RNZ Russia scandal: CEO, editor-in-chief says inclusion of ‘pro-Kremlin garbage’ inexcusable

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson. Photo / Mark Mitchell

RNZ’s chief executive and editor-in-chief has called the editing in of “pro-Kremlin garbage” to stories “inexcusable”, saying it breached the news organisation’s standards.

RNZ yesterday released a list of stories discovered in its probe so far after an employee was placed on leave on Thursday when it emerged a story by international wire agency Reuters had been republished on RNZ.co.nz with Kremlin-friendly language.

Speaking on the radio station’s Nine to Noon this morning, CEO Paul Thompson said there had been a “serious breach of our standards, which is really disappointing”.

Thompson said there wasn’t any evidence more than one person was involved in adding incorrect information to the stories, but the “editing systems are not as robust as they need to be.

“They [the changes] are all really, really serious and we obviously did not have the robustness of the systems to pick up on those problems,” he told Nine to Noon.

“It is so disappointing. I’m gutted. It’s painful. It’s shocking.

“We have to get to the bottom of how it happened, but clearly, we have had those breaches happen and we haven’t detected it,” Thompson said.

He apologised to the public “who rely on us to be a trusted source of news and information. We’ve let them down”.

Thompson also apologised to RNZ staff and the Ukranian community.

“It’s so disappointing that this pro-Kremlin garbage has ended up in our stories. It’s inexcusable,” he said.

He revealed RNZ didn’t respond to a complaint made to the Minister of Broadcatsing about Russian “propaganda” in October last year, saying it was typical to maintain a “church and state” separation between the organisation and the minister.

“In hindsight, perhaps it was something we could’ve thought about at the time more than we did,” Thompson said.

“To be frank, ideally we would’ve looked into that at the time, but as far as I’m aware it didn’t happen, but that’s one of the things we’re looking into.”

‘Our editing processes are not strong enough’ - CEO

“I can’t explain [why these edits went undetected for so long]. What it tells me is that our editing process for this particular type of copy - which is online wire copy published on our website - our editing processes are not strong enough.”

RNZ has launched an employment investigation into the employee who made the changes, and Thomspon said he “didn’t want to compound the challenges we’re dealing with by complicating that or compromising that”.

Speaking on a separate external review into what happened, Thomspon said there hadn’t been any terms of reference written yet and he cautioned any conclusion could be months away.

“Hopefully, in the next couple of days, I will be able to share [who will be doing the review] and the terms of reference, but I just need a bit of time because we’ve been extremely busy responding to this,” he said.

“I want to make sure that I take the time to think about it and set it up well. We will let people know in the next couple of days.

The first story that was found to have been altered was by Reuters Moscow bureau chief Guy Faulconbridge. The original story said:

“The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.”

But when republished on RNZ.co.nz, that passage adopted a more Kremlin-friendly framing.

“The conflict in Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian elected government was toppled during Ukraine’s violent Maidan colour revolution. Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum, as the new pro-Western government suppressed ethnic Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine, sending in its armed forces to the Donbas.”

After the editing of the Reuters story was discovered on Thursday, at least 14 other articles were audited and found to have been similarly reworked.

“The audit is ongoing, so every day, if there are further problems, we will update the page on our website where we’re collating all of this so there’s one place people can find it,” Thompson said.