So imagine my luck when enter 103 year old Granny Myra Letts. Below is a nice picture and article by the nice people of
Manawatu Standard of Mrs Letts on her 103rd birthday in February of this year with a glass of vino in her hand. Bless. And look she also is a fan of Australian Women's Weekly.
"Mrs Lett said she does not know what the secret is to living to 103, but has treated herself over the years with a love of fashion, jewellery, sweet food, and her weekly read of Australian Women's Weekly magazine".
Not many people live past 100, a blessing and a curse. My Great Grandmother did and her three daughters made their 90's. Even fewer people are 103 and live in the Palmerston North's Rose A Lea rest home. Mrs Letts didn't want any presents all she wanted for her birthday is what every 103 year old wants "
to see everybody and have a piece of cake".
This is the image that Mrs Letts' family would wish us to know her by. The image they want her children and grand and great-grand children to remember her by.
But mainstream media across New Zealand published a picture of Mrs Letts that the family do not wish us to remember her by. I will not link to or publish it here and most seem to have destroyed the evidence of their posts by now in any instance, removing photos and changing their online versions of the original sensationalist items they had up. Most ran stories with a very obvious description of who she was and most even named her. Thing is, when I saw the picture and read the story about the whistleblower I immediately thought that it was the family who gave consent for the picture to be published to prove what an awful bunch of criminals the Rest Home owners were so thought nothing of it.
It turns out that the family
did not consent to publication, were not even called for permission to use the photo and like sheep the MSM copied other publishers of the photo for this sensationalist emotional story that is based around the premise that nobody wants to see Granny tied to the bed. It sells papers and is unequivocally hard to spin as to why it was done. This is Granny. However the family seem to have known that Mrs Letts was being treated that way to assist with her bent leg and have come out as a majority in support of it (one unnamed family member was a bit tetchy, she was probably the one who visited the least and so was horrified by what she was finding when she did visit).
Rest homes are bloody awful at the best of times. It is all a bit damn grim and there is plenty of blood, guts and gore. Rest homes also bends rules to help families. Seen that before as well from personal experience. I've visited relatives in them and between the increased senility of the residents, their sometimes reluctance to complain due to the feelings of burden on the family and that they all know they will never get to leave. It is all a very confusing dynamic for a visitor not used to being there.
The issue I want to focus on is not the right or wrongs of the rest home or the DHB for that is a matter for investigation and the facts released by the DHB look frighteningly grim and hard to spin. The whistleblowers you would hope had the best interests of the residents in the forefront of their concerns as whistleblowers in New Zealand tend to end up being shot rather than praised.
I want to focus on the MSM publishing of the photographed leaked of Mrs Letts lying on her bed with her leg tied.Mrs Letts' family through the daughter Bev Stone have claimed that it was a breach of privacy and exposed a lack of dignity. I would totally agree that if the picture was used without the family or Mrs Letts' consent then they have every reason to be utterly outraged. I would be dumping a retainer with a senior lawyer immediately if it was my Granny and on the next flight back to deal with it. It would definitely meet my definition of an "urgent trip home". It's Granny.
Blacking out her face made little difference for when the family read it they knew it was her, the younger children in the family may see that picture of Granny on the bed and recognise her. Made worse of course that Mrs Letts died on November 9th and was buried just a few days ago. How many 103 year olds live in that small town?
This family just having buried their beloved 103 year old Granny now finds a picture of her in the newspaper with her leg tied to the bed. The insensitivity of that is on the extreme end.
Outraged they want to go to the Privacy Commissioner. Of course they are clueless at this stage as the Privacy Act excludes
news media. And the chances of success in pinging the whistleblower are limited as they can claim a "public interest" defence immediately as they have channelled their concern to the DHB in the first instance. The whistleblowers gave the photos to the DHB for the purposes of raising their concerns. The Letts' need to go to the NZ Press Council against the media publishers. Here they will find a "statement of principles" that media must follow. Among them
3. PrivacyEveryone is entitled to privacy of person, space and personal information, and these rights should be respected by publications. Nevertheless the right of privacy should not interfere with publication of matters of public record, or obvious significant public interest.Those suffering from trauma or grief call for special consideration, and when approached, or enquiries are being undertaken, careful attention is to be given to their sensibilities.11. Photographs
Editor should take care in photographic and image selection and treatment............Those involving situations of grief and shock are to be handled with special consideration for the sensibilities of those affected.It's basically a toothless tiger if you want compensation and retribution on the MSM as the decisions are based on ethics and not monetary recompense. Its sanction is some time after the damage has been done, to require the publisher to publish in a prominent place that they were bad girls and boys. Legally very unsatisfying.
So really like any matter with the media, the family needs a lawyer who can negotiate a position in a meeting with publishers and threaten merry hell to rain on them to get a settlement before having to enter the general judicial system where in all honesty, you push muck up hill from day one getting a result for this unfortunately.
In entering even this initial delicate negotiation process wouldn't it be handy to have, at least, ergh, I don't know - say the Guidelines for Vetting Pre-publication.doc that comes from the publishers HQ? Their own internal rules about situations such as this? Where an editor has publicly claimed the text is sourced from media law training given by a top-tier NZ law firm? But curiously sent from head office in Sydney headed up "Guidelines" and widely distributed to contributors and staff as a "pre-publication vetting.doc"?
I dunno, pretty embarrassing if a publisher is breaching their own internal guidelines? While a journalist declares these sorts of discoveries "101", it is solely because they have no idea how potent these sorts of corporate produced documents can be in the wrong hands - not of a mildly trained junior repeater - but a good hard-arsed negotiator of a lawyer. This is why corporates go to great lengths to hide internal manuals, guidelines and policies. Also it is why when found distributed widely they deny all knowledge that they are official.
And here MSM this week has a huge fail for the Letts family.
APN's own guidelines for pre-publication vetting.doc prove this with not one but
three breaches and one restatement of the "you are too poor to sue us so we can do anything we want to you" without taking care. Below:
Guideline 2b."Particular care should be taken to ensure that people are always correctly identified and that the photographs accurately depict the intended people, and do not implicate unrelated people".Does the picture of Mrs Letts accurately depict her? I think not. She is an old lady with old lady problems, one being gammy legs. Highly typical in a resthome for residents to have physical problems, she is after all 103! The picture is being used in a way to slight what was really happening to her and in the process has implicated the unrelated corporate person being the rest home in this particular incidence - the care of Mrs Letts. All without the permission or consultation of the Letts' family.
Guideline 2c. "Avoid entirely, or take particular care in relation to any allegations or implications of fraud, dishonesty, untruthfulness and other improper conduct, unless they can be clearly substantiated".Was improper conduct alleged in relation to Mrs Letts? Sure thing. The publications have all produced stories alleging improper conduct at the rest home, that Mrs Letts was mis-treated. All without I hazard to guess based on the Close Up Interview and others - ONE single phone call to family members to put them right. They can't call Mrs Letts of course, she's dead! But not one single call to family? That's not avoiding entirely the risk or taking care.
Guideline 2d."There are categories of people more inclined to sue....."It was deemed here that Granny's estate or her family isn't wealthy enough to sue for damages through the courts for her privacy and dignity being invaded. They weren't deemed worthy of even a courtesy call.
Just think if it was say a politically connected man John Key's mother don't you think the papers would have called John Key to check their facts? Or if it was wealthy Sir Michael Fay's mother likewise? They wouldn't dare run it without litigious Sir Bob Jones' permission if it was his family member. And how about power legal eagle Colin Carruthers QC? Do you think they would have taken him on without asking the story about Gran first?
Guideline 2g."The fact the story has been broken elsewhere without apparent repercussions does not necessarily mean that it is safe for APN to pick it up. APN should make its own independent assessment of risk".So did anyone in the MSM actually contact Granny's family to ask if they would like her picture published? And could use it in a story against the rest home? Clearly not....
If these guidelines are all SO basic and formed from common sense and knowledge gained from training or other documents that have been around for years then then why can't editors in the MSM actually follow them?I note that the rest home has engaged the services of Bruce Stewart of Palmerston North. There is another Bruce Stewart QC. Stewart QC is twenty years more aggressive, nasty, well-read and ruthless than I am and takes absolutely no prisoners in contentious matters.
The Letts' could do well to have a chat to him if they want a negotiation and compensation for their wrongs.
You still think journalism 101 is so simple?
I ask again:
What has happened within APN and their New Zealand publications to instigate APN Sydney forwarding these guidelines and emails in and around the past couple of months?
So far this "non-story" has reached:
The NBR
here.
The Pinko MP's at Red Alert
here.An absent David Farrar who is too tight to ride a camel because they charge for dismount
here.Pinko Dimpost
here and
here.Professional writer Bill Bennett
here.Christian networked blog M&M's
here.Former Journo Home Paddock
here.Former Journo Roar Prawn's
here.Inquiring Mind
here.Gotcha
here.And Russellite's on Public Address will no doubt still be filling the troll farm with things that would make my mother blush about me.
And now Steven Price has jumped in
here. I would not call him a Russellite. There is a much more fun description for him. Lawyer (using that term loosely if she didn't actually pay him) for the terminally strange faker
Pearl Going.
Photos from Noz at 
All stolen from The A List.
