Adjudication No. 1265 (adjudicated December 2004) [2004] APC 40

Adjudication No. 1265 (adjudciated December 2004)

The Australian Press Council has dismissed a complaint by Dr R T Lange of Robe, South Australia, against an article headed Royalties, red tape undermine explorers published by The Independent Weekly, Adelaide, in the Business & Money pages on 24 September.

The article contained criticism by the SA Chamber of Mines that, despite government pledges to increase funds for incentive packages to boost exploration, the mining industry feared royalty rises and were unhappy with provisions concerning native vegetation replenishment and a trend to exclude the industry from parks.

Dr Lange said the article breached Press Council principles that newspapers should not publish what they know to be false, fail to check the accuracy of what they report, distort the facts or fail to make fact and opinion clearly distinguishable.

Dr Lange said the headline failed to distinguish fact from opinion by excluding the words "Miners say" and that throughout the article statements from the mining sector and the South Australian Premier were reported "complete with their distortions, nonsense and suppressions of fact, as if such distortions, nonsense and suppressions did not exist."

Concerning the heading, The Independent Weekly carried a paragraph before the introduction of the article that clearly explained that the comments were from a peak industry group. The Press Council believes that this method of balancing the heading, a practice becoming common in many newspapers, meant the heading itself did not breach any principles, although claims purporting to be facts should be identified as such.

The balance of the article also clearly identified the sources making comments and attributed the comments to these sources.

Newspapers have a vital role in advancing debate on matters of public interest and importance and in this instance The Independent Weekly article fulfilled this role.

In any debate there are counter views and Dr Lange submitted a brief letter to the editor criticising miners and inviting the newspaper to examine their claims.

The letter was not published.

In response the newspaper's editor said Dr Lange's letter arrived too late for use in the next issue of The Independent Weekly and was not read until after this issue had been published.

The editor said that she had the right to choose which letters were used and which were discarded.

Although Dr Lange's letter was brief and well argued, the Press Council generally upholds the right of an editor to select letters for publication and does so again in this case