Adjudication No. 521 (October 1991) [1991] APC 55

Adjudication No. 521 (October 1991)

The duty of the press to inform people honestly and fairly is a fundamental principle of the Australian Press Council and requires great diligence by editors in its application.

A complaint by Mr George Cook, the Secretary of the Festival of Light and Community Standards Organisation Queensland, against the Brisbane Sun, raises the question of how omissions in attribution should be balanced or corrected by the newspaper.

In an article headlined "Anger on AIDS classes ban bid", Mr Cook, who had written to the paper attacking government plans to conduct AIDS education lessons for all Queensland school children in years 8 to 12, was quoted on several aspects of the issue, two of which are germane to the complaint.

In the first, he was quoted indirectly as saying no schoolgirl had contracted AIDS in Australia, a reference derived from his statement "no girl of school age has contracted AIDS anywhere in the whole of Australia in the latest full recorded full year "(sic - emphasis added). Mr Cook complains that because several girls of school age had AIDS, contracted from blood transfusions prior to new blood testing techniques being introduced in 1985, the omission had held him up to ridicule, contempt and hatred.

Mr Cook's second complaint is that he was quoted as saying "The effect of these lessons on the modesty of young girls will be devastating and will affect them for life," whereas his original letter had the quotation introduced by the preamble "leading medical authorities stress that the effect of these lessons ... etc." (emphasis added). It is clear Mr Cook was using this preamble to support his view and that of his organisation to ban AIDS education for school girls.

While different readers may take different meanings from the same words and sentences, those quoted in newspapers have a right to have their own attributed words in news stories to b quoted accurately and not interpreted by the newspaper.

The paper offered to publish a corrective letter from Mr Cook, an action endorsed by the Press Council which has long encouraged newspapers to print swiftly and with reasonable prominence the viewpoint of aggrieved readers and public figures. Mr Cook rejected the offer, believing that it "would be seen by readers as The Sun generously allowing a reader to let off steam."