Today in Media Files, The Sunday Telegraph has been rapped over the knuckles for going after someone who asked an audience question on Q&A, and the ABC’s Michelle Guthrie is up against Mitch Fifield and Pauline Hanson in a good feud guide.

Attack on Q&A audience member breaches standards. The Sunday Telegraph has been censured by the Australian Press Council over a Piers Akerman column that attacked a Q&A audience member. In the column, Akerman trawled through the Twitter account of Fred Thorpe — who had asked a question when Akerman was on the panel of the ABC program — and wrote about her appearance on Backyard Blitz, her superannuation fund and support for an independent candidate running against Tony Abbott in his electorate during the last federal election campaign. The council found the Tele breached two of its principles in publishing the column: that factual material is presented with reasonable fairness and balance, and that publications avoid causing or contributing to substantial distress unless it is sufficiently in the public interest:

“The council notes that the complainant merely asked a question, albeit on live television, and could not be reasonably described as either being a public figure or being involved in the broader debate about the government’s data-matching program. There was no public interest in scrutinising the complainant’s background to the extent the publication did, and there is a strong countervailing public interest in ensuring the public is free to participate in public debate without unwarranted scrutiny. Given this, the council concludes that the publication failed to take reasonable steps to avoid contributing materially to substantial distress which was not sufficiently in the public interest.”

Good feud guide. The ABC’s managing director Michelle Guthrie is in one corner, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield and Senator Pauline Hanson are in another. Fifield has responded to Guthrie’s speech to the Friends of the ABC on Friday with an opinion piece in today’s The Australian. Guthrie said in her speech that proposed changes to the ABC’s charter and act were part of a political vendetta and that the ABC was being used as a bargaining chip. Fifield has defended the changes, negotiated with One Nation in exchange for supporting the government’s media reform legislation, saying reactions had “ranged from the hysterical to the slightly unhinged”. The Australian‘s media section has also weighed in with a report of the piece, including comment from Hanson, saying, “Ms Guthrie has been drinking the ABC Kool-Aid for too long”.

Journo died from overwork. A Japanese journalist died of overwork after working 159 hours of overtime and only taking two days off in the month before she died, according to a report released last week. Miwa Sado was 31 and covering an election for NHK, the public broadcaster, and died of heart failure in July 2013, according to a report from the local labour office. 

Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings. The Block gave Nine the night, and, with more Blocking tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday, most likely the week as well. Oh, and Bathurst on Ten did well — the car race averaged more than 1.5 million as it ran over time because of crashes and wet weather. The awards ending averaged 1.67 million nationally and over 400,000 on Fox Sports.

But Survivor couldn’t crack the million mark nationally in its third last program of this series (901,000) and the much ballyhooed Wake In Fright drama’s first ep was all but ignored with just 578,000 national viewers for Ten. The second and final episode is next Sunday. The Block managed 2.28 million nationally and 1.57 million metro viewers. In the morning, Insiders easily dominated with 507,000 viewers — 125,000 more than Weekend Sunrise. — Read the rest on the Crikey website.