Press Council adjudication on Sydney Morning Herald NBN “Special Report” vindicates concerns says Fletcher

 “Concerns I raised about the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Special Report’ on the National Broadband Network have been vindicated by the Press Council,” said Mr Paul Fletcher, Federal Member for Bradfield.

 “The ‘Special Report’ published in April this year contained a series of glowingly positive articles under the banner ‘Update on the NBN’, alongside advertising from a company which is a likely key retailer of NBN services.

“As the Herald subsequently told the Press Council, it had conceived the idea of this supplement and then sought out advertisers willing to support it”.

In its adjudication the Press Council found it needs to make new rules governing these kinds of supplements to ensure compliance with its principles governing material of this kind:

 The Council emphasises, however, that there is a substantial risk of breaching those principles unless supplements of this kind prominently display an explanation of their limited purpose. This could involve an unequivocal branding such as "Promotional Supplement" and/or a prominent box at the beginning of the supplement which clearly explains the limited purpose. There should also be a prominent disclosure of any vested interests which have funded any supplement or written some of it. This requirement is also necessitated by the Council's principles about conflicts of interest.

 In order to assist compliance in relation to special supplements of this and other kinds, the Council will develop Specific Standards of Practice after consultation with the media industry and the broader community.

“I certainly hope that the new standards will prevent a repeat of this kind of unbalanced, Pravda-style coverage of a highly contentious issue”, Mr Fletcher said.

“There was no mention in the eight articles contained in the supplement that NBN’s rollout is running well behind what was promised (in April when the article was published, the most recently disclosed number of fibre services in operation was 2,315); that the NBN had already lost over $400 million of taxpayers’ money; and that the money spent on the network has been borrowed by the Australian government”.