14 December 2004

Peters Challenges TVNZ News To Run Bailey Salary Controversy

Rt Hon Winston Peters has challenged Television New Zealand to put the Judy Bailey salary controversy in tonight’s news bulletins and says he will be available to debate the issue with chief executive Ian Fraser on Close Up at 7.

This follows reports today that TVNZ is doubling Bailey’s salary to $800,000 because of the increase in demand for television newsreaders.

Mr Peters raised the issue in Parliament today, asking the Prime Minister if she was embarrassed that the state television-employed Bailey received $384 an hour for a 40 hour week, or more properly as Helen Clark said, for four minutes work a night, while a single pensioner received less than $250 a week.

“TVNZ executives pledged before a select committee this year that their spending will be more transparent. Now they are refusing to comment on the astronomical salaries they are paying themselves.

“This salary issue is an affront to ordinary New Zealanders struggling to make ends meet and it is high time these greedy and extravagant television executives were held to account.

“They should front up on their own television programme tonight and tell everyone why they should accumulate vast sums of wealth at the expense of taxpayers,” said Mr Peters.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>