We all lose when opinion is for sale
Media, Telecommunications and IT Unit | Mike Nahan
The Age 20th July, 1999
The John Laws affair is likely to bring about a revolution in talk-back radio akin to the 'payola' scandals in US pop music stations. Under 'payola', pop music disc jockeys were being paid by their ostensible employer, the radio stations, and again by the record companies to put particular pieces to air.
Talk-back radio is a highly influential shaper of public opinion. For whatever reason, the talk-back hosts have obtained a credibility beyond that of any other public personalities.
To survive and flourish, firms need to be well regarded by their customers. The powerful personalities of the airwaves can destroy or shore up that public perception. This offers the talk-back hosts an 'opportunity'---and it offers a route for a firm to hire a secret gun in order to undermine a competitor in the market.
Business is both a victim and a promoter of these unethical standards. It also has to deal with a plethora of well-resourced anti-business advocacy groups.
The media need to do more housecleaning. If business feels that its opponents are given lots of automatic free kicks, the temptation to engage in hidden funding must increase. But business must also realise that what it does now can come back and haunt it later. In a deregulated environment, it is no longer enough to merely stick to the letter of the law. It must build its own long-term relationships with the public and appropriate interest groups---something which the banks, in particular, coming from a previous environment of pervasive regulation, have not been good at doing.
Media Watch has disclosed practices which need to be exposed and that many business people have been fighting against. The furore over the Laws affair contains its own remedies. Public exposure of the truth and public condemnation is an appropriate sanction. Australia does not, however, want the heavy hand of government---not a disinterested party---regulating in detail media-third party interactions.
The publicity of the Laws case demonstrates the potency of democratic institutions in combating misuse of the media. The blowtorch of publicity offered by a free press, even if it is in a feeding frenzy on the issue, will doubtless provide its own remedy. Business, chastened by the counter-productive outcome of the ABA/Laws deal, is likely to be more careful in defining the line beyond which advertising and PR become unethical payments. The talk-back host and the media, anxious to maintain or restore their public image, are likely to tighten the terms and conditions under which they conduct their business.
Robert Manne's article, 'The Opinion Business', on this page yesterday, opens a further dimension to the issue. Manne associates the Institute of Public Affairs with talk-back hosts' practices. He seems to be saying that private-sector funding inevitably pollutes an analyst's views. Robert Manne originally came to public prominence through his editorship of Quadrant, a privately-funded magazine. (The Age, indeed all other newspapers, are also privately funded.)
Manne's suggestion that only government bodies are capable of purveying the truth is a ludicrous reversal of the truth---government monopolies on media are a prescription for tyranny. Government media monopolies are the antithesis of a free press.
In fact, the lack of diversity of views in government-funded universities, which are themselves increasingly seeking private-sector funding, creates the need for private think-tanks like the IPA. Indeed, Manne acknowledges the integrity and anthropological credentials of our colleague Ron Brunton, an expert who is not likely to be hired by most university departments because he offends their own Politically Correct agendas. His work is independent of our funders.
The not-for-profit IPA goes to great lengths to keep research activity separated from funding. Like The Age, we put procedures in place to ensure our views are not coloured by our funders' interests. It is only by such efforts that public debate can be kept where it belongs---concerned with logic and evidence, not money and personal attacks.
The IPA often pioneers changing opinion. Accordingly, we have to be more rigorous in our marshalling of facts than those simply promoting established beliefs. Our funding base and resources are modest. Our influence lives and dies on our arguments. The IPA is as threatened by the buying of opinion as anyone---a society of bought opinion has no place for think-tanks.