Adjudication No. 30 (May 1978) [1978] APC 7

ADJUDICATION No. 30 (May 1978)

The Australian Press Council has upheld a complaint against a newspaper for its refusal to publish a reply by a "gay organisation" after the newspaper had printed an editorial attacking the organisation.

The Council's adjudication stated:

The Australian Press Council, while re-affirming that a newspaper which purports to serve the general public has the right to advocate any point of view it thinks proper on a question of public controversy, emphasises the duty of such a paper, when it has published arguments favouring one point of view on such a question, to give reasonable publicity to countervailing arguments.

The Townsville Council for Civil Liberties sent to the Press Council, somewhat belatedly, a statutory declaration dated 20 December 1977, in which a complaint was made against the Townsville Daily Bulletin. In its edition of 3 August 1977, that paper had published an editorial announcing and defending its refusal to publish a news release from a group of persons called Recognition and described as a "gay organisation" which supported the repeal of laws making consenting adult sexual behaviour in private a crime. The release had argued for the reform of the law on such matters.

The paper's editorial said that undoubtedly some people would brand the editor's refusal to publish the release as an act of suppression and intolerance, but it added that the Bulletin made no apology for refusing to make its columns available to publicise an organisation which it described as "dedicated to the propagation of practices which are reprehensible, against the order of nature and morally degenerative".

The statutory declaration pointed out that the same newspaper on the same day had published an advertisement of weekly meetings of Recognition, which advertisement had been paid for, and it contended that the refusal to publish the news release, which had not been paid for, was therefore hypocritical. This, however, is not the point to which the Council is concerned to address itself.

A telephoned request on behalf of Recognition for an opportunity to reply to the editorial met with the response that no publicity whatsoever would be available to the group.

The Townsville Daily Bulletin is a paper of general news coverage. The Council is clearly of opinion that such a paper, while within its rights in condemning in the terms of the editorial the proponents of reform of the law on the relevant topic, is under a strong obligation as a matter of ordinary fairness to hold its columns open to a reasonable reply.

The Bulletin's refusal to do this was not only "an act of suppression and intolerance"; it was a rejection of the duty, which must be accepted if freedom of the Press is to retain the support of the public, to respect the right of the general reader to be informed of the arguments on each side of a public debate upon which a paper has expressed its own views in favour of one point of view.

The complaint is upheld.