Adjudication No. 655 (July 1993) [1993] APC 47

ADJUDICATION No. 655 (July 1993)

The Australian Press Council has upheld one of two complaints by Mike Pepperday against the Weekend Courier, Rockingham WA, and dismissed the other.

Both complaints related to an article in the Weekend Courier of 27 February 1993 and the newspaper's failure to publish a letter subsequently offered by Mr Pepperday which he claimed would have corrected mistakes in the original article.

The article and the letter referred to a major development in a long standing issue in the area: Fleuris Pty. Ltd., developers of a tourist resort at Port Kennedy, had announced a 50-50 joint venture with another West Australian owned firm.

In the article, Rockingham MLA, Mike Barnett, is quoted as saying, "Suffice to say that all the criticism and rumours about Japanese and foreign ownership will be put to rest by this announcement".

Mr Pepperday's letter, hand delivered to the newspaper with accompanying documents, claimed that the "rumours" were not rumours at all, but that the developers in the only brochure they had published about the proposed resort had specifically referred to "3000 Japanese membership units" providing the $200 million financing.

His letter pointed out that the brochure was still being used by the developers in contact with other media as late as October 1992 and that they had testified to a WA parliamentary committee in September 1992 that Singapore financiers were going to pay the total cost of construction.

Mr Pepperday complains that the newspaper's refusal to print the letter, or any part of it, breached the Press Council's principle five, which, among other things, cautions newspapers not to misrepresent or suppress relevant facts.

In this case, the newspaper argues that the letter did not contain any new information, made unsubstantiated allegations and was far too long.

The latter two points could have easily been addressed by editing with the complainant and, while the Press Council encourages letters to the editor (the paper concerned does not always have a letters' section), there are other ways, including a news story in which the complainant's point is quoted, in which balance can be achieved.

On a subsidiary matter raised by the newspaper, that it had given coverage to the views of the "Friends of Port Kennedy", of which the complainant is the spokesman, over a longer period, the Press Council is not in a position to give a ruling, and it is not germane to the complaint in question.

In essence, the newspaper had an opportunity to correct a distortion in its reporting on the "rumours" of foreign ownership, and left its readers with an unbalanced report of a matter of obvious public interest.

In his second complaint, Mr Pepperday says the Weekend Courier report breached principle 10, by damaging the reputation of his lobby group.

There is nothing in the report to link the "criticism and rumours" to his group, and this part of the complaint is dismissed.