Australian media get a taste of public interest medicine

McDonald's. Photo / Richard Robinson.

The Australian media are copping a bit of their own medicine.

First, Channel Seven has been taken to task for using McDonald's Grimace and Hamburgler in its station identifier during ad-free children's television.

Children's television standards ban advertising during preschool viewing, with restrictions on other children's programming.

But the network used the McDonald's footage - without the fast food chain's permission - in a station identifier, angering broadcasting watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which found Seven guilty of broadcasting an ad that was not clearly identifiable as advertising to children, and wrongly drafting Hamburgler and Grimace during protected times.

"The [authority] remains serious about the protection of children during children's programming, particularly given their vulnerability to forms of advertising that are not well signposted or have the potential to be unduly influential," chairman Chris Chapman said.

Now it is the newspapers' turn.

While a separate inquiry focuses on the implications of media convergence, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has announced a probe into newspapers that could see a powerful regulator overseeing all the nation's news outlets.

The inquiry follows Britain's hacking scandal that has embroiled the UK media empire of Rupert Murdoch, whose Australian News Ltd group owns 70 per cent of the nation's mastheads.

The Greens had pushed for a parliamentary investigation of the Australian group.

"The Murdoch empire is relentless about wanting inquiries into politics and politicians, and that's how it should be, but they don't like it when it's the other way around," Greens leader Bob Brown said.

But the Government has avoided a head-on clash.

"Bob Brown wanted a parliamentary inquiry, he wanted a media inquiry to focus on News Ltd, to talk about breaking up News Ltd, and we've said 'no' to all of that," Conroy told Channel 9 yesterday.

Instead, he has appointed retired judge Ray Finkelstein and journalism academic Matthew Ricketson to head an independent inquiry into the impact of technological change and commercial pressures on reporting standards.

It will also investigate the adequacy of journalists' codes of practice, and the future of the Australian Press Council, the industry's self-governing watchdog, which Conroy described as a "toothless tiger".

He said one possibility was the merging of the council and the communications and media authority into a new regulatory body with real powers.

The council has welcomed the inquiry.

News Ltd and the rival Fairfax group have said they will co-operate with the inquiry, but were reserved in their reaction.