Journalist ‘muzzled’ on Budnik affair

Press, 29 April 1987, Page 2

Journalist ‘muzzled’ on Budnik affair

PA Auckland An Auckland radio producer, Ms Toni Mcßae, has resigned from IZB, saying she was muzzled over the Budnik affair.

She planned to broadcast on Monday information on the case of the expelled Russian diplomat, Mr Sergei Budnik, and S.I.S. attempts to recruit her last year to spy on the Russians.

However, she said the station seemed to go cool on the idea during the week-end and she felt the story had to get out. After consulting senior colleagues she decided to go to a Wellington newspaper with the story “to give it credibility and make sure it didn’t go out the. back door.”

She said she “was hauled over the coals” by the station manager, Mr Brent Harman, on Monday and later received a telex from the network news controller, Mr Chris Turver, requesting no more coverage on the Budnik affair, particularly on talkback radio.

“I took it to be muzzling and decided to resign,” she said. Ms Mcßae said she had been approached late last year by an S.I.S. agent in Auckland and asked to investigate certain members in the Soviet Embassy.

She continued to meet the man in her job as a journalist, not as a spy, until December 19, and then forgot about the case until the announcement

last Friday that Mr Budnik had been expelled. Claims that Radio New Zealand did not carry an item on the possible involvement of Ms Mcßae in the expulsion of Mr Budnik because of Government or other external pressures are totally unfounded, according to the director-general of Radio New Zealand, Ms Beverley Wakem.

Ms Wakem said that the IZB Station Manager, Mr Brent Hannan, “made a decision not to run a separate story on the possible involvement of Ms Mcßae on the basis that there were insufficient facts to back Ms Mcßae’s contention that she had been approached by the S.I.S. to spy on Soviet officials."