Adjudication No. 1253 (September 2004) [2004] APC 28

Adjudication No. 1253 (September 2004)

The Press Council has upheld a complaint brought by Kingsley Wellington against The Sunday Mail, Adelaide, regarding an article headlined A 52 Kilometre Collision Course published in its 20 June edition.

The article in focussing on one of South Australia's most dangerous roads highlighted the death in 2001 of Michelle Hutchinson in a head-on collision. The article contained the following paragraph: 'She did nothing wrong - police say the other driver, who was also killed, was on the wrong side of the road when they collided at 3.45am on 13 March, 2001.'

The complainant, whose son was the driver of the other vehicle, objected to the words 'She did nothing wrong'; he construed it as meaning that the blame was being cast on his son. According to the complainant, the Major Crash Squad had stated that the cause of the accident would never be known.

In preparing the article, the newspaper had been told by police media liaison that the complainant's son was on the wrong side of the road when the accident occurred but that there were no skid marks and that the police would never know for sure what exactly had happened. In this light the categorical assertion that 'She did nothing wrong' clearly went beyond a mere reasonable inference. The newspaper conceded as much when it said to the Council that it 'should never have attached blame in the first place'.

The newspaper sought to handle the matter in a compassionate manner. However, a mediation effected by an internal ombudsman appointed by the newspaper failed to achieve a successful outcome because of disagreement over the contents of a proposed letter to the editor.

The Press Council is of the view that the newspaper's main preoccupation was its campaign for improvement to a stretch of a road on which many fatal accidents had occurred, and that the unequivocal assertion was not a deliberate act on its part. However that assertion should have been clarified.