Propaganda Seeps Into New Zealand - the RNZ, Reuters, BBC Scandal

Written By arthur falls

Stop the propaganda - C/O The Guardian

For over a year, an Radio New Zealand editor has been inserting Russian propaganda points into Reuters and BBC news releases relating to the Russian war against Ukraine. This is a big deal. However, when the conflict that is the subject of the news is in part a proxy war between two superpowers, a bit of sober contextualisation is valuable.

So what happened? 

The story as it stands is simple. One dodgy editor at a mainstream media outlet inserted propaganda into articles syndicated (republished) from other outlets, under other journalists' names. This propaganda was attributed to journalists who didn't write it and news outlets who did not distribute it. That’s a really big deal. The offending outlet, Radio New Zealand, in spite of having discovered the perpetrator, has executed a theatrically convulsive response to show the public that it means business about truth in reporting. This must be why Ground News calls RNZ a centrist, high reliability news source.

There are calls for inquisitions and explanations from domestic New Zealand media, but how is any outlet to anticipate and prevent what amounts to employee vandalism? Yes, an automated text comparison run on all syndicated content would have inexpensively prevented this incident. However, this is something the other news outlets which are so enthusiastically gloating over RNZ’s misfortune, almost certainly do not do. The reason is simple: It’s unthinkable that this type of activity would occur in the first place - and even if it did, surely the audience itself would notice such obvious unethical editing (it didn’t for over a year).

To change BBC and Reuter’s byline articles, which have been published globally on 16 separate occasions, is professionally suicidal. This is not a skilled misinformation strategy. Other more subtle behaviour, like cherry-picking statistics used to support public statements, is much harder to detect and is easy for a propagandist to engage in. Especially a well-positioned editor or journalist. 

This event demonstrates how easily a motivated and genuinely skilled actor could alter the information space of the hapless New Zealand public. 

With that established, let’s take a quick look at the propaganda surrounding the Ukraine war and New Zealand’s relationship to it.

The fact that it took so long to expose the alterations taking place at RNZ could be seen, among other things, as an indicator of the disinterest of the audience in the subject matter itself. New Zealanders are evidently not highly engaged with news about the Russo-Ukraine War. Even if they were, what impact could a Kiwi’s opinion have on a war between the global superpower, Russia, and a state on its border?  Do we even have a right to an opinion?

This is not intended as a claim that Kiwis should be indifferent to the suffering of the Ukrainian people. We are a compassionate people concerned with the well-being of all (provided we don't have to take in too many refugees). However, Western institutions, including New Zealand ones, have a demonstrated indifference to human suffering. One example is Air New Zealand's maintenance of Saudi Arabian military equipment as that military was engaged in atrocities against Yemeni civilians. Atrocities that continue to this day against civilians who are receiving sub-minimal humanitarian support and limited Western media attention. According to Unicef 11,000 children have so far been killed or injured and 2 Million are currently acutely malnourished. How is Ukraine different?

Propaganda is often thought of as a lie told to manipulate the masses. However, truth itself can be used in an equally manipulative fashion. Truthful or otherwise, almost all coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine republished in New Zealand can be labelled propaganda. This is by virtue of the fact that this coverage is targeted at individuals with no exposure to, or direct influence on, the war. Some of this propaganda is Ukrainian-produced, some Western-institutional, and some Russian. 

Truthful coverage of the Ukraine war may be being used by Western institutions for a range of manipulative purposes:

Claims of the need to support Ukraine to prevent Russian military expansion into Europe don't stand up to scrutiny in the face of the overwhelming enormity of NATO and the demonstrated frailty of the Russian military. The grim Yemeni example is one piece of evidence contradicting humanitarian claims.

Two and a half months before the invasion, NATO was unified in a strategy of de-escalation and warned Russia of stronger sanctions if it took military action against Ukraine. Recalling Western governments’ minimal concern over the 2014 Crimean invasion, the 2008 Russio-Georgian War and the Chechen Wars fought in the ‘90s, the world we find ourselves in may be highly path dependent. Were it not for 1. early Ukrainian victories and 2. the astute lobbying and social media propagandising of Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the beginning of the war, Western governments may have declined increased military aid, played down the Russian invasion and even encouraged appeasement. This would have resulted in very different media coverage. 

Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Twitter from 2022/01/01 - 2022/03/01 features regular English language emissions and daily announcements of talks with different world leaders. On the 26th of February, the third day of the invasion, he tweeted over twenty times. This is a leader whose country is being invaded. Russia is trying to kill him personally. He considered tweeting that important. Zelenskiy is a one-man propaganda machine.

Some examples of Western Zelenskiy-focused propaganda from the first week of the war:

Russian propaganda is a natural response to Western propaganda. While it is of a different quality and kind, namely poor historical fiction, it is of a genuine and desperate nature - as the leadership of the nation itself faces the existential threat of failure in Ukraine. This is much less cynical than the righteous, self-congratulatory Western narrative building it responds to. We are only exposed to Russian propaganda in New Zealand as a result of message spillage that occurs in a borderless internet ... and apparently a lone actor who went down the rabbit hole a bit too far. Although we still have to learn if there turns out to be more to the story.

Let’s remember though, that we are discussing propaganda on top of propaganda

Note 2023/06/16: Lots of stuff has emerged since the identity of the editor in question, Michael Hall, was made public. When the dust has settled and we have the increased scope of hindsight this subject will be worth revisiting.


arthur falls
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