Adjudication No. 103 (June 1981) [1981] APC 13

ADJUDICATION No. 103 (June 1981)

About 3 May it became known that transcripts of tape recordings alleged to be of telephone conversations between the Prince of Wales and his fiancee had come into the possession of certain newspapers. The chairman of the Press Council made a general announcement that the council would view with strong disfavour any publication of the contents of the tapes by an Australian paper.

The transcripts were in fact published by a German magazine, Die Aktuelle, and a version of what it published was supplied to many Australian newspapers by the Australian Associated Press wire service. The Press Council noted with interest and pleasure that all but one of the metropolitan dailies refrained from making use of the AAP material. The one exception was The Age.

The Press Council referred the matter to its complaints committee, which has discussed with the editor of The Age its decision to publish material from the tapes. Publication by The Age occurred in the issue of 9 May. On 11 May it printed an editorial under the heading "Why Publish the Stuff" in which it argued the case for publishing. The council wishes to examine the two main arguments advanced by The Age.

The Age concedes that it would not have bought the tapes (assuming that their authenticity, of which it had grave doubts, had been established), and would not have been the first to publish. But it pointed out that the tapes had already been very widely published in the German magazine; and had also been made freely available through their transmission to Australian newspapers on open telex lines. Thus, the privacy of the original conversations had already been massively invaded (assuming the conversations did occur), and the issue of respecting the privacy of the speakers no longer arose.

The council cannot accept this argument. A conversation does not cease to be a private conversation merely because someone other than the participants has illegitimately gained knowledge of what was said and spread his knowledge around. The conversation was and remains a private conversation, and the obligation to respect its privacy cannot be cancelled by the fact that others have chosen not to observe the obligation.

The council believes The Age has erred, and done a disservice to the maintenance of high journalistic standards. The council would maintain rather that a firm insistence on the principle that rights of privacy should be observed by newspapers expresses itself more clearly by an equally firm refusal to have any truck with material that has become available as a result of so blatant and "despicable" an invasion of privacy as this material purported to be. This presumably is the view taken by those newspapers which declined to use the material provided by AAP. The position taken by The Age in this matter may well have the effect of weakening the resistance in the journalistic world generally to the exploitation of private information obtained by morally or professionally dubious methods.

The council recognises that considerations of public interest (as opposed to public curiosity) may in special circumstances override the right to privacy. But it feels that this is not such a case.

Another main argument used by The Age is that if it is known to the Australian public that the tapes have been published overseas, and if the Australian Press maintains a deep silence, will the public not conclude that the tapes contain matter it were better to conceal? Is it not better then to "publish the stuff" and demonstrate how innocuous it is, how lacking in "political dynamite" and (possibly) how fraudulent-sounding.

Nevertheless, the council still holds that the rights of privacy ought to prevail. The course taken by The Age went against the wishes of the two people who were victimised by this inexcusable journalistic malpractice. They had insisted that the tapes were fraudulent, and also made it clear that they wished that they should not be published. In the circumstances it seems to the council that The Age erred again in taking a decision to publish which, on the evidence available, was contrary to the wishes of the victims of this unsavoury trick. This would be true whoever might be the victims of such journalistic malpractice.