Former TVNZ Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria has released several internal staff emails; SportsCafe's line-up in the early 2000s. Photo montage: Oliver Rusden; photos: TVNZ
‘Dull fingerprints’, ‘s*** telly’ - the internal TVNZ staff messages targeting former Breakfast host; Ric Salizzo builds SportsCafe empire with four new shows; Voyager Media Awards – will there be a C-bomb sequel?; The Spinoff editor stepping down.
Former TVNZ Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria has released a series of internal staff emails and messages that he says highlight the level of animosity towards him at the state broadcaster during his short tenure.
Santamaria has won the right to have his legal dispute with TVNZ fully moved from the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) to the Employment Court to achieve a faster resolution.
He has said he has been unfairly “cancelled” and “became and remains unemployable” because of the fallout from his departure from TVNZ in 2022.
TVNZ has defended its actions, including the way it handled Santamaria’s departure and the aftermath, and says it remains “confident of our position”.
Santamaria resigned after 32 days on air, after a complaint of inappropriate behaviour by a female colleague.
His resignation from TVNZ was announced on May 28, 2022.
Santamaria has said the alleged incident at TVNZ was instinctive, with no ill intent, and it was “never alleged at the time by the complainant to be sexual and/or harassment”.
He apologised later for making his colleague feel uncomfortable.
The public has not heard the colleague’s side of the story.
This week, ERA member Rachel Larmer said both parties were alleging the other had breached, in a number of ways, a record of settlement (RoS) that had been agreed after Santamaria’s resignation.
In a preliminary decision last year, the authority backed TVNZ in the first round of the legal fight, but other claims were yet to be heard.
Santamaria has received almost 3000 internal and individual TVNZ files, including emails and messaging app messages, as part of a Privacy Act request.
Santamaria said he could not release the full tranche of emails and messages as they formed part of his legal action.
“I would very much like to, because I believe they demonstrate the wider picture and opposition to my hiring from the outset – none of which I was aware of.”
However, he provided several examples:
Santamaria said he accepted that people would gossip and have their opinions.
“That happens in any workplace, whether we acknowledge it or not. But this was specific stuff, and it was widespread.
“As far as I knew, I was being welcomed into TVNZ... but all those warm welcomes given to my face and online by new colleagues belied what was actually happening behind the scenes.”
A TVNZ spokeswoman said the company complied with Privacy Act obligations.
“TVNZ engaged external counsel to review thousands of documents to fulfil Mr Santamaria’s Privacy Act request,” she said.
“During that process, TVNZ identified an exceedingly small number of messages that do not meet our professional standards.
“While disappointing, personal messages between individuals did not factor into what occurred in 2022.”
Santamaria told Media Insider he would challenge heavy redactions in TVNZ’s Privacy Act response. “There are also documents which I know to exist which haven’t been given to me.”
The TVNZ spokeswoman said under the Privacy Act, Santamaria was “entitled to his personal information, but he is not entitled to anyone else’s personal information”.
Asked what he wanted to achieve with his legal actions, Santamaria said, “first and foremost, I want the facts out there”.
“I’ve always wanted that, but I stuck to my obligations of confidentiality – first, as a TVNZ employee and then under the terms of the record of settlement.
“The same cannot be said for TVNZ, in either of those scenarios. Both the Minister of Broadcasting at the time and the Chief Ombudsman spoke of the necessity for a Crown entity like TVNZ to be transparent and accountable for its actions.”
The TVNZ spokeswoman said Santamaria had spoken about the employment matters “at length on his personal platforms and in the media, which TVNZ considers to be a breach of his own confidentiality obligations”.
“That claim [TVNZ’s counterclaim] forms part of the matter to be heard in the Employment Court.”
Santamaria said the decision by the ERA to allow his legal actions to be fully heard by the Employment Court was “an important victory”.
“The ERA has, as member Larmer pointed out, limitations as to its power and jurisdiction. This is in contrast to the Employment Court, which is just that – a court.
“The case will be heard by a judge, and the discovery processes are more robust. I’ve always said the legal arguments in my case are better suited to that jurisdiction and I’m glad the authority has agreed with that.
“Also, I have an appeal against an earlier ERA determination which is already in the court and scheduled for an October hearing.”
Santamaria replaced John Campbell as a Breakfast host in April 2022, after a 17-year stint at Al Jazeera.
His last appearance on screen for TVNZ was on May 18, 2022.
TVNZ initially said a “family emergency” was behind his absence – a statement later discredited after the female colleague’s complaint of inappropriate behaviour emerged.
This was followed by claims of inappropriate messages to female colleagues at Al Jazeera.
In its latest determination released publicly this week, the ERA quoted Santamaria as saying he “became and remains unemployable”.
Santamaria told Media Insider he had applied for a number of production, editorial and broadcast roles “all of which I am well-qualified for”.
“I always found the speed of the ‘thanks-but-no-thanks’ responses (or the lack of response at all) to be telling.
“The fact is, with the current narrative that exists around me, I’m simply not going to find employment.
“And don’t forget, through my Privacy Act request, I’ve seen what people at TVNZ were saying about me all along – both internally, and with people in other media organisations. Many people never wanted me there in the first place.”
In a statement to Media Insider, TVNZ said two of Santamaria’s claims were already being determined by the Employment Court.
“The Employment Authority found there was no ‘urgency’ or ‘public interest’ in this third claim, but decided because the other two claims are in the Employment Court, the third claim should also be heard there too,” said a spokeswoman.
“Our reasons for opposing the application are well set out in the decision.
“Mr Santamaria was clear that he would appeal any adverse ERA decision, so we agree it’s more efficient for all claims to be heard in the Employment Court.
“Unsurprisingly, we’d like the matter resolved, but it’s not up to us. Mr Santamaria took 18 months to lodge this claim with the ERA and has amended his claim twice since. Hearing dates are outside of our control.
“Mr Santamaria’s employment at TVNZ ended three years ago and the circumstances surrounding this were well reported on at the time.
“We remain confident of our position. We don’t have anything further to add in advance of a court determination, irrespective of Mr Santamaria’s blog posts.”
The beloved and irreverent SportsCafe has not only reopened its doors, it is also planning a major expansion in the modern media environment.
The show that originally screened on Sky TV and then TVNZ in the late 1990s and early 2000s, returned in a new guise last year – a weekly video podcast called SportsCafe-ish, featuring familiar, if slightly more wizened, faces Ric Salizzo, Marc Ellis and Leigh Hart.
Lana Coc-Kroft also made occasional appearances.
Spurred by the success of SportsCafe-ish – and its numbers on YouTube and podcast channels such as iHeartRadio – Salizzo is not only returning to the original title but supercharging the empire.
He is setting up a new business, SportsCafe Media Group, which will encompass the SportsCafe show as well as four new titles in the works, each with well-known hosts.
The full slate of planned shows are:
Salizzo said the audience numbers for SportsCafe-ish had blown him away, citing 1.66 million YouTube views, an average 60,000 viewers per full episode and 350,000 podcast downloads between June and November.
“It was just a great way to make a show,” Salizzo said of the video podcast. “I just loved it. Instead of layers of approvals and conversations and meetings, all I had to do was press upload.”
Salizzo is also expanding the business across the Tasman – he now has a place in Sydney and is spending a lot of time there – and wants to draw on the transtasman rivalry and access some of Australia’s best-known stars.
Salizzo said the model was being turned into a “true transtasman media force” after he saw the popularity of SportsCafe-ish shows featuring the likes of former NRL star Matty Johns and cricketing great Adam Gilchrist last year.
He pointed out most of New Zealand’s major sporting competitions were now transtasman, including Super Rugby, NRL and A-League football.
“There’s so much fun for us to be had with a bit of transtasman banter and letting Australians tell us how good they are at everything. So yes, we’re going to really step it up later in the year.
“It just felt like it was time to bring the fun back and that worked well for us last year. So it’s like, OK, well, let’s put our feet on the accelerator and see what we can do.”
He and some of the other stars would be shareholders of the new company.
“I just think there’s a lot of gnashing of teeth going on around the changing media mode – you can either be one of those people that sit around screaming and yelling and crying, or go, ‘actually, there’s an opportunity here, just to do things differently’. That’s what excites me.”
SportsCafe will return from Monday. You can hear it here.
“SportsCafe is no longer just a show – it’s an international movement,” said Salizzo.
The former politician and radio industry entrepreneur who is in line to be NZME’s new chairman has added his voice to the chorus of people concerned about the use of the C-word in a newspaper column taking aim at female politicians.
“I don’t think we need to lower media or parliamentary standards any more; [that] would be my view,” Steven Joyce told Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan this week.
“They’re low enough and some words should be left out of the public discourse. I’m disappointed, actually, that it’s happened, putting a media hat on, which I may have to do at some point soon.”
NZME shareholders will meet on June 3, with nominations in place for an initial, new-look five-member board, comprising Joyce as chairman, alongside shareholder Jim Grenon and incumbent directors Carol Campbell, Sussan Turner and Guy Horrocks.
One of Grenon’s previous board nominees, Philip Crump, who will sit on a new NZME editorial advisory board, also referenced the c-word debate and Stuff journalist Andrea Vance‘s Sunday Star-Times column in a blog post this week.
“Stuff, the publisher, defended Vance’s use of the word as being appropriate in the circumstances, noting that the column formed part of a spectrum of views on the issue,” Crump wrote on his Cranmer’s Substack.
“However, the backlash highlights a deeper issue: the erosion of trust that occurs when language becomes inflammatory and unmoored from reasoned argument.
“The incident brings to mind George Orwell’s seminal 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language. Orwell argued that sloppy, vague, or manipulative language reflects and perpetuates muddled thinking, particularly in political discourse.
“The English language, Orwell wrote, ‘becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts’.”
NZ Herald senior political correspondent Audrey Young wrote in her Inside Politics newsletter on Thursday: “There has been virtually no support in the press gallery for Vance’s use of such language.
“She is a much-deserved finalist in [tonight’s] Voyager Media Awards in the category political journalist of the year – for work produced in 2024. But if she wins, it will unfortunately look like an endorsement by the industry of her column last weekend.”
Almost 400 journalists and other guests will don their frocks and black-tie suits for the annual Voyager Media Awards tonight.
The journalism industry’s most glamorous night of the year takes place at a new venue, the Grand Millennium hotel in central Auckland.
Perhaps as a metaphor for the past year of cutbacks - and much like the 6pm TV news - tonight’s event has been cut from two presenters to one.
Jeremy Corbett has the unenviable task of keeping a roomful of journalists/rivals/friends/colleagues in check and on track.
Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith will be a special guest.
As mentioned, Andrea Vance is up as one of three finalists for political journalist of the year. If she wins, she will have the opportunity for her own “right of reply” to the criticism of her C-word column this week.
The awards have already hit the headlines this week, with revelations the NZ Herald pulled its finalist entry from “best scoop”, after several inaccuracies with the story that centred on the actions of former Tipene Funerals worker Fiona Bakulich.
Those articles now have a correction appended to them.
Watch the Voyager Media Awards tonight, live - with the ceremony set to start at 7pm - here: https://npa.co.nz/voyager-media-awards/
The Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman is stepping down from the role later this year after four years in the chair.
After taking a break, she will become a special correspondent for the website, contributing on a project-by-project basis.
Chapman, who started as an intern with The Spinoff in 2016, became its editor in 2021, replacing Toby Manhire, who is now editor-at-large.
“At the time, Madeleine was the youngest editor of any major local publication, a testament to her exceptional talent,” The Spinoff said in a statement today.
“Under Madeleine’s leadership, The Spinoff has cemented its position as a vital online magazine, delivering daily content spanning pop culture to politics with a distinct focus on engaging younger and underserved audiences.”
The Spinoff chief executive, Amber Easby, head of audience Anna Rawhiti-Connell and founder Duncan Greive all paid tribute to Chapman.
“Madeleine has been instrumental in The Spinoff’s success. She has an incredible ability to connect with audiences and has built a truly exceptional team,” said Easby.
“From day one, Madeleine showed incredible promise, but no one could have predicted the editorial force she would grow into. She is a writer possessed of both off-beat humour and a profound moral code, and leaves The Spinoff with a strong sense of its place in the world and a vital voice beloved by its members,” said Greive.
Chapman said the editorship had been “the most intense and satisfying role of my career, which admittedly has been almost entirely at The Spinoff”.
“I am incredibly proud of what the editorial team here has achieved over the past four years, across written, audio and video series. I can only hope that I was able to contribute to a broadening of perspectives and storytelling in New Zealand media and that readers were compelled to think and to laugh thanks to our work.”
The Spinoff said it would publicly recruit for a new editor, the fourth in its history, following Chapman, Manhire and Greive.
RNZ’s Mediawatch, which is quick to hold the rest of the industry to account, this week broadcast an apology to NZME editor-in-chief Murray Kirkness for erroneously suggesting he had been demoted some years ago.
Kirkness has just been elevated to the NZME executive – the first time since March 2023 that the editor-in-chief role has a seat at the top table. It seems Mediawatch mixed up the role with the person.
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.