Today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph carries a less than chastened report of a ruling against the paper by the Australian Press Council
. (Not that I could find any mention of it in their online edition, mind you).
The newspaper gets told off for its coverage of a protest ride by cyclists in which it published the mobile phone number of the event organiser. The Press Council describes it as a “grievous invasion of privacy”.
But most amusing is that the paper was cleared of presenting opinion as fact in a news story because of the piece’s “obvious bias”
It goes on: “The newspaper agreed an opinion had indeed been expressed in the news story but argued this is now done routinely.” So that’s okay then.
Oh yes, and guess what the headline of the report about the ruling was? “Press Council defends cycling’s selfish traffic fools”. Yup, I’d say that counts as opinion.
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