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An article by Colin Allison
on January 13, 1979 appeared on page 3 of The
Sydney Morning Herald ‘Interview May Lead to Ban
on Jail Magazine’:
“The future of Contact, the
magazine written for and by Parramatta Jail prisoners is
in doubt following the publication of a controversial
interview with a ‘lifer”; James Edward Smith.
The bitter 20 page
interview was published in the Christmas magazine issue
and distributed during the absence on holidays of the
jail Superintendent, Mr Harry Duff.
A senior jail official
confirmed yesterday that Mr Duff who ‘vetted’ each issue
of the low circulation magazine before its release,
usually every quarter, had not seen the finished
product.
The official said the
interview had ‘been slipped out while the cat was away’.
A spokesman for the
Department of Corrective Services said the interview was
likely to be highly embarrassing to the NSW Police Force
and the department.
He called its distribution
regrettable and said an investigation would be called
into the circumstances of the interview. A tougher
approach to censoring the magazine was inevitable and it
could be cancelled.
The interview with Smith
was allegedly conducted in November with another
prisoner - Bernie Matthews - the magazine’s editor.
However the department’s
spokesman said he doubted if a face to face interview
had taken place. He indicated Smith was not at
Parramatta Jail nor had he been at the time of the
interview.
Asked about Smith’s
whereabouts the department said it was not departmental
policy to reveal it.”
I contested the false and
incorrect assertions contained in the Allison article
during a formal complaint to the Australian Press
Council. It was the first time In Australian journalism
history that a prisoner had lodged a formal complaint to
the Australian Press Council. I contested the following
points:
1. Allison’s assertion that
the Parramatta Jail Superintendent, Harry Duff, “who
vetted each issue of the magazine before its release had
not seen the finished product” was contested in my
application to the Press Council:
“At the beginning of
December, 1978, I collected all the stencils that were
to be printed in the Christmas issue and took
them to the jail Superintendent, Mr Duff, for the
official vetting. He kept the material overnight
and returned it to me the following morning. There were
no complaints about any of the content.”
2. Allison’s assertion that
the magazine was distributed during Duff’s absence from
the prison on holidays was also contested in my
application to The Press Council:
“Mr Duff began his vacation
on 2 January, 1979, nearly 3 weeks after Contact had
been distributed.”
3. A further assertion in
the Allison article quoted a departmental spokesman as
saying; “he doubted if a face to face interview had
taken place” and claimed that “Smith was not in
Parramatta Jail nor had he been at the time of the
interview”. These assertions were also contested in my
application to The Press Council:
“Verification that the
interview between myself and Smith had occurred in a
prison exercise yard next to Six Wing inside Parramatta
Gaol on 28 November, 1978, was substantiated by
Statutory Declarations from myself, Smith and Billy
Sutton which were also attached to the application.”
The significance of the
incorrect assertions contained in the Allison article
was an example of the media accepting misinformation and
false material and having to regard it as truthful and
accurate without being able to check its authenticity or
reliability from independent sources before publication.
I attempted to illustrate this point in the submission
to the Australian Press Council in 1979:
“The repercussions that Mr
Allison’s article could have would not be fully
understood by those who do not have experience of a
maximum security environment or a smattering of prison
politics. Unlike newspapers and magazines outside the
walls of a prison, any prison magazine published by
prisoners inside the walls of a NSW penal establishment
is subject to “vetting” and censorship, usually by the
prison Superintendent.
The editor of a prison
magazine (usually a prisoner) has to tread a very fine
line between being a voice for the prison population as
a whole and toning down articles that prison authorities
would censor. For a prison magazine to be an effective
voice of the prison population it has to relay thoughts,
articles, stories etc. from prisoners, for prisoners and
about prisoners. Sometimes that material is
diametrically opposed to the policies of prison
administrators and if it is printed without the official
“vetting” first, then a series of prison sanctions could
be brought into force against those responsible for
printing the magazine.
Those sanctions could
include the sacking of prisoners responsible for the
magazine, banning the magazine or restricting further
publications, transferring the prisoners responsible for
the magazine to Siberian prisons situated in isolated
parts of NSW or confinement to maximum security sections
of the State prison system. The scope of prison
sanctions available to prison administrators is very
wide and varied.”
My complaint about the
Jockey Smith interview in the 1978 Christmas issue of
Contact was presented to the Australian Press Council on
29 March, 1979 by David Brown from the UNSW Law Faculty
who made oral submissions to the hearing:
“What is revealed is not a
series of isolated instances but a deep-seated and
systematic attempt to mislead, misinform, concoct and
cover-up events and practices taking place behind the
prison walls of this state, by the Department of
Corrective Services and prison officers and a
preparedness to use the media to this end.
We therefore submit that
the Council should not view this complaint in isolation,
but should treat it as one documented example of
systematic and deliberate duplicity at a high level
within an allegedly “public” department
We request the Council in
its findings, to actually identify the source of
information of the Sydney Morning Herald story, to place
this complaint against the wider background, and to
openly suggest concrete proposals to combat this
continuing situation. In particular, we urge the Council
to recommend:
(i) Support for the
continuing demand of prisoners to have direct access to
the media. Had the Sydney Morning Herald reporter been
able to check the story regarding the Contact interview
with Jim Smith and with the editor of Contact presumably
the story would not have been published in the form it
was.
(ii) That such is the
record of the Department of Corrective Services, that no
releases or statements from within the Department be
accepted for publication without:
(a) Checking directly with
the prisoner involved if it involves an individual
prisoner, or the group if a group of prisoners
(b) Seeking a comment on
the official release from either the Prisoners Legal
Co-Operative or the Prisoners Action Group. The adoption
of such practices, as a code, by the press and the
electronic media, would go some way to countering the
continual stream of misleading, inaccurate and sometimes
downright false, information issuing from the Department
of Corrective Services.
The Prisoners Action Group
strongly urges the Press Council to discuss this
complaint against the wider background we suggest, and
to recommend the adoption of concrete guidelines as
suggested above, in an attempt to break down the
barriers preventing the public from knowing what is
really going on behind the walls of its prisons.”
In response to the complaint The
Australian Press Council handed down Adjudication No 51
with the following comments:
“The Press Council is not
able to decide where the truth lies between these two
conflicting assertions of fact. But the Press Council
takes this opportunity of reporting that it is very much
alert to the difficulties some disadvantaged groups of
citizens face in making their position public, and
suggests that the press makes special efforts to help
them in such cases.”
The significance of that
complaint caused wider ramifications which resulted with
a more balanced and objective reporting of prison/crime
issues despite the ambiguous and ineffectual response
from The Australian Press Council’s response to the
complaint.
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