Adjudication No. 1437 (adjudicated September 2009) [2009] APC 24

Adjudication No. 1437 (adjudicated September 2009)

The Press Council has dismissed a complaint by Lulu Kenzig over the publication of what she said was a private letter, clearly not for publication, in the Sun City News on July 14, 2009.

The issue began with the publication of an earlier letter from Ms Kenzig complaining that inaction by the local council was endangering local wildlife. The editor, Terry Loftus, added a comment which Ms Kenzig certainly read as a criticism that she was not "prepared to go the extra mile" in seeking to have her valid concerns addressed. She then wrote a second letter, which detailed a number of her community activities over the years. It was the publication of this letter that prompted the complaint.

Ms Kenzig complained that the publication of the letter had put intimate, private matters about her life into the public domain and damaged years of hard work in the district.

Mr Loftus replied that nowhere was this letter marked "private" or "not for publication." The last paragraph included the words "the purpose of this email is not to ask you to print all of this" and suggested that the following week's letters page should note her 15 years of involvement in community activities. Mr Loftus also said that he had run the letter in full so as not to be accused of selective editing.

The Press Council has some sympathy with Ms Kenzig, who thought her letter was clearly not intended for publication, at least not in full. But it does not read that way. The incident illustrates the danger of not explicitly stating that something is not for publication when dealing with a newspaper (or any media).

A better way to have handled this would have been for the editor to discuss with Ms Kenzig an edited, less personal, version of the letter for publication.