TVNZ’s head of news, Paul Yurisich, is on leave while a lawyer investigates its hiring policies in wake of the Kamahl Santamaria fiasco. But as Mark Jennings writes the saga is not over yet.
TVNZ’s chief executive Simon Power hasn’t been in the job very long but already he is facing a make-or-break moment. In the wake of the Kamahl Santamaria affair, he must confront the issue that has been simmering in the background long before Santamaria flew in from Qatar.
Power has inherited a news division where many of its journalists don’t appear to like or support its leader – Paul Yurisich.
While Power will no doubt implement changes to TVNZ’s recruitment “policies, processes and practices” he also must decide whether Yurisich can remain at the helm of the company’s flagship property – news and current affairs.
Paul Yurisich was something of a surprise hire by Power’s predecessor, Kevin Kenrick.
Yurisich or Yuri as he is widely known by journalists had been out of New Zealand for 15 years working for Bloomberg TV in Hong Kong, and Al Jazeera English in Qatar.
Kenrick explained his appointment in a media release saying Yurisich, “can bring a global perspective to our business as we look to innovate and extend the news product we deliver to our audiences."
Working in Hong Kong and Doha does not necessary provide “global perspective” any more than working in Auckland or Sydney would. Al Jazeera and Bloomberg might be bigger than TVNZ but it doesn’t mean they are more sophisticated TV news operations.
While New Zealand ranked 11th on the Press Freedom Index 2022, Qatar was 119th and Hong Kong 148th.
Freedom House, a US based organisation that advocates for democracy, has an unflattering view of Qatar’s media environment: “All journalists in Qatar practice a degree of self-censorship and face possible jail sentences for defamation and other press offenses.”
Perhaps Kenrick felt TVNZ news needed an injection of outside blood after long serving head of news John Gillespie stepped down in 2020, but Yurisich’s appointment meant several senior and loyal TVNZ news executives missed out on one the country’s most influential media roles.
TVNZ insiders describe Yurisich’s style as “autocratic” and his decision to hire Mereana Hond (head of digital news) and Santamaria from Al Jazeera into key positions raised eyebrows in TVNZ’s newsrooms. Both, incidentally, are also former TV3 employees. Hond and Santamaria are smart journalists but they are seen as outsiders closely allied to Yurisich.
Programmes like early morning news shows have tight cultures. Staff bond over having to dramatically adapt their lifestyles to the unsociable working hours and having an outsider who doesn’t “fit” can be a recipe for disaster. The programme’s executive producer and supervising producer have both recently left TVNZ.
TVNZ’s current affairs programme Sunday also lost one of its top producers recently. Chris Cooke, one of the country’s best investigative journalists, resigned because he felt Yurisich had not been supportive enough in a legal battle the programme was involved in.
Sunday reporter and former US correspondent, Rebecca Wright, has moved to a presenting job at Newshub and 1News supervising producer Jonathan Williams has gone to Stuff.
The TVNZ newsroom’s unhappiness came pouring out on the 6pm news on Sunday, May 29.
The lead story on 1News focused on TVNZ management’s refusal to respond to requests for information on the Santamaria affair.
Reporter Kim Baker-Wilson said the newsroom had sent a long list of questions to the CEO, head of news and current affairs, and corporate communications and got ‘no comment’ responses. The rest of Baker-Wilson’s report essentially quoted an article by a Stuff on allegations against Santamaria.
While it was appropriate for 1News to report the story, the 6pm producer rammed it home to viewers and TVNZ’s “tight-lipped” management by making it the lead item (was this the most important news story in the world that day?) and allowing a 3-minute duration (most stories are half that).
The producer had Baker-Wilson include the fact that 1News had hired its own lawyer over the issue rather than consult TVNZ’s in-house counsel which it would usually do.
The next night a senior reporter (during a live cross) told viewers the saga had been very hard on TVNZ staff. Reporting on the feelings of your colleagues is unusual. This looked like another very public shot at management.
Much of the wider media interest in the story has been prompted by TVNZ’s bizarre decision to initially explain Santamaria’s absence from Breakfast as being due to “a family emergency”.
Power apologised to staff on June 2, admitting the description was “wrong”, but he didn’t explain who signed off the media statement containing this fudging response. Was it him, or Yurisich, or someone in HR or corporate communications? Whether it was a poor taste attempt at black humour or a deliberate obfuscation, it was always going to be exposed as duplicitous.
TVNZ’s recruitment processes may turn out to be inadequate or inconsistently implemented but Power and Yurisich will be further unsettled by what is currently happening at Al Jazeera.
At an all staff meeting on in Doha on June 2 a number of women came forward to say they had made complaints of sexual harassment which had not been properly dealt with. Another woman claimed that someone who had behaved inappropriately was present at the meeting.
Al Jazeera bosses called the meeting after reports in the New Zealand media quoting female journalists working in Doha. One woman provided details of a sexually suggestive email allegedly sent by Santamaria and claimed his inappropriate behaviour was well known in the Al Jazeera newsroom.
Paul Yurisich may well have known nothing of Santamaria’s behaviour when they both worked in Doha and he appears to have acted promptly when he learnt of the recent complaint against his Breakfast host. The problem here is that no one in TVNZ’s management, who knows the full story, is prepared to be transparent.
1News waved melodramatically the flag of independence when the story broke - but how hard is it prepared to push Simon Power for the actual answers to the network's failings?
