Adjudication No. 32 (June 1978) [1978] APC 9

ADJUDICATION No. 32 (June 1978)

The Australian Press Council has received from the Randwick North Branch of the Australian Labor Party a complaint that on the front page of the first edition of the Daily Mirror for 3rd April 1978, an article appeared with a large type heading "War On Dole Cheats" and the addition in smaller type "$42m Fraud". Posters were in similar terms.

The Branch rightly says that the impression given is that a $42 million fraud had been uncovered in relation to dole cheats, the word "dole" having its ordinary meaning of unemployment benefits. The article said immediately after the headlines that 230,000 dole cheque earners would be investigated following the discovery of a $42 million social security fraud and that thousands could lose their benefits as a result. It then went on to show that the alleged fraud related not to unemployment benefits but to invalid pensions.

The confusion of invalid pensions with unemployment benefits was apparently perceived immediately by the newspaper staff, for it was corrected in later editions of the paper on the same day. The figure of $42 million was dropped in those later editions and is challenged by the Branch by means of comparisons with other publications, but it is not conceded by the paper to have been wrong. At this stage it is not possible to say whether the figure is exaggerated or not.

The burden of the Branch's complaint is that it was neither right nor honest for the paper to use the figures and headlines and the statements that immediately followed them were not justified. It seems to the Council that the errors were serious, but that the paper acted promptly in later editions to remove them.

The complaint is upheld in relation to the first edition.