The Press found to have breached Media Council rules with its school lunches article

The Media Council has upheld a complaint by David Seymour’s office against this article on school lunches. It was found to have breached both the fairness and conflict of interest principles.

The first issue was that they ran the article, and didn’t even ask the Minister for comment. They only quoted opponents of the new school lunch programme.

Simon Clarke, David Seymour’s Director of Communications, complained the article breached Principle (1) Accuracy, Fairness and Balance because no effort was made to contact the Minister’s office for comment during the formation of the story, despite the article containing direct criticism of him. He said because the article was already printed and had been online for at least 12 hours before any attempt was made to include comment, the opportunity for balance was rendered moot. He said the reporter instead sought comment only from known detractors of the programme and failed to approach other relevant stakeholders, such as the School Lunch Collective.

The Press said this was a mistake – they just forgot to ask the Minister to comment!. The Media Council ruled their failure a breach.

The second issue is more interesting.

Mr Clarke complained the article also contained a significant undeclared conflict of interest relating to the reporter’s previous role. He said the journalist assigned to the story served as Director of Communications for Health Coalition Aotearoa (HCA), confirmed in correspondence with The Press’ editor. Mr Clarke said HCA has been an outspoken critic of the school lunch programme and the reporter had overseen communications campaigns against it.

So the journalist who wrote the “neutral” story on the school lunch programme had just a few weeks earlier been the effective campaign manager for a lobby group campaigning against it. She interviewed her former employer for the story, but not the Minister.

This was also, not surprisingly, found to be a breach.

Now some might say, that her previous role was just a job, and didn’t reflect her actual views. But if you look at her Twitter account, she has tweeted multiple times against the school lunch programme.

That’s just a couple. There have been multiple tweets on this issue, and also a huge number on other issues – in every case attacking the Government.

Bryce Edwards likes to talk about the revolving door between Government and lobbyists. Maybe he should also focus on the revolving door between lobbyists and the media. Here you have someone who is campaigning stridently against the Government on an issue, and they get employed as a journalist to them neutrally report on the same issue.

You now have the HCA promoting stories written by their former communications manager. And there are plenty of them. A look at her page at The Press, lists seven stories in just the last three months on school lunches. And the one thing they all have in common, is that they are all negative on the programme.

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