Adjudication No. 1473 (adjudicated August 2010) [2010] APC 23

Adjudication No. 1473 (adjudicated August 2010)

The Australian Press Council has received a complaint by Vadim Chelom about an opinion article by Professor Amin Saikal on 1 March 2010 headed It is time for Israel's friends to condemn its acts of terrorism. The article was written for, and published in, The Sydney Morning Herald. It was also posted to The National Times website, where opinion articles from Fairfax Media publications are gathered. As a result, the article was accessible via The Age's website, where Mr Chelom read it. He wrote a letter to The Age for publication and when it was not published he complained to the Council on several grounds.

First, Mr Chelom complained that the article was inaccurate because it contained several gross historical errors. He said that it wrongly stated that the founding Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, had been involved in forming the terrorist groups, Irgun and the Stern Gang. The National Times agreed that such a statement would be false but said that the article was unintentionally ambiguous on the issue and, after hearing of Mr Chelom's concerns, Prof Saikal had agreed to an amendment which had been made subsequently to the article on The National Times website. The Council upheld Mr Chelom's complaint on this issue, welcomed the change to the website and emphasised that similar amendments should be made to any archived version.

Mr Chelom also complained that the article inaccurately stated that groups were formed "to terrorise the British out of Palestine and create the state of Israel on what had traditionally been recognised as Palestinian land". He said that Israel had been created by UN resolution, not by terrorism, and that the reference to Palestinian land was a "refutation of Israel's legitimacy to exist as a State". The Council considered that the issues asserted by Prof Saikal were legitimate expressions of opinion and, in any event, did not necessarily carry the connotations claimed by Mr Chelom. Accordingly, this aspect of the complaint was dismissed.

Secondly, Mr Chelom complained that no balancing response to the article was published, even though he had written a letter for that purpose. The National Times pointed out that the article generated a lively debate on the website, with 215 comments, both critical and supportive, being published. On 15 March the website also published an article by the chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies that was strongly critical of the Palestinian leadership. The Council's principles do not necessarily require that an opinion article be balanced in itself, but they do require that balance be provided by the publication in its overall coverage of an issue. The Council considered that this requirement had been met and it therefore dismissed this aspect of the complaint.

Thirdly, Mr Chelom complained that there had been no disclosure of the writer's "serious conflict of interest" because he was the director of a research centre which has received grants from the governments of Dubai and of Iran, which "frequently calls for annihilation of Israel". The National Times pointed out that Prof Saikal had been identified as the Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at ANU and it said that the Centre received grants from a wide range of sources and was subject to the academic standards and control of a highly reputable university. The Council considered that a more specific declaration of interest might have been necessary if the background of the named centre was not readily discoverable or the possible conflict was acute. It considered that these conditions did not apply and therefore dismissed this aspect of the complaint.