Part Two: The Hookes’ bouncer error

SHORTLY after taking on the job as Media Watch presenter, Liz Jackson was quizzed on the program's previous attacks on The Australian's columnist Janet Albrechtsen.

"She has a history with Media Watch, but I'd like to think she won't bear a grudge and nor will we," she told The Australian's Media and Marketing section in March. "I'm sure she'll rise above it." The latest Media Watch attack on Albrechtsen suggests that the program continues to seek to twist supposed factual errors in her columns to try to discredit the opinions in her columns.

Media Watch has a history of unfounded and plain wrong attacks on The Australian, consistent with the program's political antipathy to the newspaper. When the error of its attacks are pointed out, it refuses to correct or corrects in a grudgingly inadequate manner. In the process, the program's journalistic practices have been exposed as not up to standard, particularly for a program that monitors media and journalist performance. Here's one small but telling example.

In its 9 February 2004 broadcast, then Media Watch presenter David Marr lashed newspaper, television and radio outlets for conducting "trial by media" following the death of cricketer David Hookes in an altercation outside a Melbourne bayside hotel. Marr claimed the laws of contempt aimed to ensure that trials took place where they should - in a court of law. The media's treatment of Hookes' death was "way over the top in every way", he continued, not least in declaring a bouncer at the hotel, Zradvo Micevic, guilty of an unprovoked and furious assault.

The Australian does not necessarily share Marr's view of how the media reports major crime. Courts in the United States, for instance, are much less obsessive in censoring public information about such crimes without obviously producing a lower standard of justice. Nevertheless, Marr's views would be shared by many lawyers, if not journalists. Marr continued: "Micevic's picture was published widely including the front page of The Australian - and it was not obscured as we're obscuring it here. If identification's an issue at his trial, it's not going to be hard to pick him."

As Marr spoke, the program cut to page one of The Australian which included a photograph clearly showing Micevic's face. But what Marr didn't tell ABC viewers was that Media Watch showed the front page of The Australian that had been published outside Victoria. For its Victorian editions on that day, The Australian used another page one photograph of Micevic in which the bouncer obscured his own face and could not be recognised. The issue Marr raised - of identification for trial - did not apply.

Media Watch could have avoided this error by contacting the editor of The Australian before going to air. It did not do this, even though Media Watch previously had agreed, following previous errors, to contact the editor before broadcasting any item of significance concerning the newspaper. When confronted, Media Watch conceded its error and mentioned the curse of being Sydney-centric as an explanation. But it refused The Australian's request for an on-air correction, which would have alerted viewers of the program that it had made an error concerning its attack on The Australian. A very brief correction at the end of the following week's program would have set the record straight concerning The Australian and been a postscript showing how national media organisations dealt with the sort of legal issues it had raised the week before.

Instead, Media Watch resorted to its website, attaching an asterisk to the reference to The Australian in the online transcript of the previous week's program: "Correction: The Australian tell us that they published a special edition in Victoria, which used an image of Zdradvo Micevic that did not idenfity him. Our apologies to them, but the issue remains for other media, including the Herald Sun and the Age, which published photos and sketches of the accused."

The Australian complained to ABC Managing Director Russell Balding about the inadequate correction. The newspaper argued that only a small minority of those who watched the Media Watch program and its claim against The Australian would bother to read the online transcript of the same program. Balding maintained that the Media Watch correction conformed with the ABC policy of responding to errors in a form most suited to the circumstances. He said the ABC maintained the toughest and most comprehensive editorial policies in Australia and that the Media Watch website was not simply an archive but was an integral part of the program's output.

The Australian maintains that Media Watch failed to comply with proper journalistic standards. Its failure to contact The Australian led to a significant and indisputable on-air error which was used to criticise the newspaper. And when its error was pointed out, it refused to directly inform viewers of its mistake, instead burying a "correction" in the transcript of the program in a form that the great majority of viewers would never read.

Part One: Janet Albrechtsen's Good News from Iraq

"We stand by our argument that The Australian's columnist Janet Albrechtsen misrepresented the nature and source of 'Good News from Iraq'." ABC producer Peter McEvoy, to James Taranto, Editor of OpinionJournal.com, 11 May 2005.

The insinuation of "misrepresentation" indeed was the clear theme of the Albrechtsen item on 9 May 2005 broadcast of ABC television's Media Watch program. In an item headed "Wall Street Journalism or blog?", presenter Liz Jackson focussed on two short sentences from Albrechtsen's 4 May 2005 column in The Australian:

Terrorists "must detest The Wall Street Journal. Each fortnight the paper's website (www.wsj.com) includes a round up of good news from Iraq."

The Source of Good News from Iraq

What Albrechtsen's column got wrong was the precise web address at which the The Wall Street Journal publishes the round-up of good news from Iraq. Rather than wsj.com, the Iraq good news round-up is published on www.OpinionJournal.com, the website of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. This is arguably the most influential editorial or oped page in the English-speaking world. Certainly it is more influential in the world of ideas and opinion than The Wall Street Journal's news pages. Albrechtsen's argument gained no strength by referring to wsj.com rather than OpinionJournal.com. Both are websites of The Wall Street Journal. OpinionJournal.com editor James Taranto, who also works for the print version of The Wall Street Journal, described the error in referring to the newspaper's wrong website as "honest, and very small". Taranto said Albrechtson's column "misidentifies" which Wall Street Journal site carried the good news round up from Iraq but was "not substantially inaccurate". "OpinionJournal is part of what we call the WSJ.com network", he said. For the purposes of Albrechtsen's column, OpinionJournal is a no less "prestigious" (to use Jackson's word) source than wsj.com.

On the 9 May broadcast, Jackson mocked the "27 pages of good news, from the prestigious Wall Street Journal? We wanted to know more ... but couldn't find it on their web site". She added: "Good News from Iraq is not published on the highly respected Wall Street Journal website ..." She referred to OpinionJournal.com as a "sister site", a "spin-off site" or a "Dow Jones website". Jackson did not make it clear that OpinionJournal.com is a Wall Street Journal website. At best, the relationship between wsj.com and OpinionJournal.com was left muddied by the 9 May broadcast.

Perhaps the muddiness was because Media Watch itself was not sure. Media Watch producer Peter McEvoy later told Taranto that the program "did attempt on many occasions to clarify the precise relationship between The WSJ and OpinionJournal.com" but its emails and telephone calls to parent company Dow Jones and The WSJ news desk in New York yielded no information before it went to air. However, Media Watch does not appear to have attempted to contact OpinionJournal.com. "Instead," suggested Taranto, "Media Watch jumped to the erroneous conclusion that Good News from Iraq is not published on the highly respected Wall Street Journal website. Since the goal was to make another journalist's honest mistake look like a deliberate misrepresentation, one cannot credit Media Watch with acting in good faith." In a response to Taranto, ABC producer McEvoy said Media Watch did not say that "OpinionJournal.com is not published by The Wall Street Journal".

The Nature of Good News from Iraq

The Media Watch suggestion of Albrechtsen's "misrepresention" of "Good News from Iraq" goes to Albrechtsen's reference to "a round-up of good news from Iraq" included on The Wall Street Journal website. As it turns out, that is exactly what "Good News from Iraq" is: a round-up of good news from Iraq. As McEvoy put it to Taranto, it's a "cull of media reports and media releases highlighting the good news from Iraq ..."

On the 9 May broadcast, Media Watch made some additional points:

# The round-up was not produced by a Wall Street journalist but by a self-described Brisbane "blogger", Arthur Chrenkofff, who is now on the staff of a Queensland Liberal Senator.

# The blogger does no independent reporting but rather trawls the internet for good news from Iraq.

# The blogger was not paid by The Wall Street Journal and his work was published without editing by OpinionJournal.com.

But Albrechtsen made no representation about who compiled the round-up of Iraq good news. All she wrote was that The Wall Street Journal website included a round-up of good news from Iraq - no more, no less. The Media Watch point that the round-up is compiled by a "blogger" may be interesting, but in no way supports any "misrepresentation" by Albrechtsen. Nor do the other points that the round-up was compiled from the internet and was not paid for, nor edited by, The Wall Street Journal.

In the event, Media Watch has admitted that The Wall Street Journal in fact does pay for and edit the good news round-up. It was wrong on these points.

The non-correction

On its 16 May 2005 broadcast, Media Watch was faced with having to correct its obvious specific errors about Good News from Iraq without obviously backing away from its claim against Albrechtsen of "misrepresentation". Ironically, given its own errors, the result was an item called "Blogging credibility".

Jackson said: "As we pointed out the Good News isn't published on the Wall Street Journal's primary web site, but on a sister site, OpinionJournal.com." Note how Media Watch has clung to the vague "sister site" description used the previous week. There was no attempt to clarify for viewers that wsj.com and OpinionJournal are both websites of The Wall Street Journal. Viewers were not clearly informed that OpinionJournal was published by The Wall Street Journal or that it was the web site of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. There was no mention that the OpinionJournal.com editor had concluded that Albrechtsen's "misidentification" was "not substantially inaccurate".

Jackson explained that Media Watch previously had reported what the blogger had told the program: that he was not paid for its work and that OpinionJournal did not edit his work. She said the blogger "now admits he lied". The program quoted the blogger: "I do apologise. I should have told you the truth". Jackson said: "We've noted and corrected our website".

But there would be no obvious backing away from the Albrechtsen attack by Media Watch. Jackson said: "We stand by our story. Janet Albrechtsen's column gave Arthur's blog a journalistic credibility it doesn't deserve, and our own experience with Arthur's credibility only confirms that view".

Remember that Albrechtsen merely said that The Wall Street Journal's website carries a regular round-up of good news from Iraq, but cited wsj.com rather than OpinionJournal.com. Only those who closely followed the various off-air exchanges would have noticed that "misrepresentation" been toned down. Now, Albrechtsen was guilty of the lesser crime of having given the round-up of Iraq good news "a journalistic credibility it doesn't deserve". But all Albrechtsen did was refer to a "round-up" - a compilation of media articles and media releases - of good news on Iraq published online by The Wall Street Journal. Note that Media Watch has been careful not to challenge the journalistic credibility of The Wall Street Journal - in part by not making it clear on air that The Wall Street Journal does in fact publish, pay for and edit the round-up referred to by Albrechtsen.

Proper journalism

The Media Watch case against Albrechtsen finds only one small error in her column. That is the misidentification of the precise Wall Street Journal website that publishes Good News from Iraq. Proper journalistic procedure would at the least have put this issue to Albrechtsen to allow her to respond before going to air. Media Watch did not do this. Before broadcast, Media Watch put four written questions to Albrechtsen - first, about the headline to the column; second, whether she realised that the good news round-up was compiled by a "blogger"; third, whether she should have told readers that fact; and fourth, whether Albrechtsen should prefer such a "blog" to the reports of journalists on the ground. It failed to even allow Albrechtsen the opportunity to point out that Good News from Iraq in fact is published by the Wall Street Journal on its OpinionJournal.com site - a fact that still has not been clearly conveyed to Media Watch viewers.

The documentation is set out on www.abc.net.au/mediawatch