Daily Mail Australia should immediately reinstate the reporter sacked for inadvertently publishing obscene language because the error was caused by its own editing failures, the journalists’ union has told the website’s editor.
The website fired a young reporter, April Glover, on Monday, a day after she accidentally uploaded her “musings” about reality television contestants being “vapid cunts”. The offending copy stayed online for two hours.
The director of the media section of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Katelin McInerney, has written to the editor of Daily Mail Australia, Barclay Crawford, to demand he reinstate the journalist or risk having to pay her compensation for unfair dismissal.
“It is inevitable that errors like this will be made where that vital extra layer of checking that comes from subeditors is absent,” McInerney said in a letter seen by Guardian Australia.
Daily Mail Australia management conducted an internal investigation and held a disciplinary hearing in which the reporter admitted she had written the offending words. Sources said editors felt they had no option but to make an example of her by instant dismissal.
But the union said the Mail’s failure to employ enough subeditors was to blame.
“This level of personal liability puts an unreasonable level of stress on individual journalists representing a risk to their health and safety,” the letter said.
“MEAA is of the view that the actions of the company in dismissing Ms Glover are harsh unjust and unreasonable.
“Were Ms Glover to file an unfair dismissal application with the Fair Work Commission the company would be exposed to orders for reinstatement and compensation.”
Guardian Australia revealed the reporter had filed five stories on Sunday in a system in which staff upload their stories unless they are legally contentious.
Sources said Glover had written her copy in a Google document and accidentally cut and pasted a paragraph she had written for her own amusement.
“Florence initially rose to fame on Matty J’s season of The Bachelor, before unsuccessfully trying her luck at love again in Paradise,” she wrote in the published article.
“But most people who were educated at a high-school level know these vapid cunts only go on the shows to find mediocre Instagram fame and make a living promoting teeth whiteners and unnecessary cosmetic procedures.”
The union has contacted the reporter and offered her assistance. It said it was not acting on her behalf, but on principle.
Almost four years ago the UK’s Mail Online rebranded in Australia as Daily Mail Australia and now employs 50 journalists.
