Adjudication No. 1240 (April 2004) [2004] APC 15

Adjudication No. 1240 (April 2004)

The Australian Press Council has upheld one aspect of a complaint by Mark Westfield against The Manly Daily over a report on a Manly Council meeting.

The paper described the meeting as a "two-hour, factional free-for-all" over minor changes to the council's development approval for a house of a neighbour of Mr Westfield. The matter, said the paper, would normally have been dealt with by council planning staff, but it was brought before the council by a councillor at the request of Mr Westfield.

The paper's report pointed out that Mr Westfield and his neighbour, David Murphy, had a long history of conflict over extensions and alterations carried out on their houses. Further, Mr Murphy was seeking election to the council on the Liberal ticket, and Mr Westfield and his partner, Anne Marie Nicholson, had some time previously been associated with the rival Residents and Friends of Manly.

Mr Westfield complains that the paper failed to check with him as to whether comments made about him were true, and later it failed to publish in full a letter from him. His political affiliations, he said, should have had nothing to do with planning matters before the council and the Residents and Friends organisation was no longer operative. He later went on to describe Mr Murphy as a member of the Liberal Party and a "running mate" of a number of Liberal councillors. He also claimed that a photograph used in the paper was shot so as to exaggerate the "overshadowing" of Mr Murphy's house by Mr Westfield's.

In answer, the paper says that the report, although based on the planning argument, focused on how the councillors were politicising a minor matter. "The article condensed a two-hour political debate into a story concerned with petty bickering which eventually pushed the main issue back to the general manager for determination."

The paper denied running a political campaign against Mr Westfield, and said its picture did not exaggerate the situation. The paper published his letter with "the comments personally critical of our journalist edited out".

The Press Council holds that it was not incumbent on the paper to seek the comments of Mr Westfield, or Mr Murphy for that matter, on the council debate and the report of it. The background information on political affiliations, past and present, was helpful in understanding the story. The letter from Mr Westfield, as published, after his complaint to the Press Council, made the points he wanted to draw attention to with regard to the story.

However, in the Council's view, the picture drew unnecessary attention to the position of Mr Westfield's house, an issue not germane to the local council debate as it was reported in the paper. To the extent that this remained uncorrected, because references to the photo were edited out of the published letter, the complaint is upheld.