Adjudication No. 1199 (May 2003) [2003] APC 15

Adjudication No. 1199 (May 2003)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint by an Alice Springs Aboriginal group against The Weekend Australian over a feature story on a young man who can neither hear nor speak and who has been the subject of protracted legal proceedings because he has been ruled as unable to understand or answer charges made against him.

The 24-year-old Aboriginal is now under care in a 'safe house' in one of Alice Spring's Town Camps where an attempt is being made to renew his education in sign language. Ironically, the feature points out, when he can understand the charges against him, he may again face the courts.

The complainant is the Tangentyere Council, which deals with most of the Aboriginal Town Camps in Alice Springs. The council does not question the basic facts of the problem caused by the man's disabilities, but it complains over the way it claims the facts were collected, the disclosure to the public, the involvement of other people, the use of a dead person's name, and the description of conditions in which Aborigines live in the camps.

The paper says that its feature was compassionate and entirely sympathetic to the suffering of the young man, who was left profoundly deaf after meningitis at the age of two. All his life, says the paper, the man was subject to a round of violence, drinking and great isolation; it quotes a source as saying "He is locked into his lonely, isolated, silent world ... alcohol abuse is rife, petrol-sniffing is rife, violence is endemic."

The paper says that no permission is needed to enter a Town Camp, the writer identified himself to someone who was pointed out as a leader, was given directions to the young man's grandmother (visiting a hospital) and spoke to her there, and was twice told that the mother had died years before.

As for Aboriginal conditions, the paper quotes several judicial comments that support its position. The paper also points out that its purpose was to highlight the tragedy of the young man, not to detail the work of the Tangentyere Council.

The Press Council believes that feature was indeed compassionate, and that there are no grounds for complaint.

The Weekend Australian article highlights the dilemmas of reporting the social devastation faced by some Aboriginal communities. Newspapers are regularly attacked for focusing on the grimmer aspects of the picture, and human service organizations claim they are not given credit for their efforts.

The Press Council accepts that there is no readily definable midway point in the presentation of these competing realities to the public, but it believes the public's right to be informed is best served when articles achieve a reasonable balance between them.