Sir Geoffrey Cox's Advice

This was based on the former NZer, former ITN boards "knowledge and observation" of the NZ scene Sir Geoffrey takes a great interest in NZ broadcasting, particularly the 1973 structural changes which, according to him were attacting "a lot of attention" among broadcasting experts elsewhere [Post 15/10/75].

Since he has not been involved in the corporations he is unlikely to have given cost figures to dispute BCNZ's. But even if the agreed with the Government figure of "$6m 10 percent of total broadcasting expenditure" he could not have called the news services expensive.

Ten percent is a good average figure - both Cox's ITN plus the BBC devote 10 percent of their total expenditure to the news. By using the adjectival phrase "more than" 10 percent, the government is just employing a well known method of lying with

TV 1's news budget for 1975, all in: salaries, overtime, film, travel, processing, etc - was $1.7 m [source, Doug Ekhoff TV1 current affairs chief]. ITN spent 4.97m Pounds plus 280,000 on loan etc costs attributable to news

Thus TV news in New Zealand is not "expensive" and it is unlikely that Sir Geoffrey Cox, a former head of ITN, said so.