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TVNZ’s Sunday will end in May after 22 years on air (Image: Tina Tiller)
TVNZ’s Sunday will end in May after 22 years on air (Image: Tina Tiller)

MediaMarch 8, 2024

From Gloriavale to Gaza: Vital stories we’d never know if it weren’t for TVNZ’s Sunday

TVNZ’s Sunday will end in May after 22 years on air (Image: Tina Tiller)
TVNZ’s Sunday will end in May after 22 years on air (Image: Tina Tiller)

The long-running investigative news show will come to a close in May, bringing to an end more than two decades of high impact stories.

It’s been confirmed that TVNZ’s news show Sunday will end in May, making the end of primetime investigative journalism on our screens. 

“As their meeting has concluded I can confirm that a proposal has been presented which could result in the cancellation of Sunday,” said a spokesperson for the national broadcaster. “As other meetings are ongoing, I cannot comment further at this stage.”

It’s been reported that Sunday, along with Fair Go and TVNZ’s late night news bulletin, will be pulled off the air in just two months time – earlier than the expected end of Newshub – and staff were told of the news today during closed doors meetings. Dozens of journalists and producers are set to lose their jobs. The fate of the youth-oriented Re: News platform remains to be seen, but it is anticipated that job losses will come from there as well. 

Fair Go is an institution, but it’s the end of Sunday that hurts the most in a quickly dissolving media landscape. While other shows have come and gone – like Three’s short-lived 3rd Degree – Sunday has been a current affairs fixture on free to air since 2002. Over the years, it has ensured that important and otherwise unreported stories were given airtime. 

Former prime minister Helen Clark called the news “disgraceful”, Labour leader Chris Hipkins urged action from the government, while journalists from other outlets have expressed shock and upset at the move.

It’s no secret that long form journalism is expensive and time consuming, but Sunday’s impact has consistently permeated far beyond its evening weekend time-slot.

Here are just a few highlights from two decades of TVNZ’s Sunday. 

The golden mile

Described by The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive as a “bombshell” piece of investigative journalism “so powerful it bends the entire news agenda to address it”.

This 2022 investigation by Kristin Hall took an unprecedented look at the state of homelessness along the main stretch of Rotorua. It showed how the country’s homelessness crisis had reached a critical boiling point through the use of motels as emergency accommodation. 

As noted by Greive at the time, the investigation, which ran for about 30 minutes, was almost more of a short documentary than a segment from a current affairs show. 

Photo: TVNZ / Design: Archi Banal

But perhaps most crucially, the story didn’t just air on a Sunday nights and then vanish. It generated multiple follow-up reports from across all major news networks, and prompted government intervention. A month later, every Rotorua mayoral hopeful, most prominently the eventual winner Tania Tapsell, focused their campaigns heavily on the issue of homelessness as a result of this investigation. 

The Gaza Strip in 2002

Sunday’s first ever story of its first ever episode – and the first time a New Zealand crew had been allowed into the Gaza Strip.

The award-winning story looked at Palestinian suicide bombers and the families left behind after terror attacks. “This was the start of a journey which would take us to the occupied Bank and Gaza in search of answers as to why someone… could be driven to turn herself into a human bomb,” said former Sunday reporter Cameron Bennett. This story might be 22 years old but it’s still particularly relevant today.

Reflecting on his time with the programme, including as host, in 2022, Bennett said: “I feel very fortunate to have been part of that golden era. The Sunday lens was wide.”

Agenda-setting access to Gloriavale

Everyone knows about Gloriavale now, but in 2007 it was far more of a mystery. “Everywhere we turned we were gob-smacked by the bizarre way of life,” said reporter Janet McIntyre, reflecting on her time reporting at the commune. “Mass prayer rituals, women consigned to silence and subservience, large families living in cramped quarters, young children in regimented work programmes.”

Sunday gained exclusive access to the shady leader of the cult, Hopeful Christian, and McIntyre said she was shocked he chose to sit down with her. McIntyre described having to wear a full-length dress in order to be allowed in, and recalled being labelled a “prostitute” for wearing make-up in the commune.

In the years since, the treatment of those living at Gloriavale has been more widely scrutinised, with serious allegations levelled at those in positions of power.

The 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack

A show like Sunday usually involves months of intense planning before an investigation can go to air. But in 2019, days after the terror attack on two Christchurch mosques, Sunday’s team went to air with a show pulled together in two days.

“That night we gave Kiwis a raw, intense snapshot of what had happened in the chaotic hours following the terrorist attack,” reporter Jehan Casinader, who had been sent to cover the events in Christchurch, said. 

“Sunday isn’t just about facts – we put real people at the centre of our stories and help them to connect with the audience. The terrorist attack was a once-in-a-decade story that will leave a mark on us for years to come.”

The Rainbow Warrior bomber

In 2015, John Hudson scored an exclusive interview with Jean-Luc Kister, the man who planted the bombs that sank the Rainbow Warrior 30 years earlier.

“Many times I think about these things because, for me, I have an innocent death on my hands,” Kister said during the interview, in which he also described the operation as a failure. ”For us it was just like using boxing gloves in order to crush a mosquito. It was a disproportionate operation, but we had to obey the order, we were soldiers.”

Reflecting on his time with Kister, Hudson said: “He told me he had been involved in many special operations over the years but sinking the Rainbow Warrior was the only one he truly regretted… Jean-Luc was impressive – softly spoken with steely blue eyes and in 2015, still active in the French military.”

Some of the Sunday team from 2022 (Image: TVNZ)

Lake Alice Hospital 

A three-part investigation into the Lake Alice psychiatric facility and Dr Selwyn Leeks who subjected child patients at the hospital to electric shock therapy without anaesthetic as punishment. This 2007 story, which involved hidden camera interviews with Dr Leeks, would help raise awareness of serious abuse at the facility.

It would take until just this year for survivors to receive an apology.

Lake Alice

An unprecedented visit to North Korea

Few people, let alone journalists, ever have the opportunity to step foot in North Korea. But, in 2018, the Sunday team visited. 

“It took 18 months for Sunday producer Louisa Cleave, cameraman Martin Anderson and me to gain the necessary permissions to travel there to film a group of NZ birdwatchers tracking down migratory godwits,” recalled journalist Mark Crysell for Sunday’s 20th anniversary programme.

It may not have been as agenda-setting as some of the other historic Sunday pieces, but the fact alone of being able to visit North Korea with a full crew is worth remembering. “When we finally arrived, it felt like we’d been sealed inside a Tupperware container,” Cyrsell said. “We were filming in some of the most sensitive and remote parts of a country that is considered a rogue nuclear state, places where no foreigner had ever been.”

The final Paul Holmes interview

A powerful argument for longform interviewing on television. It’s so rare these days to see time being devoted to a one-on-one interview with a single subject, at least in New Zealand. In 2013, two weeks before he died, Sir Paul Holmes was awarded a knighthood and granted his last ever interview to Sunday reporter Janet McIntyre. 

A full 20 minutes was dedicated to the wide-ranging interview, where Holmes was brutally honest in answering probing questions about his controversial career. Maybe it’s just because I’m a media geek, but I distinctly remember watching this interview as a teen in awe.

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Melissa Lee in 2020 (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Melissa Lee in 2020 (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

MediaMarch 4, 2024

Turns out Melissa Lee did give a one-on-one interview about Newshub after all

Melissa Lee in 2020 (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Melissa Lee in 2020 (Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The broadcasting minister has been accused of not giving interviews since last week’s news about the impending closure of Newshub. That’s not entirely true – Lee spoke to The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive on Wednesday evening. Here’s what she said.

Melissa Lee has a lot on her plate right now. The broadcasting minister’s only been in the job since November and is now being called on to save the entire media industry. 

Last week’s Newshub news pushed Lee into the spotlight in a way she probably hasn’t experienced yet. It was widely observed that she floundered on the day, appearing glib and cold as she reacted to the news that about 300 people, including many of the country’s top journalists, were soon to be out of work. 

In the days since, we’ve heard less and less from Lee on the subject. While she has fronted journalists on parliament’s black and white tiles, and did face questions from Labour’s Reuben Davidson in question time on Thursday, she has otherwise been largely absent from the conversation around Newshub. She didn’t, for example, turn up on RNZ’s Mediawatch over the weekend, nor did she make any appearances on radio or television this morning. Labour’s Willie Jackson, the former broadcasting minister, told The Spinoff that Lee had been “missing in action”, adding today to RNZ that “in this industry’s darkest hour, the minister is nowhere to be seen”.

He continued: “No interview with you, no interview with anyone.”

We can expect to hear more from Lee this week, as it’s reported she will bring to cabinet today suggested pathways for supporting the New Zealand media. We might hear more about this at Christopher Luxon’s weekly post-cabinet press conference this afternoon. 

In the meantime, it turns out Lee did give at least one interview on the Newshub situation and the state of our media before the weekend: with The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive. In it, she appeared more sympathetic to the plight of the media and the potential job losses at Three. She was also less derisive of proposed efforts to assist media outlets, like the former government’s Fair Digital Media Bargaining Bill, and signalled that she was considering other options.

As is common practice, only parts of Lee’s interview were used last week in a piece by Greive about the Newshub closure. But given she’s made so few other public statements on the matter, here’s the whole thing (briefly edited for clarity).

– Stewart Sowman-Lund


Duncan Greive: Was there any consideration given to trying to forestall [the closure] or see if there were another path that could be taken that could lead to Newshub or Three surviving in the local marketplace?

Melissa Lee: To tell you the truth, it was a shock for me too having to come to terms with how this was going to be received by the staffers. [That] was very high on my mind… I had a conversation with the prime minister’s press secretary and I had a conversation with the chief of staff. I didn’t actually have a conversation with the prime minister until this morning [Wednesday]. So it was actually more about concern for the staff, concern for what it would actually mean for Newshub, it was just that. So yeah, I’m still processing it. 

DG: I can imagine. One thing that sort of stuck out to me is that the Newshub press gallery team is obviously such a big part of their identity and a big part of the gallery. Does it give you any disquiet as a longtime MP that in terms of the sort of big mainstream television news, there will only be a government owned channel after June if the proposal goes through?

ML: Well, I think, when you actually talk in terms of television there’s only going to be one television as in mainstream. I mean, there’s also Sky. But, I think more and more, the media landscape is actually changing and I think that’s what I actually said when I was stopped at the black and white tiles as I was heading into the house. It’s not just television… actually radio is doing video, as well as newspapers are doing video. Everything is actually becoming a more multimedia platform. 

And everyone’s going online, and actually becoming more digital. I think that is the signal that perhaps we are behind the times… I think this is not just a New Zealand problem, but it’s a global problem that the media is actually facing. And, you know, in terms of plurality, I have to say that I’m actually quite happy with the plurality we’ve got. We’ve got great journalists at many different media companies who actually do a great job. As an MP, I may not sometimes like the kind of interviews that I get, or how it’s actually portrayed sometimes, but I think they do a fantastic job. And I just hope that the public supports the media that we have. I think… there’s been some issues in terms of the PIJF [the Public Interest Journalism Fund] and how that actually turned the media into so-called “not the trustworthy types”. And I think that needs to be something that the media needs to navigate as well. And, yeah, I feel for the people who got the news [on Wednesday], it must be devastating for them.

DG: Yeah, I agree. You say that you hope that people support the media we have, but isn’t that sort of part of the problem? Historically, they didn’t need to, advertisers supported the media we have, including government advertisers. But that is the big thing that’s changed. Does this give you any pause in terms of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, in terms of introducing another mechanism to support the production of news?

ML: Glen [Kyne, Warner Bros Discovery boss] also told me that the Fair Digital Media Bargaining Bill would have made no difference to their decisions. So it’s a bit too late for Newshub, I think. I’m not going to comment about that, because I already said in opposition [that] I oppose the bill, because I didn’t think it would actually do what apparently the bill is supposed to do. 

But I didn’t stop the bill, because I thought that it needed to go through a proper select committee process. And I’m waiting for the results of the select committee process, and I will actually consider it after the select committee process has actually finished. 

But, when I was stopped a couple of weeks ago, by the media, they asked me, do you support the bill in its current form? I said, “No, I don’t, because I don’t believe that it can produce what people think it will.” So, you know, I will have to think about how it can actually be amended, potentially, if it does go through. I’m also trying to find some other way that we could potentially help the media, but you know, it’s not something that can be drummed up overnight.

DG: I think there are some criticisms of the bill which seem fair. But if not the bill, then what? Have you seen any other mechanisms for supporting the media that don’t introduce further complications, like the PIJF, or similar? 

ML: That’s what I’m looking at. I haven’t got an answer yet. If I had an answer, I might have announced it. I am looking at options. And I mean, there’s always options. But in terms of the bill, look, I mean, it doesn’t include AI. And Stuff has been quite prominent in their criticism of how AI has been scraping their news. And the bill doesn’t include that. I mean, you know, if anything that should potentially be included. 

Anyway, there’s quite a few things… The bill’s not perfect. But I’m not criticising. As I said, I will hear what the select committee comes back with, and I will make a decision after that. 

DG: Just one more question. But I wondered if you could, beyond the thoughts for the journalists and their jobs, offer a recollection or a sort of requiem for Newshub, in terms of your experience of it, your interactions with it, your sense of what it was as an organisation.

ML:  There are still quite a few weeks of consultation that the company is actually going through, I don’t know where that’s actually going to land… I’ve always enjoyed Newshub, I think they are fair and they are tough. We have great journalists working there. My heart goes out to them. Their future is uncertain, and I feel for them.

But that also brings a flashback to, I think in 1990, and I think it might have been the honourable Maurice Williamson, who actually made it possible for an overseas entity to buy TV3, otherwise it would have gone belly up back then I think.

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