Global Courant
New Zealand’s public radio broadcaster has found that nearly two dozen Reuters and BBC articles republished on its website had been inappropriately edited, some of which had taken on a pro-Russian slant, a spokesman for the broadcaster said.
The broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, said on Friday it would investigate articles containing issues. In addition to articles related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the broadcaster said it found articles about Israeli politics and tensions around Taiwan that had been improperly modified.
A web editor from RNZ, which is funded by the government but editorially independent, has been sent on leave, according to the spokesman, and the channel has apologized for the changes in the articles. Local New Zealand news media released the name of the editor, but the broadcaster said it would not confirm the person’s identity while the review was ongoing. The person named did not respond to a request for comment.
RNZ said it was checking hundreds of stories. So far, 22 have been inappropriately edited, a station spokesman said Tuesday.
On Monday, a representative of the Reuters news agency said the RNZ news agency had asked to investigate when it noticed that some of its articles had been published on the broadcaster’s website after they had been edited without its consent, as required by the sharing agreement. .
Some changes seemed to echo Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine. Among other things, they called the pro-democracy Maidan revolution in Ukraine a “coup d’état”; describe that Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea took place in 2014 “following a referendum”; and false claims that “neo-Nazis” are fighting for Ukraine.
Speaking to RNZ’s “Checkpoint” news program on Monday, the employee said he had edited “several stories that way” in the past. “I did that for five years and nobody tapped me on the shoulder and told me I was doing something wrong,” he said.
On the same programme, Paul Thompson, the broadcaster’s CEO, said: “We feel shocked and bewildered and really, really challenged by this.” The employee was not fired, but an “employment process” was underway, Mr Thompson added.
Earlier that day, Mr. Thompson had described the edits as ‘pro-Kremlin nonsense’.
