At RNZ a vacancy opened on Morning Report when Corin Dann moved to become the business editor: an opportunity to get some balance into their news coverage. Nope. They pulled in John Campbell.
According to RNZ, Campbell was committed to impartial journalism. Yeah, right… just like the rest of their staff, no doubt. Their bias, which is prevalent in all government-run broadcasting globally, is rarely mentioned, unless it is to deny it exists. They have lost a lot of listeners since 2020. I presume their coverage of Covid helped.
Shane Currie, writing in the Herald’s Media Insider, has some interesting statistics. Overall, listeners have fallen from a high of more than 700,000 in early 2020 to a low of 467,700 at the start of 2025. Morning Report in early 2020 hit a peak of 531,836, more than 100,000 ahead of Hosking on ZB. By early 2025, Morning Report’s audience was 333,200, more than 100,000 behind Hosking. It closes out the year on 352,200 listeners, 72,100 behind Hosking.
No doubt they believe John Campbell is their mana from heaven. He arrives from TVNZ, the other leftie outfit that we are forced to subsidise. However, Media Insider reports that Campbell’s appointment was not without some discord at board level. One source said there were concerns ahead of election year and perceptions around his politics. A second source said, “I am stunned.” Here’s why.
Campbell wrote an article for TVNZ soon after the announcement of the new coalition government and triggered a complaint to the Media Council. It was headlined, “I hoped to be surprised – actually I’m amazed.” Campbell did not mean this kindly. He expressed his disappointment at the coalition agreements and, in his view, their lack of attention to climate change and poverty (obviously forgetting Jacinda did nothing), a “deeply regressive” approach to race relations and misguided support for landlords and gun-owners.
If Campbell was on ZB, he would be entitled to his opinion: that’s the purpose of the station. It is privately owned and so presenters can have opinions that some people might regard as biased. However, on government-owned media, the opposite applies. At TVNZ, he should have been required to report facts without expressing a personal opinion. This flies in the face of RNZ’s pronouncement that Campbell is committed to impartial journalism. He most definitely is not.
After a so-called scathing report by former Head of News Richard Sutherland, RNZ appointed a chief audio officer, Pip Keane. Campbell and Keane worked together on Checkpoint and Campbell Live at TV3. What a coincidence! Keane’s appointment is supposed “to signal ambition”…
As for Campbell, Media Insider says Morning Report is a programme he has listened to since it began. “My parents woke up to it. My childhood mornings echoed to the sound of it. That makes Morning Report really special to me. My first understanding of journalism would have been from Morning Report.” This useful piece of puffed-up reminiscing tells us the programme is somewhat responsible for his leftist views. Impartial? Not likely.
Moving onto TVNZ, it is the same story. The vacancy on their Breakfast programme was, again, the opportunity to balance their editorial stance and, again, an opportunity was missed. It was no surprise when the successful applicant was named as the one and only Tova O’Brien. Who would’ve guessed. TVNZ can’t break the habit, either.
Campbell moves from TVNZ to RNZ and O’Brien moves from Stuff to TVNZ. This is just moving deckchairs on the left-wing media. The dire need for change was ignored: instead they chose the status quo; keep leftist principles and policies in place, keep the bias going and keep losing public trust and audience.
Never was an old saying more true: a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
JC is a right-wing crusader. Reached an age that embodies the dictum only the good die young. This article was first published HERE
According to RNZ, Campbell was committed to impartial journalism. Yeah, right… just like the rest of their staff, no doubt. Their bias, which is prevalent in all government-run broadcasting globally, is rarely mentioned, unless it is to deny it exists. They have lost a lot of listeners since 2020. I presume their coverage of Covid helped.
Shane Currie, writing in the Herald’s Media Insider, has some interesting statistics. Overall, listeners have fallen from a high of more than 700,000 in early 2020 to a low of 467,700 at the start of 2025. Morning Report in early 2020 hit a peak of 531,836, more than 100,000 ahead of Hosking on ZB. By early 2025, Morning Report’s audience was 333,200, more than 100,000 behind Hosking. It closes out the year on 352,200 listeners, 72,100 behind Hosking.
No doubt they believe John Campbell is their mana from heaven. He arrives from TVNZ, the other leftie outfit that we are forced to subsidise. However, Media Insider reports that Campbell’s appointment was not without some discord at board level. One source said there were concerns ahead of election year and perceptions around his politics. A second source said, “I am stunned.” Here’s why.
Campbell wrote an article for TVNZ soon after the announcement of the new coalition government and triggered a complaint to the Media Council. It was headlined, “I hoped to be surprised – actually I’m amazed.” Campbell did not mean this kindly. He expressed his disappointment at the coalition agreements and, in his view, their lack of attention to climate change and poverty (obviously forgetting Jacinda did nothing), a “deeply regressive” approach to race relations and misguided support for landlords and gun-owners.
If Campbell was on ZB, he would be entitled to his opinion: that’s the purpose of the station. It is privately owned and so presenters can have opinions that some people might regard as biased. However, on government-owned media, the opposite applies. At TVNZ, he should have been required to report facts without expressing a personal opinion. This flies in the face of RNZ’s pronouncement that Campbell is committed to impartial journalism. He most definitely is not.
After a so-called scathing report by former Head of News Richard Sutherland, RNZ appointed a chief audio officer, Pip Keane. Campbell and Keane worked together on Checkpoint and Campbell Live at TV3. What a coincidence! Keane’s appointment is supposed “to signal ambition”…
As for Campbell, Media Insider says Morning Report is a programme he has listened to since it began. “My parents woke up to it. My childhood mornings echoed to the sound of it. That makes Morning Report really special to me. My first understanding of journalism would have been from Morning Report.” This useful piece of puffed-up reminiscing tells us the programme is somewhat responsible for his leftist views. Impartial? Not likely.
Moving onto TVNZ, it is the same story. The vacancy on their Breakfast programme was, again, the opportunity to balance their editorial stance and, again, an opportunity was missed. It was no surprise when the successful applicant was named as the one and only Tova O’Brien. Who would’ve guessed. TVNZ can’t break the habit, either.
Campbell moves from TVNZ to RNZ and O’Brien moves from Stuff to TVNZ. This is just moving deckchairs on the left-wing media. The dire need for change was ignored: instead they chose the status quo; keep leftist principles and policies in place, keep the bias going and keep losing public trust and audience.
Never was an old saying more true: a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
JC is a right-wing crusader. Reached an age that embodies the dictum only the good die young. This article was first published HERE
12 comments:
Obvious to all - defund this msm. Why does National (Luxon and Goldsmith) allow this policy to continue its damage to the Coalition?
So true. They lost me years ago, but what still really grates is that our taxes prop these pro-regressive neo-Marxists up. Like a bad smell, they need to be gone, or at least entirely funding their own biased selves.
Congratulations John Campbell on your appointment. A long-serving steward of kiwi journalism who can still put out quality long form investigations- see his work on Brian Tamaki and Destiny church this year. Don’t let the haters get you down. Tall poppy syndrome still running strong in this country!
Rnz? Tvnz? How about the nz herald too? This column may have just exposed the futility of Phillip Crump’s six golden rules of journalism and his editorial board.
A Thank-You Note
(From Claire Charters, Anne Salmond, Lady Moxon — and the NZ Herald)
In a Christmas Eve opinion column in the New Zealand Herald, Deloitte partner and Māori Services leader Lee Gray argued that Māori are “largely excluded” from artificial intelligence design in New Zealand and that Māori-led frameworks, grounded in cultural values, should guide the ethical development of AI. He cited the growing size and sophistication of Māori commercial entities as evidence of capability and urged a “humanising” approach to AI that embeds Māori principles at the design and governance level. The column was published unchallenged as opinion, with no interrogation of its factual claims, assumptions, or the commercial interests of its author.
⸻
Dear Lee,
What a thoughtful Christmas gift. Truly. 🎄
Many of us academics and activists have been labouring for years to persuade the country that every new system — constitutional, environmental, technological — must be intercepted early and gently re-oriented away from crude democratic universalism and towards something more… interpretive. You’ve saved us a great deal of time.
We particularly appreciate how you opened with exclusion. Not evidence, of course — that would only complicate matters — but a clean, declarative statement that Māori are “largely excluded” from AI. That single sentence does so much work. Once exclusion is asserted, authority follows naturally. It’s practically self-executing.
Thank you, too, for the elegant laundering of universal human values. Care, stewardship, trust, accountability — all so drearily common when left in their Western packaging. Recasting them as culturally specific Māori contributions gives them both gravitas and proprietorship. We’ve long argued that values become more powerful once they are ethnically licensed, and you’ve demonstrated this beautifully.
The economic figures were a masterstroke. The Māori asset base, the Deloitte Top 200 Māori Index — not because they are relevant to AI engineering, of course, but because they establish moral and institutional weight. Democratic mandate is so 20th century. Balance sheets, we’ve found, do nicely.
We are also grateful for your choice of battlefield. AI is perfect: new, opaque, frightening, and largely unregulated. A domain where ethics outruns evidence and frameworks outrun outcomes. Embedding “principles” now ensures that governance structures, advisory boards, consultation rights and judicial interpretation can all follow, quietly and irreversibly. You couldn’t have picked better terrain.
A special note of thanks to our friends at the New Zealand Herald. By sheltering the column under the warm umbrella of “opinion”, you spared it the indignity of fact-checking, challenge, or disclosure of interest. Comment is free, after all — particularly when it advances the correct moral trajectory. Journalism as stenography would have been too crude; journalism as facilitation is far more useful.
Taken together, this was not merely a column. It was a template:
• assert exclusion
• elevate values
• convert participation into authority
• embed governance through ethics
• normalise it via media
• monetise it via consultancy
We couldn’t have written it better ourselves.
With warm seasonal regards,
Claire Charters (constitutional possibility)
Anne Salmond (values translation)
Lady Moxon (juridical expansion)
The New Zealand Herald (opinion, untroubled by scrutiny)
—PB
Anon 7:16 I'm confused, is there another John Campbell joining RNZ.
One who understands and can report on the real world in which we all must live.
The cabal speaks....
Crump, Joyce and Grenon should urgently rethink strategy in 2026. This is a joke.
Personally, I think it's great that Campbell is joining RNZ again.
That means they will lose even more listeners, therefore less indoctrination of the gullible voters.
When RNZ numbers get to a desperately low point, perhaps Luxon will say that that RNZ is no longer viable and axe it.
Ditto TVNZ.
Keep up the good work PB! Merry Christmas mate.
When will the govt listen to us. Defund these far left biased entities.
Does the Herald (or any other MSM newspaper for that matter) print anything else but opinion pieces these days?
Hugh jorgan … thanks. Blessings for the festive season too.
—PB
Yes special thanks to PB who always comes up with something interesting and worth reading.
Merry Xmas mate.
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