The head of New Zealand’s public radio station apologized after a journalist inserted “pro-Kremlin garbage” into Reuters news stories about Russia and Ukraine published on the broadcaster’s website.
Paul Thompson, the chief executive of the publicly-funded Radio New Zealand , said around 250 stories had already been forensically checked for Russian propaganda since they became aware of the issue on Friday and that 16 had been found that required corrections and editor’s notes. The digital reporter allegedly responsible for the embarrassing incident has been placed on leave, and Thompson said thousands more articles would need to be reviewed for problems.
The majority of the altered stories were based on reports from the Reuters news agency. Speaking to RNZ’sprogram, the accused unnamed journalist said: “I subbed several stories that way over the past number of years.” “In fact since I started RNZ and… I have done that for five years and nobody has tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I was doing anything wrong,” they added.
The claim that the employee’s edits went unchallenged for years has yet to be verified with the journalist’s managers. But serious concerns had been raised about their work as far back as May 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Thompson said at the time, a story was reviewed and updated in line with editorial standards.
Some of the propagandistic alterations may have been subtle enough to escape the attention of casual readers in that they were only a few words long, but they dramatically changed the context of a story. Amendments adding Kremlin talking points to stories included sentences that “neo-Nazis had created a threat” to Russian borders and that “Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum.”
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