Waitakere fails in Herald complaint

The Press Council has rejected a Waitakere City Council complaint against a Herald article about "Westie hoon" drivers.

The article last August sought to perpetuate the stereotype of West Aucklanders, the Press Council said in a decision released today.

The article was headed "Legend of the Westie hoon no urban myth" and dealt with a Land Transport Safety Authority report on road safety.

Waitakere City Council complained to the Press Council, saying the article misrepresented statistics to show Waitakere drivers as "prone to getting drunk, roaring off in their cars and wrapping themselves around power poles".

The city council was particularly concerned that the article used only one of three sets of LTSA statistics - those dealing with crashes per 100 million kilometres travelled (VKT). The LTSA's Waitakere report had an explanatory note that estimated traffic flows had contributed to the VKT statistics so they were not as reliable as the crashes per 10,000 people measure.

Analysis of the other data would have shown Waitakere in much more favourable terms, the city council said.

The Herald's editor-in-chief told the Press Council that "the terms used in the headline and introduction to the story, while colourful, are borne out by the statistics and accurately reflect conclusions that could be reasonably drawn from that data".

The Press Council said the reporter's task was a very demanding one. The LTSA report on Waitakere contained 73 figures and 14 tables. There was no narrative analysis or commentary, just statistical information and graphs.

There were figures and tables for four types of road: state highway urban and rural, and local authority urban and rural. It was inevitable that for a brief news story only a small selection of the information could be glanced at.

The editor-in-chief said that the complaint appeared to have been provoked by the use of terms such as petrolhead westies, boozing and speeding. He said that figures 24, 25 and 26e in the Waitakere City report showed Waitakere was above the national average for rural and urban alcohol-related crashes; figure 26 showed speed was a problem on urban roads.

Figures 38 and 39 showed Waitakere drivers topped the national average for several types of accidents, such as hitting parked vehicles, trees and power poles, and driving off cliffs.

The city council agreed that the city did exceed (not top) the national average for some types of accidents (trees, power poles and driving off cliffs) but it was well below the national average for hitting fences, buildings and bridges. It said the city was on the national average for all objects struck.

The city council added that alcohol was above the national average for urban crashes but was again well below the average for rural crashes. The main point to note was that alcohol had consistently moved in a downwards trend in both environments over the measured period.

The clash of views illustrated how readily isolated aspects of the road safety report could be picked out and highlighted, the Press Council said. The article had significant omissions and deficiencies but these did not justify the council's upholding the complaint.

"The wider Auckland community surely understands that the stereotype of West Aucklanders that the Herald article seeks to perpetuate is just that, a stereotype, a simplistic substitute for thinking about the current scene in a more complex way," the Press Council said.

Some reference to the basis of selection of the VKT figures should have been given and the article would have been more balanced if it had included some of the other data.

"The strongly tabloid character of the article, with its striking headline and boldly colourful language, proves to have been ill-suited to capturing the multi-stranded message of this very detailed report."

However, the Press Council did not think the damage done to the reputation of Waitakere was as severe as the complainant claimed.

- NZPA