The attack on TVNZ’s John Campbell for having the gall to express a clearly labelled opinion reminds me of an incident that occurred when I was in Rio de Janeiro. Police stormed a bus on which passengers were held hostage. They opened fire, killing a passenger and leaving the gunman unscathed.
Mysteriously, the captured gunman was dead when the police van arrived at the police station…but that’s another story. I am more concerned with well-intentioned actions that hit the wrong people.
Former Dominion editor Karl du Fresne criticised an opinion piece about the national hui at Tūrangawaewae Marae that Campbell penned for the TVNZ website. At the core of du Fresne’s criticism was the belief that a journalist working for a state-owned media organisation invalidated his position by expressing a personal view (critical of government policy) that nailed his colours to the mast. He called for Campbell to be dismissed.
A cover story in the latest issue of North & South interrogated the controversy. It quoted a number of journalists and academics and, although none called for the TVNZ chief correspondent’s head on a pike, most were of the view that his forthright opinion pieces should not have been published. Some felt it affected public trust in journalists, others placed TVNZ in the same public interest journalism sphere as fully taxpayer-funded RNZ (it is not) and saw this as an opinion-free zone (even RNZ is not).
The issue contained an eloquent – and compelling – defence by John Campbell in which he stated: “I have never been, and I am not, partisan. Full stop. My journalism has never, once, supported a political party.” He spoke of “work in which I am able to amplify other voices”. Adding “That’s still the journalism that matters to me most.”
I have no difficulty with John Campbell stating his opinion on the TVNZ website, so long as it is clearly identified as such – and it is. Thinking back to my days as editor of the New Zealand Herald, I liken Campbell to the paper’s then political editor John Armstrong, who wrote attention-getting opinion pieces but did not allow it to intrude into his straightforward reportage that earned the respect of Parliament and beyond. Continue reading “John Campbell the wrong target in reporter opinion controversy”
