50 Years of New Zealand Television: 2 - The Whole World's Watching

Television (Full Length Episode) – 2010

The birth of television in the 1960s meant that suddenly protests and civil unrest could be broadcast directly into Kiwi homes. This episode of 50 Years of New Zealand Television looks at many of those events — involving everything from the Vietnam War and the Springbok tour, to Bastion Point and the Homosexual Law Reform Act. It also examines how being televised altered their impact. Interviews with both protestors and reporters provide a unique insight into what it was like to be living through extraordinary periods of New Zealand history.

I can remember, as an editor, getting footage and looking through it and seeing dead bodies and thinking this was extraordinary...We suddenly lost our innocence and our naivety about what was occurring in the world.
– Sean Duffy on editing footage from the Vietnam War