The New Zealand Media Council has gone where angels fear to tread by questioning the fairness of republishing something that was already common knowledge.
The council has upheld a complaint – on fairness grounds – by the family of a man investigated as a suspect in the disappearance of Mona Blades 50 years ago. Police found nothing to substantiate those suspicions and closed that line of enquiry. The Mona Blades mystery, however, remains an open cold case.
The complaint was made by the daughter of the man, a deceased traffic officer who had been implicated by a retired policeman who is now also dead. The Media Council found Rotorua’s Daily Post was unfair in “the unnecessary naming of him on the flimsy and entirely unsubstantiated theory of one deceased man” in a story marking the 50thanniversary of the day the 18-year-old disappeared while hitch-hiking from Hamilton to Hastings.
The decision was not unanimous. Four of the ten members of the council dissented. You can read the decision here .
Let me put it bluntly: The Media Council majority got it wrong.
How can the Daily Post have acted unfairly when the accused man’s name can be found in a simple online search and the accusations and investigation were well-known in the area. How can it be unfair when – for more than a decade – his name and association with the case had been referenced in a readily accessible Wikipedia article on Mona Blades’ disappearance?
Since 2013 the Wikipedia entry has contained a link to a January 2012 New Zealand Herald story headed ‘Cop v Cop in cold-case murder’. That story set out allegations by retired policeman Tony Moller against deceased traffic cop Derrick Hinton. On the 50th anniversary of the disappearance, the reference was brought into the body of the Wikipedia entry which now reads:
Former Kawerau policeman Tony Moller believed his ex-colleague, former traffic officer Derrick Hinton, was involved in Blades’ death. Moller’s allegations have been strongly rejected by Hinton’s family. Based on those allegations, police in January 2012 used excavators to dig up the laundry floor of a Kawerau property where Hinton lived in the 1970s but found nothing of interest.
The entry still contains the active link to the 2012 New Zealand Herald article, which remains freely accessible through online search engines. The story quoted Kawerau Mayor Malcolm Campbell saying there had been “a lot of buzz” around Mr Moller’s theory for years. “You can talk to anybody about it and they’ve all got their theories,” he said. “To be fair to both sides, it’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened for us here in Kawerau, because it’s going to put it to bed once and for all. There’s either something in it or nothing in it.”
At the time, Hinton’s family set up a website to publicly repudiate the claims. That website is no longer accessible but several other news articles from that time – articles that named him and quoted members of his family – remain accessible online. These articles also name two other one-time suspects, one of whom is believed to still be alive and in Australia.
For the past six years a reddit entry has named Hinton and continues to describe him as “yet another of the remaining persons of interest”. He has also been named in news stories revisiting the disappearance. For example, his name appears in a 2017 Stuff article on the cold case.
So, there can be no doubt that Hinton’s name, the accusations, and the fact police found no evidence against him were already in the public domain when the Daily Post made the quite reasonable decision to revisit a case that has remained open for exactly half a century. The story appeared on the anniversary of her disappearance.
Had the newspaper not named him, understandably curious members of the public would have had no difficulty in filling in the blank space.
Why would the Daily Post resurrect past suspects that had been investigated and eliminated?
The reason is simple: New Zealand Police took the unusual step of openly discussing theories about Mona Blades’ disappearance, the description of suspects, and named two people who had been investigated. They did so in the hope the information would bring forward members of the public with new information.
The first named suspect was John Freeman who, two weeks after the disappearance, shot and wounded a St Cuthbert’s student before killing himself. No link to Mona Blades was established.
Police also named the Australian-based person of interest as Charlie Hughes. Thirty years after the disappearance, Police revealed they had re-interviewed Hughes and told the Daily Post at that time that, in the course of a five hour interview, he had been fully cooperative. Hughes, too, had made public statements to clear his name. No charges were laid against him.
The Media Council says that “naming previous persons of interest and publishing unsubstantiated theories around their connection to the disappearance is in certain circumstances unfair”. Perhaps, but this is not one of those cases: The naming of Hinton after Moller’s accusations followed a precedent already firmly established in the Mona Blades case.
The council’s majority decision describes the article as “deeply unfair to Mr Hinton and his family”. It may have been unfair of Tony Moller to point an accusing finger at Derrick Hinton. However, it was done in a very public manner, and the police reaction was equally public. The allegation was investigated, and no evidence was found to substantiate it. But there has been no unequivocal exoneration of Hinton by investigators. Perhaps there should have been, but it still stands as one of many lines of enquiry in the Mona Blades case that have come to nothing, but which remain on the record.
‘On the record’ is an important phrase in the context of the decision. The Media Council has, in effect, told the Daily Post it should have erased history. That is wrong.
Last week New Zealand Herald Media Insider Shayne Currie reported that I feared the decision would have potentially far-reaching effects. I said: “It will make media think twice before publicly re-examining cold cases and even historical controversy. In reaching this decision, the council has created the sort of chilling effect that it should stand against.”
I stand by that statement. I would add that the Media Council should not have extended the concept of media fairness into a highly subjective area that I doubt you will find in books that analyse media ethics.
‘Accuracy, fairness, and balance’ are not grouped haphazardly in journalistic codes of practice. Fairness is placed in the centre of that phrase in the expectation that, in the course of presenting facts and ensuring that those facts are weighed against other relevant matters, journalists will deal equitably with all parties and not resort to underhand methods of newsgathering. It is not a test to determine what should be suppressed for reasons other than irrelevance.
Dr Denis Muller, an Australian scholar and author of Journalism Ethics for the Digital Age provides a useful definition of fairness that the council might find instructive:
Fairness MEANS:
- We portray our subjects in a way that is faithful to the evidence we have about them.
- We avoid inaccurate, malicious, cruel, or bad-faith portrayals.
- We avoid distortion or misrepresentation.
- We do not suppress relevant available facts.
- We offer people an opportunity to reply.
- We separate our comment from our news reporting.
- We obtain prior consent from our subjects, unless the circumstances make it unnecessary.
I cannot see that the Daily Post breached any of those provisions, and I believe it was outside the mandate on the council to venture beyond them.
In summary, the Media Council made two basic errors. First, it examined the article in isolation. It took no account of the fact that we live in what is described as a post-scarcity age. News media no longer hold a monopoly on dissemination of news nor on the archival retention of that information. The council failed to judge the article within the wider context of that digital reality. Secondly, it allowed itself to be swayed by the argument of a family that understandably wishes to protect the reputation of its patriarch but for whom, sadly, closing the stable door is pointless.
The Media Council should rescind the decision.
And a footnote
The complaint set out in the decision stated that “the entire front page was taken up by the allegations made by Mr Moller against Mr Hinton”.
In fact, there was only a small pointer on the front page of the Daily Post’s May 31 edition. The story was carried on page 2, which also contained an index and quarter page advertisement. Only a third of the story was devoted to the claims by Moller. The remainder canvassed other aspects of the case. Online, the positioning and presentation of the story may have changed over the course of the day, but the content reproduced continued to be what had been published in print.
I disagree with you Gavin. All your arguments seem reasonable – from a news media viewpoint. But if you put yourself in the position of the family of someone accused but never convicted of a crime, it’s hard to justify the rejuvenation of what was a suspicion. Nothing more. From an historical view, the information remains what it is – a piece of history that is best left to historians. That doesn’t close it off to the public, but leaves it in the realm where it belongs
Jim Tucker – editor, writer, publisher JimTuckerMedia New Plymouth
To review 50 years of so far fruitless investigation without mentioning Hinton is to censor history. Your argument would preclude much of the practice of revisiting historic cases and events.