Investigation Report No. 2719
File No. / ACMA2011/1833Licensee / General Television Corporation Pty Ltd
Station / GTV Melbourne
Type of Service / Commercial television broadcasting service
Name of Program / A Current Affair
Date of Broadcast / 9 August 2011
Relevant Code / Clauses 4.3.1, 4.3.5, 4.3.5.2 and 4.3.7 of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice 2010
Date Finalised / 25 May 2012
Decision / Breach of clauses 4.3.5 [privacy], 4.3.5.2 [privacy of a child] and 4.3.7 [unfair identification].
No breach of clause 4.3.1 [accuracy].
The complaint
On 15 February 2011, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) received a complaint regarding the program, A Current Affair, broadcast on 9 August 2011 by General Television Corporation Pty Ltd, the licensee of GTV (the licensee).
The complainant was concerned that the program included inaccurate statements about himself (referred to here as Mr Y), and contained footage of himself and his children, ChildA and Child B, which was broadcast without their knowledge or concern for their privacy.
The complaint has been investigated under clauses 4.3.1, 4.3.5, 4.3.5.2 and 4.3.7 of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice 2010 (the Code). The licensee’s compliance with clauses 4.3.1 and 4.3.7 of the Code has been investigated pursuant to section 148 and subsection 149(1) of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (the Act). The licensee’s compliance with clauses 4.3.5 and 4.3.5.2 of the Code has been investigated pursuant to section 170 of the Act. [1]
The program
A Current Affair is a current affairs program broadcast nationally at 6:30pm weeknights.
The program broadcast on 9 August 2011 included a segment titled, ‘Centrelink Shame File’. The segment counted down the ‘top six welfare rorts’ based on the number of cases the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has prosecuted for Centrelink fraud.
The segment included interviews with the General Manager of Centrelink and a 2UE presenter, as well as footage from a previous A Current Affair segment broadcast in 2006, which featured footage of Ms X and Mr Y.
The segment was introduced as:
Presenter: Now, the shame file that exposes the sort of people who are ripping off our welfare system to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. A list that Centrelink uses to target pensioners and single parents.
[...]
Reporter: We’ve obtained official Centrelink data which reveals the top six welfare rorts and the people behind them. [...] Tonight we’re counting them down to find out who are the worst of the worst.
The broadcast material the subject of the complaint concerned the verbal and visual content below:
Table 1: Verbal and visual[2] broadcast material the subject of the complaint:
Verbal material / Visual materialReporter: The number one welfare rort is the single parent pension, with 1,200 prosecutions in the past year. / On screen text: ‘No. 1, single parent pension’.
Reporter: We’ve been told you’ve been rorting the welfare system for the last ten years. / Ms X listening to the reporter on a public street.
Ms X: No. I don’t know what you’re on about. / Ms X talking to the reporter.
Reporter: Previously we caught up with [MsX] who had been claiming the single parent pension. / Ms X driving a car with Child A in the passenger seat.
Reporter: Even though we found evidence she was living with this man. / Mr Y walking across the street.
Reporter: She was dobbed into ACA by her own mother. / Ms X pushing Child B in a trolley in an outside market. Child A walking behind Ms X.
Ms X’s mother: She’s been lying to Centrelink to gain benefits as a single parent when she’s not been eligible. She’s been rorting the system. [...] / Ms X’s mother talking to the reporter in a room.
Assessment
The assessment is based on:
a recording of the broadcast provided by the licensee;
the complainant’s submission to the ACMA;
the licensee’s submission to the ACMA;
correspondence between the licensee and the complainant; and
publicly available information, the source of which is relevantly identified.
Ordinary, reasonable viewer
In assessing content against the Code, the ACMA considers the meaning conveyed by the relevant material. This is assessed according to the understanding of an ‘ordinary, reasonable viewer’.
Australian courts have considered an ‘ordinary, reasonable viewer’ to be:
A person of fair average intelligence, who is neither perverse, nor morbid or suspicious of mind, nor avid for scandal. That person does not live in an ivory tower, but can and does read between the lines in the light of that person’s general knowledge and experience of worldly affairs.[3]
The ACMA asks what the ‘ordinary, reasonable viewer’ would have understood the program to have conveyed. It considers the natural, ordinary meaning of the language, context, tenor, tone, inferences that may be drawn, and in the case of factual material, relevant omissions (if any).
Once this test has been applied to ascertain the meaning of the broadcast material, it is for the ACMA to determine whether the material has breached the Code.
Issue 1: Factual accuracy
Relevant Code clause
The relevant clause of the Code is clause 4.3.1:
News and Current Affairs Programs
4.3 In broadcasting news and current affairs programs, licensees:
4.3.1 must present factual material accurately and represent viewpoints fairly, having regard to the circumstances at the time of preparing and broadcasting the program;
The principles applied by the ACMA in assessing content against the obligation in clause 4.3.1 of the Code are set out at Attachment A.
Complainant’s submission
The complainant submitted:
[...]
[T]hey labelled [Mr Y] as the fraudulent partner of [Ms X] and dipping on her pension. It’s totally wrong. [...] The point is, it’s old recycled news. And the scary part is, re-using it in the future. [...]
[The story] wasn’t researched at all, what [the reporter] did was cut bits from the original tape and makes a story out of lies [and] deception [...]. If [the reporter] did [his] research correctly [he] would have noticed that [Mr Y] and [Ms X] haven’t been together since 1994.
[The reporter stated], ‘we filmed [Mr Y] entering the house and taking out the rubbish’. I replied, ‘did you ever think, that [Mr Y] was helping out for the kids?’ Also, if [the reporter] did his research correctly [he] would have noticed that [Mr Y] had been approach by [the Department of Human Services], which [Mr Y] had an arrangement with to visit daily to help with kids.
[...]
Licensee’s submission
The licensee submitted:
[...]
In response, Nine states that A Current Affair staff conducted extensive observational research into the original story prior to broadcast. This research included observing [Ms X’s] residence. We also relied on advice from her mother that she was co-habitating with [Mr Y] following her own observations.
As identified in the script of the original story below, during the observation, Nine observed [Mr Y] conducting household duties such as taking his children to school, taking in the rubbish bins and working on the family car in the garage, all while staying overnight in the home on each of the nights we observed the residence. Nine maintains on the basis of this evidence, the statement, ‘We found evidence that she was living with this man’, is correct.
The entire script of the original story is set out below, highlighted is the relevant summary of evidence we collected on [Mr Y]:
SCRIPT: - Story Name: SINGLE PARENT
[...]
[Reporter] Last week, we received this email from [Ms X’s mother].
[Voice over read of letter] My daughter has been reported more than once to Centrelink fraud for an amount far exceeding $30,000. I have reported her myself several times over the past year and nothing has been done. We are taxpayers and don’t believe fraudsters should be allowed to continue with their fraud.
[Reporter] [Ms X’s mother] had dobbed in her daughter.
[Ms X’s mother] It’s a very tough decision and I’ve considered it and I’ve weighed it up. But she needs to be brought to account for what she’s been doing for such a long time. She swears at you, she calls you names, she really has become something that’s out of control. She’s been lying to Centrelink to gain benefits as a single parent when she’s not been eligible. She’s just been rorting the system.
[Reporter] For ten years, [Ms X’s mother] and her husband claim daughter [Ms X] has been living with various men while pocketing the sole-parent pension – that’s almost $500 a fortnight. She also gets hundreds of dollars more in rent assistance, telephone allowance, cheap public transport and discounted car registration.
[Ms X’s mother] Well, I used to say to her, “You should get off the pension now, it’s not right that you have it, that you’ll get caught, that you might go to jail, you might have to pay it back or both”, and I would say that to her quite often. And her response was, “Everybody’s doing it”. We used to try to explain to her that that’s taxpayers money that she’s fraudulently receiving, but invariably there was denial.
[Reporter] We’ve been told you’ve been rorting the welfare system for the last 10 years.
[Ms X] No, no. I don’t know what you’re on about.
[Reporter] Your own mother has dobbed you in.
[Ms X] Yeah. I don’t have anything to do with my mother. She has nothing to do with me. She’s making false accusations.
[Reporter] She says you’ve defrauded Centrelink for 10 years.
[Ms X] Nuh.
[Reporter] You even went as far as, “Mum, I’ll never get caught”.
[Ms X] Nuh.
[Reporter] Is this not true?
[Ms X] No
[Reporter] For the last 10 years you’ve been collecting the sole-parent pension
[Ms X] Yeah, it’s true.
[Reporter] But you’re not living by yourself, are you, [Ms X]
[Ms X] Yes, I am.
[Reporter] Over several days, we filmed [Mr Y], the father of three of [MsX’s] five children, play dad – taking the kids to school, bringing in the bins, fixing the family car, running errands – all while living under the same roof.
[Reporter] [Mr Y], you’re telling me you don’t live at the house?
[Mr Y] No.
[Reporter] You don’t live at the house?
[Mr Y] No.
[Centrelink representative] If someone has entered into a marriage-like relationship, then they have an obligation under law to tell us about those arrangements.
[Reporter] [Centrelink representative] admits the single-parent pension is one of the most abused benefits. This year, more than 20,000 people are being investigated for possible fraud. But he says policing this pension isn’t easy.
[Centrelink representative] Often the investigations that we have to engage in are very sensitive. We have to look at the nature of an individual’s relationship, we have to look at their financial relationship, we have to look at their domestic arrangements.
[Reporter] Why isn’t something being done? How can these women have child after child on a single-parent pension? How can they justify it? It’s ludicrous.
[Centrelink representative] It would seem clear he is living under the same roof [while observing the vision collected by Nine].
[Reporter] How do you prove it?
[Centrelink representative] Well, let me just say that what you’ve outlined is certainly a matter of concern for us, and I would appreciate being given that sort of specific information.
[Reporter] [Ms X’s] live-in partners have also enjoyed a tax-payer funded welfare lifestyle. First was [LV], the father of her other two children. He lived with [Ms X] until being sentenced to 14 years in prison for a series of rapes. Now she’s back with [Mr Y]. He got out of prison earlier this year after serving a term for armed robbery.
[Centrelink representative] Certainly you’ve raised some issues which I believe would warrant further investigation and, you know, and I’d ask you to provide us with that information.
[Reporter] Do you still love your daughter?
[Ms X’s mother] It’s very hard to. I guess deep down I do.
[Reporter] Is that why you are doing it?
[Ms X’s mother] Because I love her? No, I’m doing it because I think people should be protected from individuals like this.
[Reporter] Why would your very own mother say that?
[Ms X] Look, how many (bleep)ing times are you going to ask me? Why don’t youse just (bleep) off?!
[...]
Finding
The licensee did not breach clause 4.3.1 of the Code.
Reasons
In considering the obligation at clause 4.3.1 of the Code that licensees must broadcast factual material accurately, the first step is to identify the material of concern. The ACMA must then assess whether the material would have been understood by the ordinary, reasonable viewer as a statement of fact or an expression of opinion and, if a statement of fact, whether it was accurate and if a viewpoint is represented, whether it was represented fairly.
In this case, the complainant is concerned that the reporter’s statement (in bold) below was inaccurate:
Previously we caught up with [Ms X] who has been claiming the single parent pension even though we found evidence she was living with [Mr Y]. She was dobbed into ACA by her own mother.