Tracy-Moana Campbell against the NZ Herald
Case Number: 3595
Council Meeting: 2 December 2024
Decision: Not Upheld with Dissent
Publication: New Zealand Herald
Principle: Accuracy, Fairness and Balance
Ruling Categories:
Accuracy
Balance, Lack Of
Overview
1. On 10 October 2024 the New Zealand Herald published an article headlined “Middle East Conflict: Christopher Luxon says Benjamin Netanyahu not listening to others”. Towards the end of the article, a sentence said: “This week marked a year since Hamas’ incursion into Israel, its killing of more than 1100 innocent civilians and its taking of hundreds of hostages.” The complainant says this statement is inaccurate because of the 1105 Israelis killed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, 368 were military personnel. The complaint is not upheld by a majority of the Council.
The Article
2. The article, by-lined by a Herald reporter, outlined Mr Luxon’s concerns about the Middle East conflict, including that it seemed Mr Netanyahu was not listening to many international calls for Israel to exercise restraint, and to avoid the loss of innocent civilian life. Mr Luxon said the government was “deeply concerned” about the risk of “catastrophic impact on innocent citizens”.
3. The article quoted the similar views of Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau of Canada and Anthony Albanese of Australia calling for restraint and de-escalation. Mr Albanese is also reported as calling for the return of Israeli hostages and expressing abhorrence of the terrorist acts of October 7.
4. The article covered Mr Netanyahu’s video address to the Lebanese people urging them to save their country by freeing it from Hezbollah; and the US reaction to that, warning that there should be no military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza. It reported Israel had warned there would be strong retaliation against a recent attack from Iran.
5. The piece went on to quote Foreign Minister Winston Peters who unequivocally condemned Iran’s attack on Israel, warned of further escalation, said civilians throughout the Middle East are already enduring intolerable suffering, and urged de-escalation, diplomatic action and maximum restraint.
The Complaint
6. The complainant Tracy-Moana Campbell says the Herald report is demonstrably inaccurate in stating 1100 innocent civilians were killed on October 7. She says Israeli news service Haaretz keeps a verified, publicly available, searchable list of casualties which the Herald reporter should have referred to for accurate figures. Haaretz reported on 23 November 2023, "Of the total number of fatalities on our current list, 851 are civilians (including 59 from the police force and 13 from the emergency services) and 368 are IDF (Israeli Defence Force) soldiers. Of these, 1,105 died on October 7".
7. The complainant says that in its article, the Herald refers to a group, including hundreds of Israeli soldiers, as "innocent civilians". She says the Herald never refers to Palestinian civilian casualties as "innocent" - not even the more than 16,920 children Israel has killed. Her initial complaint said that “could be construed as biased on a racial basis and deeply distasteful”.
8. In her final comment Ms Campbell says her primary concern is an error of fact. 851 civilians were killed on October 7. The rest of the total of 1105 people killed were combatants. She says “Combatants by definition are not civilians - innocent or otherwise.” Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal, according to an International Court of Justice ruling. She says “To describe Israeli soldiers as “innocent civilians” is not only factually incorrect; it is a political statement demonstrating considerable bias.”
The Response
9. The Editor said the context of the story is Christopher Luxon’s comments about Israel and the Middle East conflict and pressure being applied by the international diplomatic community on Benjamin Netanyahu. This was shortly before Mr Luxon met other international leaders at the East Asia summit in Laos. Ms Campbell’s complaint related to one sentence positioned in the bottom third of the article. Rather than the Israeli website, the Editor says the Herald generally relies on the objective reporting of news agencies such as the Associated Press and Reuters. He says this particular article was authored by a Herald political reporter and focuses solely on international diplomacy efforts, including those by the Prime Ministers of NZ, Australia and Canada.
10. The Editor said that three days before the article in question, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had publicly described the Israeli October 7 victims as “innocent”. That same day Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly stated: “One year ago, the terrorist organization Hamas launched a massive, co-ordinated, and horrifying attack against Israel. There are few words to describe the cruelty that comes with the massacre of 1,200 innocent people and abduction of over 200 others…” Also that day United States President Joe Biden had described the 1200 victims of the October 7 attack as “innocent”. The Herald also quotes others, such as the US Vice President and the Secretary of Homeland Security, as describing the October 7 victims as innocent.
The Discussion
11. The preamble to the Media Council Principles says: “An independent press plays a vital role in a democracy. The proper fulfilment of that role requires a fundamental responsibility to maintain high standards of accuracy, fairness and balance and public faith in those standards.” Principle (1) Accuracy, Fairness and Balance, requires that “Publications should be bound at all times by accuracy, fairness and balance and should not deliberately mislead or misinform readers by commission or omission. In articles of controversy or disagreement, a fair voice must be given to the opposition view. Exceptions may apply for long-running issues where every side of an issue or argument cannot reasonably be repeated on every occasion and in reportage of proceedings where balance is to be judged on a number of stories, rather than a single report.”
12. The article complained of is a news story about events in the Middle East and a summary of comments by PMs Luxon, Albanese and Trudeau. The complaint of inaccuracy is about one sentence, towards the end of the article, saying that deaths on October 7 were of “innocent civilians”. Ms Campbell focusses on the fact that hundreds of the Israeli dead were IDF personnel and therefore could not be described as innocent civilians.
13. The Herald response to her complaint focusses rather on the fact that there is a great deal of international support for describing all of the victims on October 7 as innocent. The Council agrees with the complainant that it is inaccurate to describe victims from the Israeli Defence Force as civilians. However, the Council agrees with the Herald that the surprise nature of October 7 incident meant that the IDF personnel were not engaged in any “hostile act of aggression” at the time of the Hamas attack. This seems to have resulted in many prominent people worldwide describing all the victims of the attack on that day as innocent.
14. In our view Ms Campbell is correct on a detailed factual basis to say it is inaccurate to describe all 1105 dead as “civilians”. However, it is also our view that the incorrect detail, although significant in itself, is of marginal importance to the story, which is focussed on the situation and international leaders’ comments at the time of publication of the article. The sentence complained of is context, to remind readers of what sparked the current conflict.
15. The Council believes it was careless to use the common phrase “innocent civilians” to describe all 1105 dead, when 368 were IDF members. In its response, the Herald said its use of that phrase relied on an AP story of 8 October 2024. The AP story says, “The militants killed some 1200 people, mostly civilians and abducted another 250”. This does not support the Herald’s argument that they were relying on the AP story as the Herald article went further than AP’s account and described all victims as innocent civilians.
16. The Council is also troubled that the Herald failed to correct the narrow factual point by making a correction to say, as the AP article did, that the majority of victims were innocent civilians. Their response to the complaint was misdirected when it focussed on the innocence of those killed and did not respond to the inaccuracy of saying all 1105 were civilians. The Council is surprised the Herald did not move quickly to fix this error instead of focussing on international reaction to the October 7 deaths, which was not relevant to the complainant’s specific and accurate point about wrongly characterising IDF personnel as civilians. The Herald appears to have failed to understand, and therefore to correct, the complainant’s point.
17. However, a majority of the Council does not believe the public interest was significantly engaged or harmed, nor was the article deliberately misleading, as a result of this inaccuracy. The main fact is that over 1100 people were killed in a surprise attack. A primary focus of the complaint was that all of those who were killed were not innocent, but because many prominent people had described all the victims as innocent, it was not unreasonable for the Herald to adopt that description.
18. The numbers of the dead who were civilians or IDF personnel is a relatively small error in the wider context of coverage of a long running news issue, the balanced 10 October article, and the headline of that article which features the Prime Minister criticising a lack of responsiveness on the part of the Israeli Prime Minister. We do not agree with the complainant’s assertion it shows political or racial bias. The Middle East conflict is clearly a long running news topic. Balance has been maintained through the many past stories in the Herald, and multiple other news outlets, covering the mounting death toll and destructive impacts of the conflict on innocent people in Palestine and Gaza.
19. On balance, and in all of the circumstances outlined above, the Council’s majority view is that the inaccuracy was insufficient to support finding a breach of the Principles. The complaint of inaccuracy under Principle (1) is not upheld.
Dissent by Hank Schouten, Judi Jones and Alison Thom:
A minority of the Council held the view the inaccuracy was sufficient to support a finding of a breach of Principle (1). Although the article’s focus was on matters other than the death toll of the initial attack, it was important to be accurate in reporting the details. The minority felt the Herald’s reference to the AP source had failed to support its use of the phrase “innocent civilians”, and it would have been an easy matter to correct by changing “civilians” to “people”.