The Courier-Mail breached the press watchdog’s standards for accuracy, fairness and balance in a report headlined “Mega-mine’s future in hands of greenies” about Adani’s Carmichael mine in Queensland.

The News Corp paper claimed that the Threatened Species Recovery Hub was an “anti-coal group” made up of “greenies” who had been “hand-picked by the Palaszczuk government to review one of the mine’s environmental management plans”.

But the Australian Press Council said the hub is a collaboration of research scientists engaged in issues of threatened species and only one member was involved in the review.

“The council considers the publication failed to take reasonable steps to ensure the ‘anti-coal group’ headline was accurate, not misleading, and fair and balanced,” the council said in an adjudication published by the Courier on Monday.

The newspaper reported, in print and online, in January that “the fate of Queensland’s Carmichael mine is in the hands of an environmental group whose members champion radical action on climate change, oppose coal and have appeared as expert witnesses against Adani”.

The Hub complained to the press council that the article implied they were environmental activists, when in fact they were a “collaboration of more than 150 world-class research scientists from the CSIRO, Australian Universities and various non-government organisations working on the challenge of how to recover Australia’s threatened species.”

Some of the errors were caused by incorrect information provided by the Queensland government to the Courier-Mail, but the paper did not contact the Hub prior to publication and only got the views of Adani.

The newspaper published an opinion piece by the deputy director of the Hub on 22 February 2019 which was a robust defence of scientific practice. It also said the Hub did not request that it be able to respond in the opinion piece more generally to the article.

The Press Council requires publications to take reasonable steps to ensure factual material is accurate and not misleading (general principle 1) and presented with reasonable fairness and balance (general principle 3). In this case, the Courier breached principles 1 and 3.

“The council notes that the terms ‘compromised’ and ‘incapable of carrying out a review’ are not presented as fact or comment by the publication but as direct quotations from the Adani spokesperson,” the adjudication says.

“However, the publication did not contact the Hub for comment prior to publication and the Council considers that it was not reasonably fair and balanced to only present Adani’s perspective. In these circumstances the publication failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that Adani’s views of the Hub were presented with reasonable fairness and balance and breached general principle 3.”