Radio New Zealand Says It Did Nothing Wrong

I make it back to the USA, RNZ digs in, and a "No One Likes You, Elon" t-shirt.

Hi,

Last time I sent you a Webworm, I was on my way to Manchester airport to fly back to the US, as Trump sidestepped Congress to send a barrage of missiles towards Iran.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency says Iran’s mission to build a nuclear weapon has only been set back a few months. Trump has — as always — his own facts: “It was obliteration.”

We’ll see, I guess.

Since then Trump has said “fuck” on TV, and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called Trump “Daddy”. This country is never not massively embarrassing.

For anyone wondering what customs was like, it was okay. I got back in. I came back via Atlanta, generally recognised as a much more relaxed airport. From there I cleared immigration, and then it was a domestic flight back to LA.

Immigration, Atlanta style.

Right now, the sky outside my apartment is grey. All across this city, masked federal agents — I assume, how would you know? — continue to kidnap people off the street. The Los Angeles sub on Reddit has become incredibly dystopian and depressing.

For now I am staying put here, and will continue to report on what’s going on around me.

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Radio New Zealand Officially Sees No Issues Over Its Reporting on Alex

Yesterday RNZ sent out a generic letter to those who complained over its coverage of Alex.

Last week I told the story of trans man Alex — in Alex’s words — thanks to the posts he’d left behind on an internet forum. I grew up on internet forums, so knew the format well. People get tight on forums.

I wanted to give a few quick updates on that story — a story that I took a lot of care over.

Firstly, Alex’s parents objected to my story, releasing a statement calling me “opportunistic” and the story “sensationalised”. I would counter that by saying I reported a teenager’s perspective that had been sorely lacking.

Misgendering their son, they went on to say, “We urge those who have shared Vanessa’s story to focus on the real issue: that a 17-year-old died of starvation in the care of the state.”

I don’t really want to get into this too much — as what Alex’s parents are going through is clearly horrific. But I think it’s important to note that Alex’s parents released their statement through the anti-trans group “Resist Gender Education NZ.”

I am not going to link to Resist Gender Education NZ, and would just say I think it’s really unfortunate Alex’s parents got involved with that group — the same group that shopped Alex’s story to Radio New Zealand in the first place.

Online, various TERFS didn’t like me much either.

Then there were the emails in my inbox that made me feel like I was back at high school again.

Jaime is probably just a stray nut, but who knows.

The last person I annoyed fabricated an entire court case against me, joining forces with Sean Plunket — a fringe broadcaster backed by a multimillionaire. That cost $10,000 to defend and toss out. This shit is annoying. And fucking expensive.

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As I wrote in my last update, I have been in contact with RNZ Chief News Officer Mark Stevens about all this.

So has Angel, who’d shared Alex’s 6000 messages with me (after first attempting to share them with RNZ, and hearing nothing back). This is what Angel had to say to Webworm about that experience:

June 16:

“Thank you again David for continuing to put a spotlight on this issue. I emailed Ruth Hill very shortly after the article was published with the same information I shared with you. As of today, I still have not heard back. The silence is maddening and deafening. Thank you for responding to me so quickly and getting Alex’s story out there and allowing his own voice to set the record straight.”

June 22:

“RNZ confirmed to me they did receive the email but had misplaced it due to filters. This will be my last update. Thank you everyone who has been following along, for your support of Alex and for sharing his voice.”

With all this in mind, I emailed RNZ’s Mark Stevens and their media comms person on Sunday 22nd, asking for an update:

Hi Mark

I am going to be writing an update about this towards the end of the week so wanted to see if RNZ had any more comment on this situation.

By now you can see the email was sent, and regardless of whether it was received you have it now. You also have the context of my story on Webworm, which is fairly full in scope and shows the story shopped around by anti-trans groups, who then celebrated its release.

You also have Alex's perspective on things - which is now in the public sphere.

Let me know if you have anything to add - or if we can just expect the story to exist, in its current state, forever.

David.

As of writing this, I still haven’t heard back.

Crickets.

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Yesterday, RNZ sent out a generic response to those who had complained directly to them — refuting it had breached any of the Media Council’s principles. In essence RNZ’s response was, “We did absolutely nothing wrong.”

Webworm was supplied a copy of the letter, and has archived it here.

In the letter, RNZ noted they had edited the original article slightly, saying:

“Since publication, it has become clear that the teenager identified in the story variously as V and Vanessa also identified as Alex and used different pronouns. Reflecting that, a number of edits have been made to the language used and the article has been updated accordingly. Essentially, we use Vanessa or Alex depending on the understanding of those who were interviewed.”

This leads to a bit of a confusing mess in RNZ’s article — and one that still deadnames and misgenders Alex most of the time. And despite this, RNZ says they did absolutely nothing wrong: “We do not believe that this story breached Principle 1 [Accuracy, Fairness and Balance.]”

It will be interesting to see how the BSA and Media Council respond to complaints. I outlined how those complaints can be made here.

In this writer’s opinion, this whole thing is incredibly depressing and shows how far New Zealand’s national broadcaster has to come in acknowledging, respecting and validating trans lives — even in death.

I said it earlier, and I’ll say it again: This was a story shopped around to RNZ by an anti-trans group — a group that is now handling the parent’s PR.

None of this shit was exactly subtle.

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Odds And Ends

About a month ago, kiwi artist Jess Johnson and I decided we needed a t-shirt riffing on this sign we saw at a protest. Jess went away and did her thing, and this week we added the “No One Likes You, Elon” t-shirt to our lil’ Webworm store. It comes in black, white, pink and lime — and ships worldwide.

There’s a bunch of other stuff — hats, shirts, stickers — if you wanna rep Webworm out in the real world and look like a lunatic like this guy:

My Webworm uniform: An “I Have Worms” rainbow cap, and the Elon tee.

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Come Say Hi in Denver & Chicago?

Rob and I are recording two Flightless Bird live shows over the next few weeks.

We’re in Denver July 3rd, and Chicago on July 10th. Tickets are here — please come and say hi afterwards, I’ll be hanging out in the lobby after. Wear your Webworm shirts if you have any, so I can tell you apart from the normies.

If Rob ever gets over his fear of flying we’ll do this show in New Zealand down the line. I really, really want to. In the meantime, we are just popping up in US cities when we both get the time and our schedules align!

Thanks for being here, and thanks for reading — as always.

Talk soon,

David.

Me and my Flightless Bird collaborator Rob (photo: Shayan Asgharnia)

PS: I’d say the Elon shirt is for everybody, but I guess there are exceptions. From the Webworm chat, over on the app: