Radio station The Edge has issued an on-air apology for misleading a listener who was part of a dating promotion on The Edge Breakfast show.
Last month, listener Emily* went into the Auckland studio over a week and a half to meet three masked men who she was told were listeners who were interested in dating her. The segment was hosted by The Edge Breakfast hosts Dom Harvey, Meg Mansell and Clinton Randell.
Emily answered questions about her personal life and relationship history as part of the promotion. It wasn’t until the promotion had wrapped up that she found out two of the three contestants, including the one she chose to date, were actually Mediaworks interns using fake names and identities.
“I felt disappointed, used and discarded,” Emily told 1 NEWS on Sunday.
“I felt like the butt of a cruel joke… The fact that they were so willing to use me for a performance and lie to me shows very little respect to women in terms of their time and energy and dignity."
In an on-air apology this morning, the segment was described as a “wrong call”.
“It wasn’t in the spirit of the segment, which was actually to help our listener find a genuine connection, so we just wanted to take this chance to apologise to her for being misled and also to all of you listening to this as well,” Randell said.
The men she was set up to date weren’t who they said they were.
Producer Hamish Phipps has taken responsibility for the segment.
“I made a wrong call by involving people that work for the company. It was something I did without you guys — without Dom, Meg and Randell knowing about — so yeah, I would also just like to personally apologise to the woman involved and to our listeners.”
A Mediaworks spokesperson told 1 NEWS one of the hosts has also reached out to Emily privately, and a written apology has been issued on a private Facebook group for fans of the Dom, Meg and Randell show.
Mediaworks says practises at The Edge have been reviewed as a result of the promotion.
“The content director for The Edge carried out the review along with producers and processes have now been put in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Management became aware at the end of April when a complaint was made via our standards committee. This is when The Edge content director reached out to the individual to explain and apologise.”
*Name has been changed to protect her identity
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