Karen Arnold against the Otago Daily Times

The Otago Daily Times published an article May 13, 2025, titled I’ve ignored it: Ex councillor still hasn’t paid gorse bill.

The story reported that former Councillor Karen Arnold had failed to pay the Invercargill City Council for the cost of removing gorse from her property, a matter of dispute with the council dating back to 2022.

Ms Arnold complained the article breached Media Council principles relating to accuracy, fairness, and balance, and had caused unjust reputational harm.

The story omitted key facts supplied two months earlier to the reporter, including the full context of her dispute with the Council, procedural irregularities acknowledged by the Council and the eventual cancellation of one of the bylaw notices.

“Despite this, the article presented a skewed narrative that implied serial non-compliance and failed to mention key concerns I had raised. The reporter had these details prior to publication but chose not to include them, creating a distorted and incomplete public record.

“The article included photographs of gorse, sourced directly from a Hearings Panel agenda prepared by Invercargill City Council staff. These images were used without context and gave the impression that the vegetation was entirely my responsibility. The article did not disclose the origin of the photos, nor that they were drawn from a process I had objected to as unfair and procedurally flawed.”

She said she had provided the journalist with detailed information challenging the accuracy of those images and had supplied him with photographs clearly showing that the majority of the gorse originated on adjacent Invercargill City Council land, a written explanation outlining her objection to Council’s failure to manage its own vegetation and a copy of a complaint sent to the chief executive.

She said the reporter ignored the material almost entirely, presented the Council-supplied images as uncontroversial and omitted any reference to the counter evidence she supplied.

This misled readers and breached Media Council Principles (1) Accuracy, Fairness and Balance (4) Comment and Fact, and (12) Corrections.

In response, the Otago Daily Times said it stood by its story and did not wish to take the matter any further.

Ms Arnold said this response did not engage with the substantive points raised and offered no pathway for right of reply, correction, or clarification.

The Media Council considers this to be a straightforward report about a dispute between a Council and a ratepayer. 

Ms Arnold deserves some sympathy as her gorsy bit of land is beside a much larger hill of gorse owned jointly by the Council and her attempts to legally challenge her obligation continue.

She made some key points in response in the article. While all her arguments in this long-running dispute were not detailed as she would have liked, there was no evidence that the reporting was factually inaccurate or unfair.

Decision:  No grounds to proceed.