John Drinnan has a pretty explosive piece in The Herald this morning:
Maori TV: $10.6m, RNZ: Zero
Treatment of state-funded broadcasters smacks of political expediency.
It is a tale of two broadcasters. Finance Minister Bill English gave Maori Television a $10.6 million boost in the Budget, although it has a $12.9 million nest egg built up over years of taxpayer funding.
Meanwhile, Radio New Zealand is floundering in the eighth year of a funding freeze.
Maori TV gets about $33 million a year from the Crown and from the funding agency Te Mangai Paho combined. Radio NZ gets about $35 million of state funding. For both broadcasters, those sums have not changed for eight years. But this year Maori TV got another $10.6 million over four years.
Politics plays a role in the public broadcasters’ funding. The Government is obliged to reward the Maori Party because of its support.
…
In my opinion, political expediency is the reason the Government has given money to Maori TV and left out RNZ. Spokespeople for the Ministers of Broadcasting and Finance declined to clarify the reason for the decision.National has a long-standing antipathy towards Radio NZ, which it has dismissed in the past as “Radio Labour”. …
Read on for more in The Herald, and while you’re at it why not check out Drinnan’s new blog ZagZigger (welcome to the Dark Side John).
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