RNZ WHEELS IN BEHIND THE GOVERNMENT ON UKRAINE

The May 26 2022 article on Ukraine that disappeared from the RNZ website has reappeared in an amended form. RNZ will not confirm that the journalist who wrote the article is also the journalist who has been suspended. 

A MODIFIED version of its May 26 2022 story on Ukraine has reappeared on the RNZ website. RNZ says that the article 'lacked balance' and was temporality removed from the website in order that it could be amended.

Simply removing the offending article would have looked too much like political censorship, so RNZ has gone for the next best thing. It has smothered the article in commentary that supports the New Zealand's Government's policy on Ukraine and the actions of the West in general. It includes a statement from the office of Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta and comments from Security analyst Paul Buchanan and David Capie, Victoria University's director of the Centre for Strategic Studies and Professor of International Relations.

Paul Buchanan is a former intelligence analyst for the US Defence Department and has worked alongside the CIA. Buchanan said last year that 'the currency of diplomacy is forged in hypocrisy' and 'a war of opportunity announced by an invasion of a sovereign European state by a traditional Western adversary was bound to generate a much stronger reaction than the oppression of Palestinians or a genocidal campaign against Houthis in Yemen done by non-European Western allies...'

The name of the journalist who wrote the article has been removed from the modified version. His identity though is now generally known so RNZ has shut the gate long after the horse has bolted. RNZ will not confirm that the journalist who wrote the article is also the same journalist who has been suspended. 

While RNZ says that its aim is to provide 'balanced' coverage of events in Ukraine, this is also the view of a public broadcaster that has tilted the playing field in favour of the American-driven narrative on Ukraine. While it professes to journalistic objectivity, it has also been convenient for RNZ to suggest that other views are associated with support for Moscow. Colin Peacock of RNZ's Mediawatch has also suggested that they are 'minority views'. He has already claimed that such views also 'do not have a basis in fact'. Clearly Peacock has a unique view on what constitutes balanced reporting as far as Ukraine is concerned.

The suspicion remains that RNZ is cherry picking the facts that suits the view that it favours, which just happens to be that of the New Zealand Government. But it should not be up to RNZ to decide who is right and who is wrong. The listener or reader should be allowed to make that call for themselves. At the moment many people may be thinking they are not getting a fair and accurate picture of what is really going on in Ukraine from RNZ.

Meantime, the war in Ukraine is turning into an ever more open confrontation between the West's Nato military alliance and Russia.

NOTE: The chief executive of RNZ has made his opinion clear on what he thinks of views on Ukraine that stray beyond the approved narrative. According to Paul Thompson they are 'pro-Kremlin garbage'. That, apparently, is what Thompson considers to be a 'balanced' view.