Media vs media

The NZ Herald reports:

TVNZ threatened to sue Newstalk ZB after a producer raised questions with the state broadcaster about an incident in which its political editor, Maiki Sherman, allegedly used a homophobic slur, ZB host Mike Hosking says.

Hosking told listeners today that his producer, Sam Carran, had been investigating the alleged incident – in which Sherman allegedly directed the word “f****t” at journalist Lloyd Burr during an event in Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ office – in the latter part of 2025. 

“We got to a point where we were going to say something about it,” Hosking said.

But when Carran went to TVNZ to seek a response, the state broadcaster came back to him saying it did not comment on employment matters – followed soon after by a legal letter from a corporate law firm, understood to be Russell McVeagh. 

“TVNZ threatened to sue us,” Hosking told listeners.

I’m not sure who looks worse in this.

First you have TVNZ threatening another media company with defamation, in relation to a story that appears to be 100% factually accurate (in that no one since Ani O’Brien published has said it is wrong). So the state owned broadcaster is using legal threats to squash an accurate story that one of their staff behaved badly.

But you also have NZME that got the legal threat, and decided to then sit on its hands. Once upon a time, a defamation threat would make a media outlet even more determined to publish. Would they have backed down to a non-media company acting the same?

And people wonder why there is low trust in media. This is why.

The post Media vs media first appeared on Kiwiblog.