Adjudication No. 1060 (November 1999) [1999] APC 54

ADJUDICATION No. 1060 (November 1999)

The Press Council has considered a complaint against The Age made by the Australia-Asia Culture & Arts Centre. The complaint concerned an article republished from the Daily Telegraph, London, relating to a meeting between a journalist and the Dalai Lama which contained the following paragraph:

`It seems incredible that he can keep laughing when 1.2 million of his people have been killed, and 5000 of his monasteries destroyed in the name of communism. Tibetans about to be executed used to cry: "Long live the Dalai Lama," until the Chinese took to hooking their tongues out.'

The Centre challenged the accuracy of this passage and claimed that if The Age could not justify the allegations it should apologise to the governments of China and the Tibet Autonomous Region. It also claimed that the adverse public perception that it said would flow from the article would affect the sales of tickets to a performance by the Tibetan Performing Arts Troupe that the Centre was organising.

The Age for its part denied that the article would affect the sales of tickets and defended the statements complained of as a reasonable portrayal of what has happened in Tibet since the Chinese invasion.

The Press Council is in no position to determine the validity of either of the Centre's assertions. Many matters are likely to affect ticket sales and it would not be possible to conclude that a single article had this effect (assuming that sales were affected which the Council does not know). The broad statements relating to oppression, while evocatively expressed, reflect a general perception that is held in the community. Whether the detail in the statements is accurate is not something on which the Council can pronounce.

The Council believes that this was a case where, in the circumstances, it would not have been unreasonable for a suitable letter challenging the figures to be published.