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Talk about giving with one hand…

By Steven | September 3, 2008

On the same day the Hawke’s Bay Today was writing to Peter Hausmann to offer to correct its editorial of five days earlier for inaccurately founded attacks, guess what it printed in its paper? The same inaccurately founded attacks. Nice.

The Press Council has found this “inexplicable“, and it doesn’t seem that the paper even tried to explick it.

The following week, the paper published more inaccurate criticisms of Peter Hausmann, without properly seeking his response, as the Press Council found. When it finally published a correction, it botched that too.

The Press Council upheld complaints about all four items, on various grounds of inaccuracy, unfairness and imbalance.

It noted that Hausmann was difficult to get comment from (he said he was worried about confidentiality undertakings), which understandable irked the paper, but “principles of accuracy, fairness and balance always apply and therefore reporters are obliged to strive for the other side, no matter what difficulties exist.”

It was also critical of Hawke’s Bay Today for relying on the information reported in another paper, inaccurately as it turned out.

They should have known that you can’t believe what you read, these days.

Topics: Media ethics, Press Council | No Comments »

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