Newspaper fined over sex crime report

The owner of the newspaper Hawke's Bay Today was fined today over an article likely to identify the victim of a sex crime.

The owner, APN New Zealand, editor and reporter were charged over a front-page story on September 13 last year about a man jailed for two years and two months for historic sex offences.

Today in Hastings District Court police prosecutor Tony Rielly asked that the charge of being author of the report against Douglas James Laing, 50, be dropped.

The prosecution also withdrew a jointly laid charge against editor Louis Harold Pierard, 52, for publishing the story.

Pierard and Laing were formally warned by the police.

The newspaper's owner pleaded guilty to the publication of the story, which had details that could lead to the identity of the victim.

APN's counsel, Bruce Gray, said there had been no intent to identify the victim and the publication of the article had been an error of judgment.

Before publication the story had been read by the victim's mother who had assured the reporter the victim could not be identified from the information in the story, Mr Gray said.

He said the story had been written with the help of the police who had facilitated the meeting of Laing with the family and had given a photo of the man to the family so the paper could publish it.

Mr Gray said the company wished to apologise for identifying the victim.

Judge Geoff Rea acknowledged the newspaper did not deliberately identify the victim and was thus different from other breaches of suppression in the media recently.

He fined APN $600 and ordered the company to pay court costs of $130.

- NZPA

* APN owns nzherald.co.nz, the New Zealand Herald, Herald on Sunday, Aucklander and other papers throughout the country. It is also joint owner of The Radio Network.