The Media Council has upheld a complaint against Radio New Zealand for inaccuracy and a delay in making corrections to a column published in March this year.
File photo. Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
The opinion piece by political scientist Bryce Edwards incorrectly stated that Labour went into the 2020 election promising to break up the supermarket duopoly and reform the banking sector.
Hector O'Brien complained that the article was false on both accounts and that it went beyond what was said in Labour's manifesto. His complaint was lodged on 9 March, the day the article was published.
RNZ acknowledged that comment in the article was wrong and corrected it.
"However, the Media Council does not believe it acted quickly enough to fix obvious and significant errors of fact. Its [RNZ's] explanation that it was in the hands of Dr Edwards, and that it did not hear back from him until 4 April, was less than convincing.
"Publishers are responsibility for material they publish, and that responsibility cannot be shrugged off by saying it was in the hands of the writer of the article.
"It took four weeks to correct the column. That is far from prompt, beyond the time when the story had any real currency, and few of the people who read it would have seen the corrected introduction or the annotation explaining how the article was corrected."
RNZ was in breach of the Media Council's Principle relating to columns, blogs and opinions, which requires opinions to have a foundation of fact. It was also in breach of its principle relating to corrections which says significant errors should be promptly corrected with fair prominence.
The Media Council was uncertain whether RNZ had advised other platforms, who had reproduced the same column, that it had received a complaint and had made corrections.
"Publishers should pass on corrections promptly to others who reproduced the same material. It was noted that on 20 June, when the Council was considering this complaint, the Victoria University-hosted Democracy Project website - which is run by Dr Bryce Edwards - was still carrying his article in its original uncorrected form."