Press Council backs The Greens in ruling on Tele’s budget coverage
On the same week that The Greens got their way with the announcement of a media inquiry, the party has won an Australian Press Council adjudication against News Limited’s Daily Telegraph.
The APC – this week branded a “toothless tiger” by media minister Stephen Conroy – ruled against an article published by The Telegraph on May 11 as part of its federal budget coverage.
The item – bylined to Alison Rehn and John Rolfe and headlined “Political support comes at a price” – claimed: “Their party is supposedly about protecting nature but the Greens have managed to force the Government to take money away from repairing the east coast after the summer of natural disasters.”
However, The Greens complained that the claim was inaccurate.
The APC ruled: “The council has concluded that there was nothing in the article to support the assertion that money was taken away from repair of the flood damage to refund the cited programs, or that The greens had ‘forced’ the change.
“The newspaper did not provide any support for that assertion in its correspondence with the council. The assertion was inaccurate and remains uncorrected.”
At the time of posting, the original article remains on The Tele’s website, although the APC ruling does not appear to have been published online.
The APC added: “The council also considered it a pity that the party and the newspaper could not come to an agreement on a way of redressing their differences.”
The APC has not yet published the ruling on its own site. It appeared opn page 2 of the print edition of today’s Tele.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Quod erat demonstrandum.
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The Greens may need to get their own Green Newspaper, so they can control it and be happy
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Ann. The Greens don’t need their own newspaper. They just need a newspaper that is fair, objective, not controlled by far-Right hacks or given to kowtowing to the Lib/Nat rabble.
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