TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — New Zealand’s public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ) has launched an external review after it was discovered that pro-Beijing and Kremlin edits to Reuters articles were made, that in some instances changed language regarding Taiwan.

The review was launched on June 10 after it was discovered a day earlier that significant edits were made to a Reuters article published on the RNZ website, including a false claim that a referendum was conducted in Crimea before Russia invaded the region in 2014. RNZ first received a complaint about the content last October, per the New Zealand Herald.

While the vast majority of the stories edited concern the Russia-Ukraine war, on Wednesday it was found that edits had also been made to articles about Israel and China, with the latter involving Taiwan.

On March 16, RNZ published a Reuters report on a North Korean missile launch that included the line “Tokyo says it worries Russia's invasion of Ukraine has set a precedent that will encourage China to attack self-ruled Taiwan, who the U.S. is stocking up on weapons.” The original Reuters copy read "Tokyo worries that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has set a precedent that will encourage China to attack self-ruled Taiwan."

Multiple edits were also made to a Reuters article describing cross-strait tensions including removing a reference to Taiwan’s democracy, adding a statement from China’s foreign ministry calling Taiwan “the first red line,” and adding that then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit in 2022 was considered by China to be a “major provocation.”

The story was also edited to remove the word “strongly” from the sentence “Taiwan's government strongly disputes China's territorial claims."

RNZ says all publicly identified edits (now 22 in total) have been removed by RNZ and the original Reuters copy has been restored.

The broadcaster said a digital producer named Mick Hall had been suspended from duties pending an investigation, according to New Zealand news outlet Stuff. It has not been confirmed if Hall was responsible for all the edits identified.

RNZ’s morning news program interviewed the editor allegedly responsible for the edits on Wednesday, who said he had edited several stories in the same way over the past number of years. “In fact, since I started RNZ and… I have done that for five years and nobody has tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I was doing anything wrong,” he said.

RNZ noted that those claims have not yet been verified by the staff member’s supervisors.

It has been noted that some of the edits went unnoticed for months, and contained significant spelling or grammatical errors. Hall reportedly worked remotely and often on late shifts, meaning his work was often subject to less oversight than other staff, and his personal views were not well known to colleagues.

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson said on Thursday that the outlet had let their audience and the Ukrainian community down. "We're feeling shocked and stunned and really, really challenged by this," describing the altered copy as "pro-Kremlin garbage."

“It is so disappointing, I’m gutted, it’s painful…We have to get to the bottom of how it happened,” he said.

The three-person panel appointed to investigate the inappropriate edits is comprised of a media and a public law expert, as well as the former director of editorial standards at Australia’s public broadcaster. It is expected to take about a month to complete.

There has been speculation that the edits were influenced by overseas actors, though a journalism professor at Auckland University of Technology warned against speculation, per Stuff.

“What happened here is very, very concerning, but it is very dangerous to guess what happened," Verica Rupar said. “It could be an individual, it could be a propaganda war.

"It would be good if Radio New Zealand is transparent instead of creating an atmosphere where people guess,” she said.