Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

What was happening over at State TV today?!

Did they really drop the ball that badly on the day's top local story, or is just that the entire staff are fully paid up members of the Labour Party, and on the Government payroll?!

The Sunday papers came out with further revelations from Ian Wishart's controversial Investigate Magazine interview, where John Tamihere made some badly misguided comments about the Holocaust, while trying to explain the attitute of Maori claimants and activists.

TV3's evening news led with a story following up these revelations, with an item from Amanda Gillies featuring representatives from the Jewish Community, as well as other MPs. 3 News continued with a live cross to Amanda, who gave us the latest details, including Prime Minister Helen Clark's announcement that Mr Tamihere was now on "extended leave" due to "considerable stress".

However, over on State TV One, they led with Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles' wedding. Fair enough. Bernie then tried to convince us that State TV had "Breaking News", which consisted of a live cross to a Political Reporter who began by talking about the story from the morning papers.

He followed this up with the claim that there was a fax coming through from Helen Clark - the same one Amanda had already held up a few minutes before. However, there was no track at all to go with the top NZ story of the day... looks like TVNZ would have ignored the new revelations if it hadn't been for the late breaking fax.

State TV's "effort" follows the feeble attempt by TV One's Agenda programme to try and prove Ian Wishart's interview with Tamihere was in fact "off the record", with claims that staff at Soljans Cafe didn't see a tape recorder on the table, as Wishart asserts.

Ian Wishart promises more revelations over the coming weeks from his interview... just don't expect to see or hear about them on State TV!

* NZ Herald: Tamihere on extended leave after offending more of his colleagues