Opinion pieces by non RNZ staff published on website
dukeofurl made this Official Information request to Radio New Zealand Limited
The request was partially successful.
From: dukeofurl
Dear Radio New Zealand Limited,
I have noticed various opinion pieces published online in the last 3 months which contain errors of fact.
This can be minor or major and sometimes pieces are corrected soon after but no details are given of the change.
Could you provide a list of the opinion pieces accepted for publication in the last 6 months and their authors. Only those authors NOT employed by RNZ as employees or staff need be included. But would include those who are occasional paid contributors.
Could you detail those opinion pieces that were corrected or changed after initial publication and the detail of corrections or changes made. Some items may have multiple changes . Include where necessary communications from the author asking for the the change or correction.
Yours faithfully,
H O'Brien
From: Maggie Hedge
Good morning
Your request has been received by Radio New Zealand. Under the Broadcasting Act 1989, we have 20 working days in which to respond to you and I expect we will have our reply posted to your postal address within that time. If for some reason, such as leave commitments or sickness, we are unable to respond to you within 20 working days, there is a further provision for an extension of time and if that is necessary and I will write to you again if it becomes necessary to extend the time taken.
In the meantime, your oia request will be processed against the standards which you have nominated.
Yours sincerely,
George Bignell | OIA Coordinator
RADIO NEW ZEALAND | LEVEL 2 | 155 THE TERRACE PO BOX 123 | WELLINGTON | NEW ZEALAND 6140 | www.rnz.co.nz DDI +64 4 474 1424 | [mobile number]
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From: dukeofurl
Dear Maggie Hedge,
Thanks for your reply
I wish to receive all responses by email via FYI
Yours sincerely,
H O'brien
From: George Bignell
Dear H O'Brien
We respond to your inquiry as follows.
RNZ does not hold the information you seek and it would be an enormous job
to compile the lists you are after. There is the point too that
corrections or changes can be made for a variety of reasons, e.g. we
might change a headline, edit for length, a photo, a phrasing to make
something make more sense, add in a link, or any / all of the above.
All the pieces that we have published are publically available at
[1]https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/on-the-in....
So, in a formal sense, your request is refused under s18(f) of the
Official Information Act which cites that "that the information requested
cannot be made available without substantial collation or research" and
the earlier s18(e) which relies on the fact that information may not even
exist. This refers to the fact that if edits to an article were made, our
content management system, for example, may not capture all those edits.
If you can be more specific in the nature of your inquiry, we may be able
to assist further. We do not require that inquiries be made under the
OIA as we are happy to respond if the information is available.
Kind regards
George Bignell| OIA Inquiries Coordinator
RADIO NEW ZEALAND | LEVEL 2 | 155 THE TERRACE
PO BOX 123 | WELLINGTON | NEW ZEALAND 6140 | [2]www.rnz.co.nz
DDI +64 4 474 1424 | [mobile number]
[3]RNZ-logo-reo
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From: dukeofurl
Dear George Bignell,
Thanks for your reply. I dont think you understand my request. Of course there may be minor changes which are inconsequential , but surely you have a vetting or editing process by your staff before publication. Maybe you even use spell checkers and other edit support software like Grammarly and the like. As your contributors are busy people with other work Im only interested in changes that they request.
It seems strange to me to suggest ways of finding that out but maybe you could start with the providing the original copy and the final online version as it is today leaving it up to me to 'compare them' Maybe you could provides emails (and other correspondence) from the contributor asking for changes or corrections as I imagine thats how its done. Surely you have some sort of version tracking software showing changes, even Wikipedia can do that ( maybe legal requirements make that essential but Im not looking for that sort of thing.) Any way that sounds too complicated to unravel so First and Last version would do , or the emails from contributors requesting changes.
As a final suggestion, you could show online the major corrections as they appear so readers understand there has been an oops.
Yours sincerely,
H O'Brien
From: George Bignell
Good morning
Your OIA request has been received by Radio New Zealand. We have 20 working days in which to respond to you and I expect we will have our reply posted to your postal address within that time. If for some reason, such as leave commitments or sickness, we are unable to respond to you within 20 working days, there is a further provision for an extension of time and if that is necessary and I will write to you again if it becomes necessary to extend the time taken.
Yours sincerely,
George Bignell | OIA Coordinator
RADIO NEW ZEALAND | LEVEL 2 | 155 THE TERRACE
PO BOX 123 | WELLINGTON | NEW ZEALAND 6140 | www.rnz.co.nz
DDI +64 4 474 1424 | [mobile number]
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From: dukeofurl
Dear George Bignell,
There seems to be an error. This is not a new request, but the same one I earlier submitted.
As your reply didnt answer the questions I just clarified the request at your suggestion
Yours sincerely,
H O Brien
From: dukeofurl
Dear George Bignell,
You said in your last correspondence that you were treating it as a new OIA, which I objected to.
However the 20 working days from the date(5/7) has passed. Which is outside the obligatory response time.
Yours sincerely,
H O'Brien
From: George Bignell
Radio New Zealand Limited
Dear Ms O'Brien
Your reply has been delayed due to me having a period away on sick leave arising from a flu virus , my apologies.
I have now had an opportunity to look at your follow up request and our response remains as it was in the first instance, i.e. your request is refused under s18(f) of the Official Information Act which cites that "that the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or research" and the earlier s18(e) which relies on the fact that information may not even exist.
To explain further, articles are submitted in a variety of ways to a number of different editorial staff in our organisation. There is no one standardised way in which an article, from its first draft, can be or is tracked through "a system" at RNZ. That is simply not how we operate.
To ask editorial staff if they still retain the first version of any article on our website is problematic too because of different housekeeping regimes. Some of these systems are automated, especially in our dedicated News system ,so we would simply have no way of knowing which version, if any remained, was the first one.
I am sorry we cannot be of more assistance to you with your inquiry.
Yours sincerely
George Bignell| OIA Inquiries Coordinator
RADIO NEW ZEALAND | LEVEL 2 | 155 THE TERRACE
PO BOX 123 | WELLINGTON | NEW ZEALAND 6140 | www.rnz.co.nz
DDI +64 4 474 1424 | [mobile number]
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