New Zealand public broadcaster ‘gutted’ after Ukraine stories edited to include ‘pro-Kremlin garbage’

More than 16 ‘inappropriately edited’ stories found after hundreds reviewed

Signage is displayed on the Radio New Zealand building in Wellington, New Zealand (AP)

Radio New Zealand, the country’s public service radio station, issued an apology after it was found that one of its journalists edited reports on the Russia-Ukraine war to add “pro-Kremlin garbage”.

The taxpayer-funded RNZ said it has so far found 16 stories that were found altered to include Russian propaganda and were published during more than a period of one year.

Paul Thompson, the chief executive of RNZ, said he was “gutted” and shocked with the discovery of edited stories, pledging to get to the bottom of it.

“It is so disappointing, I’m gutted, it’s painful,” he said. “We have to get to the bottom of how it happened.”

“It’s so disappointing that this pro-Kremlin garbage has ended up in our stories,” Thompson told Nine to Noon. “It’s inexcusable.”

He said they have already reviewed 250 stories and the ones that were found “inappropriately edited” had been corrected along with an editorial note. They would be reviewing thousands more, he added.

The public service radio station launched an investigation into the scandal, commissioning an external review of the organisation’s editing processes.

RNZ said a digital journalist has been placed on leave pending the result of an employment investigation and does not have access to their system.

The journalist, who was not named, acknowledged publishing “several stories” with pro-Russia slant since joining the broadcaster.

“I subbed several stories that way over the past number of years, in fact, since I started [at] Radio New Zealand,” they told the Checkpoint show in a statement, according to NZ Herald.

“And I have done that for five years and no one has tapped me on the shoulder and no body told me I was doing anything wrong.”

Thompson called it a breach in their editorial policy and an audit has revealed it was isolated to “one area”.

RNZ, which began as a radio broadcaster, has grown to become a multimedia organisation, and its website ranks among the nation’s most viewed news sites.

Stories attributed to the Reuters wire service or the BBC were edited to include sentences and paragraphs of pro-Kremlin narratives such as "Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum", and that "neo-Nazis had created a threat" to Russia’s borders, among others.

New Zealand’s minister for broadcasting, Willie Jackson, said the breach was a “major issue” and “unprecedented for RNZ” after he was briefed on the matter.

Some of the articles dating back to April 2022 showed changes to including the word “coup” to describe the Maidan revolution, a series of deadly clashes between protesters and forces leading to the ousting of authoritarian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

The stories were also changed to add references to a “new pro-Western government”.

RNZ said it will now add another layer of editing to wires stories.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark tweeted that she expected better from the public broadcaster.

“Extraordinary that there is so little editorial oversight at Radio New Zealand that someone employed by/contracted to them was able to rewrite online content to reflect pro-Russia stance without senior staff noticing,” she wrote. “Accountability?”