A journalist accused of inserting Russia-friendly and false information into RNZ news stories on the Ukraine war has broken their silence tonight.
RNZ's Checkpoint programme reports that it spoke to the under-fire reporter who claimed they had been editing news articles in the same manner since starting at the public broadcaster.
The chief executive said the incident exposed a "systemic weakness" in the way in which stories were published on its website. (Source: 1News)
"I subbed several stories that way over a number of years, in fact, since I started at Radio New Zealand. And I have done that for five years and no one has tapped me on the shoulder and told me I was doing anything wrong," the suspended journalist told RNZ.
The reporter has been put on leave as other staff investigate thousands of stories they had worked on. An external audit at RNZ has also been ordered.
The chief executive of the public broadcaster, Paul Thompson, said he would not resign in an interview with Checkpoint today.
Earlier today, he said the debacle had exposed "systemic weakness" with how stories were being published. Thompson described the edits as "pro-Kremlin garbage".
Mahi for Ukraine's Kate Turska said both a physical war and a propaganda war were being fought. (Source: Breakfast)
"This also raises issues around our editing process for online news… clearly, our editing systems are not as robust as they need to be," the chief executive said.
"There is a particular employment investigation around one person, but this is a problem which is around a systemic weakness."
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.
Several pro-Russia edits about the war were made by an RNZ employee. (Source: 1News)
"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."
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