Adjudication No. 64 (August 1979) [1979] APC 17

ADJUDICATION No. 64 (August 1979)

The Australian Press Council has censured a newspaper for having published as the work of a named contributor, without his knowledge or consent, a statement which that contributor had not written.

The Press Council's adjudication followed a complaint by the South Australian Branch of the Australian Journalists' Association against The Sunday Mail, Adelaide.

In its issue of June 3, 1979, The Sunday Mail published a column entitled "In Your Court" under the name of a journalist. A person named in the article sought an apology and damages, and it was agreed between the journalist and executive officers of the newspaper that the advice of solicitors should be taken and acted upon. The solicitors advised negotiations with the person named and further advised that if he were prepared to accept an apology whatever he might request by way of apology should be carried out.

Negotiations, to which the journalist was not privy, produced agreement upon a form of apology, and the journalist was informed that an apology was to appear and that it was already being set in type. He was not informed that the proposed apology was to appear in his column "In Your Court" and under his name in the following issue of the paper. This however occurred in the issue of June 10, 1979.

The paper attempted to justify what it did by saying that the terms of settlement with the person named in the original article so required, and that anything less would have left both the paper and the journalist exposed to legal liability.

The Press Council found itself unable to condone the publication of the apology as the work of the journalist himself. His agreement that an apology would be published did not justify the publication of it in a column by-lined as his. The paper's contention that it had not in any way acted unethically the Council considered to be unacceptable. The Council said that it was of the utmost importance that a by-lined article should be genuinely the work of the person shown as the author.

For its breach of this elementary principle, The Sunday Mail was censured.