Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters
The head of New Zealand’s public radio station apologized on Monday after it was found that a journalist had been inserting “pro-Kremlin garbage” into news stories about Russia and Ukraine which were published on the broadcaster’s website.
Paul Thompson, the chief executive of the publicly-funded Radio New Zealand (RNZ), said around 250 stories had already been forensically checked for Russian propaganda since they became aware of the issue on Friday and that 16 had been found that required corrections and editor’s notes. The digital reporter allegedly responsible for the embarrassing incident has been placed on leave, and Thompson said thousands more articles would need to be reviewed for problems.
The majority of the altered stories were based on reports from the Reuters news agency. Speaking to RNZ’s Checkpoint program, the accused unnamed journalist said: “I subbed several stories that way over the past number of years.”