Adjudication No. 396 (March 1989) [1989] APC 9

ADJUDICATION No. 396 (March 1989)

The Australian Press Council has received a complaint about two articles which appeared in the Melbourne Sun on November 28 and December 13 1988.

Both articles refer to the children of the complainant's first marriage. Custody of the children was awarded to their mother by the Family Court from 1980 until May 1988, when it was transferred to the complainant. Subsequent relations between the parents appear to have remained unsettled and in November the children were made wards of the State by the Children's Court.

The first Sun article purported to describe possible arrangements for the children's care over Christmas if they were not allowed to return to their mother and conditions of access over this period for both parents. The mother was the source of information for the article, which presented only her side of the continuing custody dispute.

The second article sought to describe revised Christmas access arrangements agreed to by both parents and Community Services, Victoria. It reported the mother's dissatisfaction with these arrangements and included, in its concluding paragraphs, a brief comment from the complainant.

Although both articles used pseudonyms in referring to the children and their parents, the complainant believes that the first article contains enough information to identify him to his acquaintances. He complains that the reporter gave him no opportunity to present his side of the story.

Having first contacted The Sun, the complainant wrote an impassioned letter to the editor on December 14 to state his point of view. The letter was not published. The Sun considered that some parts of it might be defamation and said it was disinclined to engage in a possible "slanging match" between the complainant and his former wife. On January 3 1989 the paper offered him a version of his letter for publication, heavily-edited on legal advice, but this was rejected.

By their very nature, custody disputes in the Family Court are likely to be open to more than one interpretation and often generate strong differences of opinion between the divorced parties. The Press Council therefore believes that in dealing with such cases, papers can reasonably be expected to make sustained efforts to contact at least both parents, and to achieve a fair balance in their overall presentation of stories.

It is doubtful whether either expectation was fulfilled in this case. Indeed the paper says that if it had been aware of the facts presented by the complainant it probably would not have run the story. The paper says it made a number of unsuccessful attempts to contact the complainant but decided to proceed with publication of the first article even though there was no obvious urgency for doing so before his side of the story had been ascertained.

The letter of reply which The Sun offered the complainant reflected little of the factual material or the strength of feeling in his original text and, if it had been accepted, would have appeared around six weeks after the article which prompted his complaint.

Even if both articles and The Sun's qualified offer of a reply are considered together, the coverage given by the paper to the complainant's account of the custody dispute was well out of proportion to that afforded his former wife.

The complaint is therefore upheld.

NOTE: The complainant was willing to have his name used but the Press Council has not been able to because of the requirements of the Family Law Act.