Sean Plunket: putting the unfashionable back on air

Friday, 17 September 2021

“When you’ve been de-platformed, what else is there to do but build your own?”

It’s been eight months since Sean Plunket left talkback station Magic Talk among changes that saw controversial hosts John Banks taken off-air, and Peter Williams retiring.

Inevitably, the combative former Morning Report presenter refused to be silenced for long. He’s building an online radio station, aimed at those who don't see their concerns being addressed by traditional broadcasters.

It will be a safe haven for hosts who have been exiled from the mainstream. Plunket won’t yet name the presenters he has lined up, but the rumour mill has spat out sportscaster Martin Devlin, recently taken off-air for throwing a punch at a colleague, blogger Martyn Bradbury, and antagonistic local politician Michael Laws.

**READ MORE:

* Broadcaster Sean Plunket says support has been 'humbling' since Magic Talk departure

* Should we care about Sean Plunket's departure from talk radio?

* Sean Plunket has left Magic Talk

* Magic Talk clash: Sean Plunket attacks 'greedy boomer' colleague Peter Williams

**

Despite wooing British TV star Noel Edmonds at his north Auckland home, the Deal or No Deal presenter opted not to sign on.

Plunket doesn’t see it as New Zealand Fox News, the opinion-driven cable channel which thrives on right-wing commentary that wades directly into the culture wars, but it’s driven by his belief “something has gone wrong with our Fourth Estate media”.

“I think we need a new place to take the views that are unfashionable, are cancelled, are de-platformed, be they right or wrong, and apply journalistic means to them and give people a place to have the discussions we are not having.

“It's not healthy if we don't have the discussion.”

Plunket is a strong proponent of the free speech panic: an orthodoxy that dictates political correctness is stifling debate. One touchstone of this theory is what Plunket refers to as “the Treaty.”

“We haven’t had a discussion about that in an open forum, and that’s why it gets so many people angry. I've always been politically agnostic, so I don't care who the government is…But the quality of the debate does worry me. We do not have enough diversity in our journalism…It is all skewed Left.”

He rejects the idea that local outlets are filled with right-wing voices, not least the most popular commercial breakfast show’s Mike Hosking, and columnists like Matthew Hooton, Richard Prebble, Steven Joyce and Stuff’s own Damien Grant.

“They are treated like the token.”

Plunket buys into the theory, popular among conservatives, that the Government is corrupting journalists through New Zealand on Air (NZOA), a Crown entity that has been funding broadcasting and creative content since 1989.

“That comes with…the requirement to adhere to certain editorial principles. That is not independence. In truth, many parts of our media are being compromised.”

He is particularly exercised that a new $55m public interest journalism fund incorporates a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. However, many outlets already include this in their charters or corporate values.

“The Government, through this fund, is going to deny us a debate about the application of the Treaty of Waitangi in the 21st century context. We're never gonna have that because if you're a news organisation, you will lose your funding for certain projects.”

Plunket dismisses the reality of how the agency works; that it acts at arm’s length from the government of the day, and has no control or input into how content is produced. He doesn’t see a contradiction in his previous work for state-owned broadcasters RNZ and TVNZ.

“I had misgivings about [RNZ’s] editorial policy and the fact that it practised incredible self-censorship, in the way that it hired … and I watched it from the inside.

“I watched journalists and people in arts programmes in Radio NZ use the organisation to actively campaign against certain parties during election campaigns.

“I can remember during an election campaign, having a senior journalist in the Gallery take me out for a coffee and tell me that I had to stop going particularly hard on a certain minister with the Labour government ‘because we are doing the overnight polling. And if you keep doing this, we might lose’.

“And they campaigned against National governments. There were several ways to make editorial calls and judgements as to what stories get run and what stories don’t.”

He declines to name the reporter.

Plunket, 57, co-hosted Morning Report for 14 years from 1996, a ferocious political interviewer. Before that he was a political reporter for TV3 and presenter on Fair Go.

In his final months, the relationship with RNZ turned sour. Plunket lost an Employment Relations Authority case after the station refused to allow him to moonlight as a columnist and presenter.

Plunket claims he had previously been offered a job hosting Nine to Noon but it was his understanding the then-prime minister Helen Clark had expressed a preference for someone else.“I was cool with that. The wind had changed. You accepted when you worked at RNZ that it is not independent from political control.”

Helen Clark says she has “no recollection whatsoever of any such event.”

A spokesman for the broadcaster said: “RNZ has no comment to make on these claims that go back a number of years except to say that RNZ operates independently and appoints people to roles on merit after a rigorous process.”

Plunket went on to work for Newstalk ZB, and then RadioLive, establishing himself as a ‘woke warrior’ and bogeyman of left-wing Twitter. He ignited controversy by calling celebrated author Eleanor Catton an “ungrateful hua”, and an ill-judged tweet about serial sex-abuser Harvey Weinstein. He was forced to resign after a brief stint on the Broadcasting Standards Authority board.

In 2020, the BSA fined MediaWorks $3000 after it found an interview Plunket conducted with Te Whānau ā Apanui spokesperson Louis Rapihana amplified negative stereotypes about Māori and had the potential to cause widespread harm.

Plunket believes he was fired from MediaWorks after Vodafone threatened to pull advertising. “I was told I was too hot to handle.” Vodafone says this is “categorically not true,” and MediaWorks says the claim is “incorrect”.

Plunket’s dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race. But the mouth that earned him a living did not come with a silver spoon. He had a tough upbringing in Porirua. His journalist father Patrick was largely absent.

It would shock many of his ‘fans’ to know it was Plunket who pioneered increased use of te reo Māori on Radio NZ. “This is going back years. In Māori Language week we always had this thing on Morning Report where we’d throw in a ‘kia ora’. And that was good enough, right?

“I said, ‘lets do more than kia ora. Let’s do ‘good morning, welcome to Morning Report, I’m Sean…’ and learn how to say it.

“I also said, why are we p…… around doing this once a year. Why don't we do it all year …and give the programme more texture and currency. And we did, and it took off, and it’s good.”

He refuses to confirm it – citing client confidentially – but Plunket also had a role in the revival of Te Paati Māori in last year’s election, media training candidate Rawiri Waititi, now an MP and co-leader. Andrew Campbell, now Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s chief press secretary, was also a client in the early 2000s at the NZ University Students Association.

Plunket had less success with economist Gareth Morgan, whose Opportunities Party bombed in 2017. Plunket attributes that to Ardern’s shock ascension to Labour leadership.

“Only Gareth’s somewhat indelicate claims about lipstick and pigs kept us in the news cycle.”

Plunket denies Morgan is bankrolling his new venture. Neither is Bob Jones, although Wellington gossip circles hold he approached both.

He won’t name his investors, but insists they will have no editorial influence. Nor will he take NZOA cash.The station will launch in late summer. With a nod to his own ‘cancellation’ he’s called it The Platform.

“Its primary principles are freedom of speech, democracy, and the idea that everything is worth discussing.

“I’m asking everyone who works for The Platform to treat everyone they interact with dignity and respect. To be careful in the sort of language they use: c…womble would not be acceptable. To raise the tone and tenor of debate.

“I think there's a shift and a tide in society… I'm probably not flavour of the month. But in many ways, that sort of success or approval, when you look at in perspective, was pretty meaningless anyway.”

*Andrea Vance has worked on projects funded by NZ on Air.

*This story has been amended.