Annual Report 2001 : Chairman's Foreword

CHAIRMAN'S FOREWORD

This is the fifth annual report of the New Zealand Press Council since I assumed the position of Chairman in 1997. Perhaps it is time to say more explicitly what the Council is trying to achieve with its annual report.

The Council is a self-regulatory body set up 30 years ago by print industry representatives, namely the newspaper owners and the journalists' union. They were, and still are, the founding constituent members and were the two signatories to the Constitution from which we get our authority.

The purposes of the Press Council are to provide the public with a complaint-resolution body, protect freedom of the Press, and maintain the highest standards in journalism. They are the objectives specifically stated in the Constitution. The Council was among the first bodies straight out of commercial activities to provide the public with a complaint-resolution service. The Press Council is a social enterprise that we hope is recognised as an entity that is making its contribution to societal life in the country. Unusual for today, this service is provided free to all New Zealanders.

Self-regulation is a most important core value of the Press Council. The only viable alternative to self-regulation is statutory control. The central feature of self-regulation is retention of independence outside central government control, thus giving the Press Council an unrestricted mandate within its own industry and, as a responsible body known to the public, to protect freedom of expression. New Zealand is undoubtedly one of the freest countries in the world but that does not mean it must not be alert to incursions into its freedom. In this annual report there are two separate features, World Press Freedom Day and Defence Of Freedom Of Expression, which we hope will be read by all.

The Press Council is completely independent of any government influence or taxation support. Funding comes entirely from the industry. The Council does not have the obligation of a Crown Entity required to prepare annual reports for tabling in Parliament that have mission statements, overviews and outputs. Apart from any statutory obligations other organisations involved in public body/social enterprise activities are now producing annual reports. In 1995 the then Chief Justice of New Zealand, Sir Thomas Eichelbaum, produced the first annual report for the court system of this country. This was a voluntary initiative for the sake of providing essential information to the public about one of society's fundamental services.

With that background we come to examine the purpose of the Press Council's annual report. The Press Council is an autonomous body in that it is self-governing. But as its business is to offer a service to the public as a complaint-resolution body, to fulfil its function as a protector of freedom of expression and standards of journalism - all public issues - it must pay strong attention to the public.

For the Press Council the public is an undivided entity in that almost all New Zealanders are its potential users as print journalism is an integral part of a democratically governed society.

The group of readers within the industry have a particular reason for knowing about the Council and are obvious readers. Every editor in the mainstream industry is sent a copy of the annual report, as is every Member of Parliament. The Council has a statutory obligation to supply the National Library with copies. The annual reports are available to 10 journalism schools as a valuable source document for them. We hope the widespread dissemination of our annual report will stimulate interaction and monitoring of the social service.

It can be deduced from the foregoing list, which is by no means exhaustive of those who might get and read a copy of the annual report, that it is reaching not only a large, but also an influential group in society. The next logical step is to see if we are delivering to that readership.

There are probably three broad levels of information that we make available. Details of the personnel of the Press Council are of interest. The Council is composed of 11 members of whom six are public members (that includes the Chairman) and five industry members. The financial statements, statistics about complaints and some review of the year's activities have always been included. That information is distinguishable from the other information contained in our annual report in that it is primarily about the past. The next levels, to which reference is made, are mainly about the present and future, and act as an impetus to speedy publication.

At the 25th anniversary, in 1997, of the establishment of the Council we undertook a review to measure whether we were meeting the public needs having due regard for some fairly persistent criticism that was coming our way. In other words, we embarked upon reform. An aspect of self-regulation that must be kept to the forefront is that the self-regulatory body itself must keep a sharp and disinterested eye on its own performance. We found in that review that there were several areas that required our attention. Extension of jurisdiction to cover most print media, and the need for a written document that informed the industry and public of the Press Council's commission, were the most important.

Jurisdiction was achieved but without the co-operation of significant groups of publishers. Their failure to contribute and co-operate has not prevented our provision of services to the New Zealand public. We called the written document the Statement of Principles and that has been a success. Those and other reforms were detailed in the reports from 1998-2000. This was the Press Council talking about itself and the changes it was making that affected its service to the public.

The Press Council also identified an interest in the workings of newspapers among the public. Newspapers are an essential element in the democratic governance of the country, which proposition is indisputable, but there is much more to the part the print industry plays in our daily lives than politics. Huge changes have taken place in the format of newspapers. Not many now would recall the layout of daily front pages on which classified advertisements appeared. The main news stories currently occupy the front page, as has been the practice in the United States. There was some experimentation with tabloid-size papers, which was mostly abandoned, but not entirely. The present regular Sunday papers arrived nearly 40 years ago and, of course, a major innovation was the widespread introduction of community newspapers. In last year's annual report we provided an account entitled, Community Newspapers In New Zealand. There have been changes in style, too, in that newspapers began paying greater attention to magazine-type articles and magazines extended into sharply focussed investigative journalism.

The Sundays took on aspects of both.

In 1972, there were about 30 New Zealand-generated magazines (among them the New Zealand Woman's Weekly, New Zealand Listener, Seaspray, Consumer and the Chartered Accountants' Journal). Despite New Zealand's lively magazine industry in the century, the introduction of television hit magazines hard in the 1960s and 70s. However, an explosion of lifestyle and general interest magazines recently saw 76 new titles produced between 1990-99, supplemented by thousands of imported magazine titles. The Magazine Publishers Association reports that by the end of 1998, New Zealanders consumed more than 103 million copies of magazines a year, a higher per-capita rate of magazine readership for 3.6 million people than the United Kingdom, Australia and the US. Trade and professional magazines generally do not bother the Press Council. In its 1999 annual report, the extension of its jurisdiction to cover other magazines was specifically covered.

There have been other changes in the New Zealand print industry, too, such as the rise in newspapers of opinion pieces and many by-lined articles - that is, those carrying the reporter's name. The enormous changes in business and commercial reporting have also reflected the growing sophistication of the country in this area. Old-fashioned women's pages have given way to coverage of lifestyle issues as men and women redefine their place in society. As leisure time has increased with a rise in prosperity newspapers have responded by giving greater attention to sport and entertainment generally. It is not uncommon for sports stories, particularly those with an international/political content as globalisation of sport continues apace, to occupy lead space on the front pages of our dailies. The continuing sagas of the Rugby World Cup and the America's Cup illustrate that point. These events have very significant impacts on local and national economies.

What a newspaper provides today is greatly expanded on what it placed before the public 30-40 years ago. For more detail, please see the annual report for 2000, What The Newspaper Provides. Some newspapers have regular features about education and current affairs that are meant also to give practical assistance to the classroom teacher. A notable failure is that our publicly owned television service does not provide any programme on current affairs specifically for young people.

In response to some of these industry changes, the Council broadened its approach to information contained in the annual reports. In 1997 there was a special item on protection of journalists' sources, which was an international issue as investigative journalism became increasingly embarked upon. In 1998 expansion of jurisdiction was raised, as was the Statement of Principles. The Council took up the subject of presenting itself to the public and for the first time, dealt with the rising use of opinion columns and their place in modern newspaper publishing. The same trend of dealing with individual and interesting topics for 1999 and 2000 reports continued. Of these Pacific Island Affairs, Newspapers And The Internet, The Lange Case, Press And Public Bodies and The Public Interest are all worth a mention.

Many of these items over the years had their origins in actual complaints or protection of free expression. It might be said that the Council's annual reports over the past few years, in addition to providing the usual fare of annual reports, have grown to become publications reflecting some notable aspects of print journalism. This, we believe, is serving the public interest about the undertaking of the print media and about ourselves.

See items What Is News? and Personalisation Of The News contained in this report, which have a bearing on these issues.

Finally, since 1999 the annual reports have published all the year-in-review's adjudications in full, not just those thought to be of particular interest as had been done in the past. To this extent, the Press Council has established a permanent record of its adjudications enabling convenient access. Like conventional law reporting, this builds a body of precedents available to all.