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| APC UPDATE | 15 August 2014 |
| Summary of latest adjudications |
| Michael Burns/The Sydney Morning Herald |
| The Press Council has partly upheld a complaint about two articles in The Sydney Morning Herald concerning the deaths of Kate Malonyay and, subsequently, her former partner Elliott Coulson. The first was published on the website on 3 May 2013 and the second was published on the website on 9 January 2014 and in print a day later. |
| Ms Malonyay’s family complained the first article included material which the publication obtained by attending her funeral. The Council emphasised that, in general, publications should check directly with the family or funeral director whether they can attend a funeral, publish images of it or quote material from the ceremony. It was not sufficient to rely, as in this case, on the apparent approval of a police officer, especially as the publication had reason to believe the family itself might not consent. |
| The Council did not consider coverage of this funeral was sufficiently important in the public interest to justify publishing the material without the family’s consent. It emphasised that a matter is not in the public interest merely because members of the public are interested in it. Accordingly, it upheld the complaint that attending the funeral and publishing material obtained by doing so was a breach of privacy. The Council decided that delay of almost a month between learning of a very serious error in the second article and publishing a correction was excessive. It also said the very brief correction should have had a heading to identify the topic for people who might be interested in it. Accordingly, it upheld the complaint about late and inadequate correction. |
| The Council did not consider, however, that the second article was unduly insensitive or sensationalist in its coverage of Ms Malonyay, especially as it appeared eight months after her funeral. Accordingly, this aspect of the complaint was not upheld. Read the full adjudication |
| The Daily Telegraph re the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman |
| The Press Council has upheld a complaint about material published on The Daily Telegraph's website on 3 February 2014 relating to the death of the actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman. The material was headed “Kids grieve for junkie actor dad” and included a photograph of his children and an assertion about what their response would be to the circumstances in which Mr Hoffman died. |
| The Council has concluded that the combined impact of the references to the children and their alleged feelings, a photograph of them and the use of the term “junkie”, was highly unfair and offensive, especially as the material was published only a few hours after Mr Hoffman’s death. |
| The Council also concluded that serious breaches of its Standards of Practice occurred in this case even though the offending aspects were removed from the website within an hour. The Council noted it is entirely foreseeable that, as occurred in this instance, material which has been removed from a website may nevertheless be seen widely before its removal, and remain permanently available from other internet sources. Read the full adjudication |
| The Sydney Morning Herald re the legal status of foetuses |
| The Press Council has not upheld a complaint about a series of articles in The Sydney Morning Herald between August and December 2013 concerning public and parliamentary debate about a Bill in the NSW Parliament seeking to define a foetus as a legally recognised person after reaching a specified stage. This would have broadened the scope of the crime of causing grievous bodily harm to a person. |
| The Council considered the publication might well have achieved better fairness and balance, but it concluded that the failure to do so in these particular circumstances was not so significant as to constitute a breach of the relevant Standard of Practice. Read the full adjudication |
| Some remedies without adjudication |
| A recent example the the Council helping complainants obtain a remedy without adjudication |
| A complaint by a family about the publication of a photograph taken of them in an airport arrivals hall and during a moment of intense personal grief, in which the caption inaccurately described who they were and attributed their grieving to a major but entirely unrelated incident which was the subject of the accompanying article. The complainant said the picture was intrusive and misleading. It had been published despite their making the journalist and photographer aware at the time that they were not in any way connected to the tragedy that was the subject of the article. |
| The Press Council was approached after the complainant had received no response to their complaint to the publication. The Council's staff then raised the matter with the publication, which removed the photo from the online article, sent the complainant a letter of apology with a commitment to remove the item from the publication's photo library, and also published an apology in print and appended an apology to the online article. |
Australian Press Council
Address: Level 6, 309 Kent St, Sydney, 2000 Phone: (02) 9261 1930 or 1800 025 712 Fax: (02) 9267 6826
Email: info@presscouncil.org.au Web: http://www.presscouncil.org.au |
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