This week, why you should care about “metadata”, the media mogul threatening your already shrinking access to free-to-air sports, and why the PR industry should heed its own advice.

Meta-intrusive

The House of Representatives has passed new laws that will potentially impact severely on the media’s capacity to do its job.

The legislation requires telecommunication companies and ISP’s to retain so-called metadata about their customers for two years.

This metadata is information about your online activities, including your emails and phone calls. It isn’t the content, but it does reveal who you’ve been communicating with, where and when. Journalists have been given added “protection” in amendments to the bill. However, the changes simply mean that authorities will require a warrant to access reporters’ information.

Journalists, the union points out, will still be in the dark about who accesses their metadata and when. This means sources who expose government corruption or even straight incompetence could be exposed, unless reporters start to take much greater precautions.

In case anyone should think reporters’ concerns are overblown, InDaily is aware that the source of a relatively recent leak to the media from within the State Government was tracked down using telecommunications data (they didn’t use retained metadata, per se, but were able to extract location data from a message sent from a mobile device).

Australian governments all say they favour freedom of the press – but they like plugging leaks much more.

Blank space

The boss of Adelaide’s Riverbank Authority, Andrew McEvoy, had a bit of a touch-up from the national marketing media this week in relation to his day job as a honcho in Fairfax Media’s events arm.

One of his biggest projects in his first year on the job, the Spectrum Playground event at the Domain in Sydney, has attracted rather limp attendances.

As reported by marketing website Mumbrella, the event has attracted very sparse crowds. And they published pictures of the vast empty spaces to prove their point.

In Adelaide, McEvoy will be hoping to achieve much more success as he oversees the redevelopment of the Festival Centre Plaza and Riverbank precinct.

PR industry: do as I say, not as I do

Almost exactly a year ago, the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) had a messy change-over at the top.

As reported by InDaily at the time, the peak body for the PR industry was rocked by mass resignations (including Adelaide’s Leigh McClusky) after a new president, Mike Watson, was elected.

This week, Watson put out a media release boasting that the PRIA had seen “the first upturn in its performance for several years, according to Beaton’s recent benchmark survey of Australian Associations”.

Ironically, Watson’s effort is almost a textbook example of how not to write a media release – full of obscurities and ambiguities.

Take this for a second paragraph. The new board, it says, has focused on “bringing value back to PRIA’s post nominal system”. Okay….

Then there’s this – the CEO, Ray Shaw, has “stepped down to enable both the position and office to change to a more administrative and transactional role”.

“Shaw was engaged at a high level to analyse and reset the business model of the organisation and he has done that very well in a short time,” explained Watson. “He has introduced many new systems and processes to give the Board a solid foundation on which to make strategic change.”

That’s clear then.

The release also informs us that the PRIA is introducing new memberships called “PRelationships”.

PReally?

A taste of things to come

It’s been a bleak month for cricket fans who haven’t been prepared to lock into a pricey Foxtel contract.

Channel Nine has cherry-picked a tiny number of World Cup games to show on free-to-air and the rest have been snapped up by the pay TV network.

And if Rupert Murdoch has his way, things will only get worse for non-cashed-up sports fans.

The mogul, whose News Corp owns half of Foxtel and the majority of Australia’s daily newspapers, wants to get his hooks into more of the big-rating sports on free-to-air TV. He said as much on Twitter this week in an attack on federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull:

Aust! Turnbull’s plans to scrap certain rules suit buddies at Nine. Can’t oppose dumping all regs but not this. Nice to see how MT plays.

Turnbull wants to loosen some of the regulation around media ownership, including the rule that prohibits the one entity controlling an entire media market via a commercial television licence, a commercial radio licence and a newspaper. However, he’s holding firm the so-called “anti-siphoning” list, which stops cherished national sports being whipped off to pay-TV land.

He told Fairfax: “The policy question for government is simply whether we want to continue with a free-to-air television system where ordinary Australians, who may not be able afford a Foxtel subscription, can nonetheless watch their favourite sport on free to air TV? This is a very Australian arrangement.”

The Murdoch boosters, though, aren’t happy with any media deregulation that doesn’t give Foxtel greater access to the sports on the anti-siphoning list.

Don’t expect your friendly neighourhood Murdoch newspaper to campaign for your rights to watch footy and cricket on free-to-air. Here’s Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt’s take on it all:

Notice how Channel Seven and Nine skew their news a little to the Left? Think Seven’s Mark Reilly, Andrew O’Keefe and David Koch. Think Nine’s Laurie Oakes and 60 Minutes.

Notice how Sky News, on Foxtel, is closer to balanced?

Notice how Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull proposes media changes that will help the former and hurt Foxtel, part owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation?

Naughty corner

It was bound to happen one week, and this is that occasion – I’m declaring myself the numpty of the week.

This week I published the latest story in a long series about the Gillman land deal, reporting Treasury advice which warned Premier Jay Weatherill not to go ahead with the deal in the form proposed to Cabinet. The document was provided to the Opposition after a long FOI battle. They hadn’t seen it before. I wasn’t aware of having seen it before. When I asked for Government comment, they were dismissive.

Then, in Parliament, Deputy Premier John Rau took great delight in pointing out that it had already been tabled in Parliament. You numbskulls InDaily! I checked again and, yes, he was right – there it was, buried on page 1071 of an unindexed pdf file of numerous Gillman-related documents. [He also claimed the same story had been written in The Australian last year – close, but no cigar. It seems that Treasury provided its advice against the deal on numerous occasions and in different forms, all of which should be reported when they come to light.]

Nevertheless, I’m a little embarrassed after billing the document as new. The Government? Not embarrassed at all – and the substance of the story is accurate.

Top of the class

News Corp reporter Nigel Hunt is one of the best in the business, eschewing rewriting press releases in favour of using long-term contacts and nous to dig out stories that no-one else has told. He was at it again this week, revealing the identity of SA’s new police commissioner days before the State Government’s set-piece announcement.

Media Week is published on Fridays.