LGBTI people and issues On 9 June 2021, Sydney University researcher Alexandra Garcia published a corpus linguistics analysis of reporting about
LGBTI Australians by the
Herald Sun and affiliated Newscorp mastheads the
Daily Telegraph and
The Australian. Following an analysis of more than one million published words, Garcia concluded that the
Herald Sun and its associated publications covered transgender people and issues substantially more than any other organisation, and the coverage was found to be overwhelmingly negative, with more than 90% of articles representing transgender Australians in a strongly negative light. The research found that the publication of Advisory Guidelines by the
Australian Press Council had not improved the standard of reporting, with most reports and columns being characterised by fear-mongering, misrepresentation of medical science, divisive rhetoric, derogatory language, and suppression and under-representation of the voice of transgender people. The analysis followed similar work by LGBTI rights watchdog, Rainbow Rights Watch, in 2017—which analysed more than 8 million published words which found that reporting in Australian press publications
Daily Telegraph,
Herald Sun, and
The Australian—were calculated to inflame fear, uncertainty, and confusion about transgender people and issues, and that the Australian Press Council was ineffectual at upholding long-term balance and good media ethics. On 21 January 2021, the
Herald Sun published a factual report by journalist Serena Seyfort concerning a woman accused of detonating a
Molotov cocktail in a Melbourne suburb. The article included prominent and repeated references to the transgender status of the accused in the sub-headline and throughout the body of the article, also describing the woman using her former name without any obvious public interest justification. On 21 July 2021, the Australian Press Council concluded that the article breached media ethics standards, saying: "publishers should exercise great care not to place unwarranted emphasis on characteristics such as race, religion, nationality, country of origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, illness or age".
Other controversies Australian Greens policy on drugs Shortly before the
2004 election, the
Herald Sun published an article entitled "Greens back illegal drugs" (
Herald Sun, 31 August 2004) written by
Gerard McManus, which made a number of claims about the
Australian Greens based on their harm minimisation and decriminalisation policies posted on their website at the time. The Greens complained to the
Australian Press Council. The text of their adjudication reads:
Contempt of court for source protection In June 2007, two
Herald Sun journalists, Michael Harvey and
Gerard McManus, were found guilty in the Victorian County Court of contempt of court after refusing to disclose the source of a story the pair wrote in the
Herald Sun on Australian Government plans to scale back proposed veterans entitlements. The controversy resulted in agitation to change the law to introduce "shield laws" in Australia to take into consideration the journalists' code of ethics.
African gangs moral panic Following fighting at the 2016
Moomba Festival in Melbourne, the paper embarked on a 32-month campaign employing racialised language attacking supposed
African gangs in the city. Civic and state leaders, community members and the police denied that any such gangs existed, but the paper published 130 articles over a two year period featuring the words "Sudanese" and "gang", and 173 (including 37 editorials) mentioning "Apex" a supposed gang for which little evidence existed. The racialising and criminalising coverage of
African Australians increased racism against this group and created many problems for the community. The Herald Sun's intense focus on criminality in the
Sudanese Australian community, out of all proportion from its real scale, has been described by academics as playing a key role in fomenting a
moral panic. Knight was also accused of making Williams' Japanese opponent,
Naomi Osaka, appear as a "white woman". Following this, there was significant condemnation of both the
Herald Sun and Knight for the use of this image by the author
J. K. Rowling and
Jesse Jackson amongst others. The
Herald Sun defended its decision to publish the cartoon; and, two days after its initial publication, the cartoon was reprinted in part along with a series of other illustrations by Knight on its front page under the caption "WELCOME TO PC WORLD." ==Collectible items==