Adjudication No. 988 (August 1998) [1998] APC 34

ADJUDICATION No. 988 (August 1998)

In dismissing a complaint over the complainant's belief that he had been harmed in one of a series of letters published in the Ranges Trader, the Australian Press Council observes that he should have accepted the editor's offer of space for a clarifying letter of his own.

Brian Hannan rejected the editor's offer and demanded instead that the paper itself retract the contents of the contentious letter.

The Press Council finds there was no obligation on the newspaper to follow that course and commends it for its open offer to the complainant for letter space.

The dispute arose over comments of a local clergyman comparing the Ash Wednesday bushfire tragedy (which killed many people and destroyed property in the newspaper's circulation area in the Melbourne hills) with gambling on poker machines.

Replying to one of the letters published which criticised the clergyman, Mr Hannan ended his own published letter with the paragraph: "Your editorial comment is that nom-de-plumes are unacceptable. Unless I am mistaken, a recent writer to your column used an earlier surname rather than the one which she was known at school and to us. Use of her later surname would have better allowed local readers to assess any bias in her comments."

In a covering, not-to-be-published note to the editor Mr Hannan also referred to the nom-de-plume issue. A week later, a letter written by a neighbour of the nom-de-plume writer was published which criticised Mr Hannan.

It said his "comments accusing a recent writer of using a nom-de-plume were unacceptable". It also questioned "the motives for writing his letter".

In communication with the paper and in his complaint to the Press Council, Mr Hannan argued that the published criticism of his letter was untrue and defamatory. While acknowledging that readers could "link" the last two sentences of his published letter re the nom-de-plume, he claimed the existence of a full stop between the two sentences meant there was "no direct linkage in law" and that therefore the newspaper itself should print a retraction.

Whatever the legal status of the full stop, the complainant's argument bears no relationship to the cut and thrust of discussion on public issues in letters' columns or to any breach of Press Council principles.

The conjunction of the two references in the complainant's letter plainly raise the question of why a nom-de-plume was used and his subsequent critic was entitled to challenge him.

The answer to the complainant's concerns was to accept the editor's offer of further letter space and not claim a non-existent breach of Press Council principles.