Media Council rules Pangolin headline irresponsible

The Media Council has ruled that the headline Pangolins at border published by Stuff on June 21, 2020 was simply untrue. No pangolins – live or dead – were at the border. A collection of body parts had been intercepted at the border in 2017 and 2018. A headline in the Sunday Star-Times reading ‘‘World’s most trafficked animal seized in NZ’’ was similarly misleading.

Likewise a photo of a live pangolin directly under the headline and the subhead ‘‘Pangolins, scaly creatures suspected of carrying Covid-19, have been trafficked into New Zealand‘‘ undermined the facts reported in the article that the imports were historic and related to body parts.

Troy Dando complained about the headlines claiming they were non-factual clickbait designed to lure readers with inaccuracies.

Sunday Star-Times responded that the headline didn’t say ‘live’ pangolins and the first sentence of the story referred to seizure of more than ‘‘150 products made from pangolin’’. The word ‘suspected’ had been added to the original headline to introduce the necessary element of doubt about pangolins’ role in spreading Covid-19.

The Media Council noted that a reasonable reader, seeing that headline in the present tense could easily understand it to mean pangolins infected with Covid-19 have either reached – or breached – New Zealand’s borders. At a time when concern about the virus was understandably high, such loose wording was irresponsible.

The full Media Council ruling is at www. mediacouncil.org.nz