What does the public expect of the news media in the digital age?

The Law Commission is considering the merits of a single regulator which would deal with complaints against all news media regardless of how they disseminate their news. Photo / Thinkstock

Media standards and regulation are in the spotlight in Australia and Britain - driven in large part by the fall-out from the hacking scandal which has enveloped parts of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

Here in New Zealand the Law Commission is considering the merits of a single regulator which would deal with complaints against all news media regardless of how they disseminate their news. The Commission is asking for public feedback on what standards should apply to the news media in the digital era.

At present members of the public who are dissatisfied with the way in which a news media organisation has handled a complaint must go to one of two different complaints bodies, depending on where the story appeared.

Complaints against broadcasters are handled by the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), while complaints about newspapers, or their websites, are handled by the Press Council. These two bodies adopt quite different approaches to how they define and apply journalistic ethics and standards.

Because it is a statutory body the BSA must apply standards laid down in the Broadcasting Act and must work with industry to translate these standards into specific codes of practices which are used to assess complaints. There are currently four different codes:

•Free-to-air television

•Pay television

•Radio

•Election Programmes

The BSA's jurisdiction extends to all radio and television broadcasters, but, because of the age of the statute, not their websites, which are currently unregulated. The BSA has developed a significant body of media case law, particularly in the area of of privacy.

The Press Council, whose membership is voluntary, is much less prescriptive in its approach, relying on a set of general journalistic principles which are intended to provide guidance to the public and publishers with respect to ethical journalism.

The Law Commission is seeking public feedback on a proposal to merge these two regulatory bodies into one complaints body which would be independent of the state and of the news media. This body would handle complaints about all news media irrespective of the format in which they distribute their content (online, print, on-demand etc.).

One of the first challenges facing any new regulator would be to consult the public about what standards should apply to the news media and the extent to which standards should differ in different contexts.

Traditionally, the standards to which the news media have been held accountable have dealt with the following matters:

•Accuracy;

•Fairness and balance - ensuring for example that news is not deliberately distorted through the omission of important facts or view-points;

•Respect for individuals' rights to privacy;

•A commitment to public interest rather than self-interested publishing;

•Transparency; ensuring conflicts of interest are declared;

•Good taste and decency; ensuring the general public is not offended by the gratuitous publication of offensive content.

Unlike Australia and Britain where the public is regularly surveyed about its views of the news media and media standards, New Zealand has little independent research in this area.

For example, we are not aware of any comprehensive New Zealand research investigating public expectations of media standards and how these may be changing as a result of the greatly expanded menu of options available to consumers of news and current affairs online.

Some of the questions a new regulator might want answered are whether the public has different expectation of standards of accuracy and fairness from newspaper websites, which are constantly updating breaking news, compared with those same newspapers' print products?

Similarly, does the public expect the same standards from news videos published on newspaper websites as they do from footage broadcast on prime time television? What about news and current affairs programmes accessed on demand?

And what care are news websites expected to take when publishing user-generated content including comments on news stories?

What about bloggers who might choose to come under the independent news media complaints body - should they be subject to a different code more appropriate for the inevitably partisan nature of opinion makers?

Interestingly, recent research undertaken by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) (www.acma.gov.au) exploring Australians' expectations of media standards in a converged environment found that consumer expectations depended more on the content itself (and the provider) than the platform on which that content was delivered.

One of the key findings from the focus groups involved in the research was "the expectation that community standards should apply differently to content type rather than delivery channel.

Participants consistently distinguished between user-generated and professionally produced content. This distinction was driven by the perception of each content type having a different 'community'. Content that was professionally produced (such as films, television programs or series) was expected to be consumed on a mass scale by the broader community and, as such it was expected to reflect broad community standards.

The ACMA research suggests the "on-demand" distinction is less important than the nature of the market for which the content was intended. With respect to news and current affairs, this market is by its very nature almost invariably broad-based, which might suggest community expectations of standards for news and current affairs may be uniform, irrespective of delivery channel.

In our Issues Paper on media regulation we raise a number of questions to test New Zealanders' perceptions and expectations of media standards in the converged environment. Some of the questions we are keen to receive public feedback on include:

•Does the public think the traditional standards for news media remain relevant in the digital age given the public's ability to source information directly from a vast number of sources?

•Does the facility for users to comment and participate in the news process through the read/write web change any of these standards?

•Should all news media be accountable to the same standards irrespective of the medium in which they publish? Or is there a distinction to be made between content which is broadcast to mass audiences simultaneously and content which is accessed by individuals on demand?

Public feedback on these and other issues can be made online at www.lawcom.govt.nz

Submissions close March 12 2012.