Adjudication No. 1027 (May 1999) [1999] APC 21

ADJUDICATION No. 1027 (May 1999)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint against The Daily Mercury by the Mackay District Health Service, about the publication of a photograph, and the methods used to obtain it, for a report on a temporary aged care facility in the city's base hospital.

The front-page report ("Aged Care Scandal. Concerned staff risk jobs to expose hospital conditions") described the facility as "a sad, dark and crowded place without identity or direction". It listed concerns of "a small delegation of hospital staff" about safety and care shortcomings attributable to physical conditions in the facility. The photograph, showing a group of five residents in a TV room, was modified to obscure their faces.

The report appeared two days after a visit to Mackay by Queensland Cabinet Ministers, including the Health Minister. It stated that during the visit, the staff delegation had confronted the Minister, hoping for some reassurance about Government intentions to improve aged care facilities in Mackay as part of a hospital redevelopment. The reassurance had not been immediately forthcoming, and the staff were said to have approached the Mercury to shed further light on the issue.

The Mackay District Health Service accepted the public interest nature of the report. Its complaint centred on the Mercury's reporter and photographer entering the aged care facility without official approval, and on the taking and publication of a photograph, allegedly without the residents' consent and in breach of their privacy.

In rejecting the complaint, the paper noted that the report had been the culmination of a six-month investigation into aged care facilities at the hospital, inspired by repeated complaints by staff and relatives of patients.

The Mercury said it had been invited to inspect the facilities by an anonymous "key staff member", and that its photographer had obtained the consent of the group before taking the picture which appeared in print the next day.

The central issue for the Council is whether public interest considerations underlying the report and photograph outweighed what the Health Service felt were unethical practices, and the paper acknowledged were "unusual circumstances", in their preparation.

The Council believes that, in this case, the Mercury's approach was justified. Significant public or private organisations providing community services, such as a hospital, are legitimate subjects of media scrutiny, and the Council accepts that it may not always be appropriate or fruitful for a paper to seek official approval of its line of enquiry.

The front-page report was balanced by an article on the following page reporting the Health Minister's comments on the aged care issue in Mackay, which made it clear, however, that she was unwilling at that stage to make any firm commitments to future plans.

The Council believes great care is required in deciding the extent to which private individuals' circumstances should be exposed to illustrate issues of public concern. In this instance however, it is difficult to see how the five residents, whose faces were obscured in the photograph, would have suffered any detriment from its publication, whether or not they consented to its being taken.