IMC determination: Sandy Anghie v The West Australian

Sandy Anghie complains about the following stories: (September 23, 2023) “Here comes Team Sandy at a cost of $16k” (The ‘first story’); (October 5, 2023) “Keeping her own council? Anghie’s donation conflict” (The ‘second story’); (January 19, 2024) “In another world as storm brews” (The ‘third story’); (January 20, 2024): “Anghie making a hashtag of it” (The ‘fourth story’).

At the City of Perth Council elections in October 2023 Ms Anghie stood as candidate for Lord Mayor against incumbent Basil Zempilas. In the lead-up to the election WAN gave it extensive coverage. Throughout this period Basil Zempilas was an employee of Channel 7 and regularly writing a column for WAN.

Ms Anghie complains it was inaccurate for the first story to say she “bankrolled” the four other candidates. We consider the report was accurate in that respect.

The next complaint is that it was inaccurate to report the donations were for “printing, delivery and postage of flyers”. Ms Anghie’s declaration made it clear that the donations covered printing only of envelopes. To that extent the report was inaccurate.

Ms Anghie also objects to the words “co-ordinated campaign”. We do not consider that description to be inaccurate.

The remaining complaints concern the linking of Ms Anghie’s “co-ordinated campaign” to the history of past dysfunction and factionalism in the council, the mention of the Labor connections of her campaign manager, and the lack of any similar analysis of Mr Zempilas’ campaign arrangements.

To provide fair and balanced coverage of these issues WAN needed to give equal attention to Mr Zempilas’ Liberal connections. However, it failed to report that his campaign manager was a former Liberal Party employee, and that two of his team members were Liberals.

There was a similar lack of fairness and balance when reporting the co-ordinated campaign run by Ms Anghie, but not that by Mr Zempilas.

Only her campaign was linked to past council dysfunction along with a reminder that factionalism had been “the key driver” of “entrenched divisions” affecting “proper governance”. That linkage and context implicitly invited readers to take an adverse view of Ms Anghie’s potential “friendly voting block”.

Accordingly, we uphold Ms Anghie’s complaint against the first story.

The second report differed from the first which said she was only “helping to bankroll” those campaigns. In our view readers would reasonably understand the second story to say Ms Anghie was funding the whole or a substantial part of those campaigns, when in fact she had only paid for a single distribution of flyers. For this reason, the statement was inaccurate.

Ms Anghie also claimed it was misleading to report that Ms Anghie’s decision had brought about “extraordinary consequences”, a “donation conflict”, and “an extraordinary situation that threatens to derail decision making at the council”.

The accuracy of these statements is to be determined in the context of the article as a whole. For this reason, we do not consider these statements breached the Code.

Nevertheless, there was a lack of fairness and balance in reporting.

There was no report on the electoral gift Mr Zempilas made in 2020 to the successful candidate Rebecca Gordon, or on the declared gifts amongst the Zempilas team candidates Lezer, Reynolds and Yorke in 2023. Nor any commentary on the possible consequences of these donations for ongoing council decision-making.

Accordingly, we uphold Ms Anghie’s complaint against the second story.

During December-January 2023-24 Ms Anghie, her husband Michael, and young daughter toured Europe on holiday. Ms Anghie was regularly posting photos and details of places they visited on her social media accounts. She chose to place the posts in the public domain.

Mr Anghie was (and still is) CEO of the public company APM which at that time had experienced an unexpected slump in profits and a severe decline in share value. These were issues of considerable public interest because APM was a large supplier of services to vulnerable clients in the early childhood, youth employment, veterans support, disability and aged-care sectors.

This was the subject of the third article complained of, with images and content from Ms Angie’s posts included in a section of that report.

Ms Anghie complains this was a misuse of those materials and an invasion of her privacy.

There was an undoubted public interest in WAN reporting APM’s CEO was touring Europe on an extended holiday while his company was in dire trouble. The source of that story was Ms Anghie’s public posts, so she inevitably had to be identified to substantiate the report.

Accordingly, we do not uphold Ms Anghie’s complaint that there was an invasion of her privacy.

Ms Anghie complains the third story breached the IMC Code of Conduct by inaccurately reporting ‘they’ (i.e. Mr and Ms Anghie) had described visiting Vienna’s attractions. In our view the word “they” is grammatically linked to the subject of the paragraph — the social media posts — and clearly should be understood as such.

Ms Anghie further complains that her posts were on business accounts mainly concerned with architectural matters; but WAN focused on personal/social aspects of them. The article accurately repeated Ms Anghie’s posts and complied with the Code.

Ms Anghie complains her daughter was cropped out of published photographs, creating the misleading impression that she and her husband holidayed without her. We disagree. The cropping complied with the PP which requires children to be protected from media exposure.

Ms Anghie complains she should not have been drawn into his business transactions. Ms Anghie received no mention at all in the story concerning her husband and APM. She was only referred to in relation to the European tour and the fact her posts were the source of that report.

Ms Anghie complains she should have been given a contemporaneous right of reply. As already noted, the story about APM’s financial issues did not mention Ms Anghie nor impugn her in any way. We are not satisfied WAN was obliged to provide a right of reply.

For these reasons we do not uphold the complaint against the third story.

On the same day the third story was published Ms Anghie posted a response on social media. It was a relatively mild, rhetorical, sometimes facetious commentary expressing surprise at the extensive coverage of the family holiday. This resulted in several people criticising the article online.

This resulted in WAN publishing a story in the fourth story, a “Herd on the Terrace” (HOTT) column headed “ANGHIE MAKING A HASHTAG OF IT”. It accused Ms Anghie “the failed Perth Lord Mayoral candidate” of “generating righteous indignation”, and of using LinkedIn to “stoke outrage about reporting of her designer-label vacation”.

The online version of the article went further with headlines “ANGHIE ANGER AS SOCIAL MEDIA BOASTS BACKFIRE”, and “SANDY ANGHIE WHIPS UP OUTRAGE…”.

The article concluded with an ‘insider tip’ to Michael Anghie, namely: “Politely ask your partner to stop pumping out images on social media of you living the high life. Or at least ask them to use the private setting. Failing that, stay at home.”

Ms Anghie complains that the article breached the IMC Code of Conduct by including an unfair headline, factually distorting descriptions of the holiday, inaccuracies that her post was “angry” and “provoked outrage” and the implication from the “insider tip” that she had done something wrong.

In defence of the complaint WAN describes the HOTT column as a “satirical and snarky look at the goings-on in the top end of town” which is “well known to readers as a gossip sheet with licence to be playful (and) entertaining”.

Even though HOTT is not meant to be read in the same way as normal news articles, it still must comply with the IMC Code of Conduct. Reports must be honest, accurate, balanced, fair, and should not give distorting emphasis. Comments detrimental to a person should follow fairly and reasonably from the facts.

These are all objective standards, and when applied to comments being written in a semi-satirical column such as HOTT the issue is what readers will understand the words to mean.

The headline “Anghie making a hashtag of it” was a witty reference to her social media posts. But in our view most readers would also have understood it to mean she had made a mess of her posts. This is reinforced by the online headline and the “insider tip”.

We agree with WAN that a “festive season jaunt”, “designer label vacation”, “European sojourn” and “living the high life” were comments which followed fairly and reasonably from the facts.

In our view the fourth story breached the Code by the headline unfairly and inaccurately implying Ms Anghie had made a mess of things with her social media posts. It also unfairly and inaccurately described her most recent post as “angry” and intended to stoke or whip up outrage. It also unfairly and inaccurately suggested that by posting descriptions and photos of the family holiday Ms Anghie had done something wrong.

Even if, the comments were simply honest expressions of opinion by the journalist, then they were not opinions which followed fairly and reasonably from the facts.

The overall tone of the article evinced a hostility towards Ms Anghie which we believe readers would have taken seriously.

For these reasons we uphold Ms Anghie’s complaint against the fourth story.

To read the full determination, visit independentmediacouncil.com.au.