Adjudication No. 1332 (adjudicated October 2006) [2006] APC 26

Adjudication No. 1332 (adjudicated October 2006)

The Australian Press Council has upheld part of a complaint by Jacquie Thomson, representing the Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council, against the Newcastle Herald.

The complaint concerned a 15 June article on an administrator's report on the land council under the headline - $7 million legal fees - Report on land council money. The land council was concerned that the headline was inaccurate and that the article was unbalanced by the newspaper's failure to seek rebuttal from the land council to the report's allegations of wasted money.

The newspaper acknowledged the error that legal fees were only a proportion of the $7 million and offered in correspondence with the Press Council to print a correction. The land council refused to accept this offer. Nonetheless the Press Council believes that the newspaper should have acknowledged in print the error in the headline as soon as it became aware of it.

Ms Thomson also complained the newspaper had not been thorough in seeking comment from the land council to balance the report on its management of funds.

The newspaper had contacted the land council office in good faith to seek a comment, not realising at the time that the administrator occupied the office. Two days later the newspaper published an article giving the land council's comments on the report and three days after that published a letter from the former chairman of the land council responding to the report. The newspaper edited this letter to remove specific references to the amount spent on legal fees, but the letter addressed the land council's other concerns with the article.

The Press Council believes that the follow-up article and published letter provided the land council with appropriate balance on all its concerns except for the inaccurate headline.

NOTE: The newspaper lodged an appeal in this matter. The Council's Chairman has rejected the appeal and re-issued the adjudciation in a slightly re-worded form.