Simon O'Connor: Fundamental(ist) mistakes

Just when you think Kim Hill and the people at Radio NZ cannot embarrass themselves – and New Zealand – anymore, they go ahead and outdo themselves.

During a recent visit, former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was invited for an interview with Hill. Meandering through a variety of topics, she eventually stated that those who voted for Brexit were racists and xenophobes.

Graham Adams: Media knives flashing for Luxon’s government

No one is going to die wondering how some of the nation’s most influential journalists personally view the new National-led government. It has become abundantly clear within a few days of the coalition agreements being signed that they both loathe and fear it.

It is often said that the National Party attracts people who imagine they are born to rule. But since the details of the agreements between National, Act and New Zealand First were announced on Friday, it seems it is the left-leaning media who see themselves as the nation’s true aristocrats, endowed with a perpetual mandate to decide which ideas are suitable for public discussion. And which should be allowed to be put to voters in a referendum.

Karl du Fresne: If RNZ caters to all New Zealanders, why have so many given up on it?

A recent Dominion Post column of mine headlined “Dinosaur versus Dominatrix” (reproduced on this site), about an on-air clash between Kim Hill and Don Brash, brought a couple of old-school broadcasting grandees out of the woodwork.

Ian Johnstone, a familiar face on TV screens from the 1960s till the 1990s, and Geoffrey Whitehead, a former BBC deputy political editor who became CEO of Radio New Zealand and now lives in retirement in Napier, both had a whack at me for criticising Hill’s hostile demolition job on Brash.

Karl du Fresne: Dominatrix vs dinosaur

Don Brash made two big mistakes recently.

The first was to think he could criticise a high-profile Radio New Zealand presenter on Facebook and get away with it. The second and much bigger mistake was to accept an invitation to explain himself on Kim Hill’s Saturday morning radio show.

Inevitably, Brash was savaged. It was as close as RNZ will ever get to blood sport as entertainment.

Dave Witherow: Jabberwocky

For more than a year our state broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, has concealed the fact that it is engaged in a campaign to “change the linguistic landscape”. This radical new mission was far from voluntary. It was imposed from above, forced upon a supine RNZ staff following amendments to the Maori Language Act in 2016.

Few New Zealanders were aware that one of their most trusted institutions had been so fundamentally subverted, and no-one at RNZ, it would seem, thought fit to tell them (or even, as many of us might have hoped - to protest). But no, they just quietly went along - some of them minimally and probably reluctantly, but others with servile enthusiasm.