The Press Council has considered a complaint about an article in the Herald Sun on 19 May 2013 headed "Veterans lose home support" with a sub-heading "Cut to care program a ‘slap in the face’".
The first sentence read: “A crucial in-home care service that provides meals for veterans and war widows has been axed by the Federal Government.” The next two sentences said the Government had withdrawn funding for the “Home and Community Care program” which provides “assessment, co-ordination and home-care services tailored to the needs of ex-servicemen and women and war widows”.
The article said the Victorian Government estimated more than 1500 Victorian veterans and widows “will miss out on meals and more than 1500 recipients will no longer benefit from activities groups”. It said many of the recipients will still be eligible to receive similar in-home care, but then reported the Victorian Health Minister’s comment that the veterans and war widows would need to apply “through the general HACC program”, which was “expected to add further strain to the system”. It also quoted critical comments by the RSL.
Alan Ashmore complained that the headline was not a fair and accurate assessment of the changes and the article inaccurately said an in-home care service was to be cancelled. He noted that after the article appeared the Federal Minister for Veterans Affairs issued a media release saying the funding being withdrawn was not for direct service provision.
The publication said the headline and first sentence accurately reflected the fact that the Government was abolishing a program giving special assistance to help veterans and widows apply for services tailored to their needs at home. In any event, it said they should be read in the context of the whole article, which gave further information on the effect of the Budget cuts.
It said the article was written for Victorian readers and did not suggest all veterans would lose their benefits, but accurately reported the concerns raised by the Victorian Health Minister, including in a letter from him to the Federal Veterans’ Affairs Minister. It had interviewed and quoted the spokeswoman for the Federal Minister saying that the Budget had made no changes to the home-care program and “Veterans have the same right of access to Home and Community Care services as other Australians”.
The Council notes that, in fact, the program which had been cut by the Federal Government did not provide in-home care. It also was not called the “Home and Community Care program”, which is a separate and continuing program that does provide in-home care. It considers that these important errors in the headline and first two sentences were not sufficiently clarified by later paragraphs. Accordingly, the complaint is upheld.
Note
(not required for publication by the newspaper):
The complainant said that he had sent a letter to the editor about inaccuracies in the article but had received no response and no correction had been published. The publication said it had not received the letter, and the Council was not in a position to decide the issue.
Relevant Council Standards
(not required for publication by the newspaper):
This adjudication applies the Council’s General Principle 1: “Publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced.” and General Principle 2: “Where it is established that a serious inaccuracy has been published, a publication should promptly correct the error, giving the correction due prominence”.