A complaint made against The Australian Financial Review for a misleading headline in August of last year has been upheld by the The Press Council.
The offending headline read: “$390k tugboat workers to strike for 40pc rise”, with the complaint against the headline centred around the misrepresentation of tugboat workers' salaries.
The story was about tugboat operator Teekay Shipping and how it was seeking a Federal Court injunction against proposed strike action over wage and shift conditions by 52 members of the Australian Institute of Marine and Power Engineers (AIMPE) employed at Port Hedland.
Andrew Williamson of the AIMPE made the complaint about the piece telling the council that the headline was inaccurate and misleading by implying all 52 engineers earned $390,000 per annum and that the dispute centred on a 40% pay rise.
He said the base salary for the engineers was $229,000 and even the three who received housing allowances in Port Hedland did not receive total remuneration as high as $390,000.
The complainant also said it was inaccurate and misleading to allege the claim was for a “40pc rise”. He said an ambit claim for an increase of 38% over four years was made 13 months before the article appeared but had progressively been reduced to 14% over four years by the time the article was published.
He said he made this clear to the journalist and the claim was reported accurately in the article itself but the headline reference was misleading and grossly unfair.
The council made the conclusion that the headline was inaccurate, misleading and unfair in describing the engineers as “390k tugboat workers” when that figure was at the top of a large range of earnings across which individual tugboat workers earnings might lie.
The Council also arrived at the same conclusion about the description of the claim as being for a “40pc rise” when the claim had been reduced to 14% over four years not to a single year.
While the council conceded that the article itself was more balance and explained that situation is much more detail, the complaint was still upheld.
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