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ACMA releases current affairs review info

ACMA completes its lengthy look at how current affairs shows present factual and fair information.

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ttmwACMA has today released a very extensive report on its industry review of current affairs shows, following on-going concerns on breaches of the Code of Practice.

“This is an important opportunity for viewers to comment on the rules that will affect what they see on commercial free-to-air television in the coming years, including on the new digital multi-channels,” said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman.

“The ACMA earlier provided the current affairs research to Free TV Australia to assist its consideration of appropriate safeguards in the code to meet the community’s expectations. The ACMA is now publishing the research to inform public consideration of the draft code.”

ACMA says viewers have high expectations that facts presented in commercial television current affairs programs will be accurate and that, when there are errors, viewers consider that corrections should be made. But ACMA found only 23% of people agreed that programs are always accurate with the facts they present.

The review looks at everything from viewer habits, expectations, punishments and case studies.

In recent times current affairs shows including Today Tonight and A Current Affair have received little more than a slap on the wrist from the industry watchdog. How often have we heard the sentence: “In light of these discussions and the detailed nature of the code review process, ACMA does not, at this stage, propose to take any further action in relation to this matter.”

Amongst its many findings, the review notes: Viewers believed that the regulator should play a more active role in ensuring that broadcasters are deterred from presenting factual inaccuracies and unfair representations of viewpoint. While it is generally believed that current affairs broadcasters should be correcting errors as soon as they occur, there is far less belief that this is happening in practice. The public would welcome giving more power to the regulator to prevent these errors from ever happening on commercial current affairs programs.

The results are released ahead of public comment on Free TV Australia’s own review of the Code of Practice.

The very extensive results of the review are available for scrutiny at ACMA

9 Responses

  2. This is certainly one area where they have you really tighten right up.On the Today Tonight program,you do wonder if each story they show is the truth,or downright made up lie,as they have done that a bit in the past,which they should’nt get away with.I will watch ACA for the odd story here or there as i trust them or i would watch Neighbours

  4. we are what we eat. If we eat sh!t for so long how would we have the faculties to identify what we are being fed?

    we need a watch dog and not a pathetic toothles tiger than goes for the wrist. I want then to go for the jugular.

    A society as a whole is only as smart as its media. Its simbiotic but legislation can forge a better direction so lets act!

  5. I’m sure that every reasonable person is well aware that these sorts of trashy programs always like to push the boundaries of the truth. However, the true extent of the deception only becomes clear when you have a particularly in-depth knowledge of the topic they are covering.

    For example, every time that one of these programs got stuck into Big Brother, us fans over at the Behind Big Brother forums would find countless outright factual inaccuracies alongside numerous sneaky attempts to misguide the public. On one occasion, Today Tonight producer Nicole Brand created an account on these forums under the name “bubbles 2601” in order to ask for information and footage for her program. Over the course of her brief stay, she also made several posts accusing Big Brother of covering up information. A few days later, when the story went to air, the reporter held up one such post as evidence that online fans of Big Brother were outraged. This incident has been reported by the likes of crikey.com – just do a Google search.

    Nevertheless, despite all this the best solution to the problem is for the moronic masses to wake up to the situation. It really is pathetic that people need the government to think for them.

  6. ACMA needs to do what it’s supposed to and investigate and have a preliminary, if not a final, outcome within 4-6 weeks…. Seriously – how long does it take? It is a joke that we hear on this site, 6-12 or more months later of breaches (and usually of zero repercussions).

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