Complaints not adjudicated: 2006-2007

In the comlaints statistics for 2006-2007, this report noted a small percentage of complaints, only 16.9 per cent, progressed through the complaints procedures (published in the Council's information booklet, Objects, Principles and Complaints Procedure, available from the office and posted on the Council's website at: http://www.presscouncil.org,au/pcsite/complaints/process.html) to the adjudication stage in 2006-2007. This figure can be compared with previous years, in the table on page 42 of this report. Of the remaining complaints, some were refused, some referred to another body and others withdrawn for legal action. Details of the number in each category can be found in the statistics elsewhere on the website. 12.1 per cent of complainants did not follow-up a request from the Secretariat for more detail on their complaints. And then there are those complainants who were happy to let their complaint rest after receiving the publication's response to the complaint and those whose complaints were conciliated either by the Council Secretariat or by an independent member of the Council. 43.5 per cent of all complaints ended in this way - to the satisfaction of all parties.

The complaints process gives to the Executive Secretary a discretion to refuse a complaint in a number of circumstances. In previous annual reports, there has been discussion of some of these. Complainants who feel aggrieved can appeal the decision to the Council's Complaints Committee, which decides whether to accept the matter for processing. In exceptionally rare circumstances, publications can appeal the acceptance of what they see as an unfair complaint. Below are a number of complaints where the discretion to refuse was exercised in 2006-2007.

The effluxion of time

The Council's procedures allow for complaints to be lodged within 60 days of initial publication. Some leeway is allowed and the guideline can be waived in rare special circumstances, and especially where the complaint raises important issues of press ethics. The most egregiously late case in the last year involved a complaint against The West Australian that dealt with a report published in February 1997 and dealing with a family law matter. Even allowing for some sympathy with the complainant, a ten-year delay was seen as excessive. More typical was the case of a lobby group that sought to lodge a complaint five months after the article in question was published. In this case, it concerned an issue on which the Council has previously adjudicated, so no matter requiring the Council's attention was raised.

Once the process has been commenced, parties are asked to respond to correspondence within two weeks. Again some leeway is allowed in cases where the time limit would be unfair. In one case involving The Australian, a complaint was lodged in late December about an article published in September. Due to the circumstances of the case, the complainant had been out of the country, the matter was not rejected immediately. Instead the secretariat sought further information from the complainant. When it had not heard back from him until late March, and judging that there was no egregious breach of the principles involved, the office refused to process the matter, a decision endorsed by the Complaints Committee.

Letters

The Council says that editors can edit letters from readers for publication. The general rule is that newspapers can edit letters for space or grammar reasons but that such editing should not change the meaning or tenor of the letter. When he receives a complaint alleging that the editing had changed the meaning, the Executive Secretary seeks copies of both the submitted and the published letter. Quite often he does not agree with the complainant's assertion that the editing changed the letter's meaning. The case of a letter published by a regional paper where the editor had cut the opening and closing remarks but left the main thrust intact was typical of the sort of complaint not accepted for processing. Letter writers can, of course, specify that they want their letter published without editing, or not at all, but in doing so they increase the risk of having nothing published.

In most cases the Council does not attempt to instruct a newspaper which letters it should publish. It says that newspapers have a greater onus on them to publish letters that meet the requirements of principles 2 and 8 (to provide balance for harmful inaccuracy or to someone singled out for criticism, respectively). Newspaper receive many more letters than it can publish and it has to select from among these those that it believes most appropriate to publish. Not every letter has to be published and often complaints about non-publication will be rejected because there is no onus on the newspaper to publish. Such was the case with a complaint about non-publication of a letter to Perth's Sunday Times about hotel closing hours. It didn't seek to correct any error, but the letter-writer thought his words of wisdom should have been printed. The editor disagreed, as is his privilege.

In the case of at least one complaint this year, the editor rejected a letter because his legal advice was that it carried a substantial defamation risk. In such cases, the office might suggest redrafting to remove the offending section, and reject the complaint if this action is not taken.

Advertorial

A newspaper is entitled to report on matters of interest to its readers. Sometimes those matters are of a commercial nature: the opening of a new business; the development of a new industry; the expansion of an existing employer in the region. The Council would not, in normal circumstances, seek to condemn a newspaper for such reports where the editor believes that the material is of interest to the readers. The Council is less sanguine about 'advertorials', the term for newspaper and magazine content that looks like editorial content but is published under a commercial arrangement between an advertiser, promoter or sponsor of goods and/or services and the publisher. Most allegations about advertorials turn out just to be articles about new businesses, published without any contingent advertising and meant to inform readers. One borderline case in 2006-2007 was in a regional newspaper, which ran an article about a new on-line service owned by newspaper's publisher. It was legitimate story and the conflict of interest was prominently noted, so the Council refused the complaint.

Use of images

Many newspaper now access material from Internet sites to illustrate news stories. With so many people having their own pages on various social sites, images in the public domain are more readily available. The Herald Sun printed an image taken from a MySpace page. The complaint in this case was not just about the publication of the image but that it showed the nipple of a 15 year-old girl. The newspaper was entitled to use material in the public domain - put there by the girl herself, and it was not clear whether it was a nipple or a shadow that the reader saw. There was no matter that the Press Council could deal with.

Third Parties and privacy

One of the Council's recent rulings on when the Executive Secretary should exercise his discretion to reject complaints deals with the question of 'third party' complaints. The Council decided that he would, as a rule, reject as complaints matters from disinterested parties:

• which raise matters likely to lead to the further invasion of the privacy of those reported on;
   
• which appear to the Executive Secretary to raise largely trivial or frivolous concerns; or
   
• which do not raise a significant breach of the principles.

In the wake of the publication of a book about Alan Jones, the Sunday Telegraph published an article that detailed a public figure's memories of his time as Jones' pupil. A third party complained. The Council noted that, if the article were defamatory, Jones could sue; if not, he would to bring the complaint himself.

The Age published an article about the Jaidyn Leskie case that was allegedly unfair to one of those involved. The matter was refused for two reasons: the article was clearly based on matters on the public record and the handling of the complaint could lead to an invasion of the privacy of the named person (who was not the complainant). The Council has to be wary that, when processing a complaint, if the newspaper was the subject of an adjudication, or asked to publish further material, the 'first parties' might have their privacy unwillingly invaded, outside the context of the matter of public record. While the Press Council administers the Print Media Privacy Standards for the press, under the media exemption to the federal Privacy Act, the Council itself is not a 'media organisation' as defined in the Act and therefore not covered by the exemption.

The privacy issues can be involved even when the complainant is directly involved. In the case of one country newspaper, it published an article based on a named source. The man's former de facto was upset because the story mentioned her son and, in her view, was inaccurate. Because the quotes were from a named source and any Press Council action would lead to privacy invasion, the Council declined to take up the matter.

Another third party complaint that was refused arose from a report in The Australian about David Hicks, during his last weeks at Guantanamo Bay. The article was based on public testimony and properly sourced. It was printed at the time when Mr Hicks had entered his plea. In the view of the office, it was a third party complaint that did not raise a significant breach of the principles.

'Erroneous' reporting

A regional newspaper referred to a commercial television newsreader being dismissed but, said the complainant, she's still on air. The office looked at news reports of the situation: the newsreader had been given four weeks' notice that her contract would not be renewed on 31 December. In all major respects, the original report was accurate and there was no matter for complaint.

The Daily Telegraph printed an article with the by-line of an RTA expert on car-stopping distances at different speeds. A reader disagreed with his calculations. The newspaper had published the views of an expert in good faith. A reasonable settlement would have been the submission of a publishable letter. The complainant had submitted a strongly worded missive that was unpublishable and would not consider a re-write.

Non-coverage of newsworthy stuff

The Council has ruled frequently on the question of the non-publication of material thought newsworthy by its contributor. The Council is loath to interfere in the editorial judgment of a newspaper as to what is newsworthy to its readership. But it does consider such cases and can rule that the paper was wrong not to publish material where there appears to be a public interest in doing so. Newspapers only have limited space and cannot cover every story thought by a reader to be the important event. Opponents of fluoridation are often convinced that newspapers are not covering their concerns. One such complaint was made against The Courier-Mail, with the usual rider that the alleged inadequate coverage of debate was the equivalent of suppression. The newspaper has been covering the debate for a generation or two, so it is difficult to see how the non-publication of a particular article would be worthy of handling as a complaint.

In the case of sports coverage, the local newspaper has to determine which sports to cover, from a wide variety of possibilities. There was a complaint that Adelaide's Advertiser was not covering local football leagues. Nonetheless, Adelaide United continues to receive strong coverage and international football, including the English Premier League and the European Championships were covered in the week of the complaint on the newspaper's website. There didn't seem to be a breach of the principles in the newspaper's actions.

In a not-dissimilar case, a reader complained that The Australian reported the court appearance of a female teacher charged with sexual offences on page 5. The reader asserted that a male teacher in a similar case would be on page one. Given that the article was published the same day as Ian Thorpe's retirement, and many other newsworthy stories, it would be hard for the Council to rule that the choice of where to publish the article was based on gender, and not on normal editorial decision-making, involving a choice determined by newsworthiness.

Commercial matters

The Council does not deal with advertising or the commercial operations of newspapers. Its remit is the maintenance of press responsibility through recognition of high journalistic standards. So when a lobby group complains of bias because its ad is printed on page 5, and not page 3, the Council can take no action. When a newspaper publishes a world map as an insert giveaway, and certain choices made by the cartographer upset a complainant, the Council sees it as part of the newspaper's commercial operations, not a product of newspaper editorial processes. The complainant's beef was with the cartographic firm, not the newspaper. An inaccuracy in a clearly marked advertising feature is again not a concern of the Council. Nor is the fact that, after his subscription had expired, a magazine kept sending the complainant marketing junk.

Websites

The Council will deal with the news websites of member publishers (and is now planning to offer similar services to news media organisations that publish purely on the Internet). And it applies similar standards to accepting complaints, even when the medium may be different. When The Sydney Morning Herald streamed an alleged killer's home video on its website, the Council noted that the material was clearly in the public domain, related to a US case (and was therefore not likely to adversely influence a local jury) and was clearly labelled, with a warning about the content.

The Sydney Morning Herald website complaint referred to pop-up ads that seemed related to stories (eg, a loan business pop-up on a credit card shark story). This was a commercial matter and outside the Council's remit, even if a pattern of such behaviour could be established.

Cartoons

The Council accepts very few complaints about cartoons. The Council believes that cartoonists should have a wide licence to comment on the day's events, and that the use of exaggeration, caricature and humour to express those opinions are ethically legitimate. It generally recommends the submission of a letter for publication in response to a cartoon. This was the view of the office when confronted with a complaint that a regional newspaper was "anti-Christian" after its cartoonist used religious themes in three successive cartoons published during Easter. But the cartoonist's targets were elsewhere, including politicians, and the religious theme was related to the season, not a disparagement of Christians.

Cyclists

Every year there seems to be a group that finds a number of occasions to be offended by press coverage. This year is was cyclists. Adjudication No. 1344 was one such complaint that went to adjudication. In that case there were other elements, including invasion of privacy. On the same day as the article adjudicated on was published in the Daily Telegraph, there was also an opinion column that dealt off-handedly with cyclists, in what appeared to be a humorous way. There were a number of complaints about the column. Similarly, a street magazine had a brief article (obviously tongue-in-cheek) urging drivers to turn on cyclists when they encounter them.

The Executive Secretary noted in both cases that, if the Council stepped in and adjudicated every time there was a light-hearted jibe about this group or that in the press, there would be no end of determinations it would issue. The Council has consistently said that the best response to such matters is the submission of a contrary view for publication.

Conciliated complaints

A number of the complainants mediated successfully by the secretariat or by an independent member of the Council, and the sorts of settlements arrived at, are outlined in each edition of the APC News, and these are published on the Council's website.

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View the details of complaints not adjudicated for each of the following years:

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