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Summarised by Centrist
Critics say a recent 1News report by senior journalist Benedict Collins, which focused on gang members now slightly outnumbering police officers, distracted from the arguably more relevant finding in the latest New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey showing a drop of roughly 49,000 victims of violent crime compared with two years earlier.
Family First’s Bob McCoskrie argued the decline was the obvious headline. “Rather than report the latest statistic, they went down a rabbit hole,” he said, accusing the broadcaster of choosing a narrative that emphasised gang numbers instead of falling crime.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell publicly criticised the coverage and later told Parliament he had been contacted by a TVNZ journalist with “an apology” after he raised concerns about what he described as “pretty unbalanced reporting”.
Justice and Broadcasting Minister Paul Goldsmith then confirmed that TVNZ board chair Andrew Barclay had called him over the weekend, saying the crime story had come up “in passing” during a wider discussion.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins warned that if board members were involved in editorial decisions, “that member of the board needs to resign immediately”.
TVNZ says editorial decisions remain independent, stating that while directors “take an interest in how editorial standards are maintained”, decisions on how stories are covered are made by the newsroom.
1News subsequently ran a second story highlighting the drop in crime victims, reporting that “there have actually been 49,000 fewer victims of serious violent crime”. But McCoskrie argued the report, which was not included on 1News’ site, still attempted to muddy the message.
Collins’ follow-up report used a graph with changing time intervals, making the rise in crime appear worse under the coalition government. “There’s three different measurements on that x-axis,” he said.
