Adjudication No. 619 (February 1993) [1993] APC 11

ADJUDICATION No. 619 (February 1993)

The Australian Press Council has dismissed a complaint by Mr Fred Allen that the Sydney Morning Herald refused to allow him to reply to what he regarded as a personal attack on him in a published letter.

While its principles emphasise the duty of newspapers to provide space for replies when fairness requires, the Council observes that an individual's belief that words in a newspaper are a personal attack is not, on its own, sufficient reason for the paper to be obliged to print a reply.

The tests are rather whether the broader range of reasonable readers would see the publication as a personal attack and whether the newspaper had printed fair and balanced accounts of the issue involving the individual.

Mr Allen complained about the failure of the Sydney Morning herald to publish a letter he wrote in reply to a letter it printed on 14 October 1992 by Mr I P Kennedy, Chairman of the Kilcoy Pastoral Company Pty Ltd.

The Kennedy letter was in reply to a letter by Mr Allen published six days earlier about how Australians should approach their relationship with Japanese, in which Mr Allen asserted "The Japanese now own the Kilcoy meatworks and large cattle properties in that district."

In his letter, Mr Kennedy wrote "The Kilcoy meatworks is not owned by the Japanese. Japanese client firms have a minority shareholding in another of the Kilcoy Group subsidiary companies, which is controlled by its parent and which leases feedlots on a profit share basis from Australian cattle producers."

Mr Kennedy's comments included: "It's a pity people like Fred Allen aren't as efficient in 1992 as our soldiers -- my father, the founder of the Kilcoy Meatworks, among them -- were in 1942-45" and "Mr Allen's disregard for fact in order to make a cheap shot is resented. the company is Australian-owned."

The complainant took Mr Kennedy's reply as a "personal attack" and insisted the Sydney Morning Herald publish a further letter saying that. Declining, the newspaper said it did and does not regard the Kennedy letter as a personal attack on Mr Allen and that there was no reason to publish Mr Allen's second letter.

The Press Council finds there was no hard evidence in the second letter to counter the facts in Mr Kennedy's letter, nor does it believe reasonable readers who read both Mr Allen's first letter and the Kennedy reply would see it as anything more than a strongly worded correction of what Mr Allen had said about the ownership of Mr Kennedy's meatworks.