Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Complaints to the Press Council

Comment

Sunday, 02 June, 2002

If you ever find yourself browsing through the Constitution of the Press Council, the list of its objectives might strike you as a bit odd. As well as receiving complaints about the print media and maintaining the highest professional standards of journalism, the Press Council is charged with protecting freedom of the press.

I've always thought that's a bit like instructing the gamekeeper to protect the freedom of people to shoot things, but there you are.

At any rate, it turns out that the Press Council is doing a fine job of upholding the freedom of the press. The trouble is, it's not much chop at upholding complaints.

I've just read all 61 of the Press Council's decisions since the beginning of last year. Guess how many were upheld? Four and a half. That's about 7 percent. That compares with about 40 percent for the Australian Press Council, and 22 percent for the Broadcasting Standards Authority, which deals with complaints about New Zealand's broadcast media.

Still, these numbers alone don't prove that the Press Council has fallen asleep at the wheel. The Press Council has always received lots of amusingly brainless complaints. For example, every year the Press Council emphasises that newspapers have every right to choose which letters to the editor they publish and which they don't. And every year, it receives a stack of complaints from people outraged that their inspired epistles have inexplicably been spurned.

So have there simply been more silly complaints than usual lately? Well, no. A good number of the complaints rejected by the Press Council strike me as pretty justified. Sometimes there's been a clear breach of the council's own ethical guidelines. Sometimes the editor even accepts that there's been a screw-up. Often, the Press Council itself is strongly critical of the media. And yet it still doesn't uphold the complaint.

Let's look at some examples. Here's a recent complaint from the Waitakere City Council against a NZ Herald article headed up:

Legend of the Westie Hoon No Urban Myth

The Press Council found that the article ignored other sets of data in the report which would have provided more balance. It said it was "regrettable" that the paper hadn't published the City Council's counter-claims. It concluded:

There are significant omissions and deficiencies in the newspaper article, but these do not justify the imposition of the Council's "uphold" decision.

The City Council's own detailed submissions to the Press Council make very clear that this robust and determined community has been tackling road safety problems with considerable success, and communicating this in the region.

The Press Council often finds that breaches just aren't serious enough to warrant upholding them. So it lets slide clear factual botches if it thinks they are minor; changes to the text of letters to the editor, even if they change the meaning a bit; and the use of quotation marks in a headline containing a statement the person didn't actually make. It reckons a headline that states:

Military Firearms Build-up

And it reckons that an editorial saying that a council candidate was:

attempting to fabricate an issue where none exists

In one astonishing case, Wayne Forman complained against the Napier Mail. He was initially delighted when the paper agreed to publish his story about the experiences of two relatives and a friend, all of whom are deaf. But his delight turned to dismay when he found that the published version didn't acknowledge his authorship and had been re-written with factual mistakes and a manufactured quote. Blimey.

It seems that Mr Forman had corrected the mistakes in a draft, but the wrong version was printed. The paper said:

It wasn't the first time the editing process had gone wrong and it wouldn't be the last.

Information in the article seemed to have been modified at each stage of the gathering and editing process. This has resulted in some information having a rather uncertain origin.

Another justification for press lapses frequently invoked by the Press Council is freedom of expression. For example, Rural News called Fish and Game New Zealand director Bryce Johnson a hypocrite for accusing farmers of polluting waterways but himself failing to comply with his resource consents. The paper didn't bother with the elementary journalistic practice of contacting Mr Johnson for a comment before publishing. The Press Council said:

Mr Johnson possibly does have some grievances such as Rural News choosing not to communicate with him about the contents of the article before publishing it, and for some errors. However the newspaper may say neither does he clear with them his criticisms before hand when he is on their case.

For the Council, the deciding factor is freedom of expression notwithstanding the robustness and even confrontational nature of the debate.

That is part of a free press. It is also part of the free and unfettered exchange of opinion in an open society that offensive expression will find a place, even where distortions or extreme views are integral to such expressions.

Finally, here's a complaint from the University of Otago and its Vice Chancellor against the Dominion. They say the paper's coverage of the resignations of many of its medical school's senior staff was overblown. One story was headed up:

Revolt Rocks Medical School

It wasn't upheld:

It may be that the reports stretched the effect of the departures on the ability of the School to deliver adequate teaching services, and, even more so, on the proposed hospital to operate satisfactorily. Nevertheless, that is doing what newspapers have always done. A worst possible scenario is hardly new in a media world where freedom of expression reins.

But hey - I'm just doing what the media has always done. I can rest easily in the knowledge that the Press Council, even if it had jurisdiction over this piece, wouldn't uphold a complaint about it.