Council condemns newspaper

The Press Council this month took the unusual step of sending to all metropolitan, national, regional and suburban newspaper editors a copy of Adjudication No 1153, together with a covering letter.

The adjudication (see full text) condemned the (Adelaide) Sunday Mail for its publication of a series of articles and pictures which described a recent attempt by a group of South Australian academics, senior lawyers and scientists to re-create and film a 1994 murder by drowning.

The Council was particularly concerned by what it considers to be a serious lapse of editorial judgment in this matter, and is taking the unusual step of drawing the attention of Australian editors generally to the adjudication.

The Sunday Mail complaint involves a number of issues that are regularly the subject of complaint to the Press Council, but - thankfully - rarely to such an extreme degree as this one. These issues include:

• gross insensitivity to the primary complainant (the murder victim's mother) in the preparation and publication of the material;
   
• the paper's apparent acceptance of claims by the group of academics and lawyers who organised the murder "re-enactment"
   
• that it warranted serious consideration as a proper forensic exercise (the Council believes that the most cursory examination of the "re-enactment" procedures should have led the paper to challenge these claims);
   
• the damage done by publication of this material to media efforts to discourage the frequent use of suppression orders by South Australian courts: a published letter to the editor of the Sunday Mail from the state's Director of Public Prosecutions argued:
  
  "Give the standard of your article, it is little wonder that we have to resort to suppression to prevent misrepresentation, sensationalism, and unnecessary pain and suffering of victims and their families."
   

From this perspective, the Sunday Mail's coverage was not only distasteful, but unhelpful.

Australian newspapers have a justified reputation for generally acting responsibly especially by comparison with the press in some other English-speaking countries. This gross example of poor editorial judgment can only undermine that reputation and lessen public confidence in the press and in its system of self-regulation.

The Press Council seeks editors' co-operation in minimising this risk.

See Adjudication No 1153

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