Kelly Bold against the Cambridge News

The Cambridge News published an article on May 29, 2025, titled Where will they go?

The story reported the views of a local greyhound racing advocate who said she was concerned about where more than 2900 dogs will go when greyhound racing finishes in July 2026 and that it would not be possible to rehome them in the 24-30 months post closure.

Kelly Bold, writing on behalf of The Greyhound Protection League of NZ, complained the article was one-sided, biased and contained inaccuracies.

“It violates the New Zealand Media Council's principle of fairness by exclusively presenting the perspective of a known greyhound racing industry participant and beneficiary, while deliberately omitting the voices of animal welfare organisations, anti-racing advocates, veterinarians, or government officials. There is no attempt to fact-check the erroneous claims made by the racing industry voice, leaving readers with a deliberately skewed and incomplete picture of the issue.”

She challenged the comment made in the article that the Ministerial Advisory Committee realised that rehoming the total dog population by July 2026 would not be possible and there would need to be a rehoming effort of 24-30 months. She believed the committee would not be in a position to comment on such a matter. The committee's findings and recommendations had not been made public, and this kind of misrepresentation was unacceptable and showed a disregard for responsible reporting.

In response the editor of the Cambridge News said he was “happy with the story we have published which looks at the reaction of our greyhound community to the pending ban.”

The Media Council is not persuaded that there has been a breach of its Principles. This story focussed on a greyhound industry leader’s concern about the difficulty of homing so many dogs when racing ends next year.

It was not a debate about the animal welfare problems that prompted Government’s announcement to shut dog racing down. Nevertheless, it included links to previous stories on that issue, including coverage of a demonstration at a local race meeting in 2023, which show differing viewpoints on greyhound racing have been aired in the paper.  

The Media Council has previously ruled balance can be provided over time and that would seem to be the case here. The Council did not believe this story about rehoming racing dogs had to include comment from animal welfare groups or greyhound racing critics. Their views had been reported before.

As for the complaint about reporting the views of the Ministerial Advisory Committee, the Media Council has no evidence that those remarks were inaccurate. 

Decision:  No grounds to proceed.