LUCY AITKENREAD AGAINST RNZ

Overview

CASE NO:3188

RULING BY THE NEW ZEALAND MEDIA COUNCIL ON THE COMPLAINT OF LUCY AITKENREAD AGAINST RNZ

FINDING: INSUFFICIENT GROUNDS TO PROCEED

DATE: JANUARY 2022

On January 17, 2022 RNZ published a promo to a story, reading More than 120,000 child Covid-19 vaccine doses delivered.

Lucy Aitkenread complained that on first glance she had understood the sentence to be saying the does had been administered, whereas they had been delivered to vaccination centres. The headline was deliberately misleading “to manipulate the public’s sense that vaccinating children against covid is normal and common”.   She says there is a false assertion of the “administration” of 120,000 children’s vaccines.

The Media Council notes that the headline reflects the first sentence of the story which reads More than 120,000 doses of the child (paediatric) Pfizer vaccine have been delivered to more than 500 vaccination sites around New Zealand as health providers today began the roll-out of Covid-19 vaccinations for children.  It does not state or imply that the vaccines have been administered to children.

No evidence has been advanced to support the complaint that RNZ’s story had breached the Media Council’s first principle relating to accuracy, fairness and balance or principle 6 which states that headlines should accurately and fairly convey the substance or a key element of the report they are designed to cover.

There were insufficient grounds to proceed.