RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson says his organisation's "editing systems" for online news are "clearly not as robust as they need to be" after "pro-Kremlin garbage" was edited into stories on the war in Ukraine.
Over a dozen stories published by reputable overseas agencies, Reuters and the BBC, were edited by a single employee to include Russia-friendly arguments about the conflict.
Thompson gave his first interview on the scandal to RNZ's Nine to Noon programme late this morning. The media boss apologised to the Ukrainian community and said the public had been let down by the shoddy edits.
"It's so disappointing that this pro-Kremlin garbage has ended up in our stories," he said.
"It's inexcusable."
The chief executive said the incident exposed a "systemic weakness" in the way in which stories were published on its website.
"This also raises issues around our editing process for online news… clearly, our editing systems are not as robust as they need to be," Thompson said.
Several pro-Russia edits about the war were made by an RNZ employee. (Source: 1News)
"There is a particular employment investigation around one person, but this is a problem which is around a systemic weakness.
"Therefore, we just need to do the review and it needs to come to conclusions."
He said the external review would report directly to the public broadcaster's board and be "released fully" to the public.
RNZ was still working through the details of who carried out the audit, the chief executive said, with additional details to be announced on Wednesday.
Thompson said staff were now reviewing thousands of published articles to weed out any suspect work, which could take a "few days if not weeks".
"We're going through the audit of what will end up probably being thousands of stories. But at the moment, we've reviewed 250 of them."
The chief executive said the edited articles were a "blow" to RNZ.
"We are responding as well as we can and as openly as we can. The really sad thing is how much great work that we do," he said.
"The best part of working in RNZ is the fierceness with which we defend our editorial standards, and it's galling that the activity in a very small area of the organisation can affect us all."
RNZ didn't respond to complaint over story
Yesterday, 1News revealed that a group of Ukrainian New Zealanders complained to the public broadcaster in October last year about an RNZ-written story that they said resembled Russian "propaganda".
The article included an unchallenged claim from an interviewee stating, among other things, that New Zealand was "inadvertently helping to arm neo-Nazi militias and far-right groups".
Despite receiving the email eight months ago, the story remained on RNZ's website until late last week.
Mahi for Ukraine's Kate Turska said both a physical war and a propaganda war were being fought. (Source: Breakfast)
The broadcaster confirmed it was briefly removed while an audit took place.
It was then reuploaded on Sunday afternoon, following inquiries from 1News, with an amendment acknowledging an "early version" of the story had lacked balance.
The amendment claimed the story had been updated on the same day it was published in May 2022, after an editorial process, to include comment from a wider number of sources.
Thompson said today that the emailed complaint had likely not been considered as it was responded to by the broadcasting minister's office, and RNZ had only been CC'd alongside other news publications which had re-published the story.
"That article, we have reviewed it. It is on the list of articles on our website where we've made editing changes. It does meet our editorial standards."
RNZ didn't respond yesterday when 1News asked whether the journalist who wrote the piece is the same person being investigated for altering the 15 stories originally written by Reuters and BBC reporters.
The RNZ-authored piece was also originally re-published last year by the New Zealand Herald and Newshub under a content-sharing agreement.
"We were CC'd into [the email] with a number of other media companies who ran that material. And in the normal course of events, we do keep that church-and-state separation around complaints to the minister. The minister did respond," Thompson said.
"In hindsight, perhaps it was something we could have thought about at the time more than we did."
Media publications, including 1News, hold content-sharing agreements to use some RNZ stories on their digital platforms.
However, through their agreements, publications using RNZ news stories do not have permission to reuse RNZ's published version of Reuters, BBC, or other wire stories.
A spokesperson for Herald publisher NZME told 1News: "We’ve now republished the story as per RNZ’s revised piece. We’re reviewing our own processes around publishing syndicated content."
Meanwhile, Newshub-owner Warner Bros Discovery said it had removed the article and that it had a sharing agreement with Reuters to re-publish their articles directly.
1News has previously requested an interview with RNZ.
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