Channel Seven is being sued for defamation by Mercedes Corby.
The gravamen of Ms. Corby’s case is that Channel Seven’s Today Tonight program, in the persons of its presenter Anna Coren and reporter Bryan Seymour, had promised Ms. Jodie Power $100,000 and a trip to Canada if she made false statements on air implicating Ms. Corby in illicit drug dealing. The truth of the matter is ultimately for the court to decide, but the salient point is that the matter is only before the court because Ms. Power made contestable statements, and the station broadcast those statements, about a specific individual other than herself who has standing to sue.
An obvious question this case raises is whether the practice of paying interviewees to make sensational, misleading and/or false statements is widespread in the genre of tabloid current affairs television. I can think of two such interviews, both broadcast on tabloid current affairs programs, about which I have long held grave suspicions.
Both interviews were in the context of stories about alleged “welfare bludging” in the form of Newstart recipients allegedly not actively seeking work or engaging in any other jobseeking-related activity to deserve their payment. Both were screened during the tenure of the Howard government, at times when “tough” new measures to “crack down on welfare fraud and bludging” were being considered or about to be announced by the Federal Government. Both involved interviewees straight out of suburban mythology about “dole bludgers” - in one case, a young hippie woman from Nimbin, in the other, two surfers at Byron Bay. In both interviews, the interviewees unblushingly proclaimed that they were getting the dole, and frankly declared that they weren’t looking for, or interested in, paid work. Quoth the woman from Nimbin: “I don’t have to do anything to get the dole, so I don’t do anything.” Both interviews were following by finger-wagging commentary by the presenters, and bloviators like Piers Akerman masquerading as welfare policy experts, about how shocking it all was and how great it was that the government was finally cracking down on these dreadful people.
Why do I have grave suspicions about these interviews?
To begin with, at the time of both interviews, it was simply not true that a person could collect Newstart payment without actively looking for work or engaging in other such activities. Payment of Newstart and its predecessors has always been conditional on the recipient producing evidence that they were seeking work, and since 1991 has been conditional on the recipient signing Activity Agreements and satisfying activity tests entailing regular jobseeking, participation in activities designed to enhance their employabilities, and regular meetings with their case manager to review progress. I should also add that I once had an uninhibited conversation with a Centrelink case manager in the NSW Northern Rivers area who assured me that the Newstart recipients she dealt with were indeed expected to toe the line on activity testing.
In other words, if the interviewees were claiming to be getting the dole without having to do anything for it, they were either lying in the interviews, or telling the truth in the interviews and, one must deduce, lying to Centrelink and their case manager about the extent to which they were fulfilling their Activity Agreement.
If they were lying in the interview, one must ask what would be the point? They would be inviting opprobrium from the public and, presumably, at least some of their friends and family, they would be attracting unnecessary adverse attention from Centrelink, and they would be giving the government ammunition to change its policies so as to change their circumstances in a way they wouldn’t like. What possible countervailing benefit would there be?
If they were telling the truth in the interviews and, by implication, lying to Centrelink, they would have been admitting to the criminal offence of social security fraud on national television. Why take this risk?
In both cases they would have been virtually guaranteeing that their payments would have been suspended or cancelled entirely, especially as at least some Centrelink staff in the area, and some of the local citizen patriots, would have been watching the interviews, and in small communities like Nimbin and Byron must have known who these individuals were.
We conclude that the stereotyped dole-bludging Nimbin hippy and the cliched dole-bludging Byron surfies would almost certainly not have made such statements at interview on national television, at considerable cost and risk to themselves, their reputation and their legal position, unless they believed there was some substantial countervailing benefit (presumably a financial benefit) to themselves from doing so. The question then is: who was providing the benefit, and why?
And because the people besmirched by their statements were not specific individuals, but unspecified welfare recipients in aggregate, neither they nor the programs nor the presenters nor the reporters nor the bloviators nor the television stations nor anybody else involved can be sued and called to account in court - not unless someone in one of these categories who knows something rolls over.
I have many similar concerns.
Firstly I thought the attack on Mercedes Corby was disgraceful. Not just airing a potentially defamatory allegation that seems to have been at least partly motivated by cash, but doing so in a highly manipulative way including:
- a weekend of promos that let viewers know of ’sensational allegations’ backed by a so-called lie detector.
- conveying the impression for 10 minutes that Powers had passed the ‘lie detector’ test before briefly revealing she had actually failed, then a further 5 minutes of telling us she had passed later tests and that there were supposedly good reasons for the original failure.
- denying MC the right to rebut the claims despite regular request from MC to have that opportunity.
- following up the original episode with what we now know to be fabricated claims about Schapelle Corby on centrelink payments. And the ridiculous support of Powers by her mother.
A nasty business.
But it’s bigger than just that case. The confrontation of allegedly dodgy trademen or conmen is similarly manipulative and a denial of natural justice. The format seems to be that Coren makes the claims. Then a Ch 7 journo confronts the ‘evil doer’ who naturally has no recourse other than to flee the scene, scream abuse or go into hiding, all of which have the affect of making the evil-doer appear guilty.
And now as the original post points out there concerns theat some stories were actually fabricated. Jodie Power’s tale. The old lady in chains. Dole-bludiging hippies and surfies. The lady that made the claims about Schapelle and Certerlink payments. And everywhere the stink of chequebook journalism.
Ugh! Something has to be done. Likme some real regulation including the power to put these clowns off the air.
Perhaps if MC is able to sue successfully then it might start to cost these programs too much to continue to function this way…But I’m dreaming, if the case against channel whatever is strong enough there will just be a hushed up out of court settlement and back to bad business as usual. If people stopped watching this type of schlock tv land would be a better place
Funny, isn’t it that its well-reported on 9 but not 7.(Was channel-surfing between the two til 8.30 am.)
Acftually there should be laws brought in preventing journos f4r5om lying to the public. But I suppose of that happened, we’d have no press, radio or tv.
In any case I agree utterly with Jenny.
Sueing Channel 7 may get Mercedes Corby some money, but it won’t deter Channel 7. Their insurance will pay and what they lose by having their premiums increased as a result, they will more than make up for by increased advertising revenues as more people tune in to get their daily fix of dirt.
The only deterrent that may work is for the victims of these programs to sue the producer, the host and the reporter personally. Then they might think twice before doing this stuff. The problem is that from the victim’s point of view, it makes financial sense to after the defendant with the deepest pockets and/or who is insured, not the individuals. The victim may get some financial restitution, but the program will keep on defaming people. Why do they do it? Because they can.
Yes. Television management should be held accountable and their broadcasting licences subject to hefty fines. The 6:30 pm shows are out of control, and management knows all about it.
It makes “Frontline” look like a buncha wimps. They had no balls. Pathetic.
Paul, Channel Ten Sydney ran the Corby/Seven story at the top of their 5:00 bulletin yesterday.
Once when visiting London, I commented to an English friend about how atrocious I thought their tabloids were, and wondered how they stayed in business for the lawsuits. He argued that the market for celebrity gossip and scandal was such that a big tabloid can maintain a large fund for fighting defamation and making the subsequent payouts and still come out ahead. So it was financially worth it to them to print whatever they liked - as Spiros points out about Seven.
He also remarked that there were so many outrageous allegations/outright lies being published about certain celebs in particular that sometimes the celebs just give up and ignore the lot, because a lawsuit could mean they actually physically have to go to court, which in turn becomes another story in which the claims are aired again.
CFQ, Spiros and others are right about defamation payouts being fully budgeted overhead costs for the media outlets.
I haver often thought that the defamation laws, and other media laws, need to include provisions for media outlets and operatives to be required by courts to make full and frank confessions, of similar length and in similar timeslots (or equivalent) to the original defamatory publication, of how and why they came to make claims which they either knew to be untrue, or would have found to be untrue had they exercised due diligence in their research and reporting.
Great post Paul! I know the surfer/hippie thing is only a suspicion, but maybe a lean-and-nosy-like-a-ferret journo somewhere (not from Channel 7, obviously) could locate the individuals themselves… Maybe though, they would be completely unknown to everyone in the Nimbin and Byron areas, disappearing as mysteriously as they appeared?
Helen, the thought had crossed my mind.
In any case it’s interesting that they had to travel all that distance from Sydney to find examples of a phenomenon which, if it was anything like as big a problem as they were making out, they could have found examples of in the surrounding suburbs.
Paul Norton (8):
I like that, but I’d also like to see a regulatory body that can receive complaints, conduct investigations, impose fines and put a show off the air for a period of time. I have in mind something like Ch 7 having to fill its TT timeslot for a few weeks with a notice that it is unable to broadcast its usual crap as a penalty for having breached media rules.
That would be a huge deterrent for Ch7 and have the additional benefit of sparing viewers the brain-deadening impact of watching TT.
Paul, that’s a good point, and it sounds entirely reasonable to me. TT and ACA in particular seem to “pride” themselves in informing the public about the shonky builder/magical slimming tablet/whatever, so surely they should care when they misinform said public. And if they don’t care - which they don’t - they should be made to.
CFQ at 12.52pm
I too visited England some time ago, and couldn’t believe the tabloids. I asked an English friend, “Why is it that so much trash is printed in your newspapers?”.
His reply: “Your mistake is to think they are ‘newspapers’.”
In Australia, I believe a similar error is to think that those TV shows “cover current affairs” in some sense.
I once got interviewed by ‘Today Tonight’ for something to do with my work. They obviously didn’t think my quotes were sensational enough so they edited the word ‘not’ out of one of them. Mind you, they might as well have been talking to someone else because they also managed the trifecta of getting my name, title and institution wrong.
Blair, it’s more likely that the trifecta of errors occurred so that you couldn’t complain about them editing your comments as ‘you’ didn’t make them.
Funniest thing about the whole episode was finding out from someone I knew at CSIRO (which TT incorrectly said I was from) that the CSIRO media relations people had been running around trying to find out who on earth this (non-existent) Professor Truman of theirs was who’d been talking to the media without telling them about it
“If they were lying in the interview, one must ask what would be the point? They would be inviting opprobrium from the public and, presumably, at least some of their friends and family, they would be attracting unnecessary adverse attention from Centrelink, and they would be giving the government ammunition to change its policies so as to change their circumstances in a way they wouldn’t like. What possible countervailing benefit would there be?”
I”m not so sure some of the people that allow themselves to be featured on these shows think through the issues that clearly.
A little touch of fame and notoriety in ‘beating the system’ can win kudos in some circles.
You may be surprised to know how flagrant people are in working the system if you worked on the ground in welfare, health, community or theraputic services. My response to these many disclosures (sometimes motivated by bravado, guilt or stupidity) is ” why do you want me to know that? ITs an interesting question, and it seems sometimes the motivating desire is an attempt at a strange sort of confession, and a projection of complicity upon me - i then have the moral quandry to process around the disclosing of their behaviour to the right channels, while they feel absolved in having told ’someone’ in authority, but taking a calculated risk that i probably won’t breach confidentiality and push the issue.
sublimecowgirl.
That’s an interesting point that provides food for thought. However the question which persists is why the programs would go all the way to Nimbin and Byron to find such people when basic laws of probability suggest that there will be many more of them closer to home in suburban Sydney (or whichever metropolis the show is produced in). Also, why would the program only interview (in one instance) the surfies and a bloviating Akerman when there are both other (and better informed) viewpoints to be heard, and many other bona fide welfare clients to be interviewed whose circumstances and attitude are quite different.
It’s slightly off-topic, but after enduring Akerman and Andrew Bolt on alternative Sunday mornings on Insiders, I’m still not sure whch one I find more obnoxious - Akerman because he’s more obnoxious pure and simple, or Bolt because of his devious capacity to sugar the underlying obnoxiousness of his views with wit and humour.
Paul Norton, it’s because Nimbin and Byron have a certain reputation, however undeserved, in people’s minds, and these tabloid programmes aren’t even remotely interested in a factual or truthful presentation of the story they’re beating up.
It really makes me laugh when oafs like Akerman and the right-wing commentariat and the libs constantly get stuck into the ABC about “balance”, but are deafeningly silent about the glaringly obvious bias and downright lies pedalled on shows like TT its sister programmes on the other commercial channels.
Also, slightly off topic, though referring to sublime cowboys comments…I often wonder how much welfare fraud there is. Anecdotally it is huge. My suspicion is that this perception is largely driven by the crappy current affairs shows and scapegoat politics.
I suspect that the amount of money spent on tracking down this fraud is actually huge, compared to the problem. It just does not seem very economically rational.
And just makes people, who are often doing it very tough, feel like they cannot be trusted.
Even if welfare fraud was as “huge” as it anecdotally is, there’s no question it costs taxpayers far less than tax avoidance at the other end of the scale.
joe2, you’ve transgendered sublimecowgirl!
There have been some analysrs or reports done on the extent of welfare fraud in the relatively distant past. The amount of welfare fraud according to these reports is virtually miniscule from memory. Its just a fact of life that the vast majority of welfare recipients just aren’t that stupid to work and/or claim a benefit or pension if they’re not entitled to it.The very small minority who do would almost certainly be criminals whether they were pensioners, beneficiaries, or not. And they always get caught.
“joe2, you’ve transgendered sublimecowgirl!”
OMG, i knew i should have stayed in bed today.
Paul and Joe 2; found a link for you comparing welfare fraud with tax evasion.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/tax-dodgers-laughing-as-the-poor-are-hounded/2007/12/14/1197568262862.htmlIt makes some great points in alignment with Wizofaus' comment.
I also did quick Google regular and Scholar search ( if you've not yet discovered this tool i do recommend you check it out by clicking the advanced search options)and while the issue is indeed far less problematic than tax evasion, its not exactly miniscule either.
Check it up yourselves if yr curious.
For the record i've never alerted Centrelink about any confession clients have made because, frankly, thats the least of my concerns when someone is experiencing severe abuse or rape, a life threatening(terminal)illness, or processing the sexual abuse of a child. I will always, however, encourage people to make considered and ethically integrated choices that are life affirming and empowering, so i ain't condoning choices to defraud the system, but i do understand the context in which it occurs.
Btw Joe2, if you need to see me as a guy thats OK. We can explore this a little more another time.
Adele Horin was most brave when she wrote that article, sublimecowgirl. (And an extreme apology for my, boy germ, lapse.) I remember it as a stark contrast to the media groupthink of the time. Things have changed a little, since then, but Tony Abbott ,for instance, still believes a family dole bludger bash will help his parties chances. Apparently, some of his colleagues are less enthusiastic.
I am just not so sure that these constant attacks on tax avoiders or welfare cheats are constructive. They may improve newspaper sales and low grade current affairs ratings, but seem to me neither socially or economically sound. Better to bury the stick and provide a bunch of carrots, as this bully boy stuff, is more about exclusion and blame games.
And back to my main point…. i believe, we are wasting vast amounts of money and energy, chasing down demons, when the return is far less.
sublimecowgirl,
I think that might have been the report I had in mind. That and several others, now lost in the bowels of my computer, were forwarded to me by Socialist Alliance at the time.
btw, I use scholarsearch regularly. A wonderful tool.
All this trouble just looks like sour grapes because someone has broken rank and good on this person for doing so. Surely the jury and judge can see right through all this suing for what it is!