Journalists should report facts, not indulge fantasies

Should courts be able to pick and choose which journalists cover their proceedings?

Human Rights Review Tribunal chair Sarah Eyre. Source: NZ Lawyer.

I was ordered to leave the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT) on Wednesday with the tribunal invoking section 10 of the Contempt of Court Act.

This section gives a judicial officer, such as the chair of the HRRT, the power to exclude any person if they believe that person is “wilfully disrupting the proceedings of a court” or “wilfully and without lawful excuse disobeying any order or direction of the court in the course of the hearing of any proceedings.”

The first part, “wilfully disrupting the proceedings of a court,” simply cannot apply to a journalist asserting her right to report. That would be a perversion of law.

The HRRT chair, Sarah Eyre correctly said that whether any criminal charges are laid is a matter for the police, though, if charged, I intend to vigorously defend myself.

My “offence” is that I published an account of the testimony of a witness before the HRRT after the HRRT decided I was not an “accredited journalist.”

On the chair’s own admission in open court on Monday, the tribunal spent 12 minutes on deciding I was not an “accredited journalist” and my understanding is that its sole grounds were that I am not a member of the Media Council.

HRRT was wrong to decide I’m not a journalist

I contend that HRRT was wrong in that decision because it inappropriately applied a legal provision relating to criminal proceedings to a civil proceeding.

It was also wrong to rule in the absence of any evidence of my career as a journalist.

I was deeply offended by their hasty dismissal of my right to sit on the press bench.

The Criminal Procedure Act 2011 referred to the now defunct Press Council, not the Media Council which replaced it.

I had taken legal advice that there is no legal description of who constitutes an “accredited journalist” when it comes to civil proceedings.

Before I realised this misapplication of an inappropriate law, I had actually investigated whether I could become “accredited” under the Criminal Procedure Act.

The Act provides for anyone either subject to, or employed by, an organisation subject to a code of ethics, or is a member of the Broadcasting Standards Authority or the Press Council, or with the permission of the court, to report on criminal proceedings.

Since I’m not a broadcaster and the Press Council has since become the Media Council, I investigated joining the latter, only to discover that would mean signing up to a code of ethics that includes an acceptance of what I’ll call genderwoo, meaning the belief that humans can change sex, as well as the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.

I won’t perjure myself

I’ve made it widely known that I believe humans cannot change sex – although I would contend that’s not just a belief but biological fact.

On both these issues, I couldn’t sign such a code without perjuring myself – as we learnt from Act leader David Seymour’s failed attempt to codify what the treaty principles are, it’s anyone’s guess as to what I’d be agreeing to on this point.

For those interested, here’s the Media Council’s code of ethics: https://www.mediacouncil.org.nz/principles/

If there was any doubt as to what the council meant by the discrimination and diversity section, its appalling decision that Ruth Hill of Radio New Zealand’s story, broadcast in June, about a young girl who died of starvation alone in a motel room while legally in state care, demonstrates the council’s capture by trans ideology.

The council said of Hill’s story that “the story lacked balance and fairness, particularly in its portrayal of the deceased teen’s gender identity.”

Hill had interviewed the dead 17-year-old girl’s parents and accurately used female pronouns for the girl (there is no doubt she was female) – which was in keeping with the parents’ wishes – and that was the nub of the 17 complaints the council received.

RNZ disagreed with the council’s findings: “It sends an alarming message to newsrooms if they are expected to balance first-hand perspectives from people directly involved in a story and information contained in verified documentation with second-hand sources.”

The council has set a ludicrous standard

Any journalist knows no single story can ever represent all views and opinions of any given subject and it would be ludicrous to require that every story did.

Those captured by genderwoo want everyone to regard “misgendering” of trans people, such as using female pronouns for those born female and male pronouns for those born male, as offensive, rude and something that should be forbidden.

I strongly disagree; I think it is a journalist’s job to deal in facts, and we should have no responsibility or obligation to pretend to believe the subject of a news story’s personal fantasy about themselves.

Understand, I’m not saying such people should be prevented from living their fantasy; I very much believe in live-and-let-live, so long as you don’t impinge on the rights of others.

I’m saying I should have no responsibility or obligation to pretend that fantasy is true, especially when I am functioning as a journalist.

My understanding is that the HRRT has reprimanded the barrister representing the Lesbian Action for Visability Aotearoa (LAVA) women, Nicolette Levy, KC, for inadvertent “misgendgering” of those involved in this proceeding.

That is, Levy has correctly identified people according to their actual sex, and those reprimands appear to show that the HRRT is not an impartial adjudicator.

The Victorian scandal

Currently, there is a man in jail in Victoria, Australia, for raping his five-year-old daughter, filming it and sending the video to another pedophile.

That man has claimed to be a woman and, as a result, received a ridiculously short sentence, which could see him released after serving just two-and-a-half years, which he is serving in a women’s prison.

The prison authorities and Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allan, have shown scant regard for the safety of the real biological women in that prison being locked up with a convicted male sex offender.

Such cases are now routinely reported by media around the world using female pronouns for such men, which I think is an utter failure of the journalistic ethic of reporting facts and is actively misleading readers.

That may be an extreme example, but it does bring home the danger of preventing or forbidding truthful reporting, and the sex of a person will always be a salient fact.

It’s somewhat ironic that the case I was ejected from covering involves two members of LAVA, Hillary Oxley and Margaret Curnow, who brought a complaint against Wellington Pride Festival Incorporated after their booking for a stall at an Out in the City event in March 2021 was cancelled, essentially because LAVA doesn’t accept that lesbians can have penises.

I have good reason to be offended

As I have stated previously, I believe the HRRT was wrong in its failure to recognize me as a journalist, and in using a statute meant to govern criminal proceedings in a civil case.

The barrister for Pride, Victoria Casey, KC, incorrectly described my column published on Wednesday as “a blog” and also loudly condemned my use of female pronouns to describe Professor Stephen Whittle, a natal female, as “offensive” and, yes, “misgendering.”

I take deep offence at Casey’s description of me and my work, as I do at the HRRT’s failure to recognize me as the journalist that I am.

At no point has either Casey or the HRRT accused me of factual errors.

For the record, I’m a journalist, and have been for more than 40 years. I have long written columns that have been published by BusinessDesk, National Business Review and The New Zealand Herald, among other outlets.

I now own my own publishing business, Just the Business Ltd, which is a company registered with the Companies Office, and the writing of my columns is no different a process now than when I wrote for businesses owned by others.

While it wasn’t relevant to the HRRT case, I also continue to undertake freelance journalism assignments.

If the HRRT had barred all media from reporting its proceedings, I would, of course, have complied with that order, wrong though I would have thought the ban to be.

The Cameron Slater case

But I don’t think it’s right for such a tribunal to bar the sole journalist who wanted to report on the case by clinging to an inappropriate definition of “accredited journalist” and therefore implying I am somehow illegitimate.

I’m no fan of Cameron Slater who used to publish a blog called Whale Oil.

Slater once reprinted on Whale Oil an entire column I had written without my consent or the permission of my then employer.

If Slater had asked my permission, I would have refused as Whale Oil was not an environment I would have wished to be associated with.

I regard such un-permissioned use of a journalist’s work as theft.

I would say that Slater lacked what I regard as journalistic ethics in reproducing my work without permission.

However, in a case in June 2014 named Slater vs Blomfield, the High Court in Auckland ruled that Slater qualified as a journalist because Whale Oil “regularly disseminates news to a significant body of the public.”

It would be highly insulting to me and belittling of my long career that the law could regard Slater as a journalist but that it could not regard me as the journalist that I unquestionably am.

NOTE: I expressly give permission to anyone who wishes to distribute this story to whomever they think might be interested.