Adjudication No. 395 (March 1989) [1989] APC 8

ADJUDICATION No. 395 (March 1989)

Mr Drago Dosen complains of two items in the Melbourne Age which criticised Australian voters' rejection of the constitutional amendments proposed in the 1988 referendum.

The first item, published just before the referendum, was a by-lined commentary on its anticipated outcome. The article's opening paragraph referred to the likely failure of the proposed amendments "thanks to the stupidity and apathy of the Australian electorate and a virulent campaign waged by the Liberal and National parties".

The second item was an editorial published approximately seven weeks later. It lamented the lack of a "positive response" to the report of the Constitutional Commission citing as a reason for this "the woeful ignorance, indifference and gullibility of most Australians and the shameful apathy and narrowly self-interested opportunism of most politicians".

Mr Dosen complains that as a member of the Australian electorate he was personally insulted by both items. He considers them defamatory, and in a letter he wrote to the paper protesting about the first article, offers to give the journalist a chance to prove his (Mr Dosen's) stupidity in court. The letter was not published.

In rejecting the complaint The Age says it considers both items fall within the accepted bounds of comment. Furthermore, it "finds it unreasonable to argue that a newspaper or a commentator should not express trenchant criticism of a majority of the electorate for voting in a way that it (or he) believes, rightly or wrongly, to be unwise".

An important consideration is a newspaper's right to publish by-lined or editorial comment, even when it may provoke the disagreement or even the hostility of a proportion of its readership. This right has long been recognised as a characteristic of a free press, as long as published view - whether those of papers themselves or of other writers - are clearly distinguished from news reporting, and do not amount to gratuitous vilification of identifiable groups.

Both the articles complained about by Mr Dosen were explicitly designated as comment or editorial opinion.

The complaint is dismissed.