Today Women’s Refuge announced that MediaWorks has accepted their invitation to undergo domestic violence awareness training. This comes after one in a series of damaging instances of sexism on their radio stations, the latest of which occurred last week, when George FM’s Thane Kirby and Kara Rickard were suspended for naming and slut-shaming New Zealand women on Instagram.Following the George FM incident, a producer quit live on air – a stunt which I naively hoped may have been a sign of changing tides. This is the progressive shift forward that MediaWorks needed to make. Women’s Refuge stated on their Facebook page “Our main priority is to help them understand how making misogynistic comments on air can be harmful & dangerous for women, so that this can stop.”

After Chrystal Chenery, after the cucumber number, and after George FM, it finally feels like MediaWorks are taking the first step towards recovery: accepting that they have a problem.

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