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Staff who lost their jobs under former TVNZ news boss Bill Ralston claim his outrage over the company's plan to shed news staff is hypocritical and say the "rot set in" during his time.
Former Sunday host Mike Hosking said Ralston's comments predicting the destruction of quality at TVNZ and blaming current management were "delusional in the extreme".
Hosking - now a Newstalk ZB host - said the revenue lost from One News' ratings free-fall under Ralston directly related to the need to cut costs now.
"The adult thing, I would have thought, would be to own up and accept some sort of responsibility and if you can't do that then just don't say anything," said Hosking.
"But to pretend it wasn't you . . . you weren't the person who lit the fuse, is delusional in the extreme."
Ralston hit out last week at TVNZ's plan to shed 60 news and current affairs staff as part of a wider restructure to cut $30 million in costs.
"We are watching here the destruction of something we have taken for granted for 20 or 30 years - that's a good-quality public broadcaster who gives you a news and current affairs service that you can believe and trust," Ralston told Radio New Zealand.
Yesterday, Ralston told the Herald he stood by the comments.
"I honestly and sincerely believe them," he said. "I'm not interested in trying to defend the past. What I'm worried about is the future."
In an interview in this week's Listener, Ralston said he left TVNZ because he could not give support to the severe cuts and the digital TV strategy.
"There was no 'you're out' or anything like that. It just reached a point where it was obvious to me and, I suspect, the other management there that I was the piece that didn't fit. I just handed in my resignation."
Veteran TV journalist Rod Vaughan wrote to the Herald angry about what he called Ralston's "breathtaking" hypocrisy.
"Isn't this the same person whose very first action at TVNZ was to axe charter-driven investigative programmes like Assignment and send some of the country's most experienced television journalists, myself included, down the road?"
Vaughan - who now works on rival TV3's 60 Minutes - said the "rot set in" during Ralston's "calamitous and chaotic mismanagement" of TVNZ news and current affairs. "The writing was on the wall for him a long time ago and it would have been more honest of him to say he jumped before he was pushed."
