Investigation Report 2568
File Nos. / ACMA2011/601Broadcaster / Northern Rivers Television Pty Ltd
Station / NRN
Type of service / Commercial television broadcasting service
Names and dates of programs / Ten News At Five4 February 2011
Relevant Code / Clause4.4.1of the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice 2010
Date finalised / 3 May 2011
Decision / No breach of clause 4.4.1 (present news fairly and impartially)
The complaint
On 25 February 2011, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) received a complaint concerning the Ten News at Five program broadcast on 4 February 2011 by Northern Rivers Television Pty Ltd, the licensee of NRN.
The complainant alleges that the sports segment was bias in its reporting of gambling.
The investigation considered the licensees’ compliance with clause4.4.1 [present news fairly and impartially] of the Code.
The program
Ten News At Fiveis broadcast at 5.00 pm on weeknights.On 4 February 2011, the sports segmentreported on the Melbourne Storm signing a sponsorship agreement with Crown Casino and the suspension of the football player Ryan Tandy after his arrest relating to a betting sting. At the end of the segment, betting tips were broadcast.
The relevant parts of the segment are reproduced as follows:
Sports Presenter:The Melbourne Storm are bracing for a backlash after becoming the last NRL club to link with a gambling establishment. On the back of South Sydney’s deal with Star City Casino, the Storm have signed a sponsorship with Crown Casino. The career of former Storm forward Ryan Tandy is on hold after he was stood down by Canterbury over his arrest relating to the Bulldogs Cowboys betting sting.
Steve Mortimer, Bulldogs: It’s the only appropriate thing because the start of the season is coming up and you don’t need to be distracted to start off well in 2011.
Sports Presenter: Tandy faces up to five years jail if found guilty of providing false evidence. He faces court next month.
…
Sports Presenter: To the tips and Michael Sullivan’s selection for Rose Hill tomorrow. Michael’s best bet is Lone Command, race 4, number 3, the value bet, race 4, number 1, Hawk Island and his each way special, race 3, number 9, Dancing Doll.
Assessment
This investigation is based onemails of complaint to the ACMA, correspondence between the licensee and the complainant, and a copy of the broadcast provided by the licensee. Other sources used have been identified where relevant.
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 reader 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[1].
The ACMA asks what the ‘ordinary reasonable viewer’ would have understood this 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: Presentation of news impartially
Relevant Codeclause
4.4In broadcasting news programs (including news flashes) licensees:
4.4.1must present news fairly and impartially;
Complainant’s submissions
The complainant submitted[2] that:
[The licensee] ran a negative story on the Melbourne Storm being sponsored by Crown Casino implying being sponsored by anything to do withgambling was bad. [The licensee] also then tried to associate Ryan Tandy and alleged spot fixing with the Story. At the end of sport [the licensee] then did a complete backflip and encouraged gambling by giving horse racing tips along with the odds. News is supposed to be reported without bias. Saying being associated with gambling is bad one minute and then turning around and encouraging it the next shows it was presented with bias.
Finding
The licensee did not breach clause 4.4.1 of the Code.
Reasons
The Code imposes the requirement that news programs (as distinct from current affairs programs) be presented fairly and impartially.
The nature of the complaint under consideration goes toward the issue of impartiality as opposed to fairness.The ACMA applies the ordinary English language meaning of the word ‘impartially’ in interpreting the Code:
impartial
not partial; unbiased; just.
partial
5.biased or prejudiced in favour of a person, group, side, etc
bias
2.a particular tendency or inclination, especially one which prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question.
In assessing compliance with the obligations to present news fairly and impartially the ACMA takes a range of factors into account.Taking into account the theme of the story, the range of perspectives that were presented in relation to that theme, and the overall presentation of the story,the ACMA considers whether, in its selection of the subject material used, the licensee presented the program fairly and impartially.
The complainant submitted that the sports segment was bias by reporting on a story which condemned a football team’s association with gambling and a football player’s suspension for his involvement in a betting sting, and then presentinga bookmaker’s horse racing tips.
The delegate considers that the substance of the complaint is not a matter which goes to impartiality in the presentation of a news program under clause 4.4.1 of the Code. While the complainant has characterised the licensee’s presentation of conflicting messages about gambling as bias, this does not amount to bias of the kind contemplated by the impartiality requirement of the Code. A lack of partiality or absence of bias as required under clause 4.4.1 goes to whether a program or an aspect of a program was actuated by prejudice, for example, or presented only one side of a story so that the presentation was unfairly skewed towards one point of view.
Accordingly, the ‘bias’ about which the complaint relates amounts to a complaint about double standards or hypocrisy, which are not prohibited by the Code in the presentation of a news program, rather than the kind of bias contemplated by clause 4.4.1 of the Code.
Accordingly, the delegate finds that the licensee did not breach clause 4.4.1 of the Code in this instance.
ACMA Investigation Report 2568 –Ten News At Five – NRN –4/2/111
[1]Amalgamated Television Services Pty Limited v Marsden (1998) 43 NSWLR 158 at 164–167 (references omitted)
[2] In acomplaint to the licensee dated 7 February 2011.