Australian media censorship: history and regulatory frameworks

¶ … Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, providing that the inherent dignity and equal, inalienable rights "of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world."

From postwar realities, new urgency begot a restructured definition of international politics, people, and peace. With guarantees of freedom from persecution, civil liberties, and the democratic ideals on which the new modern was founded, the Declaration's authors promised the right to expression to citizens of the signing countries, among them Australia. Yet at the same time, while superficially obeying the promise for expressive freedom, the Australian government exercises an internal control over print and media through the Office of Film and Literature, putting into stark question the concept of free expression.

When the original 18 Member States of the United Nations Commission on Human rights established the agenda that would soon birth the Declaration, the eight-person committee devoted itself to the common goal of respect for the fundamental human rights and freedoms of all people despite their conflicting views. Representatives from Australia, Chile, China, France, Lebanon, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics followed their leader's behest, paying careful mind to Eleanor Roosevelt's urging.

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

While challenges lay in their path to agreement, they finally were able to put forth a declaration recognizable as valid by the 48 signing constituents, including Panama, Czechoslovakia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iceland, and Argentina.

While the differences in their national approaches to both people and their liberties of expression were varied, their conclusion that it should be free was summarily supported in Article 19 of the Declaration.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

The role of media in 1948, however, was starkly different than that which confronts an audience today. Both in content and material presentation, the media was less openly sexual, socially fringed, and culturally biased.

With the progression of free media, the previously prevalent approach to censorship as a political and governmental tool became instead a conversation of cultural ideology, most relevant in today's media and communications industry in Australia.

Cunningham and Turner recognize the new media atmosphere as not one of the stark divisions of past, but instead of "convergence" between the different trades and media history, communications regulation, and the corresponding policy.

With the confluence of these three aspects of media decisions and the rapid growth and advances in the technological sector, the policy regarding Australian media censorship and its relation to the promises proffered by the Declaration become most relevant. Cunningham and Turner surround the discussion through an examination of several perspectives and foci, all of which to serve to democratically question the role of the OFLC and eventually return to a social support of the Office.

John Sinclair purports that the origins of the Australian media are entrenched in the European-American history, theory, and research attitudes; in the field of original Australian works, these influences are traceable throughout developing history.

It is in the relation of media and government that policy concerns are made manifest; the policy system of Australia is strictly defined with the regulations, careful observation, and standards administered by the OFCL.

While other nations, including those who signed the Declaration, are at risk for undermining the precepts of the Declaration, Australia uses its regulatory system not to prevent the expression of free speech as a form of political dissent, but instead to limn the expression of the media through a civic-minded grading system.

The role of the OFCL is not to monitor those who seek to disabuse other citizens of political abuses, Sinclair urges, but instead it plays the role of the warning system for when those expressions are either in opposition to the social standards of the Australian society or at odds with the expectations of parents' for the government to protect the most vulnerable of the population, the children. Yet at the same time, the regulations limit exposure to sexuality, violence, and other inappropriate, lewd, or criminal acts, frequently integral to the expression of art or a social point that cannot be made without their presence. Moran concludes that, by structuring a system that prevents full exposure to the natural tendencies of society and instead closing them off as mature or socially off-color.

McKee illustrates the regulatory system of the media under the OFCL through the 'textual analysis" of all media as interpreted by the audience. The two movements between structuralism and poststructuralism, he argues, do not reflect the world they represent, but instead construct that representation. Bowles' concept of "product and process"

relays an image of the media that, if in its construction of society, creates a societal image of violence and sex. As a direct extension of that, the OFCL extends its guidelines to the MA15+, R18+, X18+ rating system that captures the supposed quality of the content and rates its accordance to society by acceptability. If McKee's conclusions are correct, the regulations administered by the OFCL are not in action protecting society from unwarned exposure to maters of a culturally held concept for maturity, they are in the business of creating the ideological tenants by which social expectations are constructed and construed.

With the booming Internet age expanding the confines of information dissemination and the increasing spread of ideas, the convergence of the media environment brings the role of the OFCL and the tenuous idea of liberated expression into new light. "It is no longer possible to try to understand the role of media in society," Barr explains, "without an analysis of its relationship with other key segments of the communications environment."

With new restrictions in place by the OFCL, the nature of the environment is increasingly more colored by policy. As Schulz explained, "the ethos of the press continues to influence the culture of these companies, even as they become irrevocably entertainment driven, constantly exploring new technologies, methods and means of communication"