Andrew L. Urban.
“You can’t handle the truth!” Jack Nicholson shouts memorably, playing Colonel Nathan R. Jessup, in the 1992 courtroom drama A Few Good Men. Sadly, we could say the same about the Australian Press Council, albeit in a different context. And it was The Daily Telegraph’s Piers Akerman who shone the light on this.
On Sunday, Akerman wrote: ‘The Australian Press Council found against The Daily Telegraph recently, noting, without prejudice, an 18-year-old Canadian mass murderer was a transsexual born a male who transitioned to female six years earlier. The article did not claim the killer’s transgender status was a cause of, or contributing factor in, the shooting, but the council decided references to it were not relevant to the substance of the article and were unfair. Any reader would reasonably assume the individual was severely mentally unstable and reference to their transition was relevant. Even Australian Bureau of Statistics (2020-2022) record 70 per cent of transgender people reported mental disorders in their life compared with less than 50 percent of those whose gender is the same as their birth sex.”
The give-away clue to the APC’s rationale is in the simple phrase that the reference to the mass murderer’s transexual status was “unfair”, notwithstanding that “The article did not claim the killer’s transgender status was a cause of, or contributing factor in, the shooting…”
For the record, complaints referred to adjudication are determined by an Adjudication Panel that decides whether or not a publication has breached the Council’s Standards of Practice. Industry nominee members are not permitted to sit on Adjudication Panels. The Adjudication Panels are drawn from the Chair of the Council (currently corporate lawyer Mohamed el Roubi) all public and independent journalist members of the Council, and a group of Panel Members with community and media backgrounds who are not Council members.
The Australian Press Council has not identified the complainant by name in its published Adjudication 1862, dated 6 November 2026. The published decision identifies the complaint’s grounds as follows:
- The prominent and repeated references to Jesse Van Rootselaar’s transgender status could lead readers to infer that it was a cause of, or significant contributing factor in, the shootings.
- Such reporting could contribute to substantial prejudice against transgender people.
The complaint therefore relied on two Press Council standards, neither of which qualifies in my mind as a valid ground in this case:
- General Principle 3: Fairness and balance in presenting factual material.
- General Principle 6: Avoiding material contribution to substantial offence, distress or prejudice, unless justified by sufficient public interest.
The APC’s finding against The Daily Telegraph is an example of a confrontation between institutional authority and the facts. It demonstrates the arrogance of power (however limited in scope APC power might be) and the danger of self-rightousness in the pursuit of a woke ideology that automatically seeks to protect minorities, even when the particular minority is not at risk.
It captures a perennial problem in democratic societies: those entrusted with protecting the public sometimes come to believe that their authority exempts them from accountability. It’s not that the public cannot handle the truth, but even low-level powerful people sometimes cannot handle being required to tell it.
The Council did not find that the newspaper had published false information. Its finding concerned the relevance, prominence and potential prejudicial effect of publishing information that it accepted was factually reported.
The APC’s ruling is based on socio-politically motivated selective judgement. Test it: would you expect the APC regard it as ‘unfair’ if a murder victim was described as ‘a transsexual born a male who transitioned to female’?