UNDERCURRENT : SMEARING LEGITIMATE DISSENT AS 'MISINFORMATION'

The Independent External Review of RNZ Editorial Processes has found no evidence of infiltration by Russian disinformation into RNZ's newsroom.This was the claim made by Sanjana Hattotuwa of the Disinformation Project. But despite that he and his Disinformation Project colleague Kate Hannah continue to make groundless allegations, RNZ is still using them as authoritative guides to 'misinformation'. They both feature in RNZ's podcast Undercurrent, written and presented by former Morning Report presenter Susie Ferguson.

THROUGHOUT the media's coverage of the 'inappropriate' editing of Reuters copy by RNZ journalist Michael Hall, we heard little from Hall himself. And none of his RNZ colleagues nor his union, E tu, were prepared to come to his defence even when he was being smeared by RNZ CEO Paul Thompson as a Putin sympathiser promoting 'pro Kremlin garbage'.

But the Independent External Review of RNZ Editorial Processes, released this week, provides insight into Hall's real motives for editing news reports from Reuters. And it was not because he was in the pocket of Putin.

The report says that Hall '...identified a number of Reuters’ stories that he considered to be ‘skewed too much towards the position of the US state department’ and in editing that content, his edits were consistent with the positions taken ‘by many reputable international experts’. However, he said these edits did not indicate a personal view of his own but were a result of what he 'saw as a pro-US bias in the original stories.'

Hall told the authors of the report: ‘I understood that my role as a journalist was to present news in a way that was fair and balanced, particularly in the context of the Ukraine-Russia conflict’.

The report notes that 'The journalist involved appeared to have genuinely held concerns about the quality of the coverage of world news at RNZ.'  

We might add that others have expressed the view that RNZ's coverage of world affairs rarely strays from the interests of New Zealand foreign policy. In the case of Ukraine, the New Zealand Government has chosen to join the United States and Nato as it engages in a proxy war with Russia that carries with it the danger of a nuclear engagement.

RNZ though is not entirely to blame. It relies heavily on conservative media outlets, principally Reuters and the BBC, for its coverage of international events. But the comments of Paul Thompson have done little to discourage suspicions that RNZ has a political agenda and is sticking to it. The report notes:

'... the choice of language like ‘pro-Kremlin garbage’ was, in the panel’s view, unhelpful in maintaining public trust. At the time these comments were made RNZ was acting on incomplete information, as the circumstances and extent of the inappropriate editing was yet to be fully considered. Listeners and others may have believed the editing had been a deliberate and orchestrated exercise in propaganda, rather than a failure of journalistic decision-making or practice. As is now evident, this panel finds the latter.'

The report certainly does not entertain the view of Sanjana Hattotuwa of the so-called Disinformation Project. In a column for Stuff, Hattotuwa claimed that events at RNZ represented 'Russian disinformation's entry, expansion, and entrenchment in New Zealand's news, information, and media landscape.'

Hattotuwa claimed, without providing any evidence, that Hall was effectively a Russian stooge:

'The discovery of Russian disinformation’s promotion by RNZ is a significant development, speaking to a broader spectrum of “active measures” instrumentalising a high-trust society’s implicit faith in incorruptible practices by fellow citizens.

'The lack of oversight, and early detection suggest RNZ never planned or accounted for Russian disinformation’s infiltration of newsroom output, and editorial input.'

As I wrote in a previous column Hattotuwa's claims 'were motivated by Russiaphobic hysteria and barely intelligible'. 

In April Dr Bryce Edwards raised questions about the Disinformation Project:

'Do the constant claims from the Disinformation Project amount to fear-mongering? Some of the claims come across as hysterical, but it’s hard to tell because no real evidence is given to back them up...when extraordinary claims are made about violence and hate, and how New Zealand’s democracy is in danger, surely some basic and substantial evidence is required? Otherwise, there will be suspicions that Disinformation Project is every bit as flaky as the conspiracy theorists that they seek to expose.'

RNZ however appears to be unconcerned that the claims of Sanjana Hattotuwa and his Disinformation Project colleague Kate Hannah are invariably evidence-free. They both feature in the new RNZ podcast series Undercurrent, written and presented by former Morning Report host Susie Ferguson.  

The podcast series presents the conspiratorial view that a 'vast and complex network' (Ferguson's description) is peddling misinformation that threatens to undermine New Zealand's democracy. Hattotuwa and Hannah are right there to confirm Ferguson's obvious prejudices. While on Morning Report she described the occupation of Parliament grounds as 'alt right', clearly preferring Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's 'one size fits all' explanation that the protest was the result of 'foreign conspiracy theories and misinformation'. She was subsequently heard to ask Finance Minister Grant Robertson what 'we' were going to do about the problem. 

Undercurrent buys into the Disinformation Project's practice of throwing out claims without providing any real evidence to back up those claims. They are presented as fact but based on little more than vague speculation and deliberately misinterpreting legitimate dissent as just another assault against New Zealand's democratic traditions. 

And like Sanjana Hattotuwa, Susie Ferguson- a card carrying member of the professional managerial class - cannot understand that what she interprets as evidence of a nascent alt right movement is actually a more generalised rage against a political establishment that has defended and benefited from a neoliberal order that has seen New Zealand's level of poverty and inequality deepen. This is the real source of New Zealand's widening social divisions- not Ferguson's fantastical notion of 'a vast and complex network' peddling misinformation.