Ian Wishart against TVNZ

TVNZ published a story on its website on October 6, 2024, headlined Why South Dunedin is so vulnerable to flooding – and why it could get worse.

This was a backgrounder following up on the previous day’s flood and declaration of a state of emergency when the city was reported to have suffered its wettest day in more than a century.

Ian Wishart said it was wrong to say it was Dunedin’s wettest day. This was similar to a complaint he made about Radio New Zealand’s reporting of the same flood and another complaint about TVNZ’s broadcast coverage of the flood has been taken to the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

Mr Wishart complained TVNZ breached Media Council Principles (1) Accuracy, Fairness and Balance (6) Headlines and Captions and (12) Corrections.

He said he was concerned at TVNZ’s ability to accurately and impartially report extreme weather events, its neglect of stories about the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) and its failure to engage with the core complaint regarding NIWA’s claim, based on a single suburban rain gauge, that Dunedin experienced its “wettest day”.

NIWA’s assertion that Musselburgh rainfall data represented Dunedin was flawed. He said TVNZ did not fact-check properly and it was misleading to report Dunedin experienced its “wettest day in over a century” when there had been much bigger historical floods.

In response TVNZ said the “wettest day” comment was drawn from a NIWA tweet issued on the morning of October 4 which reported “Provisionally, Dunedin (Musselburgh) has just observed its second wettest day on record with 130.8mm from 9am Thursday to 9am Friday. It has been their wettest day in over a century, the last time it was at least this wet in Musselburgh was in April 1923.”

“Given these communications, the fact that the Musselburgh weather station is located within Dunedin City, and that the expert body which operates the station refers to Dunedin in its tweet, the committee (TVNZ) does not agree that it is misleading or inaccurate for 1News reporting to say Dunedin had its wettest day in over a century.”

TVNZ considered it was legitimate to rely on information supplied by NIWA for its reporting.

As the Media Council noted in its earlier ruling, on the complaint against RNZ, Mr Wishart devoted much of his complaint to attacking the accuracy of what NIWA says about climate. He regards NIWA as “desperate for news headlines and prepared to spruik misinformation to get them.” In his view NIWA is no longer credible in the area of climate records.

In his lengthy complaint Mr Wishart referred to news reports of historical flood events and data from rain gauges in other parts of Dunedin that are no longer in operation.  He makes a case, but it is debatable whether anything can be established by comparing historic rainfall recordings in different locations with recordings at the one remaining city station at Musselburgh.  The Musselburgh station was in Dunedin, and this was indeed its highest recording in over a century.

The Media Council was set up to consider complaints against the media, and it does not have the mandate or meteorological expertise to weigh the validity of Mr Wishart’s arguments about the data or whether the “wettest day” claim was flawed. The Council is also not set up or resourced to assess scientific issues raised in Mr Wishart’s wider challenges to NIWA’s expertise.

As the Council said in its ruling on the complaint against RNZ, NIWA is a government agency and “news organisations must be able to rely on information supplied by such organisations in the absence of material which irrefutably shows the NIWA information was wrong.”

The Council believes TVNZ was also entitled to rely on NIWA’s statement that it was Dunedin’s (Musselburgh’s) wettest day since 1923.  The media are within their rights to rely on official advice like this without being required to challenge plausible data released in good faith by weather scientists.

If there was an error because other stations had historically recorded higher individual recordings, (which for the reasons set out we do not accept), it was minor and excusable.  Dunedin was experiencing a most unusual and severe rain event, and the public needed to be made aware of this.  Newsrooms were under huge pressure to adequately inform the public and could not be expected to give attention to arguments about the precise historical accuracy of NIWA’s statements as they came in.

Decision:  No grounds to proceed