Adjudication No. 1326  (adjudicated September 2006)

The Press Council has upheld in part a complaint brought by J. Harkness against The Advertiser, Adelaide, regarding a bylined film review published in its 8 July edition.

Mr Harkness, a writer and director, produced a film Shot of Love which was the subject of the review attributed to Stan James. The newspaper, in correspondence with Mr Harkness, acknowledged that, as a result of a production error, the review that was written by Ben McEachen was wrongly attributed to Stan James. The newspaper stated that a correction of this error would be published in a later edition. This was done on 15 July on page 2. The review was reprinted under the correct byline in another section of the newspaper on the same day.

The paper failed to link the correction to the reprinted review or alert the readers of the review pages that there was only one review - and that Stan James had expressed no view on the film. To the extent that this misled readers the complaint is upheld.

The review was extremely critical of the film. The complainant found it to be highly objectionable and wrote a very long letter to the newspaper.

The Press Council has maintained the view that reviews (and other commentary) are afforded a reasonably wide licence to publish a point of view. The Council finds the review itself is not in breach of its Statement of Principles. It also finds that it was not an unreasonable exercise of the newspaper's discretion not to publish the letter written to it by the complainant.

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