Adjudication No. 1384 (adjudicated March 2008) [2008] APC 5

Adjudication No. 1384 (adjudicated March 2008)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint brought by the Church of Scientology against The Daily Telegraph regarding the headline of the article published in the 10 July 2007 edition.

The original complaint concerned allegations of unfairness in a series of articles published in the 10, 11 and 14 July editions. Subsequently, the complainant confined the complaint to the headline over an article that reported the court appearance of a woman who had been charged with murdering her sister and her father. The headline was SCIENTOLOGY SLAYING, accompanied by a sub-heading: Court told of church link to killing.

The article reported that the woman who had been charged with the murders was allegedly forced to stop taking psychiatric drugs by her family "because of their Church of Scientology beliefs". It also reported testimony in the court that her parents had insisted that their daughter "take medication imported from the US, which was 'not psychiatric in nature' and complied with the Church of Scientology's rules".

The nub of the complaint regarding the headline was that "people reading the headline understood it to mean that Scientology was responsible for the slaying/killing". The newspaper response was that the headline when read in isolation "has virtually no meaning" or "so many possible meanings as to be meaningless". When read with the sub-heading, its meaning becomes apparent, namely, "a court had been told that there were possible links between a church and a 'slaying'," the newspaper said. It further said that the headline was an attempt to "catch reader attention" and "convey an accurate sense of what the story is about".

Without the sub-heading, the headline SCIENTOLOGY SLAYING does have a degree of ambiguity. The Council agrees that the newspaper is correct in saying that the headline should be read in connection with the sub-heading and the complaint is dismissed.