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TVNZ’s Olympics reporting team is jetting out of Paris, leaving only one reporter on the ground for the Paralympics
TVNZ’s Olympics reporting team is jetting out of Paris, leaving only one reporter on the ground for the Paralympics

MediaAugust 13, 2024

TVNZ’s 11-strong Olympics reporting team drops to just one for the Paralympics

Politics reporter
TVNZ’s Olympics reporting team is jetting out of Paris, leaving only one reporter on the ground for the Paralympics
TVNZ’s Olympics reporting team is jetting out of Paris, leaving only one reporter on the ground for the Paralympics

With the Olympics wrapping up, New Zealand’s press is leaving Paris. Now, ‘unparalleled’ Paralympics coverage is all on one reporter.

Wall-to-wall Olympics coverage has dominated New Zealand’s news cycle since the games kicked off on July 26, capturing every New Zealand victory, scandal and cool shooter. Now the global competition has ended, its sibling tournament, the Paralympic Games, will begin on August 28. As New Zealand’s Olympians pack their bags, reporters and camera crews will be following suit – with only one New Zealand journalist flying in to cover the Paralympics for the nation’s biggest broadcaster.

In July, TVNZ promised “unparalleled” coverage of the 2024 Paralympics, with five pop-up channels dedicated to Paralympics coverage on TVNZ+ and a nightly programme on TV1 from 7.30pm hosted by Scotty Stevenson and NZ’s most decorated Paralympian, Sophie Pascoe – which a TVNZ spokesperson said was the broadcaster’s “primary focus”. The broadcaster will also air Grit & Glory: The Road to the Paralympics, a documentary focused on New Zealand’s Paralympians, on August 24. 

But despite this, TVNZ will have only one reporter and one camera person in Paris to cover the event. That’s compared to the 11-strong team leaving Paris after covering the Olympics, for which it was not the local broadcaster (that was Sky). This number included European correspondent Mei Heron, four camera operators including one already based in Europe, a producer and five reporters: Chris Chang, Jordan Oppert, Michelle Prendiville, Guy Heveldt, Harata Brown and Henry McMullan. For the Paralympics, 1News will have just one reporter present, Victor Waters, plus a camera person.

TVNZ has partnered with Paralympics New Zealand and Attitude Pictures to provide coverage of the tournament since the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, and its coverage this year is also supported by funding from NZ On Air and a Toyota sponsorship. In 2021, its coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics brought streaming figures to nearly 750,000. The spokesperson defended the lone reporter assignment, citing the scale of the tournament compared to the Olympics.

“It’s worth noting that there are 195 Kiwi athletes in the Olympics vs 25 Kiwi athletes in Paralympics so in terms of scale, it is a smaller event for our 1News team to cover.”

Tupou Neiufi, gold medalist para-athlete, will compete in the Paris 2024 Paralympics.

That comparison appears stark but it’s also worth noting that 78 of our Olympians competed across just five team events (men’s and women’s sevens, men’s and women’s football and men’s hockey). All 25 Paralympians are competing individually, many in multiple events. 

In June, NZME was announced as another media partner to the Paralympic Games, with Newstalk ZB being the official radio partner and the New Zealand Herald the official print and digital partner. A press release described NZME’s coverage as an opportunity to “[raise] awareness of these inspiring athletes, and [follow] the team’s journey in Paris”. But a spokesperson for the media company said that while three New Zealand Herald reporters were sent to cover the Olympics, no reporters would be on the ground for the Paralympics.

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After holding its first tournament in Rome in 1960, the Paralympic Games have been held every four years, on the same calendar year as the Olympics. In 2001, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Paralympic Committee (IPC) signed an agreement that saw the Paralympics automatically included in the bid for the Olympic Games, beginning after the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing and 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. This agreement ensured the Paralympics would always follow shortly after the Olympics in the same host nation, using the same infrastructure and offer of subsidies for athletes.

Sophie Pascoe and Scotty Stevenson will host TVNZ’s nightly Paralympics broadcast (Photo: Supplied)

Despite having fewer athletes at the Paralympics and a shorter history, New Zealand’s Paralympians have been more successful than their Olympic counterparts. For the 55 gold, 35 silver and 53 bronze medals won by New Zealanders at the Olympics, Aotearoa’s Paralympians have won 96 gold, 66 silver and 70 bronze medals. This year’s Paralympics has 594 medals to win across 22 sports compared to the Olympics’ 32 sports and 329 medals. Team New Zealand has competed in 23 sports at the Olympics this year, while the NZ Paralympians will be competing in eight sports.

Suggestions have been made in the past to merge the two events in the interest of generating greater publicity for the Paralympics, but a merge would not only overwhelm resources, it would also diminish or “drown out” the importance of the Paralympics and normalise the athletic feats, IPC president Andrew Parsons has argued. The 2024 Olympics saw New Zealand athletes collect the most golds in our history of the competition. If New Zealand’s Paralympians pull off the same feat, will there be enough reporters to share the news?

‘Become a member to help us deliver news and features that matter most to Aotearoa.’
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
— Politics reporter
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OPINIONMediaAugust 10, 2024

The Weekend: When did you first start caring about wrinkles?

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Madeleine Chapman ponders ageing and skincare in a capitalist world.

A few years ago I asked my great aunt – who was in her mid-80s at the time – how she still had such beautiful skin. I was sitting right next to her, peering at her forehead and the corners of her eyes, where only the faintest of lines were visible. I knew in my bones that she, an elderly Samoan woman, was not conducting a 12-step skincare routine, so wanted to know what other life hack she’d discovered.

She looked at me very seriously and answered: “smoking”.

To this day I don’t know whether or not she was making a joke but why shouldn’t I believe her? I have yet to see any rhyme or reason to who gets silky smooth skin at 80 years old and who gets wrinkles at 18. Which is all to say that I have gone a perhaps wilfully ignorant route with my own skin by assuming that what will be will be, and therefore doing exactly nothing to my face for 30 years.

Last year, I looked in the mirror after a particularly long week and wondered if I should be doing something about the lines that were emerging on my face. In the end I decided I probably should, and proceeded to use a face wash for exactly one week before reverting back to my “water and hands” method. I may not have taken any steps to stall my ageing face but it was a Big Moment as I came face to face (literally) with my changing body.

I’m glad that I don’t spend time thinking about my skin. Not in a holier-than-thou sense but because I know how all-consuming our bodies (whether it’s skin, weight or just our natural features) can be in the worst way. I may not spend hours peering at the pores on my cheeks or fretting over the fact that my funny frown line from childhood is now a deep trench in my brow, but I fill in that time with various other bodily concerns.

Which makes it all the more terrifying to read about children as young as six becoming deeply invested in skincare and anti-ageing products. As Alex Casey reported in her excellent cover story this week, the beauty industry has expanded its consumer base to children, with young social media influencers focusing on skincare routines and bright, fun packaging on serums and toners.

Kids younger than 10 years old now are thinking about anti-wrinkle creams, even if they’re not quite thinking about the process of ageing in the way adults might. It’s a terrifying and inevitable development in a capitalist world and makes me feel lovely and old (at 30) to have not grown up with TikTok.

I’d highly recommend settling in to read Alex’s full feature – the final quote will reward you for it (in a bleak existential way).

Ps. Even if you do nothing to your skin, like me, always wear sunscreen. You want to live long enough to get truly wrinkly.

This week’s episode of Behind the Story

Senior writer Alex Casey has this week written an incredible longform feature about the rising trend of young children coveting skincare. Note: this is not about makeup or wearing your mum’s lipstick. It’s about 10 year olds using serums and anti-wrinkle creams.

Alex has been thinking, writing about and living the beauty industry for years, and this is likely just the first in a series of big features about a billion-dollar industry with controversial aims. She joined me this week to talk about the unique challenges of interviewing kids and her own spotty history with skincare and beauty.

So what have readers spent the most time reading this week?

Comments of the week

“I think an important point here is the same one made about how measures to get cars off the road are actually pro-motorist. Every car we get off the roads because people are using other forms of transport makes driving better for those motorists who remain. The same thing applies to emergency vehicles.”

— SamStephens

“I reckon it was a great idea to have events in the Seine, even if the odd competitor did become sick. (I realise they would have a profoundly different perspective.) It’s probably the best campaign to make people aware of the pollution we have generally been brainwashed to accept, in decades. I hope that it sets a trend – cleaning up a river is probably still cheaper than building a swimming stadium from scratch – and a lot better for the environment and for the city, long term.”

— Annie

Pick up where this leaves off

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