TVNZ salary saga ripped me apart, says Bailey

Judy Bailey

Axed newsreader Judy Bailey says she never held a gun to TVNZ's head over her $800,000 salary and says the saga ripped her apart.

In her first full interview, Bailey, 53, has also revealed TVNZ told her as late as July that she was crucial to its future, only to turn around in October to say she was no longer wanted as the 6pm newsreader.

Bailey has told the New Zealand Woman's Weekly, in an interview to be published this week, that the public revelations and criticism of her $800,000 salary were humiliating - and having to read about herself on the news was "excruciating".

"I honestly think it was the worst time of my life," she says. "I felt like I was being ripped apart ... battered mentally.

"It was incredibly humiliating and it became very vicious. But I kept telling myself that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and I tried not to take it personally."

Bailey said she could understand the public questioning her salary, but she considered it a private matter between herself and TVNZ.

"I certainly wasn't holding a gun to their heads. There was very little negotiation. Presumably they paid what they thought I was worth."

She also said that her axing by then TVNZ chief executive Ian Fraser had been "a shock".

"Especially as in July he had said he was keen to hang on to me and I was quite crucial. So it did come out of left field."

Fraser went on to rub salt in the wound by stating publicly that Bailey was in the "autumn of her career" and had "lost her lustre".

"Those sorts of things are really hurtful," she says. "But that's his opinion, so what can I do? Once my pride had recovered - and that happened quite quickly - I realised this was a good thing."

Bailey signed off her newsreading duties on December 23 in an emotional departure after 18 years as the face of One News.

She revealed she had endured many difficult behind-the-scenes occasions at TVNZ. She described the John Hawkesby-Richard Long fiasco as painful, as she counted both men as close friends.

Since then, she'd watched as other talented colleagues and friends, including One News executive director Melanie Jones, were driven out.

"I haven't got a tough shell at all," she said. "I'm hopeless, as anyone will tell you.

"I've found this last year particularly brutal. It's taken a huge toll on me and my family."

Bailey now plans to work with disadvantaged children and their families. "We can't afford generations of children to be born into the cycle of poverty and violence they're being born into right now in this country."

She said she was prepared to use her profile and, if necessary, to get political to find solutions.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY