Media Council rules on Shane Reti column complaint

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The Media Council has upheld a complaint against the Northern Advocate's publication of a column by Dr Shane Reti.

The council has found a complaint by Gavin Millar that the column's headline and graphs were deliberately misleading was correct; the graphs were wrong and the Advocate "fudged" rather than make an apology and publish a correction.

The column, published on March 7, was headlined "No Covid victory parade for mental health".

It included graphs showing hospital admissions for intentional self-harm from March 2020 to June 2021 – when there were Covid-related lockdowns - increased at a much greater rate than in the preceding year to February 2020.

The graphs as presented by Dr Reti to support his comment were misleading, as was the headline. Actual figures did not support the thesis that mental health had markedly deteriorated.

The Media Council notes that the Northern Advocate did not have any material before it that indicated the graphs used in the article were inaccurate.

When these errors were pointed out, the Advocate explained that the article was an opinion piece, that it believed the data was accurate and had published the column in good faith.

Late on March 7, the day it published the column, the paper ran another article headed "Dr Shane Reti's column and graphics removed for more analysis."

It said the Northern Advocate and Dr Reti agreed to remove the article from the website until he clarified data. It quoted Dr Reti as saying, "After doing so I consider the focus of the article is correct, although the graphs I produced could have been better directed."

The implication of this "clarification" was that Dr Reti was not convinced he was wrong, and he was given a further opportunity to re-enforce his opinion.

The Media Council ruling says that "Having received the complaint, the Northern Advocate should have checked the data (which is not complex) and published a clear correction and not allowed the response to be fudged."

"The Northern Advocate did not do enough to correct the error. The article was factually inaccurate, and readers were not presented with a correction of the error." The full Media Council ruling is at www.mediacouncil.org.nz.