Adjudication No. 384 (October 1988) [1988] APC 31

ADJUDICATION No. 384 (October 1988)

The National Heart Foundation complains to the Australian Press Council about an article which appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 12 May 1988 which was the subject of a separate complaint by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The article claimed that a survey to be conducted by the Bureau in collaboration with the Foundation would entail compulsory blood testing of 7000 families. The Foundation says this conveyed a completely false impression about its intentions. The false story and the coverage it generated in other papers have threatened the Foundation's public standing, and forced it to abandon discussions with the ABS about a joint venture which could have made a major contribution to public health.

The Foundation says that its spokesman, in conversation with one of the writers of the article, made the following points:

• if a collaborative survey were to go ahead, any physical measurements of ABS interviewees, including blood tests, would be entirely voluntary, as with all Foundation surveys. There was never any intention that the physical measurements would be other than voluntary.

• The ABS and the NHF were currently discussing the feasibility of such collaboration, and no formal proposal had been put or accepted by either body.

According to the Foundation, the spokesman repeated these points at the end of his interview with the journalist in the hope that they would be clearly conveyed in any subsequent article. However, it considers the final reporting in the Telegraph was highly selective and misleading, implying that the Foundation was at best going along with compulsory blood testing or at worst allowing itself to be so convinced by the ABS. Most importantly, the report failed to state that any blood tests or other physical measurements would be voluntary.

Following publication of the story the Foundation says it did all it could under the circumstances to set the public record straight, but this seemed largely to no avail. At no stage did the Daily Telegraph issue a correction or even imply that the facts were other than had originally been proposed.

In reply to this complaint, the Telegraph expresses regret about the article ' s capacity to misinform readers, concluding that:

• In the course of assessing documentary material supplied to the Daily Telegraph, some of it was misconstrued as indicating that proposals put to the ABS were more than mere proposals, and

• This, coupled with the choice of some words and phrases, the order in which the articles presented statements and the wording of the headlines, conveyed a false impression about the survey while statements in rebuttal failed to make the impact they should have made.

The Telegraph says it considered the source of its article to be reputable, which subsequently led all concerned to accept the informant's interpretations of the material without subjecting it to the critical analysis which might have been made of information from less reputable sources.

The Press Council concludes that the Daily Telegraph failed to present adequately the position of the National Heart Foundation. The report created the impression that compulsory blood tests would be imposed by the ABS under a proposal instigated by the Foundation.

There was excessive reliance on the views and interpretations put to the paper by what was judged to be a reliable source. Not only were the resulting inaccuracies published in the Telegraph, but they were repeated in other publications in other States. This was damaging to the Foundation, and was further compounded by the Telegraph's failure to correct the inaccuracies and to apologise. This was a departure from accepted journalistic standards and the complaint is upheld.