news, latest-news

The University of Canberra asked five journalism students to withdraw Freedom of Information applications targeting controversial stories involving UC journalism course cuts and its sponsorship of the ACT Brumbies. The students submitted their request as part of a final-year investigative journalism assignment into freedom of information processes but four of the five students withdrew them after intervention from the Dean of Arts and Design, Professor Greg Battye. Third-year journalism student Lauren Ingram refused to withdraw her request and said she had been threatened with possible expulsion for asking about details of planned cuts to the journalism degree and the abolition of nearly half of the journalism practice units – including, ironically, the investigative journalism unit. Ms Ingram said there had been “a serious lack of genuine student consultation and a remarkable amount of spin-doctoring from UC” regarding the course changes. She felt it was appropriate to seek information on the cuts for her assignment and planned to publish her findings on the UC’s on-line student newspaper. Ms Ingram said she had been completely surprised by the university’s reaction. She said she came out publicly yesterday on media webstie Crikey.com because she believed it was unacceptable for the university to even request students withdraw FOI requests into sensitive administrative decisions, much less threaten them. Ms Ingram said Professor Battye had instructed her journalism lecturer and former Canberra Times editor Crispin Hull to “pass on a message to me as the one remaining student refusing to withdraw their FOI request’’. “Battye cited UC legal advice and said to let me know that if I continued with the FOI it could result in a breach of the student conduct rules. Such breaches can lead to expulsion or exclusion from university, or being failed in the subject involved. Battye claimed he had a legal opinion that the assessment required UC academic ethics clearance, which had not been sought.’’ Ms Ingram said “I told the lecturer the request went against ‘everything I've been taught about journalism’.” The Canberra Times was awaiting a statement from Professor Battye. Mr Hull said yesterday the Crikey story was one-sided and said he had clearly defended his students from Professor Battye's claim they risked breaching the UC’s ethical guidelines. According to an email from Mr Hull to Professor Battye sent last Tuesday, Mr Hull said “First, there is no risk. As I tell students, every Australian has a legally enforceable right to ask for and obtain access to documents under FOI, so there cannot possibly be any ethics-committee requirements for such "research", if indeed it even qualifies as "research". Any legal advice you have to the contrary, in my view, is plainly wrong.’’ He also said that “such a warning, in my view, would be tantamount to bullying conduct, and I will not be a part of it.’’ Mr Hull noted that singling out the student who was pursuing an FOI request with the UC would also “appear extremely odd’’. He did, however, write to students last week to tell them "The FOI office feels swamped and will have to spend a lot of time and enormous cost with your FOI requests ... [the FOI officer] would like to be relieved of the legal burden of having to fulfil the FOI requests according to the FOI Act". He requested student formally drop their FOI requests in exchange for a guest lecture from David Hamilton, the university's FOI officer: "It would be good if you could officially withdraw your FOI requests as soon as possible and in return we will get [David's] FOI insights and you will get the opportunity to ask him questions about the FOI process. I think this will go further towards achieving our educational aims than doggedly persisting with the formal FOI process." Ms Ingram received more than 400 pages of documents relating to the journalism course changes last Thursday and was in the midst of reading them. Mr Hull said the process of the course was to give students a real-life experience of the FOI process, and while they could submit an FOI to the UC in their capacity as a private citizen, he would be requesting next year’s class not use the UC for the assignment. “There is the potential for the exercise to get warped when the FOI people know it is a student exercise,” he said. “It is all just too in-house." But he praised Ms Ingram for her doggedness in pursuing her request and said she showed ”obvious promise as a journalist".