New Zealand’s public radio broadcaster has found that nearly two dozen articles by Reuters and the BBC that it had republished on its website had been edited inappropriately, with some of them given a pro-Russian slant, according to a spokesman for the broadcaster.
The broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, said on Friday that it would investigate articles it found that contained problems. In addition to articles related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the broadcaster said it has found articles about Israeli politics and tensions over Taiwan that had been altered inappropriately.
A web editor for RNZ, which is government-funded but editorially independent, has been put on leave, according to the spokesman, and the station has apologized for the changes to the articles. The local news media in New Zealand have named the editor, but the broadcaster said it would not confirm the person’s identity while the review was underway. The person named did not respond to a request to comment.
RNZ said it was in the process of auditing hundreds of stories. So far, 22 have been found to be edited inappropriately, a spokesman for the station said on Tuesday.
On Monday, a representative for the Reuters news agency said the wire service had asked RNZ to investigate when it noticed that some of its articles had been published on the broadcaster’s website after being altered without its consent, as required in its sharing arrangement.
Some of the changes appeared to parrot Russian propaganda about its invasion of Ukraine. They included calling Ukraine’s pro-democracy Maidan revolution a “coup”; describing Russia’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea as having taken place “after a referendum”; and false claims that “neo-Nazis” are fighting for Ukraine.
Speaking to RNZ’s “Checkpoint” news program on Monday, the employee said he had edited “several stories that way” in the past. “I have done that for five years, and nobody has tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I was doing anything wrong,” he said.
On the same program, Paul Thompson, the broadcaster’s chief executive, said: “We’re feeling shocked and stunned and really, really challenged by this.” The employee has not been fired but an “employment process” was underway, Mr. Thompson added.
Earlier that day, Mr. Thompson had described the edits as “pro-Kremlin garbage.”
