Radio New Zealand – bullsh*t detection again?
The changes announced could restore lost breakfast habits – the DomPost, Morning Report and last night's dinner (from the microwave because I'm too late home). Here's hoping that Guyon's professional standards will rejuvenate the session.
Mary Wilson's Checkpoint will be top competition for the other strong drive time offerings, with Jim Mora to give us some light with the dark. She's been their lonely remnant custodian of the core news journalist skill, a hyper-sensitive bullshit detector. But unrelenting Checkpoint makes it too hard to arrive home in good humour.
RNZ is known as Radio Pravda to many of my generation for the ideological cant that has passed for insight at the weekends. But what sent me off to commercial radio in the mornings was its infuriating lack of penetration. Ideological preferences do not matter much to me if the journalist still has bullshit detectors that operate with some impartial reliability.
Stephen Franks is principal of Wellington commercial and public law firm Franks and Ogilvie.