Adjudication No. 1279 (adjudicated March 2005) [2005] APC 12

Adjudication No. 1279 (adjudciated March 2005)

The Press Council has upheld in part a complaint from Neil Riethmuller about a number of issues that initially arose from an article in the Chronicle, Toowoomba, of 25 August 2004.

Last August, a Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated in Toowoomba. The unveiling of the plaque was covered in the Chronicle on 19 August and on 26 August the paper ran an article, together with a picture, about Mr Riethmuller, who apparently has some prominence in the local area as what the paper calls "an anti-Vietnam War campaigner". A letter to the editor from Leo Kucks, critical of Mr Riethmuller, was published in response to that article on 2 September and Mr Riethmuller's letter in reply - albeit with one sentence deleted - was published five days later.

On 11 September a number of other letters were published, with Mr Riethmuller taking exception to a particularly robust one written by Dan Handley which, among other things, accused Mr Riethmuller of being a "professional agitator" and of "dodging the draft in New Zealand"; said that he "obviously supports the likes of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein"; and ended with an exhortation that Mr Riethmuller go and do "as the monks did in Saigon", a clear reference to Mr Riethmuller's published letter where he recalled "Buddhist monks' fiery self-immolation" in Vietnam.

Mr Riethmuller also took exception to another article on 6 September which quoted a "Vietnam veteran and now chaplain to returned servicemen" as slamming Mr Riethmuller for "his support of the North Vietnamese" and of a column on September 11 which declared the correspondence at an end.

Mr Riethmuller has a number of complaints, ranging from allegations that the controversy was "manufactured" by the Chronicle, which sought out Mr Riethmuller for his initial interview, that the paper had "militarist philosophy", that his views were distorted, that his published letter was edited, and that the paper had not redressed the harm to his reputation which flowed from publication of the Handley letter.

The paper said that the article of 26 August was a fair representation of the interview and that there was no attempt to manufacture controversy. It said the letters to the editor were published in the opinion section and "our readers will form their own views as to whether those opinion are valid or otherwise." It added that it could find no record of Mr Riethmuller's letter to the newspaper of 12 September that called for redress.

The Press Council has no way of knowing whether the 26 August article was a fair representation of the interview, and considers the publication of Mr Riethmuller's letter in answer to Mr Kucks' letter to be an adequate response. The Council can find no evidence in the proffered material of any attempt by the paper to "manufacture" a controversy, nor of any "militarist philosophy" within the Chronicle.

The Council does, however, believe that the publication of the Handley letter, without verification of the serious claims made within it and without any attempt to allow a reply by Mr Riethmuller, to be a serious breach of the Council's guidelines.

While letters to the editor, and opinion pages generally, should by their nature encourage forthright debate, it remains incumbent on a newspaper to ensure that published material does not unfairly attack or misrepresent a person. The Chronicle should have been aware that the Handley letter made several serious accusations about Mr Riethmuller that at the very least required checking before publication and, once published, demanded an immediate reply - notwithstanding the column announcing the closing of all further correspondence on the matter which was published on the same day as the Handley letter.

Neither course was taken and, to that extent, the complaint is upheld.