Henry states:

I do not want to continue to be used as a lightning rod for racial disharmony in this country.

Rick Ellis, CEO TVNZ states:

I believe Paul has done the right thing.

The reality is that his comments have split the community and damaged New Zealand’s international relationships, and there is no going back from that.

Paul is not the first broadcaster to step over the line, and I expect he won’t be the last – but there are factors at play here that have taken things to a unique level.

I think the TVNZ statement suggests he was pushed.

“Television New Zealand probably has some responsibilities as a public broadcaster.”

Mr de Bres said Henry often said things to challenge or shock people “but this one was off the planet”.

“What he was saying was that if you were an Indian New Zealander and you were born here, you went to school here, you went to university here, you practised law here, you became a judge, you became an ombudsman and you became a Governor-General, that a key presenter on national television still thinks you don’t look like or sound like a New Zealander.”

This is the best summary of just how offensive Henry’s comments are.

Now TVNZ has suspended him for two weeks but that is still not good enough. He needs to be fired. Blogs from the right, left and centre are saying he needs to go. This isn’t a PC vs not-PC battle this is a battle that strikes right at the heart of what it means to be a NZder we are not just all white! And if you have that mindset you are living in the wrong century and the wrong country.

Danyl at the Dim Post comments:

The story led the MSM news websites all day but has yet to be covered by TVNZ News. How professional. TVNZ’s self-censorship is a perfect illustration of why being the state broadcaster is incompatible with using offensive and controversial material to boost your ratings.

Danyl also mentions his own blog stats from yesterday:

Busiest day ever on the blog yesterday with 9,464 visitors. Average for a weekday is 4,500 which goes up to around 6,000 if I find the time to write something original or amusing, which isn’t very often these days. If I advertised I’d be rich!

My visits were also about double normal rates and my busiest day since April when I blogged on the new version of Ubuntu Linux… although my numbers are only about 1.5% of Danyl’s numbers.

His latest bout of stupidity is from this morning, while interviewing the Prime Minister about the appointment of a new Governor General he asked if the new GG would look and sound more like a New Zealander. Watch for yourself:

This was not a gaffe or a mistake this was a deliberate racist comment against a senior representative of New Zealand.

Only last week CNN sacked Rick Sanchez for anti-Jewish remarks against Jon Stewart. Yes a commercial TV station sacked a news anchor for radio comments against a comedian.

Yet here we have a government funded national broadcaster willing to keep on air someone who is racist in an interview with the Prime Minister. Disgusting.

How many nine lives has Paul Henry had now?

Update: Oh god, I missed this from last week:

Update 2: @nzben (Ben Gracewood) of www.ben.geek.nz fame has withdrawn from his regular gadget section on the show. Good on him for standing up on principal. His comments are here.

Take a look at the ad for the tv show on the right of the panel. Very creative TVNZ even if it is just a computer generated ad based on word recognition.

On a more serious note there is a very good discussion with Peter Lineham from Massey University regarding the church here: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/price-religion-destiny-church-3102501/video

The link above is to the TVNZ Olympics Message Board.

But unless you want to be disgusted at the attitude of the majority of posters I wouldn’t recommend clicking on the link.

TVNZ is doing an amazing job covering the Olympics. They have four channels of coverage (TV One, Freeview Ch20 and two online channels).

But despite all this people are still complaining. I personally enjoyed the NZ vs Brazil soccer game which was aired on TV One (the main NZ channel).

New Zealanders need to get a grip and be thankful for how much coverage they are getting for free.

TVNZ surely paid top dollar to get the coverage, Sky TV would have been surely trying hard to out bid them.

Imagine the Olympics on Sky. a) Not everyone could get it – Sky costs, TVNZ is free. b) Unless you paid more it would not be in High Def. c) You would not have four channels of coverage – three channels at the absolute max. d) You would still have ads – like the live Formula 1. e) People would still complain.