Assessment 3 – Court Reporting

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Handwritten Notes

Man accused of decade-long tax-free marathon

By Braydon Hall

A Higgins man stands accused of mass tax related offences dating back as far as 2006, the ACT Magistrates Court heard today.

Small business owner Nicholas John O’Leary sat quietly at the bench as the charges were read out by Magistrate Peter Morrison.

The alleged offences include an alleged eleven consecutive years of failure to provide tax returns and multiple charges of failure to provide documents to the Australian Tax Office.

O’Leary did not enter a plea today, instead wishing to seek further legal advice before doing so.

The case will be back in court on the 28^th of November.

Stalker granted bail in “toxic” relationship case

By Braydon Hall

A Canberra woman has successfully applied for bail after being convicted of stalking her former partner in a relationship which was described as ‘deeply toxic and dysfunctional” by the prosecution.

Ashley Palmer was convicted of stalking with the intention to harass and improper use of a carriage service earlier this month in the ACT Magistrates Court.

Today, the court heard of the nature of the relationship breakdown from both the defence and prosecution, including fights over money and the custody of their child, the court also heard of an AVO taken out by Palmer in 2015.

Palmer’s defence argued that the harassment in the relationship was two-way and noted the importance of Palmer being able to care for her child, grandfather and younger sister.

In her deliberations, Magistrate Karen Fryar spoke of Palmer’s apparent obsession with her partner.

“I have to say that…your behaviour as outlined, the fixated behaviour you have displayed to me is immensely concerning.” She said.

However, the welfare of the child was a primary concern in the decision to allow bail to Palmer.

The matter will return to court where Palmer will face sentencing on the 14^th of November.

Reflection

When doing the assessment, there were several constraints and considerations placed on the reporting that could be done. The most primary consideration was in terms of accuracy; a concept central to the MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics, where the number one standard to consider is to “Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts”.

When in court, there arose several times where there was some information missing, for example, where the age and location relevant to the Ashley Palmer story weren’t clearly mentioned or missed in the note-taking process. Rather than try to supplement them or take any level of guesswork, it was a more ethical move to ensure the essential facts that could be provided were all correct.

The two cases reported on both had different dynamics when it came to the use of the word “allegedly” as one case (Nicholas O’Leary) was in the early stages, earlier than even the entering of a plea, while the other (Ashley Palmer) had already reached the stage of a conviction, with the hearing focused on a bail application. As noted by Pearson & Polding (2011), using terms like alleged “Should certainly be used whenever an allegation is being made about someone that they have not had the opportunity to admit or deny in court.”. Application of this was important in the O’Leary case, as the presumption of innocence was still open, whilst it was not necessary in the Palmer case, as the conviction had already been recorded.

Both the MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics and Pearson and Polding (2011) emphasise the importance of balance in court reporting and in the wider field of journalism, with this in mind, it was important, especially in the Palmer case, to ensure that between the written story and the piece to camera, that arguments from both the defense and the prosecution were given time in the article so as to try and maintain as much of a balanced standard as possible.

Pearson & Polding (2011) outlines a number of “Red-Light Zones for Crime and Court Reporters”, including not reporting the identity of children and juveniles, or anything that could lead to the identification of them for that matter. This was an important and ongoing consideration in the Palmer case, where discussions on the case not only drew reference to the child of the defendant and complainant, but also mentioned him by name.

Constant effort was made throughout the story and the piece to camera to avoid including any information that could lead to the identification of the child, while also maintaining the fact that the welfare of the child was a core consideration in the granting of bail. These efforts included not indicating gender or age of the child (simply using the term “child”) and upon finding out that the child will be at the same address as the defendant, using the broad term of Canberra when describing location to minimize the likelihood of the child being identified based on the information in the story.

 

Taking Crisis and Creating Community

 

 

Councilor Carol James, standing in front of the community that she’s contributed so much to.

 

For more than twenty years, 67-year-old Councilor Carol James has been a pillar of the Goulburn-Mulwaree community. This involvement in numerous initiatives, especially those targeted at the youth of the region, mirrors the same community care she was shown when her father was cut in half by a chainsaw when she was only ten.

“I grew up in Sydney, came to Goulburn when I was very small…I had a very happy childhood…Great mum and dad, lots of love and lots of affection” She said.

Both in Sydney and in Goulburn, her father had been the breadwinner of the family, taking multiple jobs to provide the best support he could. Being the groundskeeper of the Goulburn golf course while also earning income from carting wood at Big Hill, 50 kilometres out of town.

“During one of these trips away…there was a tragic accident and a chainsaw…rolled back and he was killed” She said.

“It was a shock to all the family, and to my mum in particular, who had a nervous breakdown just after”

With little in the way of extended family or established support networks to fall back on, the local community stepped forwards to help. An experience that would form a foundation for Cr James’ philosophy on youth in the community.

“…we were taken in a lot by community, and I realised how strong community needs to be to function in crisis or times of emergency.” She said.

“I’ve realised since then that you can change and help young people by being an influence in their lives”

Since that trying time, Cr James served as a local councillor since 2008, as well being an active member of the Goulburn Girl Guides, the Goulburn-Mulwaree Youth Council and the Community Drug Action Committee,

“I just really think anything you can do to build a young person’s self-esteem (and) self-confidence is doing great work for their future” She said.

An editied version of the interview can be found here:

 

Multi-platform News Analysis

On February 6^th, online blogger Andie Fox posted an article to The Sydney Morning Herald (As a struggling single mother, Centrelink terrorised me over ex-partner’s debt) which detailed her experiences in attempting to resolve a debt claim. Then, on the 26^th of February, a columnist for the Canberra Times, Paul Malone, posted an article to The Sydney Morning Herald (Centrelink is an easy target for complaints but there are two sides to every story) which used personal information, released by a Centrelink spokesperson, to dispute the claims made by Fox. This blog post will review and analyze the coverage of the story and discuss the differences in how that coverage was presented across three media sources: The ABC, The Guardian and The Canberra Times.
Andie Fox initially broke the story in the form of a blog post on the 26^th (Is this what happens when you criticise government?). The Guardian was then first to break the developing story after the blog post made by Andie Fox, doing so on the 27^th of February at 3:26 PM (Centrelink recipient’s data released by department to counter public criticism), which was followed shortly by the ABC publishing their own piece (People who criticise Centrelink’s debt recovery could have personal information released to ‘correct the record’), also posted on the 27^th with both the article and an accompanying Facebook post made at 5:11 PM. The following day, The Canberra Times released their own piece (Centrelink ‘smearing’ debt critics, says Labor). That day, both The Guardian and The Canberra Times posted links to their coverage of the matter on their Facebook pages, The Guardian doing so at 3:18 PM and The Canberra Times doing so at 9:29 AM.

In terms of timeliness, while The Guardian was the first to make an online post, the ABC was the first to link their article on Facebook, doing so seemingly at the exact same time as their article appeared on the website, while the story wasn’t linked directly by the ABC News twitter account, links to the news story through other accounts quickly appeared on the same day. The slower reaction by the Canberra Times can be attributed both to their status as a newspaper. One universal factor across the sources was the fact that social media came second in each case. Each outlet needed to publish their story before they could link it via social media, rather than posting or tweeting the story as a news alert.

Each of the three stories took a different angle in approaching the story. The Canberra Times focused more on the political implications of the event, featuring comments from the Labor party in both the headline and in the lead. The story was structured with the comments by the Opposition and the DHS occupying the first two paragraphs before context was placed in the third paragraph. This contrasts with the ABC’s angle, which emphasized the possibility of personal information being released to “correct the record” in the headline with a similar approach taken in the lead. The next two paragraphs of the article recount the event before moving into comments from sources afterwards. The Guardian’s focus is slightly different to the ABC’s, structuring the recount of events as the priority, before moving to political and departmental comments afterwards, alongside a brief consideration of the legal side.

While the general story presents four of the six news values noted by Lamble (2013), each story emphasizes different values. The story carries a similar level of significance across all three articles, as a significant proportion of Australians make use of Centrelink services. Conflict is universally present also, but expressed differently across each story, The Canberra Times concentrates on the political conflict, which was also emphasised in the headline to the accompanying social media post. The Guardian introduces the idea of a conflict with the law through its reference to legislation and through raising the question of legality, though they also include the political conflict in their social media headline. The ABC drew more attention to the conflict between Fox and the government, spending five paragraphs on Fox’s response to the release. Human interest is also somewhat present in each story. The Guardian was the only media source to link to Andie Fox’s blog, where she originally raised the privacy question. Proximity is also present, but only in the broad fashion of it taking place in Australia to a welfare recipient being noted at this point.

Both Facebook links took vastly different approaches in the comprehensiveness of their leading lines. The Canberra Times only provided part of Centrelink’s response, perhaps to try and use curiosity to draw in attention. The Guardian provides a line of context about the controversy before using a quote from the article which helps to sell the seriousness to the reader, they also use the hashtag as a means of linking their article to the wider debate about Centrelink. Each of the news articles fulfil the “five Ws and one H” (What? When? Why? Who? Where? How?). The Canberra Times is the least comprehensive, being both the shortest and drawing from the least sources. The ABC used two links and seven sources of information. The Guardian’s article features five links and five sources. The Guardian’s was the only article that noted the case as having not originating from the automatic debt recovery system.

The fairness and balance of the reporting is generally good across the board, with only a few caveats worthy of note. The ABC draws comment from two Greens Party sources, different from the single comment taken from the DHS and the Labor party. The Canberra Times story seems to try and de-emphasise any role of Fairfax in the controversy, offering only a single paragraph of context in the story. The Guardian lacks the comments made by the Labor party, although this could be a side effect of The Guardian being the first to report on the story.

This case demonstrates the different approaches that can be taken when reporting on a single story, each media source balanced the news values differently to produce a different angle. The role of social media is somewhat muted, seeing as the posts were used to link to the articles, rather than as individual news alerts. Nonetheless, social media still proves an important method of disseminating the news. Dunlop (2016) makes a note of the move away from social media as a personal platform, to the release of more general news content. This consumption of news via social media is made similarly notable in the University of Canberra’s Digital News Report (Watkins et al. 2016) where it’s found that social media was one of the most popular sources of news in the week prior to the report’s survey, sitting at 52.2% popularity. Each story presented was significantly influenced by it’s angle, informing how they prioritised their information and how they presented it to the Australian audience.

Word Count: 1,153

Word Count (Without Links): 1,087

References

Jerry Watkins, Sora Park, R. Warwick Blood, Megan Deas, Michelle Dunne Breen, Caroline Fisher, Glen Fuller, Jee Young Lee, Franco Papandrea, Matthew Ricketson, 2016, Digital news report: Australia 2016, University of Canberra, News and Media Research Centre (UC), <http://dx.doi.org/10.4225/50/5754F7090A5C5&gt;.

Lamble, S. (2016). News as it Happens. Melbourne: OUPANZ.

Dunlop, T. (2016). Success, Trends and Influence of Social Media in Mainstream Media. In H. Sykes & A. Dodd, Media Innovation and Disruption (1st ed.). Future Leaders.