Adjudication No. 901 (January 1997) [1997] APC 2

ADJUDICATION No. 901 (January 1997)

The Australian Press Council has upheld in part a complaint against The Sydney Morning Herald about an article which reported on a number of deaths involving people linked in various ways to the NSW Police Royal Commission.

The report published on 5 October 1996 under the heading "Shamed to death" was accompanied by a picture of Brian Tobin, a former Wollongong City Council alderman who was found dead on 18 April 1996, not long after he was interviewed by investigators from the Royal Commission's pedophile team.

Mr Tobin, the report said, gassed himself just after being interviewed by the investigators. A summary of how he died appeared under a sub-heading "PEDOPHILES". The caption under Mr Tobin's picture said, "Dark secrets ... Brian Tobin, whose respectable facade concealed a life of pedophilia".

Mr Tobin's brother, T K Tobin of Gymea in Sydney, complained about the use of the picture of his brother, the caption and the assertion that his brother was guilty of pedophilia.

He said the article itself referred to the fact that his brother had been interviewed by the Commission and that he was to have been called as a witness. The article, he said, presented no evidence that his brother was guilty of pedophilia.

He was invited by the paper to submit a letter to the editor stating his view of his brother's character. The invitation was not accepted.

The Sydney Morning Herald in its defence said that its article was the first to report that Brian Tobin's death was a suicide and that the paper had information "which was wholly persuasive and which was corroborated from several, and separate, sources". The paper said it could not discuss the precise nature of the information of the sources, but said that Brian Tobin's pedophilia was known to the Royal Commission.

The published article made no reference to any information it had to corroborate the assertion that Brian Tobin was a pedophile. Readers may have been left to wonder on what basis the assertion was made in view of references in the article itself only to the likelihood that he would be called to the Commission as a witness.

The accuracy of the report can only be tested against the Royal Commission's eventual findings. In the meantime, newspapers have a responsibility to maintain either the presumption of witnesses' innocence or to provide some justification for assertions of their guilt. To the extent that the Herald did neither in this case, the complaint is upheld.

NOTE: The complainant, T K Tobin, is not to be confused with T K Tobin QC of the Sydney Bar, who lives at Woollahra.