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.
7 comments:
If TVNZ wants to be the media they are at present then they cannot be the public broadcaster and the public funding should be withdrawn.
Meanwhile in the jungle that is NZ Parliament...
https://notthebee.com/article/maori-party-in-new-zealand-rips-equal-rights-bill-shuts-down-parliament-with-haka-dance
Surely it hasn't been only in the last week you've realized that TVNZ is biased and inaccurate. They say otherwise, but because they support Te Pati Maori and the Greens, to them what those parties say is true and balanced while what ACT, National and NZ First say are all far right lies. It's the same with RNZ, Stuff, the Broadcast Standards Authority and the rest of the MSM.
Reminds me of Newstalk ZBs regular breakfast hosts impartiality when talking of all things National.
Apart from Country Calendar, mercifully not yet primarily a maori promotion program, I gave up on TVNZ long ago. The blatant pro maori alignment of RNZ is my concern. Saturday morning has become Maori Morning with Mah??? Forbes brought in to lead interviewees and maintain a relentless pro maori bias. The infuriating selective reading out of pleb listener texts gives the station and organised pro maori activists enormous scope to advance their propaganda. Relentless publicity has been given to the hikoi and participants. But no condemnation of the teachers and encouraged pupils involved. Most Saturdays about half the interviewees are trace maori/pacifica/clearly maori aligned. Often nobodies of negligible interest to other than maori associates. Followed by Julian Willcox with much more of the same..... This morning RNZ discovered that that doyen of great judgement, Jenny Shipley as a source of platitudes blaming the current turmoil on Seymour. Not on maori for their not rationally reasoned stone age physical response to a legitimate debate. Or on the blunders of previous National governments.
Desoite the change of govt RNZ has become what Willie Jackson envisaged ed; a blatant pro maori propoganda machine.
TVNZ is now the anti-government government channel – very Monty Python
Well summed, Robert.
It's time TVNZ did its propaganda on its own dime.
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