The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is banned from attending New Zealand Budget briefings until 2025, after it breached protocol and reported early on Budget 2022.
WSJ published "both restricted and sensitive" material in May, almost an hour prior to the 2pm embargo lifting. Budget lock-up protocols also include a ban on transmitting or receiving information, irrespective if the information if Budget-related or not, and phones are to be off or on flight mode.
Treasury's Deputy Chief Executive Struan Little said on Tuesday the WSJ "has told us that a failsafe against accidental transmission, that was installed in the journalist’s usual work laptop, was not installed in the laptop they had taken into the Budget 2022 lock-up".
"It stated that the journalist also left their mobile hotspot running, which allowed the story to be transmitted to WSJ’s publishing desk.
"WSJ also told us the editor handling the story skipped one of the protocols that would have provided a failsafe against accidental publication, and despite the story being marked with a 2pm embargo it was published on the Dow Jones website at approximately 1pm."
Treasury has now banned WSJ and the reporter from all future Budget, Financial Statements of the Government, Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update and Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update restricted briefings up to Budget 2025.
“These consequences for WSJ and the specific journalist are proportionate with the degree of seriousness of the embargo breach and the need to reinforce to everyone the importance of compliance with the lock-up protocols.”
The Wall Street Journal proactively told Treasury it had breached the embargo.
Following the incident, Treasury launched an internal investigation.
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