Have Your Say

Stuff’s Editor-in-Chief explains the approach to covering the Tom Phillips case
Before you rush off into the usual trash me behaviour, read what he has to say.
IMHO, most of you will agree with him.

Very different from what has been and again IMHO needs to be supported.

I have copied it all, so you don’t get a headache clicking on the stuff website.

Keith Lynch is the Editor-in-Chief of Stuff.co.nz

This week Stuff came in for direct and sustained criticism from NZ Police, following an article and audio we published of the events leading up to the death of Tom Phillips.
You can read what the police said about our report – and our statement on why we published – here, but there is a larger issue at play, one that the Phillips’ case has brought again to the fore but that is almost always a conflict as official narratives meet journalists doing their jobs.

When major incidents occur — from natural disasters to political scandals to police shootings — the first official statements are issued by those closest to the event. These statements may be a collection of facts currently known, or they may be an early attempt to shape the narrative of what has occurred.

( MY note, that this is not always so, such as when the cyclones come along and people on the scene publish information as it happens and before the “officials” are even aware of what’s happening. White Island is a good example).

They can provide speed at moments when the public is searching for clarity. But they are not the story. They are simply one version of events.
It is the media’s job, on behalf of the public, to surface more information. Eyewitness accounts, video evidence, our own investigations to events, all of these will feed into what is almost inevitably a larger and more complex story.

This is what happens in any well-functioning democracy, as news organisations fund their journalists to uncover as much of the truth as they can.
Highly crafted statements, whether from police, politicians, or corporations, are necessarily limited.

They may be incomplete; they may be shaped to emphasise certain aspects over others. That does not mean they are necessarily untrue; rather, it means they are provisional. And that is precisely why journalism must, and does, probe further.
One of journalism’s key roles in society is to inform the public accurately, fairly and as completely as possible.

Verification is at the heart of that work and is where we spend careful and considerable time and resources. Our role is not to repeat what one party – including police – says about an event. It is to report, without fear or favour, as thoroughly as we are able.
This kind of scrutiny is not an act of hostility toward authorities; it is a safeguard for accuracy that ultimately benefits everyone.

Now that the Phillips children have been recovered, investigations will now rightly turn towards the four years which led up to Monday’s events.

Questions, some of them uncomfortable, will be asked about the Police’s actions over that period; about the measures taken to recover the children from what we now know were undoubtedly grim and horrific conditions.

It is the media’s job to ask these questions and to seek answers beyond Police statements.

When this right is publicly undermined, and as has happened this week, that right is threatened with legal consequences, it could be perceived as being designed to have a chilling effect across all media. This serves neither the public, nor our democracy.
In moments of crisis, the media’s role is to illuminate complexity, ask questions, and provide the public with the best possible foundation for understanding. Police statements, like any official account, are a part of that picture — but they are not the whole.