Adjudication No. 89 (February 1981) [1981] APC 1

ADJUDICATION No 89 (February 1981)

The Australian Press Council has before it a complaint against the Adelaide Advertiser about the use of the word "Huns" in an article published on 9 September 1980.

The article as a whole is an unexceptionable account of the efforts of a former gunner in the first A.I.F. to obtain pay withheld from him in respect of a period of field punishment during which he took part in the battle of the Somme.

The article quoted a section of the British Army Act of 1881 which provides that a soldier does not automatically forfeit his pay while undergoing field punishment, unless he is in custody; and it added that obviously the gunner had not been in custody, because he had been at the battle of the Somme "chasing Huns".

In some contexts the use of the word "Huns" to refer to Germans would obviously be objectionable, but in the present context, as the quotation marks showed, the phrase "chasing Huns" was merely the expression attributed to an old soldier in the terminology that was current among soldiers at the relevant period.

In the opinion of the Council, the Advertiser should not be held to have departed from proper standards of journalism.

The complaint is dismissed.