Is TVNZ making the most of John Campbell?
Friday, 24 May 2024
John Campbell is one of Aotearoa’s most esteemed, accoladed and experienced journalists. And as chief correspondent at TVNZ, he should be the jewel in the state-owned broadcaster’s crown - so why don’t we see more of him? As TVNZ presses ahead with a new, trimmed-down, digital-first current affairs team, we ask whether it’s doing enough with a prime asset.
TVNZ has announced the make up of its new current affairs unit, which has risen from the ashes of Fair Go and Sunday.
One reporter from each show will stay on at TVNZ as multimedia in-depth reporters - Sunday’s Mava Moayyed and Fair Go’s Gill Higgins - along with Indira Stewart, who has had that title since early 2023.
Also in that team is John Campbell, as TVNZ chief correspondent.
This isn’t a new role for Campbell, either. He has been chief correspondent at the state-owned broadcaster for two years.
What does Campbell do now, and what can we expect of him in the future?
Here’s what we know.
Chief correspondent? When did that happen?
Campbell’s path to chief correspondent is a circuitous one.
He joined TVNZ in 2018, leaving his hosting gig at RNZ’s Checkpoint to become a roving reporter for the national broadcaster. Campbell said he wanted to get back to reporting and out of the studio.
It was a surprise then when, less than six months later, Campbell was named as Jack Tame’s replacement on the hosting desk at Breakfast.
He was a chaotic force on set - going AWOL mid-broadcast, interrupting news bulletins, taking over weather reports - but also brought a gravitas to the programme and drew in a younger viewing base.
Campbell lasted three years on Breakfast. When he left to become chief correspondent in April 2022, he said it was “a new and really exciting broadcast-digital role, and I am so up for it”.
He said he would be crafting everything “from documentaries and broadcast specials, to stories for Sunday and 1 News, to working in the immediacy of our digital team when there’s breaking news, or when we want to tell stories in new or different ways, to making sure TVNZ is talking to, and about, as many New Zealanders as possible”.
Then-TVNZ head of news and current affairs, Paul Yurisich, said Campbell would be “out and about around Aotearoa getting into the big issues and providing even more depth to our daily coverage”.
Neither Campbell himself nor TVNZ’s current head of news and current affairs, Phil O’Sullivan, were available for interview for this piece.
And what does he actually do?
“At the moment, he seems to have disappeared from sight,” said veteran journalist and news executive Bill Ralston, who was head of news and current affairs at TVNZ from 2003 to 2007.
“He’s finding stories, but these are long stories aren’t they,” both in terms of word count and the time taken to report them.
The 1 News site shows eight stories with Campbell’s byline on them published in 2024.
Some are reported stories on issues like Wellington’s water infrastructure and the lack of charges over the Pike River disaster, others are straight-up opinion about, for example, the commercialisation of professional rugby.
Some, like pieces on the anti-coalition hui at Tūrangawaewae Marae or the Waitangi Dawn service, are a bit of both.
The stories appear in written form on 1news.co.nz, and most are very long. The Pike River story, for example, clocks in at nearly 6,800 words, while an opinion piece about Chris Hipkins’ leadership in opposition is over 3,800.
By contrast, the cover story in Sunday magazine in the Sunday Star-Times maxes out at 1,800 words.
TVNZ said the stories were “most often led or accompanied by in-depth video pieces” that appeared on the 6pm bulletin. The water infrastructure piece had a multi-media treatment that included four stories that aired across separate nights on the news, and were edited together into one story for YouTube.
“As well as this work,” a TVNZ spokesperson said, “John steps in to present on our news programmes where required and plays a role in mentoring reporters in our newsroom.”
On Thursday TVNZ amended its weekly highlights publicity email to add a special in which Campbell will explore the challenges facing Northland ahead of Budget Day.
What does everyone think about this?
Campbell’s role, and particularly the opinion writing aspect of it, has been the subject of some controversy.
In January this year Karl du Fresne, former editor of The Dominion, now Stuff-owned newspaper The Post, published a post on his blog in which he took TVNZ to task for running several Campbell op-eds since October’s general election that were critical of the National-led government.
“Campbell clearly decided on October 14 that New Zealand had made a grievous mistake in electing a centre-right government and set himself the task of leading the Resistance,” du Fresne wrote.
“Someone in authority should have told him then that this was not his function as a journalist. If he refused to accept that, he should have been told to pack his bags.
“That this didn’t happen tells us that TVNZ is happy for its chief correspondent, aka the nation’s Hand-Wringer-in-Chief, to continue his crusade.”
At least one reader took a complaint to the Media Council over the perceived bias in Campbell’s columns, which was dismissed on the grounds that the column was clearly labelled “opinion” and that opinion pieces were not expected to be neutral.
True as that may be, the debacle sparked debate about whether journalists at TVNZ - advertiser-funded but state-owned - should ever have an opinion about the prevailing leadership, one way or the other.
Ralston wondered if this might be why Campbell wasn’t more visible at TVNZ. “His forthright editorial style has at times annoyed the Government, so they might want to hide him away.”
How much does TVNZ pay him for this?
TVNZ declined to say, and let’s bear in mind that Campbell isn’t exactly a civil servant; his salary comes from advertising revenue and other commercial sources, not tax dollars.
However, as a state-owned entity, TVNZ is required to appear before a Government select committee each year for an annual review, and respond to written questions.
Thanks to its report for the 2022/23 financial year, we know how many salaries were paid out within $10,000 brackets, though no names are attached.
Whether du Fresne’s claim that Campbell is TVNZ’s highest-paid journalist may or may not be true (6pm anchor Simon Dallow would also be a strong contender) but we know that 43 people across TVNZ’s business units were paid between $200,000 and $300,000. Safe to assume Campbell is somewhere in there.
Could TVNZ be doing more with him?
Campbell is unequivocally one of Aotearoa’s most experienced and skilled broadcast journalists.
But, Ralston said, Campbell had been brought on at a time when TVNZ was starting to lose its appetite for current affairs.
“I think the problem is the management have no idea what to do with him,” he said.
“For some reason they got rid of Sunday, which was a programme that was sponsored and making them money. But the rest of TVNZ doesn’t understand its news and current affairs division, and especially current affairs.
“We’re talking intellectual lightweights outside of the news operation,” he said.
Campbell was, to the best of Ralston’s knowledge and experience, easy to work with and to manage.
“They should be using him. He’s a very very good television performer and he should be used in that role.”
What will he do in the new unit?
No one seems to know, precisely.
In announcing the new team, executive producer Nicola Russell, who is being retained from Fair Go, said it would “produce long form current affairs and consumer stories (and keep the Fair Go brand alive)”.
TVNZ said it would “have a digital focus and are charged with delivering a range of consumer and current affairs journalism”, and would likely be approached in a multi-media manner similar to what Campbell follows now.
Crucially, however, as TVNZ focuses on streaming and video on demand, that digital focus means we may see even less of Campbell and his cohort on linear TV shows like 1 News at 6pm.