Adjudication No. 710 (March 1994) [1994] APC 19

ADJUDICATION No. 710 (March 1994)

The Press Council has upheld in part a complaint by Dr Bryan Walpole against The Mercury in relation to a front page article published in the 22 January 1992 edition under the headline "Doctors' Royal rip off".

The Council's consideration of this matter was delayed by the threat of legal action by a third party.

The article was claimed to be based on a confidential internal Department of Health memo accusing Royal Hobart medical staff of blatant abuses of overtime and meal allowance provisions. The article proceeded to highlight a number of alleged practices identified in the report: that salaried medical staff were claiming overtime for lunch meetings (which they were not required to attend) where lunch was provided free; that doctors were working hours to suit themselves, such as 11 hours one day but only four the next, but were getting penalty rates for hours in excess of eight a day; that doctors were claiming call-back payments for self-initiated ward rounds on weekends; that doctors were getting paid a full hour at penalty rates for call-backs of only 15 to 20 minutes; during a specified period "$1204 was paid on call-back allowances to full-time medical staff, yet no call-backs occurred".

In his complaint, Dr Walpole said that the allegedly "leaked" report was unsigned; that no comment was obtained from the hospital, the medical staff or their industrial representatives in the writing of the article; that all the allegations could be satisfactorily explained "in terms of the nature of medical practice and the current structure of the award".

There is no doubt as to the authenticity of the report: the complaint that it was unsigned is irrelevant. The newspaper claimed that after publication it attempted to seek further information from members of the medical profession but that "none wanted to break the wall of silence". It added that it was limited as to whom it would approach for comments in the report as "there were strong indications of litigation including mention of injunctions to prevent publication or broadcast of certain material". The Press Council is of the view that, given the controversial and adverse nature of the allegations, the newspaper should have provided the affected parties an opportunity to comment on them before the publication of the article. The newspaper said that it did provide such an opportunity by publishing on page 3 of the next day's (23 January 1992) edition a reply from the medical organisations. However, there was a failure to use this opportunity to respond to the reported allegations. Nevertheless, the Council is of the view that it was an insufficient attempt to remedy the unfairness arising from the original publication; to this extent the complaint is upheld.