Quite the headline in today’s print edition of the Weekend Herald, after this article was published online on Friday.

Shayne Currie, the editor-at-large at the New Zealand Herald, wrote a comprehensive piece for his Media Insider column - not only about my latest legal action at the Human Rights Review Tribunal, but ALL the legal action I’m taking against TVNZ.

(And what do you know… the word ‘disgraced’ wasn’t used once!)

Previous articles written about me have only touched on the fact that there was seemingly some unrest in the TVNZ newsroom before I arrived. What I was now able to tell Currie for this article was that there was also a lot of opposition to me specifically:

“What I’ve found is a lot of motivation to either not have me in the role in the first place, or to have me removed from it, regardless of anything which did or didn’t happen.

As I’m sure you can imagine, there were a few noses put out of joint when I was hired for the Breakfast role. I can understand that. On-air roles are highly prized, and there’s probably always going to be some level of resistance to an outside hire.

But it’s the extent and the grounds of that opposition which has really taken me aback – and filled in a lot of blanks as to why things panned out as they did.”

Now the ‘internal documents’ referred to are ones which I’ve obtained from TVNZ under the Privacy Act.

I submitted a request to TVNZ for the personal information it holds about me (this was back in December 2023) and so far I’ve received two tranches of files. The first contained 1,565 documents, the second had 996, and there’s a third still to come.

What it amounts to is any time anyone at TVNZ mentioned me in an email, a document, a Teams discussion - or even if they received email notifications for their Twitter direct messages - I now have those communications. 

I can tell you it has been enlightening to say the least.

I now have a much clearer picture as to why events played out as they did.

And more than 800 days after I left TVNZ, I now have even more reason to keep fighting to set that record straight.