Plunket on leaving Radio NZ

Sean Plunket expounds on why he is looking to leave Radio New Zealand:

Frosty relations between Plunket, 44, and his Radio New Zealand bosses came to a head when they refused to allow the broadcaster to host an election debate on TVNZ7.

An election debate on Internet issues of all things. Hardly a commercial threat to Radio NZ.

He believed appearing on the TVNZ show as a public broadcaster would only enhance the brand of Morning Report and Radio New Zealand.

Exactly. Exposure is good, if done in a complementary way. And this would have been very complementary.

Then in the full interview we get:

It’s not the first time he’s left a job on a matter of principle. In 1995 he quit the Holmes show over stories he was doing on New Zealand First allegedly using parliamentary staffing money to run the party.

Well some things do not change.

Plunket’s favourite fable is The Emperor’s New Clothes. The role of the journalist is to point out that the emperor is naked, he says, not to “weave the cloth that makes someone nude. The worse censorship is self-censorship within an organisation”.

Indeed, and within a country. Read this article in The Australian about losing the battle for free speech.