Mr Cross meets staff

Press, 26 April 1984, Page 8

Mr Cross meets staff

PA Wellington The chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation, Mr lan Cross, has said he will shape his recommendations on the conduct of broadcasting journalists after meetings with corporation staff in Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin in the next week.

Mr Cross, who earlier met Wellington broadcast journalists, has said he will recommend to the May meeting of the corporation board certain courses of action to improve the credibility of broadcast journalism.

Mr Cross last week criticised the accuracy and objectivity of journalism —

broadcast and print — in a speech at a Wellington Rotary meeting.

Asked if he had raised his concerns about standards with news controllers within broadcasting, Mr Cross said he had been doing this on specific matters over the years in much the same way as the Press Council did in the print sphere. Such specific rulings had changed things, Mr Cross said. He said that he had been concerned in his speech more with a worldwide trend affecting the whole ethical and philosophical basis of modern journalism in Western democracies.

His point was that journalists’ inattention to doing the basics well meant that the credibility of modern journalists was under attack and had been for some years by most community leaders in several different areas.

Mr Cross said he believed the situation was serious and that journalists would take note of it.

“These people in the business should be aware of the essential fragility in world terms of journalism and that, as I have said repeatedly, its best defence is to enjoy the credibility of informed people and the people it is reporting to.” Asked if probing journalism was not likely to offend however accurate, Mr Cross said he used to argue that but had found “when journalism is right on the bull’seye it is accorded considerable respect, even among people whose bull’s-eye has been hit and it is paining them.”