Adjudication No. 881 (September 1996) [1996] APC 55

ADJUDICATION No. 881 (September 1996)

The Australian Press Council has dismissed a complaint over two opinion columns in the Daily Telegraph which attacked aspects of a bill in the NSW Parliament making it legal for transgender people to have their birth certificates altered after a change of sex.

Linda Darling complained about many aspects of the two column items published under Piers Akerman's byline on 4 June and 6 June 1996.

However, soon after the Akerman comments were published, the paper published a letter written by the complainant in which Ms Darling raised her points and offered her views in vigorous language.

The publication was swift and prominent and, in the Press Council's view, provided adequate balance on an issue of public interest.

The Akerman column, well known to Sydney readers as a strongly opinionated contribution to the paper, attacked what he saw as the risk of men who had become women having an unfair advantage in women's sport.

Ms Darling complained that there was no reference to sport in the bill, and that Mr Akerman's comments therefore were a deliberate attempt to mislead readers.

The Bill, in fact, does refer to sport, but that point is irrelevant to her argument. It was quite legitimate for the newspaper commentator to discuss an obvious effect of the bill.

Ms Darling also complained about some of the columnist's language, including "ersatz women" and "recycled men", and that it breached the Press Council principle against gratuitous emphasis on the gender or sexual preference of groups or individuals.

However, the principle insists that newspapers are entitled to report, and express opinions upon, events and comments in which such matters are raised, where it is in the public interest.

This is a clear case where the references were hardly gratuitous and both the issue and comments about it were clearly matters of considerable public interest.

As for the language used by the columnist, the Press Council has long recognised that byline commentators have a broad freedom to express themselves according to their own style.

That happened in this case and the Press Council cannot see any breach of its principles, especially as the complainant was given prominent space to state counter views.