Adjudication No. 297 (August 1986) [1986] APC 33

ADJUDICATION No. 297 (August 1986)

An ambassador complains of the reporting by The Canberra Times of Family Court proceedings to which he was a joined as a respondent, but in which he claimed diplomatic immunity. He says that although the paper did not name him, the publication of the fact that he was an ambassador, coupled with a few other facts, was enough to identify him in the small diplomatic community in Canberra.

He complains that this identification of him was in breach of section 121 of the Family Law Act and an unjustified intrusion on his privacy. Section 121 creates a criminal offence, and where, as in this case, the offence is denied, an accused is entitled to be tried according to strict legal processes in a court before being pronounced guilty. It is not for this Council to take on itself the trial of criminal offences. The inappropriateness of such action is underlined in the present case by the fact that the Director of Public Prosecutions, to whom the matter was referred by the Attorney-General, declined to prosecute.

The issue for the Press Council is whether, quite apart from any breach of the law, the publication was in breach of the standards of responsible journalism. Issues of privacy usually involve balancing the injurious effect on the individual against considerations of public interest in the facts.

The Canberra Times has a policy that in general it does not identify a party directly except by permission of the court. At the same time the paper regards it as part of its duty to keep the public generally informed about the activities of the court and about significant cases coming before it.

The difficulty which arose in this case was that a characteristic of a party, namely his diplomatic status, was relevant to reporting the point of the case, which was the claiming of diplomatic immunity to avoid the Court's jurisdiction. Although the mention of his status as an ambassador would not identify him to the public at large, it would enable some people who knew of him to work out that he was the party. Nevertheless the paper, balancing the considerations, concluded that the public should be informed that an ambassador had claimed such immunity.

In the opinion of the Press Council the paper's general approach was reasonable. However, as the newspaper acknowledged, it might have taken more care in publishing details which might help to identify the ambassador, and in making clear that details stated in the third article were the allegations made in the proceedings and not necessarily current facts.