If proof were needed of how weak media accountability is in Australia, the Channel 7 case involving the publication of AFL players’ medical records provides it.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority is the designated public agency for handling complaints against commercial broadcasters.

However, when asked whether it intended to investigate the case, a spokesman said ACMA had not received a complaint and that even if it did the complainant would first need to seek redress directly from Channel 7. Only if there was no satisfaction would the complainant then be able to have recourse to ACMA.

The spokesman agreed that ACMA has power to initiate investigations, but said it was used rarely and was unlikely to be invoked here.

This case involves a gross a breach of privacy, and possibly a criminal offence involving the receipt of stolen property. If that does not constitute a fit matter for a pro-active investigation, it is difficult to see what would.

It is yet another example of the weakness of the so-called co-regulatory regime in which ACMA is meant to regulate the commercial broadcasters in a kind of partnership with the industry.

The industry lobbied the previous Federal Labor Government hard for this because it did not like the black-letter legalism of the old Broadcasting Tribunal.

Channel 7’s conduct is a clear breach of the commercial television industry’s code of practice, which ACMA endorses and which it is meant to enforce.

Paragraph 4.3.5 of the industry code says that licensees must not use material relating to a person’s personal or private affairs, or which invades an individual’s privacy, other than where there is an identifiable public interest in broadcasting the material.

Channel 7 has claimed that the publication of these two records would “lift the lid” on drug use in a Melbourne football club. That seems to be the extent of its “public interest” justification for publishing.

The publishing of material concerning two players does not lift the lid on anything beyond the medical condition of the two players. It does not say anything about the use of drugs in even one club, much less in the game as a whole. It does not tell us anything about systemic strengths or weaknesses of the AFL’s drugs policy.

It thus serves no public interest but titillates public curiosity, which is not the same thing.

The only other formal mechanism of accountability might be through the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, which is the journalists’ trade union. The MEAA has a complaints panel, but journalists who are not members of the union – and that is reckoned to be about half – are not subject to its procedures.

In this case the AFL players have the power to exert some accountability through their own association using boycotts of Channel 7, and the resources to obtain a court injunction restraining further publication. They are the lucky ones.

All that is left is the accountability of the marketplace.

Newspaper reports today say that the ratings for Channel 7’s news fell 20% on the first weeknight since the original broadcast of the medical material. This is language the media do understand, and creates the basis for calculating what the economists call a shadow price for unethical behaviour.