Paul Henry’s personal trajectory from news presenter to becoming the news was one of the most abrupt in a sphere in which the New Zealand media’s touch tends to be at its least sure. This is the process in which the media reports the media. We are not here talking about just the local news. Henry overnight found himself a picaresque resident of the global news village. From Auckland to Seattle to London and to Mumbai, the state television employee had become bigger than anything he was talking about on the Television New Zealand Breakfast show.

Fuelling his ascent from mere presenter to international news maker was Henry’s status as to all intents and purposes that of a government servant. He had crossed into a new zone and one in which he found himself , for example, the object of a stake-out by the New Zealand Herald, an organisation not until then known for relentless pursuit of stories and especially personality stories.

A middle aged chap with BBC grade diction Paul Henry most closely resembles Britain’s David Frost in that he rose without trace. He has an instinct for the commercial opportunity, enjoys living in mansions, driving luxury cars, mixing with upscale people, and who possesses a sharp ear for the one liner. It was two of these that in a combined superheated thrust propelled him out of the gravitational pull of being just show host and into the realm of solar flare radiation news maker .

The first of these occurred when in an interview with Premier John Key, and discussing the succession of the Governor General, Henry hazarded that the incumbent Sir Anand Satyanand (a former National Press Club stalwart) resonated the Indian sub continent instead of the New Zealand archipelago. No slouch himself John Key shot back, Do you have yourself in mind, Paul?

After much backing and filling and trimming not to say apologizing to the New Zealand born Satyanand, renowned for his adroit handling of just this kind of incident, the issue seemed to die down.

It was now that Henry (pictured with official National Press Club booksellers Tim and Glenda Skinner of Capital Books) already a name on the nation’s lips, and with the flagship state Breakfast show’s ratings now truly snap, crackling and popping to everyone’s satisfaction, found it irresistible to pronounce the name of the Indian minister in charge of the Commonwealth Games Sheila Dikshit in any way other than phonetically. A state broadcasting- approved bowdlerization, euphemism, which had it rendered as Dixit, was ignored because it was claimed it was incorrect.

It was now that the Dixit hit the fan, and continued doing so even after a government apology was delivered, and not just a broadcasting one, to the government of India.

Events took on a life of their own. Henry merely tumbled around in his own vortex. A dusky sort of fellow, even references to his own Romany inheritance evaporated, unheard and unnoticed. The story had become the story.

At issue at the National Press Club at a new questions-only format session on the first day of his nationwide book tour was government custodianship of such a major proportion of the broadcast media which included Henry’s show. In his autobiography What Was I Thinking (Random House) the author records how during his entrepreneurial era as the proprietor of a Wairararapa radio station, he found himself competing with state interests owned by a government which had the power to allocate radio rights to him. Or otherwise.

During the Q&A, it was noted that the government had had to grant substantial concessions to private broadcasters because they were hurting from competition from the government itself via state broadcasting..

Central to the ultra sensitivity of the state broadcasting apparatus noted Henry was the determination to treat the entire operation as if it were a branch of government. However much the association was denied or papered over, the fact that the Dixit/Dikshit affair triggered a government-to-government apology underlined the linkage.

One solution Henry volunteered was for the state to treat its radio National Programme as its public voice, and to clearly demonstrate that all its other broadcasting investments were state owned assets, and nothing more than that.

Not since Brian Edwards’ Public Eye (Reed) 40 years before has there been such an intriguing glimpse into the noisy oil-squirting clanking engine that becomes visible when the bonnet is lifted on state broadcasting. Like the power trains of one of Paul Henry’s Rolls Royces, one should not probe too exhaustively.

All those years ago Edwards characterized the state broadcasting machine as essentially an opposing drive tri motor comprised of greed for ratings, craven obeisance to political interests, and sheer terror of the Mother of Eight.

Not much has changed, except in the Paul Henry update, the sturdy Mother of Eight has been replaced by box-tick political correctness.

Practitioners will be interested in a number of technical elements. There is for example the absolute insistence on finding the local angle, the hunt for which, Henry observes, routinely ensures that the big picture overseas stories get lost in the quest for home-town minutiae. Also he draws attention to the enduring problem that the state organisation has in departing from its pre-arranged and scheduled path when a big story breaks.

His time as an independently funded go-anywhere, do anything Masterton-based foreign correspondent will encourage others to have a go. Ironically this section will further confirm institutional broadcasters in their determination to restrict sponsorship of this kind of thing to fixed itinerary and, carefully–scripted infomercial style travelogues.