Council attacks Herald 'errors', so let's get down to the facts

Questions about the city's highest paid, unelected, public servant Jeremy Bath's knowledge of his friend's prolific letter-writing activities have been repeatedly met with accusations of political bias.

On April 17, the City of Newcastle issued the extensive media statement below in conjunction with its release - or what it termed as "proactive release" - of a code of conduct review into its CEO and allegations he "provided confidential information to his friend for the purposes of writing letters to the editor and or wrote letters to the editor under his friend's name".

The media statement includes attacks on the Herald and journalist Donna Page, an experienced reporter who has won multiple Walkley awards for her investigative journalism.

The Herald, of course, stands by her coverage of this issue, which is of legitimate public interest.

We have deconstructed the 967-word media release for our readers - to help clarify the council's statements, provide proper context for its claims, correct some of its inaccuracies and address comments attributable to Mr Bath.

In December 2023, following months of investigations by the Herald into allegations about Mr Bath's connections to serial letter writer Mr Neylon, the council announced the result of an investigation by Pinnacle Integrity, releasing a four-page summary document of the report.

Pinnacle Integrity said it had found "no evidence that the CEO directly contributed to the letters", but the summary document did not detail the investigators' reasoning for their conclusion.

After four months of community pressure for the full report to be made public, City of Newcastle released the investigation report on April 17, describing the move as "proactive".

You can read the Herald's initial coverage of the full investigation document here: 'Proactive': Report into Neylon letters saga released after four months

For the record, the council's media release announcing that the full report was now public uses the words "proactive" or "proactively" three times. It uses the word "independent" in relation to the CEO code of conduct review four times.

It refers to the Herald and journalist Donna Page nine times

Scott Neylon, serial letter writer and friend of Mr Bath, gets off lightly with only three mentions.

When the City of Newcastle "proactively released" a summary of the investigations in December, we reported its findings to the ratepayers of Newcastle who employ the CEO and who paid for the Pinnacle Integrity examination.

Yes, the Herald reported extensively on this "outcome letter".

But, no, we did not make a "significant error" on "several occasions".

The Herald has not had to publish one single correction of fact in any coverage of this topic over nine months of reporting.

We did, however, clarify an incorrect title attributed to a council worker in an article published on March 30.

This incorrect information was actually supplied to the Herald by the City of Newcastle in a written statement.

You can read the article and the clarification we published here

The use of "separately" here might suggest the Herald has been forced to make multiple "corrections" to our coverage.

As we note above, the Herald has never had to publish a single correction arising from an error during this extensive series of articles.

We have, however, amended an online article on April 8 that should not have described a City of Newcastle staff member's title as "conduct reviewer".

We used this terminology in our original report because the City of Newcastle had itself - in a written response to Herald questions - referred to this staff member as holding that title.

When the council pointed out this mistake, the Herald was eager to make the clarification. In the interests of transparency and accuracy, the note appended to the article states clearly that the error was City of Newcastle's own.

The Editor's Note we published when amending the article to fix the council's error reads:

Editor's Note: This article was amended on April 8, 2024. An earlier version of this article, in reliance on a communication from the City of Newcastle, incorrectly described Ms Kolatchew's position as the council's conduct reviewer. A conduct reviewer is a term used in the context of Local Government Code of Conduct matters to refer specifically to an independent investigator. The relevant position held by Ms Kolatchew is in fact Complaints Coordinator.

We're not quite sure how the City of Newcastle can possibly conflate their own mistake in this instance as "significant and damaging inaccuracies" by the Herald.

But we note the council then goes on to refer to its commitment to "the highest standards of integrity, transparency and procedural fairness". Go figure.

Not surprisingly Mr Bath "welcomes" the report's findings that found "no breach of the code".

He then lines up the Herald and journalist Donna Page for an attack and is about to make some serious allegations and legally unsound inferences based on, well, we're not quite sure.

Mr Bath wants to know "who" provided the Herald with his residential address and the address of his friend, serial letter writer Mr Neylon.

First, the Herald has never published the street or suburb where Mr Bath lives.

Second, as to "who" Mr Bath wants us to reveal, we're sorry, but no such person exists.

The Herald reported on December 16, 2023, that Page used a range of databases to conduct dozens of searches.

This included paid electoral roll searches, property, company and people searches.

We're not quite sure why Mr Bath is so convinced that there is a "person who illegally accessed my home address on the electoral roll".

But it's useful to know about the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.

As mentioned above and as the Herald has repeatedly stated in previous reporting, Donna Page used a range of databases to conduct dozens of searches, including paid electoral roll searches, property, company and people searches.

The Herald was not party to any "illegal" accessing of the electoral roll, as we have reported multiple times, and as Mr Bath alleges without evidence.

If what Mr Bath is suggesting is that information was obtained improperly, for example, from an MP's office, via any MP or their staff members, he should say so. But that did not happen either.

Mr Bath goes on to claim with apparent seriousness that "any person of voting age is at risk of having their home address and personal details on the electoral roll leaked to the Newcastle Herald".

Wait ... what? Just because he, as a highly paid public official, was the subject of legitimate scrutiny and reasonable questions asked on behalf of Newcastle ratepayers, now anyone aged over 18 anywhere is at risk? This is not just overreach but utterly absurd.

Again, we point out that the Herald has never published the street or suburb where Mr Bath lives.

Yes, the Herald believes that the public has a right to know about what's going on at the council.

So, yes, we investigated and cross checked multiple sources of available information to understand Mr Neylon's links to Mr Bath. As the Herald reported on December 16, Page interviewed dozens of people as part of her extensive research.

But "the person" Mr Bath seems to be obsessed with unmasking - for illegally accessing the electoral roll, an allegation for which he presents zero evidence - does not have an identity to be disclosed. They simply do not exist.

Pinnacle Integrity is a Sydney-based firm that describes itself as "a team of workplace and HR professionals highly experienced in reviews, investigations and employee management".

It was engaged by the City of Newcastle to conduct an independent code of conduct review at a cost to ratepayers that the council has so far declined to make public, despite a request from the Herald.

The City of Newcastle's media release includes a "statement attributable to Pinnacle Integrity".

That statement explains that its role as "conduct reviewer" is to undertake "a scrupulously objective, independent, and fair process" that will "establish the truth having regard to available evidence".

As the Herald has previously reported, Mr Neylon submitted 18 letters to the Herald, five of which were published.

None of this available evidence was requested for the review. The Herald could have provided information about the letters it received from Mr Neylon, but the newspaper was never contacted.

When we revealed this in December, former senior Hunter policeman Allan Connor told us that it was not only the content of the letters that would be "crucial" to an investigator looking into their source, but also the evidence left during their submission.

"It's a bit unusual when the whole investigation was about the emails and letters that came to the Herald, that they were never requested," Mr Connor said.

"There is a whole range of data and information around the submission of those letters that would be crucial to examine. Perhaps there might have been privacy issues for the Herald handing that over, but it appears that was never tested, which creates doubt about the level of confidence anyone can have in the outcome of the investigation."

Pinnacle Integrity's statement notes: "In this instance, there is a published prevailing view that our role ought to have been to prosecute a person subject of complaint to ratify a preferred finding. That is not, and will never be, our role. Our role is to assess available evidence, rather than rely on inference, assumptions, or inuendo [sic].

"It is accepted that some parties will be disappointed or dissatisfied with the outcome of complaint inquiries."

Yes, we think they might be onto something with that last point.

Catch up on the Herald's nine-month body of work on this issue here: