Day, PatrickBettison, DavidWinter, Pahmi2026-09-162026-09-161994https://hdl.handle.net/10289/18658During the 1980s, New Zealand was among the first countries to translate the reemergent neoliberal ideology of economic rationalism into legislation and policy, thereby bringing about a radical shift in the ethos and organisation of many of New Zealand’s public corporations. Among these changes, New Zealand’s public television corporation became a ‘market-led’ state-owned commercial telecommunications enterprise. This study is concerned with the news-culture at Television New Zealand Ltd subsequent to the company’s restructuring into a cluster of profit-centres. It presents an ethnographic account of journalists’ practice and editorial control immediately after the company’s transition into a rationalised system oriented by quasi-privatised market transactions. It focuses on the ascendency of a particular scale of values within TVNZ news-culture as a populist ethos became institutionalized within the State-Owned Enterprise. TVNZ’s news executives hold that market forces and populist production values enhance their representation of the broad public interest. This thesis assesses the claim in the context of ideological, material and regulatory structures. I seek to demonstrate that the problem of conflicting goals, which beset TVNZ prior to its restructuring into a SOE, has not been resolved. The tensions and ambiguities engendered by conflicting commercial and social objectives remain. I argue that discrepancies between journalists’ professional norms and routine practices in TVNZ news-culture are concealed through the co-option of journalists’ professional ideologies into the wider market-oriented discourses of TVNZ corporate culture. Thus this thesis challenges the news executives’ claim that they effectively balance organisational and journalists’ professional goals. I contend, instead, that news executives compromise journalistic standards by defining them in relation to the market performance of the commodities they produce. In a wider frame it is indicated that the public debate about standards of TVNZ journalism focuses too exclusively on the programmes and their producers without addressing standards in terms of the statutory framework which requires TVNZ management to operate the company as a cash-cow for the state. In conclusion, I contend that the state has a responsibility to ensure the television network, set up for and largely paid for by New Zealand taxpayers, provides a public space for citizenly discourse.enAll items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.Thesis