Adjudication No. 1328 (adjudicated September 2006) [2006] APC 22

Adjudication No. 1328 (adjudicated September 2006)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint about an obituary for David Pearl, a Polish-born Jewish businessman, published in The Age, Melbourne, on 26 May 2006.

The complainant, Marek Swida, read the article to be an inaccurate portrayal of conditions in pre-WWII Poland and asserted that this heralded a return to what he claimed was an anti-Polish sentiment in the newspaper. He wrote to the editor seeking a retraction and qualification of the details he claims were incorrect, namely that there were Jewish pogroms in Poland before the war and institutionalised anti-Semitism in the Polish army.

The article also stated that David Pearl was drafted into the Polish army where he achieved the rank of lieutenant and that he put his baby daughter into the care of a Polish family during the war, when he was living in the Polish forests and carrying out guerilla activities against the German army.

The newspaper did not see the need for a retraction. Nor, regrettably, did it respond to Mr Swida's letter of complaint.

It explained that the obituary, based on the eulogy delivered by Mr Pearl's son (a fact noted at the end of the article), "necessarily include[d] opinion as well as facts about [the] person's life and experiences. These opinions may not accord with those held by Mr Swida but that does not mean that they contravene Press Council guidelines."

The Press Council agrees.