Most of the stories, which date back more than a year, were written by the Reuters news agency and were changed at Radio New Zealand (RNZ) to include Russian propaganda.
A digital journalist from RNZ has been placed on leave pending the result of an employment investigation.
Paul Thompson, the chief executive of taxpayer-funded RNZ, said it had found issues in 16 stories and was republishing them on its website with corrections and editor’s notes.
He said he was commissioning an external review of the organisation’s editing processes.
“It is so disappointing. I’m gutted. It’s painful. It’s shocking,” Mr Thompson said on RNZ’s Nine to Noon show.
“We have to get to the bottom of how it happened.”
Mr Thompson said the station had forensically reviewed about 250 stories since first being alerted to the issue on Friday and would be reviewing thousands more.
Some of…
