"Heads must roll" if 1News issued second article as a result of pressure from the TVNZ board

Reporting at Newsroom and questions in the House reveal the full story of how TVNZ’s chair Andrew Barclay bent over backwards to appease Minister for Media and Communications, Paul Goldsmith who has been trying to influence the news narrative, along with Police Minister Mark Mitchell, in their own political favour.

Section 28 of the Television New Zealand Act 2003 states that it is unlawful for any Minister, whether the shareholding Minister or another, to “give a direction to TVNZ … in respect of any programme or other content” and more specifically in respect of “the gathering or presentation of news or the preparation or presentation of any current affairs programme or content”.

So when Minister Goldsmith told Barclay that a recent 1News article was ‘bad’ he seems likely to have unlawfully breached the Act.

The article in question reported unfavourable law and order statistics on a day when Government ministers were hoping for a favourable story about other law and order statistics. Minister Goldsmith also released a video in which he personally criticised the 1News story.

It goes without saying that journalists and news media should be free to report on whatever news they think is important, whether they work for a Government owned news organisation or not.

Goldsmith admitted his comments were unusual for a Minister for Media and Communications to make to the head of a publicly owned news media. "I don't actually do it very often but occasionally I do it and I felt like doing it on this occasion," he is reported to have said. Elsewhere Goldsmith said “It is not appropriate for me to be talking about political discussions and editorial matters with the board, and I haven't."

Clearly, he is right about the first part but wrong with the last three words of that statement. Goldsmith did discuss editorial matters with TVNZ, in fact none other than the chair of the TVNZ board. What’s more, it was in the context of appointments to the board, so Barclay may well have been nervous of his own place when being chastised by the Minister.

It is poor governance for the TVNZ chair to be seeking the Minister’s opinion on editorial matters. How is that relevant to TVNZ or to the board? It shows that the new chair has little understanding of his role.

Even more questionable was the fact that a couple of days later, 1News ran a second article that gave the Government what they wanted - coverage of the favourable law and order statistics. It was especially suspicious since the story was published days after the statistics were announced and had become ‘old news’. If this was the result of Government pressure, directly to 1News or via the TVNZ board, New Zealand should be very concerned.

Journalism is founded on independence. Journalists are known and relied on for maintaining a staunchly independent editorial policy. The TVNZ newsroom should never kowtow to a Government on questions of which news story to run. Minister Goldsmith can say what he likes about the media, but when he makes public comments about a publicly owned media platform for which he is the designated co-shareholder, then he has to tread very carefully lest it be interpreted as an attempt to exert influence, whether direct or implied.

While trust in news media is at an all-time low and the government drags New Zealand’s corruption perception index to historic lows, these events will only have a detrimental impact.

The big issue in the background to this is the question over political appointments to the board of publicly owned media and the extent to which these appointees are really independent or serve as vectors of indirect political manipulation. Barclay needs to explain what the board said to the TVNZ newsroom.

The Better Public Media Trust calls for an independent enquiry of TVNZ processes to find out how and why the second news story was produced. If it finds that was a result of pressure from the Minister of Media and Communications via the TVNZ board, we believe heads must roll to ensure this never happens again.

For further comment or interview requests, please contact:

Attributable to:
Myles Thomas
Chair, Better Public Media Trust

Media contact:
myles@betterpublicmedia.org.nz
021 666 297

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