2UE will be required to monitor on-air disclosure content in the John Laws’ program from next week, as part of a new licence condition imposed by the ABA.
The condition requires 2UE to engage, at its own expense, the services of an independent monitor who will undertake two periods of monitoring over the next 12 months to see if Laws is breaching his obligation to disclose sponsor agreements during the program.
In light of the current controversy surrounding ABA Chairman David Flint, radioinfo put the following questions to an ABA spokesperson:
radioinfo: Was Professor Flint involved in the making of this decision?
Spokesperson: Yes.
radioinfo: Was it a decision of the full board of the ABA?
Spokesperson: Yes. Board member Malcolm Long was on holidays, but all the other members of the board were there either in person or on the phone.
The decision was confirmed today after a 4 month period where 2UE was given the opportunity to present submissions to the ABA on the matter. 2UE had not made any comment on the decision at the time this story was written.
The ABA says the new licence condition “is designed to foster better compliance by 2UE with the requirements of the Commercial Radio Current Affairs Disclosure Standard.”
The new condition is in addition to earlier licence conditions imposed on 2UE after the initial Cash-for-Comment investigation in 2000. It has been introduced because the ABA was not happy with the level of on-air disclosure in the John Laws program.
In December last year the ABA found that 2UE had breached the Commercial Radio Current Affairs Disclosure Standard 19 times and also found 6 breaches of 2UE’s special licence condition imposed after the Cash-for-Comment Inquiry.
The ABA at the time said it regarded the breaches as serious.
2UE’s licence conditions require it to “maintain a regime of on-air and off-air disclosure of certain commercial agreements between presenters and their sponsors… to conduct compliance training,” and to “distinguish advertisements from other program matter.”
“The new condition will ensure greater certainty in procuring compliance with the regulatory regime. Most importantly, the public interest will be met through the independent monitoring of 2UE’s compliance, by ensuring that the public is being informed when an organisation is personally sponsoring the presenter,” according to the ABA.
The independent monitor must be a person or corporation with expertise in monitoring broadcasting services and must be approved in writing by the General Manager of the ABA.
The independent monitor must “make and retain a record of all relevant program content which is broadcast during the monitoring period” and report its results to 2UE and the ABA.
2UE will not know in advance of the times when the monitoring will take place.