The profile on Mary Los\u2019e was printed in the Herald\u2019s Kahu section.<\/p>\n
Los\u2019e\u2019s email raises a number of questions about the Herald\u2019s editorial processes. Kahu\u2019s feature on Mary Los\u2019e isn\u2019t flagged as having been provided or commissioned by an outside organisation. Though it acknowledges that the subject\u2019s brother works as an editor at the Herald, it doesn\u2019t mention he had pitched the story to other media while doing PR for the trust. The Herald\u2019s policy on attribution in its editorial code of conduct<\/a> states that \u201cstories from partners and other news agencies will be by-lined and appropriately sourced\u201d.<\/p>\n Neither was the extent of Joseph Los\u2019e\u2019s involvement with the Pacific Business Trust disclosed in the profile. While his email described his role as helping the trust out with media advice for free, its two most recent annual reports reveal $88,000 in payments to Los\u2019e\u2019s business JLo Consultants: $8,500 in the 2024 financial year when he initially pitched the story and a further $79,500 the year following. Both annual reports declare that Joseph Los\u2019e of JLo Consultants is related to the CEO of the trust. The trust receives nearly all its funding from the government, with a total of nearly $6.3 million invested yearly by the Ministry of Social Development, MBIE and the Ministry of Pacific People.<\/p>\n The Spinoff sent a detailed list of questions to Los\u2019e and NZME. The company returned a one-line statement, attributed to a spokesperson: \u201cWe do not comment on employment matters.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the people who Los\u2019e pitched the story to was surprised when it later appeared in the Herald with no disclosure statement. \u201cIt was clearly a conflict of interest,\u201d said the source, who spoke to The Spinoff on condition of anonymity. The source said managing conflicts can be difficult for Pasifika and M\u0101ori journalists because their communities are often small and highly interconnected. \u201cBut that just means you have to keep as clean as possible to be trusted. So you declare anything and everything that you can. That\u2019s also for the community as well. They have to be able to trust you, so you do disclose it. And I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any excuse not to.\u201d<\/p>\n James Hollings, an associate professor of journalism at Massey University, said Los\u2019e\u2019s role at the Pacific Business Trust could be managed if NZME ensured clear processes were in place to handle potential conflicts of interest. But if Los\u2019e had any role in placing the feature on his sister in the Herald, that would represent a clear conflict of interest. \u201cIf the Herald knew about his conflict, and agreed to publish the article without disclosure, that is poor judgement and in my view they should withdraw it and apologise to their readers for that lapse. If the Herald did not know about the conflict of interest, in my view that would be a serious breach of trust by an employee and the Herald should take remedial action. In any case, the Herald should explain what it knew and when, if they wish the public to continue to have faith in their editorial content.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pacific Business Trust has made its relationship with the Herald a point of pride. The Kahu feature on Mary Los\u2019e was highlighted in its 2024 annual report, along with a Waatea story that also ran in the Herald under the headline \u201cPacific Business Trust spreads its wings to hook up with businesses across Aotearoa<\/a>\u201d. \u201cOur chairman and chief executive engineered these two pieces in order to put PBT on the media map,\u201d the report said. A number of other positive stories about the trust and its work have appeared in the Herald, including a December 2023 profile of its then-chair Paul Retimanu, by the same freelancer who wrote the feature on Mary Los\u2019e, and a July 2024 Herald on Sunday story by Joseph Los\u2019e himself about a business the trust had been fostering called All Stone & Rock. It ran under the headline \u201cAuckland\u2019s newest rock stars\u201d.<\/p>\n Los\u2019e\u2019s PR help came at a turbulent time for the Pacific Business Trust. His sister started her stint as chief executive in February 2023 and soon after initiated a round of redundancies in an effort to address a range of financial issues. Two of the people who lost their jobs, John Faitala and Vahanoa Vea, initiated proceedings in the Employment Relations Authority over the way their dismissal was handled. Kahu printed its feature about Mary Los\u2019e in February 2024. In July of that year, Faitala and Vea won a legal victory, with the authority finding the trust failed to follow proper consultation procedures and ordering it to pay its former employees more than $25,000 each<\/a>.<\/p>\n More recently, the pair were awarded $75,000 in damages after Employment Court judge Merepaia King found the trust failed to adhere to the Pasifika values it committed to in their employment contracts<\/a> during the restructure. The trust has also faced criticism from some of the Pasifika organisations it\u2019s charged with fostering, with several business owners complaining to the media<\/a> about being \u201cleft in the dark\u201d and treated disrespectfully by the trust\u2019s leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n None of those issues come up in the Herald\u2019s profile on Mary Los\u2019e. The only quotes about her work at the trust come from board chairman Paul Retimanu, and they\u2019re glowing, praising her abilities as a strategic leader who \u201ccares deeply about her team and the business community she serves\u201d. \u201cAs a first-time CEO, she is knocking it out of the park and in a very short period has exceeded the board\u2019s expectations,\u201d he said. Some would say the story is pretty good PR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Herald\u2019s kaupapa M\u0101ori editor used his NZME work email to pitch a puff piece about his sister…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,208923,1073,111,139,69,26263,208924],"class_list":["post-405703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-joseph-lose","tag-media","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-nzme","tag-the-new-zealand-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Herald ran another feature on the Pacific Business Trust in 2023 by the author who wrote the profile of Mary Los\u2019e.<\/p>\n
A July 2024 headline about the Pacific Business Trust.<\/p>\n