Adjudication No. 1040 (July 1999)

The Australian Press Council has upheld in part complaints by the Queanbeyan Mayor, Cr Frank Pangallo, over stories in the Queanbeyan Chronicle in April 1999. The main complaint was over the headlines involved, "Mayor's Change of Mind" and "Pangallo's Back Flip".

The headlines could be argued to be literally correct, but the newspaper itself acknowledged it would have been preferable if the core of the headlines (Change of Mind, and Policy Backflip) had included quotation marks. They were taken from remarks quoted in the body of the story and made by one of the Mayor's political opponents, Cr Sue Jarvis.

The essence of the stories, the first on page two, was a controversy over whether the Queanbeyan Council was planning to sell the local water and sewerage services to the nearby and larger water authority in Canberra.

Earlier, Mayor Pangallo had campaigned (unsuccessfully) for a state parliament seat as an independent on a platform which included opposition to "the wholesale sell-off of community assets".

In fact, as the Queanbeyan Chronicle accurately reported in its 13 April stories, the Mayor had signalled that there were no firm plans to sell the water and sewerage authority and that there would be widespread consultation before any decision was made.

Commendably, the newspaper explained the position even more clearly in later editions and prominently published a letter from Mayor Pangallo.

Had quotation marks been used in the original headlines, making clear that this was a claim not a fact, those headings would not have given the wrong impression of the Mayor's position and there would have been no cause for complaint.

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