Adjudication No. 1025 (May 1999) [1999] APC 19

ADJUDICATION No. 1025 (May 1999)

The Australian Press Council has upheld a complaint by the Federal Council of Polish Associations of Australia against the Australian newspaper's magazine over its reference to "a Polish concentration camp".

While it was only a tangential reference in a long article about the Vatican and its attitudes to sainthood, the reference did cause offence to Polish Australians and the newspaper failed to take adequate action to redress the offence.

The editor-in-chief maintained that its readers would have known the historical context of the reference, in that the concentration camps on Polish soil during the Second World War were in fact set up and run by Nazi Germany. For that reason, the newspaper did not publish any correction or apology.

However, the Council finds that the words were ambiguous and the reference offensive to Polish Australians. It would have been harmfully misleading to younger readers and others whose knowledge of the Second World War is hazy or non-existent.

The newspaper contended the complaint was only an argument about words. It was more than that and the Press Council upholds the complaint because of the newspaper's failure to redress the hurtful mistake.

However, it does reject the complainant's further argument that the newspaper was conducting a deliberate campaign of slander against Poles and Polish Australians. There is no evidence of that and the newspaper has, in fact, on at least one earlier occasion apologised for a similar mistake.