The decision by Fairfax Media editors to publish material taken from police surveillance tapes in relation to the so-called terrorism raids was a reckless and deliberately provocative decision to act unlawfully, the High Court at Wellington was told today.
Solicitor-General David Collins QC told the court that articles
in The Dominion Post, newspaper, on its Stuff website, and other Fairfax-owned papers published on November 14 last year were "powerful and disturbing" but illegal because they interfered with the administration of justice, by potentially prejudicing trials.
Dr Collins has asked the court to find Fairfax New Zealand Ltd and Dominion Post editor Timothy John Pankhurst in contempt for publishing the articles about the controversial series of police raids in the eastern Bay of Plenty last October.
"The respondents' publications represent the most serious challenge to the public policy underpinning the law of contempt that New Zealand has ever seen," Dr Collins said.
"The articles were deliberately inflammatory, unsettling, provocative, and memorable, and the respondents sought to publish them as widely as possible."
The media group and its editor had also made firm pronouncements about the guilt of a group of individuals who had yet to face trial "and did so in a manner guaranteed to arouse hostility within the community", Dr Collins said in his closing argument.
All of this would have been more than enough to constitute contempt, but the media group went much further and published lengthy extracts that they knew would be inadmissible at trial.
This was "in the face of suppression orders they knew were in place, and a statutory prohibition directed squarely at the very material that dominated the articles".
There were 13 extracts published from intercepted communications included in a police affidavit.
These actions "puts this contempt into a class not previously seen in this country", Dr Collins said.
He said Fairfax and Pankhurst had continued to exhibit during the trial the same absence of insight that characterised their decision to publish.
"They continue to display little, if any, appreciation of the issues that will arise at the defendants' Arms Act trials," said Dr Collins.
"Their characterisation of the November 14 publications as socially responsible, yet readily forgettable, attempt to allay public fear is difficult to reconcile with the tenor and content of the articles themselves."
- NZPA
