Top cop stunned by show’s axing
Police Ten 7 host Rob Lemoto speaks for the first time about claims the show was racist
The top police officer who fronted the Police Ten 7 crime-fighting show on TVNZ has retired from the force after 28 years and spoken out for the first time about his disappointment over the way the top-rating show was taken off our screens.
Detective Senior Sergeant Rob Lemoto, who fronted Police Ten 7 for almost a decade, always had a softer screen persona than his predecessor, retired Detective Inspector Graham Bell, who was renowned for labelling criminals as “morons”, “scumbags”, “murderous thugs”, “mindless lowlifes” and “gutless goons”, among many other colourful descriptors.
But Lemoto was no less disappointed than Bell when the show was pulled from TVNZ amid allegations that it perpetrated racial stereotypes in that non-European people were over-represented when it came to arrests.
Lemoto, speaking for the first time publicly about Ten 7’s axing, said when producers asked him for his feedback on claims the show was racist, he was “dumbfounded” and “disappointed”.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Lemoto told Media Insider.
“I think one of the comments made was that there needs to be more white people on the show. Well, is that in itself not racist? Okay, so do we script it so that we only show European offenders? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there aren’t any but when the cameras go out with a car, it was predominantly in Auckland because that obviously helped keep the cost down.
“The cameras were only attached to cars and the cars only go to areas where there’s work.
“It’s a reality show, it’s not scripted and what you see is what the team has experienced.”
Police Ten 7 — renamed Ten 7 Aotearoa in its final season — finished in 2023 after 21 years and 29 seasons on our screens. While it remained one of New Zealand’s most popular television shows — and a successful export to Australia — it had been subject to critical media commentary, political heat and major academic research.
Many critics argued that it emphasised negative cultural stereotypes and marginalised specific communities.
Lemoto — who has retired from the police force after 28 years — said the show always needed an entertainment factor, but it was also a critical tool to solve crimes.
“You’re never going to put it on television if it’s just policing — ‘look we’d love to find this person’, ‘do your civic duty’, and ‘say no to drugs’,” he says.
“We have a bit of a toolkit and Ten 7 for me was definitely in that toolkit and gave us an opportunity to get some stuff out there to get some help from the public.
“We had cases that we would have just been closing and filing. It was the last avenue of hope for the victims. When we put it on the show, we’d get a lead, find the offender and get some closure for the victims.”
Lemoto said it was a privilege and honour to host the show. Bell had built a huge following and Lemoto said he had big shoes to fill: “I am only size 11!”
By the same token, he readily acknowledges his persona was different.
As a fulltime cop, Lemoto still had a day job beyond his television appearances.
“I’m still giving evidence in front of High Court judges, so I can’t call [offenders] mongrels or fat losers.”
Bell was from a different policing era, he said, where officers smoked cigars and drank whisky. “I don’t even drink tea or coffee.”
Don’t let appearances deceive, however. Lemoto is retiring after almost three decades in the force, dealing with some of the worst elements of society. There have still been times when he’s dragged criminals to a police car, or dealt assertively with gang members.
“I’ll always go with my hand out, to shake someone’s hand, and talk to them. But there are times when you just have to be assertive.”
Lemoto says what’s most disappointing is that TVNZ is now showing only Australian police and highway traffic reality shows. They offered nothing in terms of helping Kiwi victims “so that is a little bit hard to take on the chin”.
“I’m old, and I’m fast approaching 50, so I still watch television. I turn it on and there’s the Australian police force or something. How many victims from New Zealand communities is that helping?”
Lemoto’s comments follow similar sentiment from Bell last year.
“Wokeness and political correctness have just killed it in the end,” Bell told Media Insider of Ten 7. “You can’t hide from reality.”
The “allegation” that Ma¯ori and Pasifika communities were a focus was “nonsense”, said Bell.
“All it focused on was the people who were committing crimes or getting into trouble with the police from day to day. The police have never picked the colour of the people they deal with.”
TVNZ CEO back in NZ
TVNZ’s 6pm news reported on Thursday night that chief executive Jodi O’Donnell was out of the country, as email invitations were sent to staff affected by the latest round of proposals.
In an all-staff email, O’Donnell explained the business pressures on TVNZ and said Friday would be a “confronting” day at the company.
“I know this is not the news any of us want to hear, and it’s certainly not a message I want to deliver, but I want to be upfront with you and ensure that you hear it from me,” she wrote.
A TVNZ spokeswoman confirmed O’Donnell was in Australia, meeting with broadcasters there, and returned to Auckland in the afternoon.
“She will be at TVNZ’s Auckland offices [on Friday] as consultation begins and through that process,” said the spokeswoman.
“We have longstanding partnerships with commercial broadcasters in Australia for content (i.e. Home and Away from Seven and Nine’s news reporting). We’re always looking at how we can work together more in this space. We’re also keen to learn from the success Australian broadcasters have had in achieving regulatory change in their market, but we won’t be providing specific details of these meetings.”
Top Stuff names miss sport roles
Some of Stuff ’s best-known sports reporters have missed out on roles within the company’s new sports structure.
Journalists Mark Reason, Dave Long, Zoe George and Sam Wilson and news director Greg Tourelle are understood to have missed out. Some of them may yet be redeployed within the business.
“I can advise that we are still in discussion with a number of our talented sports team,” said chief executive Laura Maxwell.
Legal swapsies
They faced each other as legal counsel for Stuff and NZME. Now they’ve switched teams.
NZME’s longstanding legal counsel, Allison Whitney, joined Stuff this week as chief legal officer, at the same time as Stuff ’s former legal counsel, Gen O’Halloran, joined NZME as general counsel and company secretary.
The pair are both highly respected and likely enjoying the prospect of encountering each other once again, now, fighting for the companies they once came up against.
Caffeine hit
It’s been an obviously horrific fortnight for New Zealand media and even some of the “new media” are not immune from troubles.
As Media Insider reported on Wednesday, the arts media website The Pantograph Punch, established in 2010, will go into hiatus later this month following a struggle for funding to sustain its journalistic endeavour. Meanwhile, the new Caffeine website — targeted at New Zealand’s start-up community — has also had to reshape itself after cofounder and CEO Julie Gill was diagnosed with cancer.
“At the time it knocked the wind out of us all, but we forged on,” said co-founder James Hurman in a note to the site’s readers.
“However, at the beginning of this year Julie had a severe reaction to her treatment and this forced us all to face the reality that Julie’s health and recovery was much more important than Caffeine.”
Gill had stepped back from her role, meaning there were knock-on effects given her position as commercial revenue leader, Hurman wrote.
“We had built a team reliant on that income, and needed to make the very difficult decision to slim the team down to an affordable level so that we could keep Caffeine alive while we chart a new course.”
Highly regarded editor Fiona Rotherham’s role has been disestablished as a result and she has returned to the National Business Review.
“Fiona will be continuing her excellent reporting elsewhere with our gratitude for the role she played in establishing Caffeine and our best wishes for the future,” said Hurman.
“For the next few weeks we’ll be rebasing, taking stock and finding a new path forward.
“Our irrepressible journalist, Mary Hurley, will be continuing to produce daily content for Caffeine.
“And although there won’t be quite so much of it, we’ll be focused on the daily updates most useful to you.”
As Media Insider reported in August, the website is targeted at New Zealand’s start-up community and entrepreneurs.
“Our mission is to be the way our community connects and shares — to accelerate Aotearoa New Zealand toward outperforming the world at creating, scaling, and exiting extraordinary start-ups. We see a future where our founders are far better connected and networked — to each other, those who can help them, and their peers around the world.”
Gill has been previously the managing director of IDG, publisher of Unlimited magazine and a general manager of Fairfax NZ’s business division. Hurman, the founding partner of Previously Unavailable, acts as director and strategic adviser.
Weather wars
One of the National-led Government’s first real tests of its focus on public spending and bureaucracy will be how it responds to an official review into why New Zealand persists with two publicly owned weather agencies that have little time for each other, and one of which regularly steps on the other’s toes, posing public safety risks.
A review into MetService and Niwa, and the way they work together (or not), was expected to be completed by now but has been delayed until May.
“The weather forecasting review is progressing well and has received significant input from MetService, Niwa, and other key stakeholders,” State Owned Enterprises Minister Paul Goldsmith told Media Insider through a spokesman.
“It is expected that the weather forecasting system review report will be finalised by the end of April 2024, with advice provided to the Government after that. It would be premature of me to comment specifically on the review, or potential issues, until it is complete.”
The review — and any actions — can’t come soon enough for New Zealand’s leading private weather agency, WeatherWatch, which has grown increasingly frustrated with the landscape in New Zealand.
It is now looking to extend to Australia to build its business.
“With Newshub going, WeatherWatch will be the only private outlet with a weather broadcast in all of New Zealand,” WeatherWatch owner Philip Duncan told Media Insider.
He said his agency was up against three publicly owned broadcasters who all made commercial weather videos: Niwa, MetService and TVNZ.
WeatherWatch has to pay about $100,000 a year for New Zealand data and data hosting from overseas agencies, because Niwa tries to charge it $1 million a year for “very basic historical data that is publicly owned”, says Duncan.
“Clearly we can’t buy that — in fact, no business would. But in Australia, you pay $1000 a year — an admin fee — to access public data. In the USA and Canada, it’s free to openly use.”
Duncan said he had messaged Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee, outlining “how unfair it is to do business in New Zealand against the Government itself ”.
“If this review suggests Niwa stop acting so aggressively towards MetService and the private sector, and places value on data that is taxfunded being freely open (like in Aussie, Canada, USA, UK etc.) then that reduces our need to go to Australia to find more revenue, but we’re still working now to find investment to get us across the Ditch so we can further expand our products back here at home.
“We have huge demand and interest from Australia due to our YouTube channel (WeatherWatchTV) and so we’d have a quick way to market with what we do there.”
WeatherWatch has also launched a new app to help fund its business.
“We are currently in talks to find more investment here in New Zealand, but it’s hard work with Niwa blocking the most basic data from us to use as solutions to clients — namely historic data, which in many cases was given to Niwa by volunteers over the years and is hugely tax-funded or publicly owned data.”
He can’t understand why any Government would continue to support two weather agencies.
“If MetService is number one and WW is number two then why does Niwa (way down the list) get so much blind and non-transparent funding? It’s like the Government is trying to keep Blockbuster video alive and we are Netflix.
“Just the smallest amount of support from our own Government would go a long way.”