Adjudication No. 705 (February 1994) [1994] APC 14

ADJUDICATION No. 705 (February 1994)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint against the Northern Territory News by the Dripstone High School Council.

The complaint arose from a front page article, spilling on to page 2, headed "Teacher tied up boy for sex act. Student accuses".

The article contained a brief report of the recent dismissal and continuing police investigation of a teacher at the school who had admitted sexual offences against students. Most of it was devoted to a detailed account, obtained from one of the students, of several incidents in which sexual interference had allegedly occurred.

Although the teacher had not been formally charged -- as he has since been -- when the article was published, the School Council raised questions about its possible impact on any legal proceedings that might be instituted against him.

The School Council's main concern, however, was with what it regarded as the "apparent irresponsible, unprofessional, unethical and immoral methods used by the NT News journalists in deriving information about the reasons for the dismissal of the Music teacher".

The published description of incidents contained explicit references to sexual practices and the trauma had "no doubt been magnified for many families because of the gratuitous/explicit details contained in the NT News article".

While the paper and the complainant dispute details of the process of gathering information for the article, they agree that all Dripstone High School parents approached by the NT News had refused permission for their children to be interviewed. The paper says that it did not pursue this line of investigation.

However when, according to the editor, a student himself offered to talk to the paper, a reporter was sent to meet him, with instructions that the student was not to be questioned or put under any pressure. The NT News thus considered it had gathered news in "the universally accepted manner", and had acted properly as "every citizen in the Northern Territory has a right to know what has been allowed to happen in an NT school".

The Press Council dismissed the complaint because it held that the issue was one where the newspaper properly pursued discovery of relevant facts and was entitled to publish a matter of significant local public interest.

The Press Council did not accept that the newspaper's decision to publish infringed the tenets of fair press conduct.

At the same time, the Council reached the conclusion that the front-page article would be offensive to many readers in its details of alleged sexual activity, particularly in view of the fact that an identifiable group within the school community was involved.