3 News: 25 Years of bloopers

The Paul Henry Show: Hillary Barry Emergency Defecation Blooper

The Paul Henry Show: Hillary Barry Waisake Naholo Blooper

3 News: 25 Years of bloopers

The Paul Henry Show: Hillary Barry Emergency Defecation Blooper

The Paul Henry Show: Hillary Barry Waisake Naholo Blooper

Bloopers - News

Television (Excerpts) – 2018

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Hilary Barry Recalls an Emergency Defecation situation

By Hilary Barry 29/05/2020

Plenty of broadcasters get the giggles on-air, and it’s easy enough to brush off when the cause of hilarity is something benign. Unfortunately, in this case, the story was serious. The initial trigger had been the strange phrasing from a reporter who, in describing the bowel movement of an alleged sexual offender at the scene of the attack, called it an "emergency defecation situation". The fact it was so inappropriate to giggle at the end of a serious story made it even harder to control the laughing. Even more inappropriate was laughing through the story which followed, about a suicide bomber on a plane in Somalia. As hard as it is to tell yourself sternly that you "HAVE" to stop giggling, you reach a point where you just can’t. It’s not my proudest moment but I didn’t lose my job that day and, apart from a small handful of outraged viewers, most people forgave me.
- Hilary Barry co-anchored TV3's primetime news bulletin for more than a decade. She moved to TVNZ in 2016.