Adjudication No. 1211 (September 2003) [2003] APC 27

Adjudication No. 1211 (September 2003)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint brought by Judith Rona, against The Sydney Morning Herald over the following articles which appeared on the newspaper's website: Blunder leaves 2 Israelis dead (14 March 2003); 130 Arab children killed (15 March 2003); and Israeli bulldozer crushes peace activist (17 March 2003).

The nub of the complaint was that all three articles had involved "publication of Palestinian civilian death toll without Israeli civilian death toll". The complainant claimed that each time she complained to the paper she had included an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) website which contains statistics on Israeli civilian deaths and the website of the International Centre of Counter-Terrorism which had published 'a study comparing and analysing the death toll for the two sides'. The complainant also drew attention to the fact that on two other previous occasions (30 November 2001 and 7 April 2002) she had notified the paper of the existence of the IDF website. It was her contention that the paper was not fair and balanced in its coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The complaint appears to be based on the premise that each time a newspaper report refers to statistical data concerning the toll on one side of the conflict it must publish data concerning the toll on the other. Such a premise is untenable. Each story must be seen in context. The focus of each of the articles is not a comparative study of the tolls afflicting both sides of the conflict. The aim was to highlight the existence of an official Israeli military report which contained an admission by the Israeli army of the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the fighting who had no links to any militia.

The Council considers it likely that Herald readers would be know, from the on-going coverage, that a majority of Israeli casualties in the current conflict have been civilians.