Adjudication No. 480 (February 1991) [1991] APC 15

ADJUDICATION No. 480 (February 1991)

The Australian Press Council has upheld a complaint by Sydney architect Mr. Neville Gruzman against the Parramatta Advertiser for falsely alleging that Mr. Gruzman had made only a cursory study of Parramatta before describing it as a "disaster".

Mr. Gruzman did not complain about the editorial attacking his description of the city. He said that while he disagreed with it he believed in freedom of the press and the right of the newspaper to attack his views.

But he objected strongly, and the Press Council believes with good reason, to two sentences in the editorial which read: "It appears a local business figure, more given to ideas than the spadework required to give them substance, needed a catalyst to spark interest in his latest scheme. So he carted this critic out here (by taxi no less!) and, after a 'thorough' 30 minute circuit of the city, prevailed upon him for a comment on what he had seen."

In fact, Mr. Gruzman spent three or four hours on each of three days to study Parramatta, reacquainting himself with an area he had lived in years ago, before he was ready to accept the invitation of another Parramatta paper to tour the city on a fourth day with a reporter and photographer to comment on the good and bad points of the city.

He never used a taxi, drove himself to and from the city on each occasion and said that nobody had prevailed on him to study and speak about Parramatta. He had conducted the exercise for no payment and it had stemmed from the editor's interest in widely published comments Mr Gruzman had made, as an authority on the architecture of cities, about the state of downtown Sydney.

There is no question in the Press Council's view that the comments made in the editorial reflected seriously on Mr. Gruzman's professionalism, were wrong and should not have been printed. Having appeared in the paper there should have been a swift and prominent correction and apology.