Adjudication No. 75 (January 1980) [1980] APC 1

ADJUDICATION No. 75 (January 1980)

1. The South Australian Branch of the Australian Labor Party has complained to the Australian Press Council that The News, Adelaide, exhibited consistent and extreme bias and unfairness in its reporting of the State election campaign in August-September last year. The complaint raises a number of separate matters, some relating to general unfairness in the selection of material for publication and in the allocation of space between the two major parties, and some relating to particular news stories. headlines and editorials.

2. The Council considers this to be an important complaint because of the seriousness of the issue involved, and because it raises some basic matters of principle so far as concerns the Council's policies and procedures. The Council therefore feels itself obliged to examine the various components of the complaint in some detail.

3. The Complaints Committee of the Council sat in Adelaide on January 22 to hear the complaint. Mr Bolkus appeared on behalf of the ALP (S.A. Branch). The News was represented by Mr Brian Hogben, by the Editor, Mr Peter Wylie, and by several who had written articles to which the ALP objected. the meeting statements in relation to one story, "$40 Pay Shock: SA Government Backs Rise", were obtained in writing from Mr L.G. Lean, Assistant State Secretary, Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union, and from the Hon J D Wright, MP, Minister of Labour and Industry in the Corcoran Government.

4. The ALP supported its charge of persistent bias throughout the campaign in part by a detailed analysis of space allocated respectively to material favourable to the Liberal Party or unfavourable to the Labor Party and to material favourable to the Labor Party. One conclusion derived from this analysis was that while The News printed 3314 column centimetres of pro-Liberal and/or anti-Labor copy, it printed only 2070 column centimetres of pro-Labor and/or anti-Liberal copy. The charge of gross imbalance was supported further by analysis of the allocation of space on page one and on each subsequent page in all the issues of The News published on the 18 days of the campaign.

5. The Council must reiterate to begin with some general principles it has stated in earlier adjudications. The Council has previously affirmed the right of newspapers to be partisan; i.e. to espouse and advocate particular opinions and policies and to attack others, to support particular persons, organisations or movements and to oppose others. The Council will not censure a newspaper for being partisan or require newspapers to be impartial in the sense of being non-partisan- But the Council has also said that a newspaper, which professes to provide a general news service, has a duty to provide accurate news reports of matters of public controversy'. It should not, in the Council's opinion, seek to assist the causes it advocates by falsifying or distorting opinions or activities of those to whom it is opposed. And, in matters of public controversy of wide public importance (such as an election campaign, a newspaper professing to inform the general public should report all significant opinions involved in the controversy.

6. The right of a newspaper to be partisan is a logical consequence of the notion of the freedom of the Dress. Equally, that right is a necessary condition for the existence of a vital and vigorous Dress: newspapers which had imposed upon them a requirement to be non-partisan or impartial would not contribute effectively to the discussion of controversial public issues. On the other hand although newspapers are privately owned, many of them claim to be exercising (and are in fact exercising) vital public functions and have therefore public responsibilities, the most important of which is to give the public accurate information about matters of public concern.

7. That The News was intensely partisan during the S.A. election campaign can hardly be seriously questioned. No-one who wanted to find the best that could be said for the then Labor Government would have consulted The News. The News did not disguise the fact that its object throughout the campaign was to present the case against the Government. The Council has said that The News as a free newspaper had the right to adopt that position. The duty of the Council, then, is to try to determine whether The News, in seeking to influence the electorate to vote for a change of government, was culpably guilty of misrepresentation or distortion in presenting the views and actions of the Government and other pro-Labor organisations; or whether it failed to fulfil its public duty of informing the public of the policies and arguments of the Labor Party.

8. In its complaint, the ALP has made a central issue of disproportion or imbalance in the allocation of space. This is not an easy question- The power to select material for publication can, of course, be a power to distort. But the Council does not agree that a demonstration that one party in an election campaign has been given more "favourable" space than others is conclusive. The views or proposals of other parties may nevertheless have been fairly or adequately conveyed. An adjudicator would need to go beyond a mere measurement of space and to examine the content of the material published. This step would take the issue back to the examination of particular news stories.

9. The Council is invited to make judgments about alleged sins of omission as well as sins of commission. This also raises difficulties. One would have to be able to examine all the material available to a newspaper that might have been published. In the present case The News contends that it was given better opportunities by the Opposition to secure material than by the Government, especially by the Premier. This the complainant strongly denies. In this kind of confrontation, it is hard to see how the Council could make a reliable judgment between the assertion and the counter-assertion. As the Council pointed out in an earlier adjudication involving The News and this same campaign, the Council cannot be expected to gain an adequate knowledge of the context within which a newspaper carries on its task of daily reporting the progress of a campaign. The Council does not feel, therefore, that it can accept as being conclusive an argument based simply on inequality of space allocated to the competing parties. The inequality the ALP points to may indicate the partisanship of The News; it does not establish that The News has distorted or falsified the position of the ALP.

10. Other important issues arise from this argument about inequality in the allocation of space. Admittedly, newspapers do very often allocate space as between rival interests very unequally and they are frequently attacked on that ground. This may sometimes detract from the quality and the stature of a particular newspaper as a journal of public information. It is often an expression of their partisanship. But what principle is the Press Council expected to adopt? Should the Council lay it down that a newspaper should allot approximately equal space to, say, the major parties in an 'election campaign? The Council cannot adopt this position. It would be a considerable invasion of the freedom or discretion of an editor in shaping his newspaper; far from supporting press freedom, it would be a step in the direction of would-be benevolent dictatorship. It is to be noted that the British Press Council has taken the same position as our own in dealing with an identical complaint and argument.

11. The Press Council, therefore rejects the complaint of the ALP it so far as the complaint is one about "imbalance" or inequality the allocation of space.

12. We pass to the complaints about particular articles or headlines. The ALP complains about an article under the headline "Tonkin's Secret Plan" (August 23, 1979). The article referred to a "hurried campaign meeting held by the Liberals last night"; the source of the story was a telephone interview with the Leader of the Opposition who told the reporter that a plan had been drawn up but that he was unwilling to divulge it at that time.

13. The ALP complains that no such plan emerged in the subsequent reporting of the campaign, and that "such dramatic prominence [was not] warranted by the meeting actually reported".

14. The Council considers that the story was a fair report of what Mr Tonkin apparently said; that in the circumstance "Secret Plan" was a not really culpable piece of journalistic hyperbole; and that it is very doubtful whether the Labor Party could have been unfairly disadvantaged by the printing of this story and headline.

15. The ALP objects to a story headlined "Liberals Promise Jobs" (August 24, 1979). The substance of the article was the reproduction of a speech made by Mr Tonkin in the House of Assembly 24 days earlier. "No such promise had been made for 24 days."

16. It appears that the reporter had asked Mr Tonkin about Liberal Party plans concerning unemployment; and that Mr Tonkin had referred him to his speech in the House. In the circumstances, this seems to the Council to be a legitimate piece of reporting.

17. These two stories might be taken as affording some evidence of The News's partisan stance, but no evidence of distortion or falsification. The next two instances alleged by the ALP present greater difficulties. The first of these is an article printed on September 5 under the headline "$40 Pay Shock: Government Backs Rise" The article referred to a claim by the Metal Trades Federation then before the Australian Arbitration Commission, and reported that the S.A. Government had intervened to support the union's claim.

18. The origin of the story was a phone conversation between The News's industrial reporter and Mr Lean, who is also Assistant State Secretary of the Metal Trades Federation.

19. The ALP's complaint was that the story and headline conveyed a seriously distorted impression of the Government's intention and action on two main grounds: (a) that the Union's claim naturally included a considerable "ambit" component and the Union therefore would not have expected to obtains the full sum mentioned; and (b) that the Union was well aware that any award made by the Arbitration Commission must fall within the wage-indexation guidelines. Further that the Government was aware of these two conditions and its intervention assumed that they would be met.

20. There was a conflict of testimony in this matter also. The industrial reporter said that Mr Lean, far from speaking of an "ambit" component in the claim, rather emphasised that his members would settle for nothing less than the full $40. Mr Lean in his written .statement says that he had mentioned to the reporter on several occasions that the Government had decided to support the Union's claim "within certain guidelines" and that, in the conversation which had prompted the story as printed, he had not said to the reporter that the Government had intervened to support, the $40 claim (or that he had mentioned any figure at all in that connection).

21. Given the fact that claims of this nature are very well known almost always to include a significant "ambit" component; and also that the Arbitration Commission does seek to work within its wage-indexation guidelines, we conclude that The News's reporting of the Government's intervention was misleading. Neither the headline nor the opening paragraph in heavy type that "The South Australian Government has intervened in a national wage case to support a union application for a $40 weekly wage rise for more than 300,000 metal workers" gives a reasonably fair account of the Government's intention or action. The Council believes that an experienced editor, and especially an experienced industrial reporter, would have had a better understanding of what really was involved.

22. It is true that in the continuation of the story on page four, a quote from the then Minister of Labour and Industry, which gives an explanation of the Government's intention, might serve to correct the impression created by the opening paragraphs on page one. Nevertheless, we think it reasonable to expect that the story should have been written in such a way as put the Government's intervention more clearly into the context of "ambit claims" and wage-indexation guidelines. We conclude that this was unfair reporting and uphold this particular complaint by the ALP.

23. The ALP complains about the series of editorials published by The News throughout the campaign. It seems to the Council that the great majority of these editorials was either straightout advocacy of the action it thought the electorate should take in the election (e.g. "Now is the Time for New Ideas") or expressions of The News' own opinions and judgments (e.g. the one that proclaimed that "the Liberals increasingly provide a credible alternative"). However implausible these opinions may have appeared to the ALP, The News was, of course, fully within its rights in expressing them. One editorial, however, was much more open to question. In an editorial (August 24) entitled "Playing to Lose", The News conveys the impression that the Premier, Mr Corcoran, may have been not unfavourable to the idea of imposing a State income tax. The editorial speaks of the Premier's extraordinary tacit admission that he may have to impose an income tax after the poll". It goes on to say that the Premier thought that would be necessary "if he could not get the money he needs from Canberra", on which the editorial comments, "State Labor is all things virtuous. It's those wicked feds who are our undoing" The News then asks that "Before Mr Corcoran thinks about imposing an income tax of his very own, what about cutting back his own absurdly bloated government?"

24. The editorial was inspired by a statement by Mr Corcoran reported in that morning's Advertiser. According to The Advertiser, Mr Corcoran had said that "an income tax surcharge is one tough decision he will have to make as Premier". Mr Corcoran referred to the new Federal-State financial agreement the States had negotiate with the Commonwealth after the November 1979 Premiers' Conference. He went on to say that he was sure that Mr Fraser "would try to force the States ... to accept an income tax surcharge ... That is double taxation and it is something I have never intended to put into effect" He said that "a vote of confidence by the people would give him extra bargaining power in Canberra when it came to negotiation with Mr Fraser about the possible introduction of a surcharge. He would not say that his government would not introduce the surcharge scheme - he wanted to keep his options open". In the same issue of The News, but on another page Mr Corcoran is quoted as denying his intention to introduce a surcharge.

25. It seems to us that this editorial seeks to gain an unfair advantage by somewhat distorting the thrust or emphasis of Mr Corcoran's reported statement. It fails to do justice to Mr Corcoran's stress on his opposition to the introduction of State surcharges. As for the admission being an "extraordinary" one, and the sarcastic allusion to the wicked feds, State surcharges forced by Commonwealth pressure was at the time regarded as being a real and discussable public issue by Premiers other than Mr Corcoran. Thus we do not consider this editorial to be a fair and responsible comment on what was a responsible statement by the Premier. In our judgment, the ALP's complaint about it is justified.

26. The Editor of The News has questioned the propriety of the Council hearing the ALP's complaint in view of the fact that it had already dealt with another complaint against The News in relation to the same election campaign. The Council cannot agree that this objection has force The earlier complaint raised some specific matters not dealt with in the adjudication of the ALP's complaint; and in all instances except one the Council held that the complainant had not established his case. In so far as the wider charge of unfairness is concerned, the Council again held that the complainant had not succeeded in justifying it. The ALP, on the other hand, presented a much more substantial argument which the Council merited examination. The Council cannot accept the assumption implicit in the editor's letter that a newspaper is on trial before the Council. The Council rather is adjudicating between a complainant and a newspaper; and it would be unjust to a later complainant to refuse to consider his complaint just because an earlier complainant had been heard on related or similar, but not identical, issues.