Adjudication No. 1360 (adjudicated June 2007) [2007] APC 17

Adjudication No. 1360 (adjudicated June 2007)

The Australian Press Council has upheld a complaint from Timber Communities Australia against the Mercury, Hobart, over a front page lead article on Saturday 31 March and a subsequent correction on Saturday 7 April.

The March 31 article headlined Truck logjam was accompanied by an editorial cartoon and a Street Talk column on the same subject, both on the Letters page.

The article stated that about 122 log trucks would travel down Macquarie Street, Hobart's busiest thoroughfare, during daylight hours if a new pulp mill went ahead. It said a log truck would travel down the street every eight minutes between 6 am and 6 pm according to information supplied to the Resource, Planning and Development Commission by a consultant. A photograph of a fully laden log truck on the thoroughfare taken the previous day was published on the front page with the lead article.

On Wednesday 4 April the Mercury published a follow-up report as the main story on page 7 headlined Jump in city trucks denied quoting forest industry officials who said there would be no increase in truck movements to the present situation.

On 7 April, one week after the original report, the Mercury published a single column correction on the bottom of Page 4 headlined GETTING IT STRAIGHT saying it regretted the error. The paper said the statement about a log truck travelling down the street every eight minutes was wrong and did not appear in any report. It said the calculation made by the Mercury had now been shown to be wrong.

While the Mercury took some steps in its follow-up report on 4 April to try to redress the original errors, neither the article nor the 7 April correction met the Council's requirement that harmful inaccuracies should be corrected promptly and with appropriate prominence.