Heather du Plessis-Allan: Good luck convincing us of impartiality

Good luck to TVNZ.  

Good luck to TVNZ trying to convince anyone that they are unbiased, given what's just happened with them in the last week.  

I just played you the clip of the Breakfast reporter singing with the organiser of the Hikoi - which I think any right-minded person would interpret as an endorsement of the Hikoi.

I think this should earn her some serious trouble if TVNZ takes perceptions of bias seriously.  

What is much more serious for them is that the woman who was tipped to become the top news boss has just been outed today for taking personal leave to go on the Hikoi.  

The reason we know this is because she loves a social media post, and she's put it up on her Instagram. So just flaunted it for everyone to see.  

If you are a news boss, or about to become the news boss, you should be smart enough to keep that private emphasis on private - especially if your organisation is trying to pretend that it's unbiased, which is what TVNZ is trying to do.  

Very hard at the moment in the face of falling public trust in media.  

Just a few weeks ago, TVNZ self-published its editorial guidelines for journalists.  

The point of that was to tell us that they take impartiality seriously and that they are impartial.  

Well, that's just been massively undone by finding out that the woman who will be in charge of all of the journalists actually doesn't really like the current government at all.  

So, good luck.  

You can corral those journalists into a neutral space, all you like.  

But if the lady who is their boss has views so strong about the current government that she wants to go on a protest against them, I think you've got a problem with perception of bias.  

Now, the important thing here about TVNZ to understand is that it pretends it's impartial, right?  

It is not, that is the important thing here. 

Nobody would mind if the editor of The Spinoff turned up at the Hikoi because The Spinoff wears its colours on its sleeve.  

We know what they're about and that they own it. They’re just are completely honest about it.  

TVNZ though was trying to convince us that they are neutral.  

The other important thing here is that TVNZ is the publicly owned broadcaster on television, right?  

So that also means there are standards that we expect from them that are different to what everybody else is subjected to.  

Now, TVNZ in order to convince us that they are impartial and that they demand impartiality from the people who work within the newsroom and in the editorial team, they would have to a not give that woman the news job and I doubt that's going to happen.  

They would have to discipline that woman and discipline the reporter for what happened on television and then make that public.  

Do you think that's going to happen?  

No, me neither.  

So good luck to TVNZ trying to convince us from here on that they're impartial. 

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.