New push for ombud scheme

Last week I attended the launch of new research by the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC), Someone to Turn To, at Parliament House in Canberra. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) commissioned and launched the report, with Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert calling for the expansion of the TIO’s remit.

The research, presented by CPRC’s Chandni Gupta, includes a survey of digital platform users and charts the range of problems encountered when things go wrong online. It finds that 67% of people who complained to a digital service about a problem were dissatisfied with the outcome. Longterm followers of CMT will remember we launched our own report, Digital Platform Complaint Handling, back in 2022. Cynthia visited UTS a few weeks ago to speak to Karen Lee, Anita Stuhmcke and me to discuss the CPRC research and the TIO’s proposal to become a Communications Ombudsman. Despite four years between the CMT report and the CPRC report, there is not even an industry standard on internal complaint handling. We continue to support the TIO’s bid to become the external ombud scheme for digital platforms.

In today’s newsletter, Monica exposes an emerging trend among media personalities: get famous; get outrageous; get out. Karl Stefanovic is the latest example. Next Sacha turns to another departing giant of broadcast media: Danny Chifley, whose last shift as breakfast host of community station 2SER is tomorrow morning. Sacha asks all the hard questions, including whether Karl, Kyle and Danny are planning to launch a joint podcast. Then I turn to the links between Gina Rinehart and Pauline Hanson, and to the concern that editorial independence is parked in an aircraft hangar somewhere out of sight. Karl pops up here too. Finally, Monica details a stunning German court decision that holds Google liable for the false, harmful outputs of its genAI search results, before she outlines our newest podcast, which summarises the fascinating new findings from the latest Australian Digital News Report.

Read the newsletter.

References:

CPRC report: https://cprc.org.au/report/someone-to-turn-to  
TIO media release: https://www.tio.com.au/news/when-things-go-wrong-online-australians-want-someone-turn  
CMT report: https://www.uts.edu.au/research/centres/centre-media-transition/projects-and-research/digital-platform-complaint-handling