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Adjudication No. 1259 (October 2004) [2004] APC 34

Adjudication No. 1259 (October 2004)

The Press Council has upheld in part a complaint by Valerie Sumner against the Herald Sun, Melbourne. Miss Sumner claimed that the March 2004 report about fresh allegations of bullying behaviour within Arthritis Victoria repeated some damaging accounts of her involvement in earlier, similar controversies within the organization and distorted those incidents in its reporting.

The Herald Sun had detailed the earlier events in several articles throughout 2003. The Council confines its judgment to the March 2004 story, but pays heed to the earlier stories to the extent that elements of them reappeared in the most recent article.

The Herald Sun had originally reported on the controversy involving Miss Sumner and Arthritis Victoria in May 2003, including in that reporting the fact that she had been convicted of social security fraud in 1998. That article spoke of 'unsubstantiated claims' of bullying laid by Miss Sumner and others and said that she had been sacked over 'discrepancies in her accounts' - a claim that was not attributed to any specific source. The Herald Sun went on to report in detail, in a number of subsequent stories, the various developments, investigations, counter-claims and controversies involving Arthritis Victoria in general and Miss Sumner in particular. The newspaper said that the inclusion in the March 2004 article of this material, and other matters on the public record, was by way of background.

Miss Sumner, in complaining about the March 2004 article and, belatedly, about much of the earlier reporting, said that the statement that she had been sacked by the previous management of Arthritis Victoria over 'accounting discrepancies' was inaccurate, arguing that these were baseless allegations. She cited allegations of bullying behaviour by the then general manager as the basis for much of the 'nightmare' that she and some other staff had experienced. These various matters had been investigated both within the organization and by outside bodies. Ultimately, her key accusers departed Arthritis Victoria, and Miss Sumner was re-instated by the Board of Directors. Miss Sumner cited statements publicly exonerating her. She claimed that an account of all these outcomes had been conveyed to the Herald Sun journalist by the organisation's President before the March 2004 article appeared.

The Council is in no position to attempt to rule definitively on the various claims about the accuracy, or otherwise, of the newspaper's 2003 reports. It notes that there were no complaints lodged at the time about those reports.

In the Council's view, the newspaper was entitled to revisit matters related to Miss Sumner's employment at Arthritis Victoria in a story about a similar controversy.

However, it believes that the March 2004 article was inaccurate in stating that Miss Sumner, having been sacked and reinstated, 'then lodged complaints to WorkCover alleging bullying'. In fact, Miss Sumner made her complaint to WorkCover in August 2001, six months before her employment was terminated. Miss Sumner said that in getting the sequence of events wrong, the newspaper implied that she had made a WorkCover complaint as a payback for her sacking. To the extent that the inaccuracy was unfair to Miss Sumner the complaint is upheld.


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