Level 2
119 Ghuznee Street
P O Box 9744
Wellington 6141
New Zealand
[NZ On Air request email]
www.nzonair.govt.nz
Tel: 04 382 9524
Fax: 04 382 9546
28 October 2022
Damien De Ment
By email
: [FYI request #20728 email]
Tēnā koe Damien,
Official Information request and response
Thank you for your request under the Official Information Act (“OIA”) dated 3 October 2022.
You have requested:
1.
In unredacted form, all meeting minutes, or emails relating to the application for funding,
including all applications, proposals or grant submissions made by Stuff Limited for the production
of Fire and Fury.
2.
internal policies or criteria that are used by PIJF to review applications for funding. This is to
include the conditions or reasons for why funding is declined or granted.
3.
In unredacted form all meeting minutes, emails relating to the approval of funding by PIJF to Stuff
Limited for the production of Fire and Fury. Including all contracts, agreements, conditions
finalised as part of funding.
4.
Internal polices or criteria about how PIJF qualitatively reviews, or safety checks the content that
its funding has created.
5.
In unredacted form all meeting minutes, emails, forms, or resources used to qualitatively review
and safety check the Fire and Fury 'documentary' before it was approved to be published publicly
Connecting and reflecting our nation
Please see below our response:
1. Please find attached a copy of the
Stuff Circuit 2021 funding application that was submitted to NZ
On Air in December 2020.
To clarify, this application was not funded via the Public Interest Journalism Fund (“PIJF”).
Fire &
Fury was funded as part of the
Stuff Circuit 2021 application, which was awarded funding through
the NZ Media Fund in December 2020 prior to the establishment of the PIJF.
Whilst the application was approved under the NZ Media Fund, once PIJF came into existence
and took over funding of investigative journalism applications from July 2021 onwards, all
Stuff
Circuit content was branded and accredited as being funded through the PIJF. Despite this use of
accreditation, we can confirm that Stuff Circuit 2021 is not required to meet PIJF-specific criteria
and was not assessed against the criteria referenced in paragraph 2 of our response.
Furthermore, at the time of application and due to the nature of investigative journalism, both
the production team making the application and NZ On Air staff who assessed the application
and approved it for funding were unaware of the future investigative topics that might be
covered as part of the project. This is not at all unusual with journalism applications, and in fact,
is desirable given it is important to maintain an arms’ length as funder from the journalism itself.
2. Public Interest Journalism Fund applications are assessed against the PIJF general guidelines as
well as round specific guidelines, all of which can be found
here. However, as stated above, these
are not the relevant guidelines the Stuff Circuit 2021 application (which your request largely
concerns) was assessed against. Therefore, we have attached the December 2020 NZ Media Fund
round guidelines under which
Stuff Circuit 2021 was submitted.
3. Please find attached a copy of the funding agreement (and subsequent contract variation) for
Stuff Circuit 2021 and the funding recommendation paper that was submitted to the NZ On Air
Staff Investment Committee in November 2020.
The fol owing redactions have been made to these documents:
• Redactions made under section 9(2)(a) of the OIA to protect the privacy of natural
persons; and
• Redactions made under section 9(2)(b) of the OIA to protect information where the
making available of the information—
o (i) would disclose a trade secret; or
o (ii) would be likely unreasonably to prejudice the commercial position of the
person who supplied or who is the subject of the information.
4. All content is required to meet, where applicable, the principles of the NZ Media Council and/or
the Broadcasting Standards Authority. However, it is also noted that under
Section 42 of the
Broadcasting Act, NZ On Air is prohibited from giving any editorial direction to any successful
funding applicant.
Connecting and reflecting our nation
5. As stated above, unde
r Section 42 of the Broadcasting Act, NZ On Air is prohibited from giving
any editorial direction to any successful funding applicant. NZ On Air does not view any content it
funds prior to publication of the content and has no right of review. The editorial oversight in
addition to the pre-release viewing and approval of any funded content is the responsibility of
the platform that publishes the content. Considering this, we decline this part of your request
under section 18(g) of the OIA as the information requested is not held by NZ On Air and we have
no grounds for believing that the information is either held by another department or is
connected more closely with the functions of another department.
For your information, funding provided by NZ On Air for all successful projects is
searchable on our
website. You can als
o sign up to receive our regular industry newsletter via our website.
You have the right to refer this response to the Ombudsman if you are dissatisfied with it. More
information on how to do this is
here. NZ On Air proactively releases information in accordance with the
Government’s commitment to the Open Government Partnership National Action Plan. This includes
publishing responses to requests for information under the OIA. Please note that this response (with your
name removed) wil be published on the NZ On Air website shortly and will remain on our website for 12
months.
Thank you for your interest in our work.
Yours sincerely
Sharon Kerry
HEAD OF CORPORATE SERVICES
Connecting and reflecting our nation
Attachments:
1. An excerpt of the funding recommendation paper submitted to the NZ On Air Staff Investment
Committee in November 2020
2. A copy of the funding agreement for
Stuff Circuit 2021
3. A copy of a variation made to the
Stuff Circuit 2021 funding agreement
4. A copy of the
Stuff Circuit 2021 funding proposal
5. A copy of the December 2020 funding round guidelines under which
Stuff Circuit 2021 was
submitted
Connecting and reflecting our nation
