Adjudication No. 741 (August 1994) [1994] APC 50

ADJUDICATION No. 741 (August 1994)

The Press Council has upheld a complaint by Brendan Donnelly over a photograph and caption in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The photograph accompanied an article ("1 billion trees will be 3 billion short"), which contended that there was a wide disparity between the number of trees planted under a Federal Government reafforestation program, and those lost through harvesting or removal for agriculture.

Mr Donnelly complained that the article did not implicate production forestry, which he said is based on sustained yield to ensure the harvest of trees is less than or equal to re-growth. He therefore considered the photograph of a logger working in a NSW State forest, and its caption ("Barking up the wrong tree ..."), to be a "scurrilous misrepresentation".

Mr Donnelly wrote a letter to the editor to this effect. However, 3 of its 7 paragraphs pilloried the paper for its "promulgation of environmental stereotypes". The letter was not published.

The Herald rejected Mr Donnelly's claims, noting that the use of the word "harvesting" in the article covered production forestry as well as agricultural clearing, and that forestry plantings had been included in its statistical analysis of the issue. The article's author agreed that a strong contemporary photograph of agricultural land clearing would have been a more apt choice to illustrate the text, but the Herald "didn't have one on the day". The Council considers these inadequate justifications for using an inappropriate photograph and, for this reason, upholds the complaint.

Regrettably, the Herald dismissed Mr Donnelly with as much pique as he had shown towards the paper in his letter. It described him as "insufferably rude" and as having "an attitude problem".

It did, however, recognise that he had a legitimate point of view, "however unreasonable and wrong". The Herald subsequently published a letter from another reader which made the same points as Mr Donnelly, and which, though shorter, was scarcely less vitriolic about the paper's alleged bias and journalistic standards.

The Press Council acknowledges that the selection of letters for publication must ultimately be at editors' discretion. However, the Council believes that readers' interests are best served when letter writers and papers alike focus on matters of genuine public concern, and not on each others' perceived personal or professional shortcomings.