Adjudication No. 447 (July 1990) [1990] APC 19

ADJUDICATION No. 447 (July 1990)

An article in Business Review Weekly of 2 March dealing with the West Australian newspaper and its financial position was the subject of a complaint from David Aspinall, chief executive of its publishers, Bell Publishing Group. The complaint was about the non-disclosure of a conflict of interest.

The article appears under the headline "CAN BOND PAPER KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK?", written by Tim Treadgold. The article points out that Bell projections saw a $37 million profit for the West Australian last financial year, but then asks whether the performance is sustainable and "how much of the present effort is to dress up the business for sale" out of the "troubled Bond Group".

Mr Aspinall wrote to the magazine, for publication, complaining in strong terms that the whole thrust was to "talk down the value of the West Australian".

Mr Aspinall went on to complain that Tim Treadgold was a media executive employed by Robert Holmes a Court's Heytesbury Holdings. His association with the Holmes ^ Court company was confirmed by BRW in a letter to the Council. Mr Aspinall stressed that his complaint was against BRW and not Mr Treadgold.

In reply, both the editor, David Uren, and the chairman and editorial director of BRW, Robert Gottliebsen, say that Mr Treadgold is a longserving contributor and one of the magazine's best, and that Mr Aspinall's letter was not published because it did not contradict a single fact in the story and it constituted an "unfounded personal attack on the writer". The Press Council accepts that this view provided reasonable grounds for non-publication of the letter.

However, one of the principles propounded by the Council is that readers have the right to know of any conflict of interest, either of the author or the publishers, that might be present in any published material.

The Council believes strongly that the association between Mr Treadgold and the Holmes a Court company should have been disclosed in the article.

It was a piece of information readers had a need and a right to know. This aspect of the complaint is upheld.

The Council is disappointed that two publications represented on the Council could not resolve their differences. A toning down of the letter and a conceding of the article-writer's association should have been achieved in a non-confrontationary exchange.