Intense scrutiny was directed towards Radio NZ journalist Mick Hall after he was accused of creating “Russian propaganda”. In the maelstrom that followed, he resigned and retreated from the public eye even as his motivations were questioned. In an exclusive interview, Mick Hall talks to David Fisher.
“I’m not a Russian agent. I’m just a journalist trying to do my job.”
Former Radio NZ sub-editor Mick Hall knows where he went wrong. He is also very strongly driven to talk about what he considers he did right.
His “inappropriate edits” to international news agency stories were called “pro-Kremlin garbage” by Radio NZ chief executive Paul Thompson, a description that sparked speculation of a Russian mole at work in the state broadcaster’s engine room.
Hall: “I’ve done some shameful things in my life and I don’t think what I did at Radio NZ was one of them. I tried to engage in my work with a degree of integrity. I did things in the best interest of the public, as far as I was concerned.”
The derailing of Hall’s 20-year career as a journalist began with a tweet from a lawyer and journalist based in New York. Posting a paragraph from a Radio NZ story, the tweet read: “This utterly false, Russian propaganda history of 2014 moved on the Reuters wire today under the byline of its Moscow bureau chief.”
The paragraph was one Hall, 48, had written to insert into a Reuters story describing events in 2014 that prefaced the current conflict.
Reuters raised a flag and Radio NZ sprang to respond. Initial reporting out of the Radio NZ newsroom described the story - just one at that stage - as containing “a false account of events” that “reflect a pro-Russian view”. An earlier version, says Hall, described the edits as “Russian propaganda” until he complained.
Act Party leader David Seymour then issued a press release in which Radio NZ was referred to as “Red Radio”, demanding Thompson explain what would be done to “prevent RNZ becoming a conduit for Putin’s propaganda”.
That was Friday. By Monday, Radio NZ had reviewed 260 stories and marked out 16 as concerning. Thompson went on radio and described Hall’s edits as “pro-Kremlin garbage”. The audit continued through to late July, checking 1319 stories and finding 49 to be “inappropriate edits”.
Asked to take leave, Hall sat at home hearing his life dissected on news bulletins and across social media. The stress was playing havoc with his health, having been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome in 2019.
Just days after that tweet from New York, the father-of-three had enough and resigned.
For five years, he had been a sub-editor in the country’s most trusted news organisation. Now he was unemployed and wondering if he would ever work in journalism again.
Mick Hall’s path to Radio NZ
In news organisations, sub-editors - called “subs” - hold a specialised position. They generally have a reporting background but spend their time working on stories written by others.
As Hall describes it, the job of a sub is “a layer of protection for the reporter”. Through a deep read of stories and a sharply critical eye, they look for possible legal issues, a lack of balance, errors of fact, grammar, sentence and story structure.
“Basically knocking a story into shape,” says Hall. “Making sure it has structure, making sure that it’s readable, coherent and that it’s written according to standards of fairness, accuracy and balance.”
Hall’s path to Radio NZ began in Northern Ireland. He trained as a journalist in London and got his first journalism job there at the Irish Post, returned to Northern Ireland to work on regional publications before joining the Belfast Telegraph.
He moved to New Zealand in 2009 and spent years working for specialist sub-editing company Pagemasters. After leaving there, his work can be found in the NZ Herald, which published his freelance investigative stories exposing sexual offending against children by a Catholic priest.
In 2018, Hall went to Radio NZ as a sub-editor with what he now calls “an idealistic position”. He was excited by the broadcaster’s public interest charter , which includes a pledge to produce “comprehensive, independent, accurate, impartial, and balanced regional, national, and international news and current affairs”.
As Hall describes it, he had found a place that aligned with his values. To it, he brought 15 years of experience in the industry and the healthy scepticism of an Irish journalist who often saw BBC News reporting of his home through what he considered a Westminster lens.
He also came with a deep interest in international news and a fluency in world events not generally found as a specialisation in New Zealand newsrooms.
Hall characterised his job as a “jack of all trades” role - writing up stories from interviews carried out by others on radio, producing “explainer” articles, sub-editing, managing the flow of articles through the system and - on occasion - acting as home page editor and running the website. He also wrote the occasional story.
As the independent inquiry would later report, he entered a structurally awkward organisation that had divided its newsroom into “digital” - as in, for the website - and broadcast, which was live content.
It was a structure seen in newsrooms across the world “in the early days of the internet”, said the inquiry report, “but those days are long gone”. Now, the inquiry report found, almost all newsrooms have adopted a “single, unified daily news operation”. Doing so “ensures that editorial standards, processes and practices are consistent across all platforms”.
Not at Radio NZ, the report said, where there were “conflicts and differences of opinion” between digital and broadcast teams “with each often questioning the other in an unconstructive way”.
It posed a range of problems, including - in Hall’s view - access to world affairs specialisation. On the radio side, there was the Worldwatch team but they were a different part of Radio NZ’s structure. The newsroom divide was perceived by Hall as putting that expertise out of reach.
At Radio NZ, as with other media in New Zealand, reporting on world events comes from organisations such as Reuters, the 171-year-old news agency with 3000 journalists around the world.
Auckland University of Technology senior journalism lecturer Dr Greg Treadwell says it’s simply not financially possible for New Zealand newsrooms to fund coverage of world events with reporters on the ground.
It means that specialisation in world affairs isn’t strongly represented in New Zealand newsrooms. It’s also a reflection of interest - it’s a local media aphorism that people list “world news” as valued when surveyed but simply don’t read it.
Waikato University law professor Alexander Gillespie, who has written much on the Ukraine conflict, says media here “just lose interest” unless there is a New Zealander involved.
“International news doesn’t feature as much here as it might in Europe. We don’t have a continual concentration of attention.”
Relative isolation is seen as the main reason for disinterest but, Gillespie says, the world is at a point where security is tenuous. If, say, China and the US engage in conflict then Australia gets pulled in and New Zealand would be expected to follow.
“We shouldn’t assume we are safe.”
The edits made by Mick Hall
By 2020, as Covid-19 encroached, Hall was working from home. He had spent a handful of months at Radio NZ’s Auckland office and then a year at its Whangārei office.
As the world became more distant for most, it continued to press close on Hall through international news agency stories.
Hall speaks with passion about world events and his concern New Zealand gets a “Western-centric view of the world” through the BBC and international news agency stories.
It was this, in part, which led to the editing that eventually blew up in his - and Radio NZ’s - face.
“Throughout my time at Radio NZ I became increasingly aware of some international [news agency] copy being skewed in a way that caused me journalistic concern,” he told the inquiry.
In his view, Reuters stories “could lean unduly towards a US State Department position” while BBC stories “had a tendency towards a UK government bias”. Reuters and the BBC both have editorial codes that stress the importance of freedom from bias and impartiality.
Hall: “I believed there was a systemic failure within RNZ to approach international [news agency] copy critically.”
The panel found Hall’s “inappropriate” changes “varied widely” and “appears to have escalated over time”.
It found early edits with “one or two words added or changed” would have been unlikely to cause concern but edits “became more significant”. In some cases, it had the effect of creating “unbalanced news stories”, the inquiry found.
It was clear “almost without exception”, the inquiry found, that the changes “challenged the foreign policy settings of the United States and/or its allies”.
Those edits could be seen in stories about the war in Ukraine, Middle East stories involving Israel, stories relating to China and those in Latin and South America.
Hall told the inquiry these edits didn’t reflect his personal views but were “a result of what he saw as a pro-US bias in the original stories”. As for the increase in frequency, Hall told the Herald the tempo matched the war in Ukraine and “I felt more of a need to make changes to address perceived bias”.
In rural isolation in northern Kaipara, Hall read academic texts on geopolitical matters, dived into the weeds of conflicts across the globe and reached a point where he felt comfortable adding what he considered balance to stories written by reporters in some of the world’s hottest spots.
“I sub-edited world news copy in a way that I considered added context and balance to stories I felt needed it,” he told the inquiry. When he did so - with three exceptions - he removed reporters’ names and added a “Radio NZ” attribution.
It’s a position that horrifies former NZ Herald editor Dr Gavin Ellis. “It does not behove him to make those decisions.”
Ellis says the contractual obligation to leave international news agency stories untouched is in place for good reason - those stories usually carry the name of the author who wrote the story while often working in a country where the wrong word might have disastrous consequences.
Repeated edits placed Radio NZ in breach of its contract, Ellis says. As a general rule, he says Reuters and news agency stories are considered “safe” having gone through their own rigorous subediting process.
If - as Hall says - there were concerns about balance in international stories and edits made as a result, he should have put those to his bosses.
Ellis: “Any newsroom is predicated on the ability to refer upwards. Nowhere in mainstream daily journalism are you a lone actor. You are part of a team that puts together the day’s news.”
What the inquiry found
When the inquiry report was published in early August - almost two months after the “demonstrably false” tweet - it upended much of what had been assumed.
It dismissed claims that Hall was a “rogue actor” who deliberately set out to make edits in breach of Radio NZ policy.
Rather, Hall “genuinely believed he was acting appropriately to provide balance and accuracy and was not motivated by any desire to introduce misinformation, disinformation or propaganda”.
In doing so, he breached Radio NZ’s editorial standards and its contract with Reuters - but that the state broadcaster’s internal dysfunction “facilitated the conditions for a journalist to do so”.
It emerged Hall had never seen - and neither had his line managers - the Reuters contract which forbade editing its copy. Hall says news agency stories were commonly edited at Radio NZ.
The inquiry also tested a sample of the 49 stories judged by Radio NZ to have “inappropriate edits”. The inquiry found “many of the early examples” had one or two words changed by Hall for “accuracy or context”. In its view, “many of these examples” would not have caused Radio NZ concern whether reviewed then or now.
There were stories that were concerning, including the story that prompted the tweet from New York. Hall’s changes had “distorted the meaning” intended.
However, the “vast majority” of Hall’s work was “edited appropriately and professionally”.
The inquiry also gave context to Hall’s failure to “refer up”. He spoke of not doing so because many of the edits “seemed so minor and routine” and his confidence that he was “improving stories for accuracy and balance”.
He also spoke of not wanting to bother stressed staff and managers “with issues he felt he was dealing with”. And if he had, “he did not believe his immediate managers had the knowledge of geopolitical news events to be able to assist”.
Those claims appeared to hold some traction with the inquiry which found the “upward referral process … relies on suitably trained and experienced line managers and supervisors being available to exercise judgement and provide guidance”. The small digital news team was “extremely busy”, and even though “responsible for publishing international news”, “its senior staff are not specialists in international news”.
It also found Hall had identified and tried to suggest fixes to systemic weaknesses he believed left his employer vulnerable.
Through 2021 and 2022, Hall pushed for the creation of “check sub” roles. In large newsrooms, these are the most eagle-eyed of sub-editors who read every word of every story with a critical eye before they are published.
And in April 2023 - just two months before Hall’s work came under question - he pitched a “new role to management of digital world journalist”. In doing so, he told the inquiry he “clearly set out my views and concerns [about] editorial policy and practice”. It never went ahead, partly for want of money.
“I was really pushing for specialisation … I felt that I couldn’t refer up because nobody on the web team had specialised knowledge of world affairs,” he told the Herald. “I wanted colleagues to talk to [about world news].”
The inquiry found the Worldwatch team - on the radio side of the divide - would have been “more likely to identify errors introduced into the coverage of significant, long-running international stories”.
There were also criticisms from the inquiry. It found Thompson’s description of the edits as “pro-Kremlin garbage” helped set a narrative that could have led people to believe “the editing had been a deliberate and orchestrated exercise in propaganda”.
It was a phrase used at a time when Radio NZ had “incomplete information” and Thompson’s comments “contributed to public alarm and reputational damage which the panel believes was not helpful in maintaining public trust”.
‘It didn’t have a ring of truth’
Hall’s life fell apart with a phone call from his immediate manager the morning after editing the story picked up and tweeted across the world in New York
“Mick, I need to tell you about something really, really serious. It’s about the Reuters copy that you handled last night. Did you change anything in it?” Yes, he said, just as we always do.
“Yes,” she replied, “but you changed it in a way that changed the intended meaning.”
At that point, Hall’s heart sank. For any sub-editor , changing the intended meaning of someone else’s story is an awful prospect.
Hall scanned the story and realised he hadn’t attributed the Russian view to Russia. Instead, one of the most bitter contentions about the origins of the war was stated as fact. What’s more, he had failed to take the reporter’s name out and attribute changes to Radio NZ.
“In my mind, I thought that I’d made procedural mistakes. I thought, “okay, this is serious. I’m probably looking at a verbal or written warning’.”
By the end of the day, he was on paid leave and his entire body of work was being studied for “Russian propaganda”.
The following Monday, investigative journalist and author Nicky Hager was listening to Radio NZ news when Thompson used the phrase “pro-Kremlin garbage”.
“I felt immediately they had got it wrong,” says Hager. “It didn’t have the ring of truth. When I looked at the changed stories [Radio NZ] had put up [on its website], they had grossly over-reacted.
“Propaganda is a very strong word. It means someone is deliberately changing stories to create good feelings about Russia.” Hager looked through the stories as they were added to Radio NZ’s audit. In his view, the majority left the top of the story alone - the place where angle or direction is set - and the introduced paragraphs towards the end.
“There was context added to the bottom that I knew was not completely wrong. Some of the changes that went through were putting a ‘not Washington DC’ version of events. He was giving a slightly more impartial view of it but controversial for some people.
“It was light years from what a Kremlin propaganda-ist would be doing in a news organisation.”
Thompson’s reaction, in the view of AUT senior journalism lecturer Dr Greg Treadwell, was “reassuring”, even if it was an over-reaction. “It showed how much its reputation still matters to it. One could almost feel the shock its newsroom was going through.”
At the same time, Treadwell considers it “probably true” that Radio NZ “unnecessarily harmed its own reputation by using phrases like ‘pro-Kremlin garbage’ while the extent of the political nature of the editing was still largely unknown”.
“Outlandish things do seem to happen with shocking regularity these days but to imply some sort of Russian mole might be at work in the RNZ newsroom probably didn’t help. The report found, in fact, it was down to failings in journalistic practice and newsroom oversight.”
Hall was now the focus of intense media interest, including taking calls from Radio NZ news colleagues seeking to interview him over the unfolding issue. Media reporting now included experts on disinformation and intelligence operations offering their views on Russian disinformation operations in the context of Hall’s work.
“I was surprised when it blew up in the way that it did,” says Hall. “The way that it was framed as Russian propaganda shocked me.
“When the audit was launched, I felt the pressure. It felt like it was a show trial. Each story that was put on the website that had been flagged, added pressure. And I felt alone. I felt extremely alone and vulnerable.”
In Hall’s view, Radio NZ’s reporting planted the seed that a “Russian agent of influence had infiltrated Radio NZ”. By the time Thompson was speaking of “pro-Kremlin garbage”, Hall says other media were also reporting the edits as “propaganda”. One former Radio NZ colleague he later spoke to was “convinced that management had found a Russian mole”.
“It became clear that there was a hysteria and there was no doubt in my mind that the hysteria had originated from the original story that Radio NZ sent out. It felt like I was on the ground getting kicked in the face. I felt numbness and anxiety.
“At one point … I was pretty sure the security services would become involved so I was steeling myself to have an interview with them.”
By the fourth day, Hall stopped reading the reporting. “I started to catastrophise too much. Mentally I started to lose it a little bit. Things just started to escalate to the point where it was too much of a mental distraction for me.
“These were dangerous, unfounded allegations I had been involved in intentionally spreading disinformation on behalf of a foreign state.”
Hall’s energy went into writing a 14,000-word submission to the inquiry. Hall says the panel was exacting in its approach but he appreciated its work. “They gave me a fair go.”
Largely, he agreed with the findings in relation to Radio NZ’s systemic issues. The response from Radio NZ he described as “subdued”.
“I think that they have a lot to answer for and I don’t think that they have, really. I’m surprised that nobody resigned over it, to be honest.”
Can Mick Hall work in media again?
Where does that leave Hall? Without a job, sitting in a relocatable house shifted to rural Northern Kaipara with an enormous amount of work to be done to make it a home.
The paddock was bought two years ago and the house moved there recently. “It couldn’t have come at a worse time. It’s been a nightmare. It’s turned my life upside down.”
The next steps were to include fixing the plaster cracks caused by the house move and building a deck to look across the valley to the north . Outside, there’s an unruly paddock where Hall had plans to plant native trees.
It’s all on hold. Amid the accusations and drama, Hall’s health took a dive with a relapse of chronic fatigue syndrome.
Radio NZ, meanwhile, is putting its own house in order after a host of recommendations for change from the inquiry. Two major changes are combining its broadcast and digital operations and introducing a new role to raise editorial standards.
On the difference between its audit and the panel’s findings on Hall’s edits, Radio NZ told the Herald “the panel was entitled to its views as are others”.
It was “happy with the rigorous approach” to its audit. It also noted the panel considered “inappropriate editing of the type that was identified” to be a “serious breach of trust”.
Hall is perhaps not helped by a bullish assertion the bulk of his edits were not “inappropriate”. “I stand by nearly all of the flagged stories,” he says.
He’s not alone in this and presented the inquiry letters of support from internationally-regarded academics who have studied the Ukraine conflict.
University of Chicago professor John J Mearsheimer wrote to the inquiry, saying he did “not believe Mr Hall is purveying Russian propaganda”. “In fact, he is speaking truth to power, much to his credit. I find it profoundly depressing that in a liberal democracy like New Zealand, Mr Hall is being severely punished for simply being honest.”
Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs wrote: “The claim that the edits are pro-Russian propaganda is nonsense. The edits add depth of historical context and understanding, and open minds to a deeper inquiry.”
Universities - like newsrooms - are filled with people who work together but don’t think together. As regarded as Mearsheimer and Sachs might be, there are experts who offer opposing views. The panel ruled on three of those stories including the one which kicked off the audit. It found the Russian position presented as “uncontested facts” without being “attributed to a Russian perspective”.
Hall: “I felt that I maintained standards although I made mistakes. We all have. It definitely would have been prudent of me to be switched on and attribute that context to Russia. But it happened and there isn’t anything I can do about it.”
Were Hall’s actions enough to wind up without a job?
Hager considers Radio NZ to have treated Hall poorly. The broadcaster would not comment on Hall’s employment.
“He resigned trying to deal with an impossible situation,” Hager says. “What should have happened in a news organisation that didn’t over-react was to get hold of him and talk to him as an employee. By coming out so strongly and negatively, there was no way back for them - or him.
“He was a loyal, hard-working member of staff. They mucked up and they owe it to him to get his life back on track. The first thing they have to do is publicly apologise to him. The next thing is give him a lot of money - or offer his job back.”
Former NZ Herald editor Ellis says the benchmark is whether Hall’s actions lowered the reputation of the organisation for which he worked.
The inquiry considered Thompson contributed to this. Ellis disagrees, explaining his reaction would have been the same. The offshore tweet was the point at which “propaganda” was mentioned and where the reputational damage began.
But he considers there is a place for Hall in journalism. “I hope so. The man is not dishonest. He failed in a journalistic duty. I’m sure if he was presented with the same problem again he would almost certainly behave differently.”
It’s likely there would be initial supervision and a restraint of working remotely, says Ellis, as a relationship of belief and trust was established.
“Anything that affects trust must be treated seriously. Journalism is nothing without trust.”
For Hall, there were bright points in the darkness. There was Hager’s emergence - a welcome call - and others in “public life” who offered support and stories of challenges they had faced. Cartoonist Malcolm Evans suggested Hall ring lawyer Deborah Manning, who swung in without being paid to support his appearance before the inquiry.
Renowned journalist John Pilger described Radio NZ’s criticisms of Hall’s edits as “compliant, frightened censorship”. It was Pilger who highlighted an offer of work made publicly to Hall by Consortium News, a US-based online news outlet set up to counter the “silliness and propaganda that had come to pervade American journalism”.
Hall is taking tentative steps back to journalism but he’s uncertain about what the future holds. He told the inquiry the “pro-Kremlin garbage” characterisation “severely harmed his reputation” and wonders - when asked - how that would play out should he approach news organisations for work.
“I wouldn’t use the word blacklisted because I haven’t tested that yet. I want to get my health back. I want to put things into perspective and then I will look at resurrecting my career in some capacity.
“I’ve paid a price for what I’ve done and it’s been quite considerable. I did what I did for the right reasons. I paid the price and I’m moving on.”
David Fisher has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He first joined the Herald in 2004.