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12 March 2010
Letter to the Chronicle
MICHAEL LAWS
MAYOR
WANGANUI DISTRICT COUNCIL |
Mayor’s Office
Wanganui District Council
Dear Mr Pringle
Official complaint: Editorial of 2 March & Wanganui Story 12 March
This is an official complaint from the Mayor of Wanganui, relating to both inaccuracy and bias published by the Wanganui Chronicle.
1. Editorial 2 March 2010
You continue to publish letters to the editor, critical of myself and the council's media policy, after publishing the above editorial on 2 March 2010.
As I subsequently pointed out to you, the editorial was factually inaccurate, based upon false assumptions and lacked balance. Your reply was from your GM Andy Jarden. It did not address the point-by-point inaccuracies that I had pointed out.
I asked you to review your reply given that YOU (as editor) have not provided an explanation nor a justification.
I still await that reply. If I have not received one by the end of business today, I will officially complain to the NZ Press Council.
2 Wanganui Gas story
Your front page story this morning contains the following statement:
" In a press release yesterday, Mr Laws provided no indication as to how Wanganui Gas was tracking in relation to that bleak 2008 forecast. He could not be contacted last night for further comment."
This is a direct lie.
The Chronicle did not telephone me at either my home or cellphone numbers.
The Chronicle did not e-mail me at either my mayoral or business e-mail addresses.
I'm not aware of the Chronicle contacting my mayoral office before close of day at 5pm.
I want the Chronicle to make a correction in tomorrow's newspaper accepting that it did not contact me - not that I was uncontactable.
3. Photo in 'Herald on Sunday'
The 'Herald on Sunday' sought to perform an inquiry into my personal life late last week and posed a number of false statements to various persons, in pursuit of that story.
According to the HoS, it then gave a job to a Wanganui Chronicle photographer to secretly photograph me at my family home sometime on the past Saturday.
This is an unwarrantable intrusion into my private life, aided and abetted by your newspaper. The credit in the Sunday newspaper is to the Wanganui Chronicle.
Is this the new standard of behaviour that I can expect from your newspaper this year?
Michael Laws
Mayor
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