Ms B AGAINST STUFF
Case Number: 3538
Council Meeting: 29 July 2024
Decision: No Grounds to Proceed
Publication: Stuff
Principle:
Accuracy, Fairness and Balance
Children and Young People
Comment and Fact
Headlines and Captions
Ruling Categories: Court Reporting
- This complaint is about a Stuff article published on 8 July 2024 and headlined Dad who left son at the skate park killed a man who tried to help the boy home.
- The article reported a High Court hearing at Christchurch in which a man, who has name suppression, pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter after punching and killing a stranger who he thought was trying to abduct his son. The facts of the case reported by Stuff were based on a summary of facts provided to the Court by police who had investigated what happened.
- The Media Council has anonymised the complainant's name in order not to identify the defendant. The complainant, Ms B said the facts in the story about her ex-partner and father of her two children were wrong.
- “I was not the one who rang the police on him. I was already on the phone to police reporting a potential paedophile when my ex came back from the park and told me he had killed someone and asked me if I could go and check on him and ring an ambulance... He also checked on the man on the way back to his Spreydon home but a bystander was with him. The operator on the other end heard everything. You have made out like I rang the police, when I didn’t. “
- Ms B also complained the story wrongly reported that their son told his father and her that the victim, Mewa Singh was “trying to walk him to daddy’s car”. She said their son told them that Mr Singh said no words to him and started walking him to the bus stop. She said she told this to the police in her written statement.
- Stuff said its reporting was entirely based on the summary of facts. It was standard practice to report on a summary of facts which was agreed to by the defendant when he pleaded guilty.
- Responding to the Ms B's statement that “I was not the one who rang the police on him,” Stuff said the summary of facts said “the defendant’s ex-partner phoned emergency services. When police attended the defendant’s address he walked out of the house and was met by a police officer in his driveway.”
- Stuff said this was summarised in the story to read: “The man was arrested at his home after his ex-partner called the police.
- Stuff said the summary was not clear and the difference was semantic, but it would have been happy to clarify the point.
- It also defended its reporting of another point in the summary in which Ms B said "My son's father has been made out to have left his son at the skatepark for a short while, when he didn't. He did a U-turn and had him within eyesight the whole time."
- The summary of facts says "The defendant got into the car and drove away from the park to teach his son a lesson. A short time later the defendant turned the vehicle back towards Linwood Park to return. From the opposite side of the traffic island, the defendant observed an unknown male holding his son's hand near a bus stop on Linwood Ave.”
- The Stuff article reported "When it was time to leave, the man’s son refused. To teach the boy a lesson, the man got in his car and drove away without him, the summary says. When he returned a short time later, he saw an unknown man, later identified as Singh, holding his son’s hand near a bus stop on Linwood Ave, and became “enraged”."
- Stuff also said the headline accurately reflected the summary of facts.
- It added that it had tried to engage with Ms B to get her side of the story after she complained.
- She had responded: “I'm not really interested in talking to the media. I just think you should know that your story is not factual. I am looking into the complaints process. I have also reached out to the Christchurch High Court. There are real people involved in these stories you publish, it's not nice reading things about yourself you know are not true.”
- The Media Council has read the summary of facts presented in court and considers the article accurately reflected its contents. The headline also conveyed a key element of the report.
- The article did not say what Ms B said to Police. It just said she called them and the operator overheard her ex- partner saying he had killed a man. On another point raised in this complaint the summary says that the son told the defendant that the deceased was trying to walk him to daddy’s car, where she maintained he was being taken to the bus stop.
- Ms B's complaint is with the police and its summary of facts and the defendant’s lawyer for not challenging the summary if it was believed to be wrong.
- The Media Council is in no position to review what police said in the summary of facts. its job is limited to hearing complaints from members of the public who believe publications have failed to meet ethical standards and key journalistic principles, like the need to be accurate, fair and balanced. Media can assume that a summary of facts is accurate, if it is presented in Court and used in a sentencing. It is open to a defence lawyer to challenge a summary of facts, in which case the summary will be changed if the police accept the challenge, or the sentencing hearing will be postponed until the facts are clarified, if necessary, before a judge in a defended facts hearing. Here, there was no challenge to the summary presented to the judge. It was the factual basis for sentencing and Stuff was entitled to rely on it.
- There was no evidence in this complaint to show Stuff’s reporting breached any standards. There were no grounds to proceed.