RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson’s announced departure will forever be linked in the public mind with the last salvo fired by ACT leader David Seymour. The state-owned media’s leader deserves better, much better.
If Seymour – publicly or privately – claims a scalp he will be both wrong and, once again, in breach of the spirit of the statute he is charged with upholding as RNZ shareholding minister.
I say “once again” because I stated publicly that I believed he was in breach of the spirit of the Broadcasting Act when he criticised the appointment of John Campbell as Morning Report co-host and hinted in the same breath that Thompson could lose his job.
Speaking to The Platform, Seymour did not name Thompson in his criticism of the Morning Report appointment, but it was obvious he was referring to Thompson when he said “Look, that guy’s got an awful lot to answer for, and I suspect that he won’t be answering the call at RNZ for much longer.”
To many, it will appear that Seymour now has his wish – in spite of an emphatic statement by RNZ board chair Dr Jim Mather that the chief executive had signalled to the board last December that he intended to step down at the end of 2026.
After that announcement by the RNZ board last Friday, Seymour stated that he had been unaware of Thompson’s disclosure to the board last year. We must take him at his word but I have to confess I wondered what had happened to the much-emphasised ‘no surprises’ policy that successive governments have demanded of not only ministries but state-owned enterprises.
Finance Minister Nicola Willis set out that expectation in an Enduring Letter of Expectations for Statutory Crown Entity Boards in 2024. The State Services Commission says this requires boards to advise the responsible minister of issues that may be discussed in the public arena or that may require a ministerial response (preferably ahead of time or otherwise as soon as possible), and to inform the Minister in advance of any major strategic initiative.
Personally, I would have thought a chief executive signalling his or her intention to leave their position would fall into one or other of those categories. But apparently not. It seems the shareholding minister’s comment about the end of Mr Thompson’s 13-year tenure was based on hope, rather than knowledge.
Perhaps that’s why another politician, Horace Walpole, is credited with creating the word serendipitous.
By chance, I was with Paul Thompson the day before the RNZ chair announced the planned departure (and of which Thompson gave me not the slightest hint). We were co-panellists at the Community Newspaper Association annual conference. Thompson had also been the keynote speaker and, at my request, gave me his speech notes.
In that speech he spoke of the challenges facing journalism, including “more insidious challenges, among them the growing distrust of institutions, heightened political attacks, polarization of communities, disinformation, and the angry targeting of individual journalists”.
David Seymour and his coalition partner Winston Peters have been at the forefront of such attacks, not that Thompson named either of them.
Instead, he spoke of the need for a strong media sector, which he characterised in the way the public must come to understand it:
It’s that the media sector is more than simply an area of the economy providing news and information. It is vital national infrastructure that keeps our democracy healthy and functioning and communities informed. Like any public utility, it should be resilient, available, affordable, and useful – and able to service both individual needs and wider society. The news media sector infrastructure should never be owned or dominated by one owner. It should be a network of commercial and non-commercial, private, public, local, national and iwi stewardship.
Paul Thompson has been in every part of that system – from collating golf results as a cadet on the Gisborne Herald, through editing the Nelson Mail and The Press, to executive roles at Fairfax NZ (now Stuff) and RNZ. In his present role he has had to oversee transformative changes to both its radio services and on wider fronts.
Not least of the changes under his watch has been the transformation of RNZ into what is effectively the country’s national news agency through 70 content sharing partnerships, and the rescue of the Local Democracy Reporting scheme that would otherwise have been one of the casualties of the demonising of the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
There is a certain irony in the content partnership that helps to sustain the vital infrastructure to which he referred at the CNA conference. Thompson was Fairfax’s executive editor when the Australian-owned company announced its planned withdrawal from a 125-year-old content partnership known as the New Zealand Press Association.
In a soon-to-be-published book I describe the demise of NZPA it the following terms:
The growth of the Internet and resulting rivalry between news websites destroyed the territorial separation (and security) that had characterized the cooperative period [that existed for most of NZPA’s existence]. Managerial leadership in the dominant groups passed to Australian executives with inherently greater competitive attitudes. One group believed the geographic spread of its titles provided a competitive advantage in withdrawing from the agency and undermining its viability. There is clear evidence that the closure of NZPA had sub-optimal outcomes for all of its members.
I add that the readiness with which publishers have accepted Radio New Zealand’s content sharing scheme clearly illustrates the gap caused by the agency’s demise.
Under Paul Thompson’s leadership that gap has been filled, at least in part. There remain some holes – such as NZPA’s coverage of Parliamentary debates and its editing of voluminous foreign news services – but I think I am right in describing RNZ as New Zealand’s de facto news agency.
Like most us, Thompson has had his missteps. The most notorious (this is a septuagenarian who likes opera speaking) was a plan to move Concert FM to the AM network to make way for a youth-oriented network. That was backtracked. He has also been accused of overseeing ‘woke’ developments said to be in fulfilment of RNZ’s charter. I regard that criticism as more of an indictment on New Zealand society than inherent fault on Thompson’s part. More difficult to dismiss is RNZ National’s fall in audience ratings and the ceding of breakfast leadership to NewstalkZB. However, the appointments of John Campbell and of Pip Keane as chief audio officer at the beginning of this year aim to reverse that trend.
Had Paul Thompson been able to see out his time with the planned announcement of his departure being made in June as scheduled, his performance as chief executive would have been judged solely on its merits and he would have been given the credit that Better Public Media spokesman Peter Thompson gave him in the wake of Jim Mather’s Friday announcement.
However, the Better Public Media statement also devoted significant space to decrying the political pressure that was in play, even if it hadn’t been applied directly to Paul Thompson. And now, that will be irrevocably attached to his tenure.
David Seymour was quick to deny prior knowledge of Thompson’s December departure plan, but he twisted the knife: “I just make the observation, if your numbers are going in the wrong direction and your board is changing, then I wouldn’t be surprised if other changes came with that. As it turned out, I was right. I didn’t need to be Nostradamus to predict it.’’
He added he had “no emotion” one way or the other about Thompson’s departure.
It would have been a sign of greater stature had he said that, in the circumstances, he regretted the unfortunate coincidence of his comments and Paul Thompson’s decision. The RNZ CEO deserved to be seen as resigning on his own terms, after a significant time in the role.