Adjudication No. 446 (June 1990) [1990] APC 18

ADJUDICATION No. 446 (June 1990)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint against a Sunday Territorian report about a proposed experiment to assess the toxicity of water stored in one of the Ranger Uranium Mine's retention pools.

The front-page report, headlined "Mine To Spill Toxic Water", appeared in the Sunday Territorian of 25 February 1990. Mr Tony McGill wrote to the Editor that he considered the article was "harmfully inaccurate", listing the facts surrounding the planned experiment as he saw them, and urging a retraction.

Mr McGill's letter was not published, although mining industry reaction to the article was reported in the Sunday Territorian's sister paper, The NT News, on 27 February, and in the Sunday Territorian itself one week later. Mr McGill's own response might have stood a better chance of publication had he revealed himself at the time as a senior officer of the NT Department of Mines and Energy with responsibility for authorising Ranger operations. In fact he chose not to reveal this role until approximately one month after the article appeared.

Mr McGill's complaint hinges on two issues:

• whether the article's reliance on limited sources for its facts was enough to make it misleading and harmfully inaccurate. (These sources included leaked Ranger documents, and verbal comment from the Office of the Supervising Scientist (OSS) and the Manager of the Ranger mine); and

• whether the use of the words 'spill' and 'toxic' in the headline gave a distorted impression of an uncontrolled release of harmful waste into the Kakadu wetlands.

The Council agrees with Mr McGill that the documentary basis for the article was sketchy, although both the commentators approached could reasonably be expected to speak with authority on the matter, and one of them confirmed that the experiment was being negotiated with Ranger and the NT Government.

The Council recognises that the headline was technically correct: "spilling" water from a pond can be a deliberate and controlled act, and does not have to be the result of accident or carelessness. However, there is no doubt that a superficial reading of the headline could mislead.

Shortcomings in the report could undoubtedly have been avoided by more thorough investigation, and by more careful use of words by the paper. Nevertheless, the factual basis of the report remains:

• the water release experiment was being planned when the article appeared;

• comment on this plan from two relevant sources was sought and published as part of the article; and

• industry responses to the story were published on two separate occasions over the following week.

For these reasons, the Press Council believes that the article and publication of responses to it were generally fair.