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Case Studies
Case Study 3 (June 2000):
The Mutilated Body
Reproduced below is the article, on which the complaint was based, and the correspondence which was given to all members of the Council. For the purpose of this exercise, you are asked to read the dossier and then determine whether they would uphold, uphold in part or dismiss the complaint lodged about the article. Details of the Case Studies process are contained in the introduction to the Case Studies pages.
If you would like to, you can send to the Council your adjudication and the reasons for that adjudication. Subsequently the Council will post a precis of its adjudication of the complaint based on similar material and a summary of the "adjudications" received from Web users.
The dossier contains:
The article
The Daily Planet
Sat 21 September 1990
page 3
KYLIE BODY NIGHTMARE
by George Michaelson
Jack Haroldsson
Eleanor Rigby
THE distraught family of Kylie Moore said last night the apparent discovery of her body in a drain had ended one nightmare but started another.
"Before this we still had hope she was alive but now we know there's an animal out there who has taken Kylie's life," her tearful grandfather, Mr NeiI Rest, said yesterday.
"We've been through a terrible nightmare and we hope police catch this man soon before he does it again."
Police arc confident they are close to finding the killer.
But they say it could be several weeks before they can formally identify the badly decomposed body as that of six-year-old Kylie, who was abducted while riding her bicycle near her Kane home on June 22.
The remains of a child were found on Thursday night by horseriders off the Jones Street at Old Hill about 15km from Kane.
Mr Rest said his daughter - Kylie's mother, Donna - was under sedation after yesterday viewing the site near Smith Road.
"We know quite a bit about what happened but it still doesn't mean it's her (Kylie)" he said.
"Police have told us they can, solve the case and that, like in the Melbourne Cup, they are rounding the last bend and are in the home straight."
He said the family was dreading telling Kylie's sisters, Danii, 4, and Jacqui, 2, that Kylie was dead.
The family has not told the children their sister was missing.
"But the oldest, Danii, knows something is wrong and keeps saying Kylie is up in the sky," he said.
Ms Rest, who has been comforted by her de facto husband, Mr James Olson, gave birth to another daughter, Tracey Anne, on August 2.
The head of the homicide squad, Chief-lnsp. Paul McDonald, said an intensive search of the Old Hill area involving about 35 police would begin at 8am today.
He said it would "appear reasonable that the body was quite possibly that of Kylie".
He said the body appeared to have been partially washed out of a drain under the road.
A preliminary autopsy was conducted yesterday but police said more tests would need to be done over the next few weeks.
Sources said the body was badly decomposed and had possibly been mauled by animals after being dumped.
Kylie vanished shortly after 2pm on Saturday, June 22, as she started the 1km journey home from the shops with some groceries for her mother.
Witnesses said a blue hatchback pulled up alongside Kylie in Railway Ave and bundled Kylie into the car.
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Accompanying the article were two pictures. The first was:
Under this was the caption:
"The location of police searches in the Sandy Beach Peninsula"
The second image was a photograph of a young woman among several police and carried the caption:
"Kylie's mother, Donna Rest, at the site where a young girl's body was found in a drain."
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The Complaint
I wish to express my strong disapproval of the article ... KYLIE BODY NIGHTMARE.
The article includes, unnecessarily, details of the body's condition which would be most distressing to the victim's family and to any reader who is at all sensitive. ("... sources said the body was badly decomposed and had possibly been mauled by animals after being dumped ..." [my emphasis])
Speculations such as these are inappropriately included in press reports of crimes. (There can be no deterrent effect: an argument sometimes used to defend the practice of showing images of horrific road accidents.)
I think the editor should be censured for allowing such an article to be published. The term "dumped" itself is violent in the circumstances and the article insensitive, tasteless and offensive to the public.
I think, also, that the identity of the body had not been determined at the time of the article's writing and the headline itself should not have been published.
I understand the print and television media are "self-regulatory" and believe it to be very important that members of the public point out the deficiencies in that system.
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Extract from the Complaint Form
The complainant had ticked the taste principle (principle 6), and added, as her specific reason for complaint:
The inclusion of details about the state of the body (that it had been mauled by animals) which would have been most distressing to the family (the mother said even the fact of the body's being in a drain was shocking for her). The information was gratuitous, upsetting for any sensitive or normal reader, including the children who read the paper. It was a tasteless, heartless, pointless inclusion. Also, at this stage the identification of the body was not final - therefore a misleading headline.
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Editor's reply
The Daily Planet believes the report as published was reasonable and within the bounds of taste, given the considerable interest and publicity surrounding the case - not just on the peninsula, but across the state.
The Daily Planet has tried to reflect concerns in the community about the number of children who have been abducted or have disappeared in the past year and has tried to draw attention to the dangers young people face and to the callousness with which they are treated by the abductor. In the case of Kylie Moore, there had been considerable speculation about her fate for many weeks. Police were keen to lay to rest some of the rumours and officers and local residents to whom the Daily Planet spoke confirmed that the body was that of Kylie although formal identification had yet to be made at the time the report was published.
It was understood that formal identification would take some time because of the condition of the body.
The description published was as far as the Daily Planet felt it could go without upsetting the sensitivities of a majority of readers, but believed necessary to indicate that the body had been in the bush for some time and that someone had dumped the body without any concern or respect for the victim or her family.
It is believed the family had already been made aware of the discovery at the time the report was published.
The Daily Planet does not believe the report was a lapse of taste that would bring the freedom of the press into disrepute. Nor does it believe the report was extremely offensive to the public. It does believe publication of the report aroused the community's awareness of despicable attacks on children.
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The complainant wrote further
I want to proceed with the matter within the framework of this Council since I do not think the editor has understood that the article was as a matter of fact distressing. His suggestion that the inclusion of such detail was somehow necessary to persuade the community of the dangers and callousness of abductions opens the door to full publication of forensic and police information: a practice which is not observed in Australia (vide the Anita Cobbie case). It is specious and dishonest reasoning. The fact that the body took so long to be identified made it obvious that the little girl's body was unrecognisable: no other comment need or should have been made.
On specific points:
- No amount of "interest and publicity" warrants the release of some details of crimes. I believe the Daily Planet includes more sensationalist detail than other papers and this is a case in point.
- The implication of para 2 is that the Daily Planet is somehow alerting the community to dangers and callous attitudes which young children face in a constructive and deterring way. By this reasoning no gory detail is ineligible - a conclusion which ordinary readers will reject.
- Para 3 implies that the statement "Kylie body nightmare" was not to be read literally: i.e. the body was not being described as hers. It is suggested that the police desired the identification (prematurely) to quash rumours, a claim I doubt since the police would be the last to pre-empt formal tests and findings. "Local residents" are not reliable identifiers of bodies which have been exposed for perhaps six weeks.
- It is not always the sensitivity of a majority of readers which is crucial (even if it is correct to assume a majority of readers here were not distressed, which is not proved). The Daily Planet is a family newspaper and must gauge accurately the reaction of a range of age groups. That the Daily Planet felt it could go so far is no proof that it should have. The Daily Planet should indicate why details of what occurred after the body was left were important inclusions.
My experience as a mother of three children between the ages of twelve and seventeen, who has taken the trouble to ask ordinary readers, is that the animal detail has stayed with them in a nightmarish way and they wished they had not been told. The fact of a series of abductions in this state has itself been alarming enough for school children near us to be warned of stranger-danger and the police and schools have been running a sensible and constructive campaign about it.
- Kylie's mother said specifically that she was terribly distressed to know that her daughter had been left in a drain. I am sure reading in black and white about animal mauling would have been shocking to her. The Daily Planet says "It is believed the family had already been made aware ..." but the family's knowledge of brutal detail does not justify publishing it, particularly while the family was still upset and grieving.
- It may be true as a matter of fact that the Daily Planet thinks it has done nothing wrong. In a sense this is more alarming and it is why I complained in the first place. Self-regulation only works where parties are responsible. I, my family and the people I have spoken to did, without exception, find the report "extremely offensive". None of us believed that the inclusion of the animal-mauling detail was appropriate - we found it tasteless and, moreover, noted that no other paper or news outlet included it (i.e. of the media ordinary families read, watch or hear).
I do not subscribe to the Daily Planet and read it by chance in a coffee shop. It is probable that many people who would complain about the Daily Planet are actually readers of other less sensationalist papers and that the Daily Planet is wrong to believe that the community needs or wants violent detail. The Daily Planet's reply has not convinced me, and, in fact, I had a discussion with a Daily Planet reporter who would not have included that detail.
I, and many parents, are concerned about the violence to which we and our children are exposed. Reports of violence in family newspapers are as confrontational and damaging as visual images of it - almost more so - since children have vivid imaginations and can picture these things only too clearly in their minds. Television news is now "modified" at family viewing times - the Daily Planet should, by parity of reasoning, act in the public interest and not pander to an unhealthy "interest" or add gratuitous horror to the "publicity".
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The editor responded
I have nothing further to add on behalf of the Daily Planet about the complaint itself but I feel a couple of points need to be made about the complainant's letter in response to my earlier answers.
Her assessment that the Daily Planet includes more sensationalist details than other newspapers concerns us as we don't believe that is the case at all. Perhaps if she did subscribe to our paper she would be better able to judge our overall performance. It is very easy to make allegations of sensationalism about tabloid newspapers but Daily Planet is confident its papers meet the standards set by readers.
I object strongly to the conclusion that no gory detail is ineligible. We make no such assumption about what is acceptable to our readers.
We believe our self-regulatory processes are quite adequate - many of our staff have young families and are quite in tune with community feeling.
It probably won't satisfy the complainant's complaint but there are many details about such matters that we don't publish. Even in this case there were several things we were told but did not publish after applying our tests of acceptability.
I understand other media outlets did carry similar detail to that reported by us but I don't think that should be an issue in a complaint about what the Daily Planet published.
I remain sorry that the complainant suspects our motives for publishing what we did but I can assure her our intentions ultimately are aimed at curbing crime through public awareness and arousing public concern.
She may be interested to know that our editor-in-chief serves on a community-based advisory group recently formed with the same intention.
We have strong feelings about violence in the community and the treatment of young people (a reflection of what we believe our readers also feel) and if we are to be condemned for one article, so be it.
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The complainant concluded
I have not been convinced by his pro bono publico explanation of including, unnecessarily, the gruesome detail that a child's body was mauled by dogs. I have shown the article to a wide range of people by now, and I believe that my reaction, that it was a tasteless mistake to include that detail is representative.
I wish only to point out that the editor's paragraph 3 reveals a misunderstanding of my letter. It showed that a consequence of his argument that gory details were necessary to show the callousness of crimes was that no gory detail would be ineligible. I am, of course, pleased to read that he applies other criteria.
In relation to paragraph 6, I saw no other account of the event which mentioned the mauling, either in the print or electronic media. I do read widely, have lived in Europe, and am presently completing a Ph.D. in Philosophy. It cannot be said of me that I am unworldly.
The editor ends by saying "if we are to be condemned for one article, so be it". I think that The Daily Planet should care about the journalistic standards of each and every article which it publishes, and take notice when a well-intentioned member of the public takes the trouble to complain. As I said before, people have been upset by the inclusion of the mauling detail ("nightmarish", "wish I'd never been told") and it is because of the article's actual effect on me and people I know that I complained to the Press Council in the first place.
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Questions to consider
- In describing crimes and tragedies, to what extent should newspapers deal in the details of the crime? In particular, were the references to the state of the body gratuitous or germane to the story? Would a less explicit report have served equally well?
- To what extent should newspapers seek to suppress affronting details because there is the possibility that children might read a story?
- What obligation to the privacy and sensibilities of the victim's family does a newspaper bear? Is this obligation greater in a small community than it would be in a city?
- Was the headline misleading as the body had not been formally identified? Was the presence of the family at the search scene (as indicated by the second picture caption) sufficient justification for believing that they were aware of the find?
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If you would like to, you can send to the Council your adjudication of the above complaint and the reasons for that adjudication. Subsequently the Council will post a precis of its adjudication of the complaint based on similar material and a summary of the "adjudications" received from Web users.
Other Case Studies
Case study 1 - a posthumous outing
Case study 2 - suburban terror
Case study 3 - the mutilated body
Case study 4 - Dad Slain
Case study 5 - A matter of opinion
Case study 6 - Opinion pieces - not fictionalised
Case study 7 - Blood in the Streets - not fictionalised
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