Asian foundation wants apology for 'hostile article'

The Asia: New Zealand Foundation is demanding North & South magazine print an apology for an article on Asian crime that the Press Council found inaccurate.

"Nothing short of a printed apology for a deliberately alarmist and hostile article about Asian communities in New Zealand would be acceptable from the magazine," chairman Philip Burdon said today.

A Press Council decision released today upheld complaints made against the magazine's December cover story by journalist Deborah Coddington titled Asian Angst: Is it Time to Send Some Back?

The foundation – an organisation dedicated to building New Zealand links with Asia – was one of several complainants.

The Press Council ruled North & South had failed to meet its obligation in regards to accuracy and discrimination by publishing the article.

The council said immigration policy and crime rates in a specific community or sector of society were legitimate subjects for journalistic investigation but that did not legitimise gratuitous emphasis on dehumanising racial stereotypes and fear-mongering.

The need for accuracy always remained, it said.

"The key issue is the absence of correlation between the Asian population and the crime rate," the council decision said.

"Ms Coddington argues she has recorded the rise in the Asian population and it would have insulted the readers to link that with crime figures."

The council did not accept this argument and said the linkage was vital and should have been made explicit.

Mr Burdon said there was incipient racism in NZ towards people of Asian ethnicity.

"For a publication of this authority to give it comfort and to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Asian New Zealanders in this way is completely unacceptable.

"Asian New Zealanders are owed an apology after being targeted unfairly.

"It seems that a section of New Zealanders are unwilling to accept Asians as neighbours, colleagues and countrymen from other walks of life and are determined to question their right to be here."

Mr Burdon said the article was a transparent and repugnant attempt to exploit xenophobic fears about migrants from Asian countries.

"The article was clearly wrong on so many levels. The rhetoric was subjective and hostile, and depicted Asians as outsiders without common human traits while the selective use of statistics was indefensible."

He said statistics demonstrated Asians were less likely to commit crimes than the wider New Zealand population.

"But by gathering a number of high profile crimes together, the article sought to give the impression that crime by Asians was disproportionately higher than average when the opposite is true."

However, Ms Coddington, in a column in the Herald on Sunday newspaper, dismissed the council ruling.

"If I had been judged by my peers – senior investigative journalists – I could respect their conclusions, however 'damning'."

She said the council totally ignored the main complaint – that her statistics were wrong.

"From this omission, I can only conclude that I was correct all along, and the complainants – as I argued – wilfully used different statistics."

She said she was found guilty by "three lawyers, a retired diplomat, a teacher, a writer for Department of Trade and Enterprise, the editor of a rival publication and just one journalist I respect".

Ms Coddington said she doubted that the public believed the Press Council was maintaining "highest professional standards" in the media in light of recent appallingly one-sided coverage of David Bain and Mercury Energy fiasco.