Adjudication No. 284 (June 1986) [1986] APC 20

ADJUDICATION No. 284 (June 1986)

Mr Fritz Schroeder has complained to the Press Council about the reporting in The Sun (Sydney) of the sinking of the Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov. Mr Schroeder has made a highly detailed analysis of the reports, in respect both of content and presentation. In short he says that the original front page report of the sinking on February 18, 1986 was "not objective, was tendentious and manipulative", designed to put the captain and the Soviet in a bad light. The report on March 6 of the findings of the inquiry, which exonerated the captain and blamed the New Zealand pilot, did not, he claims, "balance" the original front page.

In the opinion of the Press Council Mr Schroeder has been over-sensitive in his reading of the reports. The paper yielded to the temptation of a headline pun, "Captain red face", and assumed, wrongly , as it turned out, that the inquiry would be embarrassing to the captain. However, the paper made it quite clear in another heading that an inquiry was starting and gave good coverage of the claims of both the captain and the New Zealand authorities, so that readers could assess the situation for themselves. The subsequent report of the inquiry finding was again carried on the front page and no interested reader could have failed to note the exoneration of the captain. Whether a particular story gets the whole of the front page must obviously depend on the competing stories on the day. There is no justification for the suggestion that The Sun "downplayed" the report of the inquiry.

The complaint is dismissed.