June 9, 2023 8:38pm by David Farrar

Radio NZ pushing Russian propaganda

very, very odd story unfolding in New Zealand: appears an employee at RNZ (the state-funded broadcaster, NZ's version of BBC) has been editing wire copy about the Ukraine war to make it more Russia-friendly. RNZ says it is "investigating". https://t.co/sBHt58NdED
— Tess McClure (@tessairini) June 9, 2023

This is quite amazing. Someone (I presume it is one person) at Radio NZ has been taking news stories from Reuters about the Ukraine conflict and editing them so they more closely reflect the Kremlin line that Ukraine had a coup in 2014 and is run by neo-nazis etc.

There are huge questions here about Radio NZ’s editorial processes. How could one person make these changes without approval, and how did they get away with it without being detected? It has only come to light thanks to people on Twitter.

What has happened would be embarrassing for any media outlet, let alone a state owned public broadcaster.

Radio New Zealand need to very quickly investigate this, and be transparent on what happened. An independent investigation might even be warranted.