Adjudication No. 1129 (July 2001) [2001] APC 30

Adjudication No. 1129 (July 2001)

The Press Council has dismissed complaints against The Australian over a series of reports, and an editorial, on the disputes, investigations and legal actions surrounding the awarding of an honours degree to a young woman at Sydney University.

The complaints were made by the student's aunt, Pauline Croxon, and the newspaper's stories appeared after the release of what it described as 'a stinging report' by the NSW Deputy Ombudsman, Chris Wheeler.

The six-year messy affair over the upgrading of the student's mark from 76 per cent to 79 and eventually to the first-class level of 80 per cent has cost the university over $1 million, caused the Ombudsman's office six months of work examining 10,000 pages of documents, the appearance of 27 witnesses, the issuing of a 33-page finding, the levelling of accusations of bullying, sexual harassment, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, flawed methods of marking, adversarial investigations by the university instead of inquisitorial, and a whole can of academic behavioural worms. And there are, it seems, a Supreme Court appeal and an Anti-Discrimination Board action to go.

Ms Croxon claims the paper's reports were inaccurate and biased, omitted some facts and used selective excerpts from the Ombudsman's report.

The Press Council believes that, given the breadth and complexity of the matter, the paper's reports were fair; they contained only one blemish in that they implied that legal aspects of the affair had been settled, whereas one court appeal and a claim to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board are still to be dealt with. This blemish was one of Ms Croxon's complaints, but it could easily have been settled by a letter to the editor. She made no such approach.

In fact, the paper apparently received and published only one letter on the whole affair, from the university's Vice-Chancellor Gavin Brown, who wrote to correct a claim made by the student's father, who attributed an upgrading offer to the university when it was merely a suggestion made by one of the professors. Professor Brown went on to thank the paper for accurately reporting the university's resolve to implement the Ombudsman's recommendations to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination.

One of Ms Croxon's major complaints is that the paper's reports regularly reported her as the student's aunt and also the university's industrial relations manager, with implications of undue influence, particularly, she says, unfairly linking her to the upgrading of her niece's marks. However, the Ombudsman in his 33-page report several times mentions critically the dual relationship, labelling it as leading to at least a perception of conflict of interest. She herself writes in her complaints of her duty to the university and of family pressure for loyalty. The Council sees this clearly as a "two-hat" situation. In the context of such potential conflicts, the Council believes that the reporting of Ms Croxon's dual role was generally fair.

Ms Croxon also complains of a headline, From a flood of tears to scandal, and a picture of the student, which she described as "pseudo Page 4 girl and an invasion of her privacy". Neither complaint stands up to examination; the picture is a perfectly reasonable one of the woman and the headline is accurate.

The good that came out of the long affair was a new regime of marking and investigation at the university.