Press Council upholds complaint against SMH over Jonathan Marshall story

Jonathan Marshall

The Australian Press Council (APC) has upheld a complaint against The Sydney Morning Herald over a story which criticised then News Corp Australia journalist Jonathan Marshall as a “maverick” while working as a journalist in New Zealand.

Marshall rose to prominence in 2012 while working for the Sunday Telegraph when he broke the story of broadcaster Alan Jones telling a Liberal Party function then Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father “died of shame”. In the media furore that erupted afterwards, Marshall’s secret recording of Jones’s comment became a discussion point in the controversy.

The Council today issued a ruling upholding a complaint from Marshall that the SMH failed to take reasonable steps to ensure accuracy and fairness in relation to the story headlined: “Maverick who likes to bend rules”.

According to the ruling the Australian Press Council found the newspaper had failed “to take reasonable steps to ensure accuracy and fairness” in relation to the story, authored by Damien Murphy. 

While the Council did not rule on claims by the newspaper  Marshall, while working in New Zealand, asked a university student to lie to university officials to gain private information about a fellow student, it did find he “should have been given a reasonable opportunity to comment before publication on this allegation of duplicity.”

A reference in the article to “manufactured tabloid trashiness” was also found to have “clearly risked being interpreted by readers as a serious allegation that Mr Marshall had fabricated some stories”.

It added: “This heightened the need to give him a reasonable opportunity to comment on it before publication, as did the failure to mention the statement by Mr Marshall’s former editor.”

Marshall, who recently redesigned Double Bay newspaper Latte Life after departing News Corp in May, said he was pleased with the decision.

“While the Press Council were unable to determine fact, because they weren’t there at some of the different events, the message is quite clear that a simple Google trawl where facts about an individual are listed are not good enough to be the basis of a story,” he told Mumbrella.

“They never called me,” said Marshall in relation to the issue of right of reply. In its response to the complaint Fairfax said it had made attempts to contact Marshall however the APC ruled the SMH had only made “a limited attempt to contact Mr Marshall late on the day prior to publication.”

Marshall added: “It was very sloppy journalism that you might expect from a school newspaper. Here we have one of the country’s biggest organs to think it can use Google to prepare a story and run away with scurrilous facts without any checking.”

Fairfax had not responded to a request for comment at the time of posting.

Nic Christensen