Part Two of Peter Saxon’s chat with The ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman

Chapman: There’s nearly 6.5 million hours of radio and television broadcast in Australia each year. There are only about 4,000 complaints a year to commercial television and radio. I don’t have the public broadcasting figures nor the community.

In order of magnitude – of those 4,000 that goes to the commercial broadcasters, probably 300 investigations a year come to us.

So, 6.5 million hours broadcast. 4,000ish go to broadcasters and then about 300 translate into formal investigations. That suggests to me that the system ain’t broke.

And what the system’s doing is making, in the first instance, the broadcaster accountable. They have to go into writing to explain their perspective and why they’re not in breach. The statistics demonstrate that often the complainant accepts that perspective.

radioinfo: So to summarise (from part one of the interview) although the number of complainants doesn’t count, nor does whether they heard the broadcast or not, those metrics still inform you on the overall mood in the community?

Chapman: Every time we make a decision – at the start of every written decision – is an articulation of the perspective we are coming from. Remember the “Man on the Clapham omnibus?”  He’s the man in the street, the average punter. Not too smart, not too silly. That’s what we do. We try to forever assess what is the community standard at that point.

radioinfo: Most people, especially the ordinary, reasonable ones, on hearing something on the radio can almost instantly decide whether it is decent or not. Why does it take the ACMA so long – months and months – to decide the same thing?

Chapman: I understand the constant frustration about the time it takes. Trust me, I am acutely aware of it. We’ve got a KPI of six months to complete an investigation.

When I first started in the job I thought that was ridiculous. We’ve now got our average run rate for the completion of an investigation from the time we get it down to about 3.2 months. I would like to get it symbolically to 2.9 – anything that has got a “2” in front of it would be very good.

So why does it take on average about 3.2 months? Bearing in mind that sometimes we don’t open an investigation till months and months after the incident because of the fact that the complainant needs to go to the broadcaster, the broadcaster has to write back (they may not write back at all). And if they haven’t written back in 60 days, then the complainant can write to the ACMA.

Leaving that aside, the broadcasting services act and the overlay of administrative law requires us on the receipt of a valid complaint to write to the broadcaster, to get all the materials to set out a statement of issues to consider the matter internally depending on whether it meets certain criteria it will come to the authority. development of a preliminary decision, the sharing of that preliminary decision with the broadcaster. Their ability to make submissions on the preliminary.

Bearing in mind that community standards isn’t a hard wired concept, and that the authority members are drawn across a spectrum of experiences, finding consensus can take time.

There are times when a preliminary decision may go to a licensee where we say, ‘our preliminary decision is that you are in breach of codes 1.1, 1.6, 5.62.’ Then the onus goes onto the licensee to sway the authority to a contrary view. And finally I want to reiterate that we then, ultimately as an authority, come out with a consensus view and that’s a well considered view.

We don’t have rough justice around the authority table.

radioinfo: How many people are on the “authority table?”

Chapman: At the moment there are five people. Five is probably too low a number. I would like to see a couple more because I think that the plurality of perspectives and experiences is healthy.

radioinfo: You have now launched the latest inquiry called the Contemporary Community Safeguards inquiry. Can you tell us a little more about that? Is it also about getting in touch with community standards? 

Chapman: Yes definitely – that’s at the core of it. The ACMA has shown a disposition to assess things from first principles. That’s becoming part of our DNA.

With the review of the Commercial Radio Advertising Standards, the ones that came off the back of ‘cash for comment,’ where there were three standards, we went back to first principles. No one’s ever been happy with them. (We asked) Are they out of date? Did they have shortcomings? Can they be done better? So, we went back to basics.

The net, net of that exercise – commercial radio thought, well this is interesting – a first principle analysis of advertising practices, I’m not necessarily sure I like the idea of that. But we went back to first principles, and the net, net, net of that is that we retained the Disclosure Standard, we retained the Advertising Standard until such time that the industry provided a Code that reflected what we thought were community safeguards. And we did away with the “administrivia” Standard. So the industry went from three Standards to one – off a first principles analysis.

That’s the background to a burgeoning confidence in The ACMA that an analysis of first principles benefits everybody. We’ve worked with stake holders and we’ve earned their trust. Now were applying it to Community Safeguards and Broadcasting.

radioinfo: I imagine it would be an extremely difficult and complex exercise to try to stay ahead of the curve – or at least not too far behind it – in the face of rapidly changing community attitudes …

Chapman: Every couple of years we get served up a new Code of Practice that is really the old Code of Practice tarted up with a couple of changes that reflect the latest outbreak. And that’s against the backdrop of convergence playing out in media and real generational differences of opinion, we think. In other words a decreasing of homogeneity of opinions amongst Australian citizens. We’ve got greater cultural diversity, we’ve got generational diversity. You’ve got an audience who are increasingly online, who have so many different experiences compared to previous generations. And yet we’re just being asked to tick off community safeguards on a slightly iteratively updated code.

There’s also an industry view that the code is overladen with unnecessary regulation and in concepts that are out-dated. And we said, we think that’s a reasonable proposition to investigate. So let’s go back to first principles. Let’s have a  “small ‘i’ inquiry. And the significance of that is, we don’t want to be imposing on the industry. We want the industry to have a dialogue with us and the Australian citizens as to what are relevant community safeguards today? And that’s what were doing and I think it’s a really healthy exercise.

When it comes to ‘factual accuracy,’ ‘representation of viewpoints’ or ‘bias’ – when it comes to ‘privacy in media today,’ ‘advertising practices,’ (we ask) what are the basic tenets that we want to preserve and what are our outmoded concepts? So that’s what were doing.

It will be an interesting, intellectually stimulating but difficult dialogue because there will be so many different views.

radioinfo: A case in point is the current community concern over the ubiquitous touting of odds during live sports. Is that on The ACMA’s radar?

Chapman: The ACMA, through its research and monitoring, were conscious of growing community disquiet about the quantum and the seemingly increasing invasive nature of online betting promotions about 18 months ago. At the same time the minister was equally conscious of it, as was the government. COAG decided they would take a whole of government approach to online betting and promotions. So the minister developed principles that he wanted to see a new code developed. That code has now been developed by both radio and television and it is out for public consultation as we speak and it will be presented to us presumably in the next month or so and we will then make an assessment of that codeof what we think are the community standards.

So it’s a very live issue. Its being tackled proactively by the minister as a result of COAG initiatives. But it’s also fair to say that the ACMA was very much alive to it about 18 months ago.

Peter Saxon