Graham Adams on NZ Herald

Graham Adams writes:

A particular egregious example appeared last week, titled “Stats NZ inquiry clears Whānau Ora of 2023 Census data breach”. 

On the face of it, the story looked like a scoop. The Herald’s Kaupapa Māori editor, Joseph Los’e, said he had seen a leaked 67-page report compiled by policy analysts RDC Group on the allegations made against Manurewa Marae concerning the misuse of Census data collected by its staff as part of a contract with Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA). 

The headline was that they had been cleared of misuse.

Perhaps we should have been told that Doug Craig’s terms of reference excluded “any finding that might interfere with or prejudice related investigations by the NZ Police, the Electoral Commission, the Ministry of Social Development, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner or any other relevant agency; noting that material identified as relevant to such related investigations will be shared with the relevant agency as appropriate.” 

For that reason, perhaps it is not surprising Los’e could record the report “contains no smoking gun related to the attention Whānau Ora and Whānau Waipareira received over the initial allegations“ and that it “makes no recommendations against Whānau Ora or Whānau Waipareira with regard to possible data breaches over the use of Stats NZ information”. 

The Herald article appeared on Sunday morning. Later that day, Stats NZ felt moved to put out a press release itself, no doubt in response to it. The press release didn’t make the Herald’s pages. 

Stats NZ made the point plainly for anyone who might have believed that the leaked RDC report had cleared WOCA: “Determining liability was out of scope of Mr Craig’s investigation. That’s the job of the NZ Police, the Serious Fraud Office and the Privacy Commissioner. We will be sharing Mr Craig’s report and related information with those agencies.”  

Very relevant info.

If the Herald is serious about restoring trust in its journalism, it might also want to make it standard practice to provide context such as the fact Los’e was the communications director for Tamihere’s Waipareira Trust for 12 years before joining the Herald in 2022 as its Kaupapa Māori editor.   

Alternatively, the Herald’s editors could have ensured the story was written by a journalist who didn’t have a long-standing connection with the organisation being covered.  

This would have been the right thing to do.