NZ Media Council upholds complaint about New Zealand’s worst murderers story

The Media Council ruled that the Herald's coverage fell well short of journalistic standards.

The New Zealand Herald apologises to Graeme Colquhoun for our reporting error and also the failure to correct it promptly. We have improved our processes to help prevent similar errors in future.

Media Council summary

The New Zealand Media Council has ruled that the accuracy, fairness and balance and corrections principles were significantly breached by a story in the New Zealand Herald.

The complainant, Mr Colquhoun, complained about a feature article published by the Herald on July 20, 2024 headlined “New Zealand’s worst murderers: More details released about longest-serving inmates”. It is a follow-up to a feature published on May 4, 2024, headlined “New Zealand’s worst murderers: The men too dangerous for parole”. The May article runs through 47 convicted murderers in New Zealand who have served more than 20 years in prison without parole. Mr Colquhoun is one of a handful of men listed with just a name and date. The July article contains details about seven men mentioned in the first story about whom the Herald had “little or no information”. That includes Mr Colquhoun.

Mr Colquhoun wrote that the article was factually incorrect and defamatory, including the statement he murdered a female during an attempted sexual assault in 1999.

When Mr Colquhoun’s lawyer wrote to the Herald in October 2024 complaining for the first time that the July article included serious incorrect information about the murder, the Herald replied that the error was being corrected that day. However, in November 2024, Mr Colquhoun advised the NZ Media Council the uncorrected article could still be found on multiple websites, including the Herald and Newstalk ZB. He provided a timestamped Herald screenshot as evidence.

The Herald stated in its March response to the NZ Media Council that it had corrected the article in October and had “today removed all reference to him from the story, including the correction”, given Mr Colquhoun had been released on parole. However, the evidence suggests the uncorrected article was still available online through October and November 2024 on the Herald website and until April 2025 on the Newstalk ZB website.

The Media Council decided the Herald article was seriously inaccurate and that the corrections were inadequate. The Herald‘s reporting in July seems to have relied on thin sources and uncertain information from police. The Herald‘s own reporting from the time was ignored and the complainant was wrongly labelled a sex offender; an egregious error. To compound matters, at each step the Herald has handled the correction poorly. The uncorrected story remained online for months despite contact from Mr Colquhoun, his lawyer and the Media Council. The correction, when made, was unclear. In all, its efforts fall well short of Media Council standards. Both the inaccurate reporting and the mishandling of the correction have had a seriously detrimental impact on the complainant’s life.

The council considers the correction failures in this case warrant an apology to the complainant.

The full Media Council ruling can be found here at Media Council - Graeme Colquhoun against the New Zealand Herald

Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.