council had become a lame duck. His first preference was always stronger self-regulation. He believes Finkelstein played a key role in making the proprietors beef up the council’s power. “My view was these kinds of opportunities only come every 10 or 20 years. And Conroy never interfered. What I am in favour of, then and now, is proper regulation, but by far ... preferably self-regulation. I would argue (this) ... is an essential element of press freedom because it builds public trust,” he said last week. In my view the proof of this pudding will be in its eating. Hedley and Liam Houlihan were right to raise the issue and Ricketson understands why they did.

The Press Council has a good new, free speech advocate, David Weisbrot, as its chair and journalists will be watching how Ricketson pushes out the boat on a free media. I have known him a long time and respect him.