Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts, I present the report on the reporting of sports news and the emergence of digital media, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I seek leave to incorporate my tabling statement in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

I am very pleased to table this consensus report on behalf of the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts Committee and in so doing acknowledge the participation and genuine interest in this inquiry by other Committee members and in particular Senators Lundy, Birmingham, Wortley, Troeth.

I would also like to sincerely thank the Secretariat, Hansard and the 43 organisations and individuals from around the world who took the time to make a submission and some of whom gave evidence at public hearings, and I particularly thank those persons who represented international organisations and spoke to us willingly regardless of time differences.

This was, from the outset, going to be a topical inquiry. The Committee had to consider the interaction between sport—particularly big, high profile sports—the media, public interest, freedom of the press, the role of Government and the emergence of new digital media platforms that have changed the way people access news and information.

Before the era of the internet, mobile phones, PDAs and other digital media platforms our access to sports broadcasts and sports news was relatively limited. Event broadcasts and sports news were available to us on radio, television and in newspapers. If you missed the Saturday afternoon broadcast and wanted to find out if Port Adelaide had defeated Sturt, you would wait for the 6pm news on the radio. On Sunday, if you wanted to see the photo of an incident that would lead to a tribunal report, or if you wanted to see how Australia fared in the test match at Lords overnight, you would buy the Sunday Mail.

These days, I can go to a website on my mobile phone whenever I like and get virtually instant reports of scores as the game is played, along with photos and information about incidents on field while the game or match is being played.

Not only can we do that, we want to do that. Consumer expectations about access to news have changed. Who hasn’t been to an event on a Saturday night and spent a good part of it checking text messages for updates on the Showdown that you are missing?

The Committee heard that the new forms of digital media have given sports organisations increased opportunities to present and promote their sports.

The Committee also heard sporting organisations are anxious to maximise the revenue potential by selling broadcasting rights and capitalising on other revenue they can make from commercialising their sports. Sports organisations need that money to stage the events, to pay the players and coaches that entertain us, and importantly to assist and encourage young people to take up sport.

Sports compete with each other for “market share”, and against other news and entertainment sources for public attention and revenue. They want to protect their existing and potential markets.

Meanwhile, broadcasters and media organisations that—through an accreditation arrangement with a sporting organisation—send along a photographer or a journalist to a sporting event, or who purchase product from an accredited syndicated media outlet at the event, find that they have many more opportunities to broadcast their report or what they determine to be news. There are television stations dedicated to sport and online “newspapers” whose content is available immediately to whoever wants to view it.

There is no doubt the relationship between big sports and media is symbiotic. They both need each other and the stakeholders in this enquiry readily admitted that.

The Committee did note, however, that many sports remain underreported even though those sports—for example, netball—may have many more clubs and participants than the high profile sports that attract most media coverage.

In this mix, is the importance of the reporting of news—the freedom of the press to report that news and the right of the public to be informed about events that are newsworthy.

In Australia, and in most comparable countries, the importance of the media being able to freely report news is a strongly held and defended value. Our Copyright Act specifically includes fair dealing exceptions which allow copyrighted material to be used for the purposes of news reporting. The parameters or conventions of those fair dealing exceptions as far as sports news reporting are concerned are not prescribed but have been reached by informal agreements between news broadcasters and sporting organisations over time.

If anyone doubts that sports news is important and influential, I would call attention to the long lasting effects of the photo of Nicky Winmar asserting his indigenous heritage taken by “The Age” photographer, Wayne Ludbey, in 1993.

The Committee heard some evidence that sporting organisations have attempted to use accreditation agreements to restrict how their events are reported. if you like, an attempt to circumvent the fair dealing exceptions that have become the norm.

We also heard that, in the world of new forms of digital media, news organisations may also be stretching the friendship when it comes to the sometimes fine line between news and entertainment.

As the Report says “The committee accepts that media organisations may be ‘testing the boundaries’ of what constitutes news, and some sporting organisations are ‘testing the boundaries’ of what can reasonably be asked of news reporting organisations in their accreditation agreements”.

So far these tensions have, in the main, been worked out by negotiation between the parties and there has not been a lot of litigation in the area—and parties to this inquiry noted their unwillingness to engage in litigation, sometimes because of the cost of litigation but also because of the preference by the parties for negotiation over litigation.

There is not, at this stage, a lot of evidence that the public’s right to know or the freedom of the press to report, has been compromised. Nor is there a lot of evidence that the sporting organisations or media organisations or syndicated media organisations have suffered detriment

Some witnesses to this inquiry thought there should be more Government intervention to ensure that does not happen.

We do note that the syndicated media organisations probably have less clout in dealing with large sports organisations than some of the major media organisations. Some high profile cases are investigated in this Report, and I draw your attention to those.

Having explored at some length the matters covered by this inquiry, the committee has arrived at a number of modest recommendations that we believe will give some direction to the parties, which reinforce the importance of this issue, but which stop short of recommending government or legislative intervention at this stage.

Those recommendations include that government should consider using current Crawford review of sports to give more attention to the sporting organisations capacity to innovate in digital innovation—the Committee would particularly like to see the digital media platforms available to sports and the media used to promote and report less high profile sports.

The Committee specifically recommends the Parliament not consider amendments to Copyright Law at this stage, and not unless outcomes of any future litigation warrants it. This matter was not, at its heart about the adequacy of the Copyright Act which—based as it is on international conventions—seems to provide an adequate legal platform for parties who wish to test it.

The committee does recommend that the Government consider the relevant recommendations of the Copyright Law Review Committee in light of the evidence received in this enquiry.

A further recommendation requests stakeholders to negotiate media access to sporting events on the basis that all bona fide journalists—including photojournalists and news agencies—should be able to access sporting events regardless of which media platform they ultimately post their news on.

Finally, the Committee sends a message to the parties that Government is interested in what is at stake here—for the public, for sport and for media organisations—and will monitor developments. In the event that negotiations between the parties are unsuccessful then the Committee recommends the Minister consider initiating the process of a code of conduct under the Trade Practices Act.

I urge all those interested to read the Report and I hope that the Committee’s work has been useful to those who care about sport, news, the freedom of the press and the interests of the Australian public who value all of those things.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.