The Jewellers Association of Australia (JAA) believes the purpose of the segment was to expose a number of jewellery retailers across Australia accused of ripping off an unassuming public through misleading and deceptive representations.
The program quoted Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman Rod Sims saying the ACCC had successfully prosecuted seven companies over the past year and these companies had paid penalties of more than $1 million.
However, after carefully analysing the Today Tonight segment, the JAA says not one of these companies was a jewellery business. However, the organisation believes the average viewer would have thought that these prosecutions related to jewellery companies.
JAA believes Channel 7 also was wrong to imply that a successful prosecution involving a jewellery business that had happened five years ago was a “recent case”.
Finally, the program interviewed a woman who had purchased a platinum ring and subsequently found the ring to have been made of plastic. But the ring was not purchased from a jewellery store but from consumer-to-consumer website, Gumtree.
Gumtree is a classified ad-style website owned by eBay.
The JAA says Today Tonight is guilty of misleading and deceptive behaviour and in breach of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice.
The JAA points to item 4.3.1 of the Code, which states: “In broadcasting news and current affairs programs, licensees must broadcast factual material accurately and represent viewpoints fairly, having regard to the circumstances at the time of preparing and broadcasting the program”.
Item 4.3.1.1 states: “An assessment of whether the factual material is accurate is to be determined in the context of the segment in its entirety”.
The JAA will be writing direct to Channel 7 requesting it publish a correction. If Channel 7 refuses, then JAA says the matter will be pursued through ACMA.
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