This week, Minister of Racing Winston Peters announced the end of greyhound racing in the interests of animal welfare.

Soon after, a law to criminalise killing of redundant racing dogs was passed under urgency in Parliament.

The next day, the minister introduced the Racing Industry Amendment Bill to preserve the TAB’s lucrative monopoly on sports betting which provides 90 percent of the racing industry’s revenue.

“Offshore operators are consolidating a significant market share of New Zealand betting — and the revenue which New Zealand’s racing industry relies on is certainly not guaranteed,” Peters told Parliament in support of the Bill.

But offshore tech companies have also been pulling the revenue rug out from under local news media companies for years, and there has been no such speedy response to that.

Digital platforms offer cheap and easy access to unlimited overseas content — and tech companies’ dominance of the digital advertising systems and the resulting revenue is intensifying.

Profits from online ads shown to New Zealanders go offshore — and very little tax is paid on the money made here by the likes of Google and Facebook.

On Tuesday, Media Minister Paul Goldsmith did introduce legislation to repeal advertising restrictions for broadcasters on Sundays and public holidays.

“As the government we must ensure regulatory settings are enabling the best chance of success,” he said in a statement.

The media have been crying out for this low-hanging fruit for years — but the estimated $6 million boost is a drop in the bucket for broadcasters, and little help for other media.

The big bucks are in tech platforms paying for the local news they carry.

Squeezing the tech titans
In Australia, the government did it three years ago with a bargaining code that is funnelling significant sums to news media there. It also signalled the willingness of successive governments to confront the market dominance of ‘big tech’.

When Goldsmith took over here in May he said the media industry’s problems were both urgent and acute – likewise the need to “level the playing field”.

The government then picked up the former government’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, modelled on Australia’s move.

But it languishes low down on Parliament’s order paper, following threats from Google to cut news out of its platforms in New Zealand – or even cut and run from New Zealand altogether.

Six years after his Labour predecessor Kris Faafoi first pledged to follow in Australia’s footsteps in support of local media, Goldsmith said this week he now wants to wait and see how Australia’s latest tough measures pan out.

(The News Bargaining Incentive announced on Thursday could allow the Australian government to tax big digital platforms if they do not pay local news publishers there)

Meanwhile, news media cuts and closures here roll on.

The lid keeps sinking in 2024

“I’ve worked in the industry for 30 years and never seen a year like it,” RNZ’s Guyon Espiner wrote in The Listener this week, admitting to “a sense of survivor’s guilt”.

Just this month, 14 NZME local papers will close and more TVNZ news employees will be told they will lose jobs in what Espiner described as “destroy the village to save the village” strategy.

Whakaata Māori announced 27 job losses earlier this month and the end of Te Ao Māori News every weekday on TV. Its te reo channel will go online-only.

Digital start-ups with lower overheads than established news publishers and broadcasters are now struggling too.

“The Spinoff had just celebrated its 10th birthday when a fiscal hole opened up. Staff numbers are being culled, projects put on ice and a mayday was sent out calling for donations to keep the site afloat,” Espiner also wrote in his bleak survey for The Listener.

Spinoff founder Duncan Grieve has charted the economic erosion of the media all year at The Spinoff and on its weekly podcast The Fold.

In a recent edition, he said he could not carry on “pretending things would be fine” and did not want The Spinoff to go down without giving people the chance to save it.

“We get some (revenue) direct from our audience through members, some commercial revenue and we get funding for various New Zealand on Air projects typically,” Greive told RNZ Mediawatch this week.

“The members’ bucket is pretty solid. The commercial bucket was going quite well, and then we just ran into a brick wall. There has been a real system-wide shock to commercial revenues.

“But the thing that we didn’t predict which caused us to have to publish that open letter was New Zealand on Air. We’ve been able to rely on getting one or two projects up, but we’ve missed out two rounds in a row. Maybe our projects . . .  weren’t good enough, but it certainly had this immediate, near-existential challenge for us.”

Critics complained The Spinoff has had millions of dollars in public money in its first decade.

“While the state is under no obligation to fund our work, it’s hard to watch as other platforms continue to be heavily backed while your own funding stops dead,” Greive said in the open letter.

The open letter said Creative NZ funding had been halved this year, and the Public Interest Journalism Fund support for two of The Spinoff’s team of 31 was due to run out next year.

“I absolutely take on the chin the idea that we shouldn’t be reliant on that funding. Once you experience something year after year, you do build your business around that . . .  for the coming year. When a hard-to-predict event like that comes along, you are in a situation where you have to scramble,” Grieve told Mediawatch.

“We shot a flare up that our audience has responded to. We’re not out of the woods yet, but we’re really pleased with the strength of support and an influx of members.”

He was the CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery NZ and oversaw the biggest and most comprehensive news closure of the year — the culling of the entire Newshub operation.

“It was heart-wrenching because we had looked at and tried everything leading into that announcement. I go back to July 2022, when we started to see money coming out of the market and the cost of living crisis starting to appear,” Kyne told Mediawatch this week.

“We started taking steps immediately and were incredibly prudent with cost management. We would get to a point where we felt reasonably confident that we had a path, but the floor beneath our feet — in terms of the commercial market — kept falling. You’re seeing this with TVNZ right now.”

Warner Brothers Discovery is a multinational player in broadcast media. Did they respond to requests for help?

“They were empathetic. But Warner Brothers Discovery had lost 60-70 percent of its share price because of the issues around global media companies as well. They were very determined that we got the company to a position of profitability as quickly as we possibly could. But ultimately the economics were such that we had to make the decision.”

Smaller but sustainable in 2025? Or managed decline?

Kyne did a deal with Stuff to supply a 6pm news bulletin to TV channel Three after the demise of Newshub in July.

He is one of a handful of people who know the sums, but Stuff is certainly producing ThreeNews now with a fraction of the former budget for Newshub.

Can media outlets settle on a shape that will be sustainable, but smaller — and carry on in 2025 and beyond? Or does Kyne fear media are merely managing decline if revenue continues to slump?

“It’s slightly terrifying because the downward pressures are going to continue into next year. Three created a sustainable model for the 6pm bulletin to continue.

“Stuff is an enormous newsgathering organisation, so they were able to make it work and good luck to them. I can see that bulletin continuing to improve as the team get more experience.”

No news is really bad news
If news can’t be sustained at scale in commercial media companies even on reduced budgets, what then?

Some are already pondering a “post-journalism” future in which social media takes over as the memes of sharing news and information.

How would that pan out?

“We might be about to find out,” Greive told Mediawatch.

“Journalism doesn’t have a monopoly on information, and there are all kinds of different institutions that now have channels. A lot of what is created . . .  has a factual basis. Whether it’s a TikTok-er or a YouTuber, they are themselves consumers of news.

“A lot of people are replacing a habit of reading the newspaper and listening to ZB or RNZ with a new habit — consuming social media. Some of it has a news-like quality but it doesn’t have vetting of the information and membership of the Media Council . . .  as a way of restraining behaviour.

“We’ve got a big question facing us as a society. Either news becomes this esoteric, elite habit that is either pay-walled or alternatively there’s public media. If we [lose] freely-accessible, mass-audience channels, then we’ll find out what democracy, the business sector, the cultural sector looks like without that.

“In communities where there isn’t a single journalist, a story can break or someone can put something out . . .  and if there’s no restraint on that and no check on it, things are going to happen.

“In other countries, most notably Australia, they’ve recognised this looming problem, and there’s a quite muscular and joined-up regulator and legislator to wrestle with the challenges that represents. And we’re just not seeing that here.”

They are in Australia.

In addition to the News Bargaining Code and the just-signalled News Bargaining Incentive, the Albanese government is banning social media for under-16s. Meta has responded to pressure to combat financial scam advertising on Facebook.

Here, the media policy paralysis makes the government’s ferries plan look decisive. What should it do in 2025?

To-do in 2025
“There are fairly obvious things that could be done that are being done in other jurisdictions, even if it’s as simple as having a system of fines and giving the Commerce Commission the power to sort of scrutinise large technology platforms,” Greive told Mediawatch.

“You’ve got this general sense of malaise over the country and a government that’s looking for a narrative. It’s shocking when you see Australia, where it’s arguably the biggest political story — but here we’re just doing nothing.”

Not quite. There was the holiday ad reform legislation this week.

“Allowing broadcasting Christmas Day and Easter is a drop in the ocean that’s not going to materially change the outcome for any company here,” Kyne told Mediawatch.

“The Fair Digital News Bargaining bill was conceived three years ago and the world has changed immeasurably.

“You’ve seen Australia also put some really thoughtful white papers together on media regulation that really does bring a level of equality between the global platforms and the local media and to have them regulated under common legislation — a bit like an Ofcom operates in the UK, where both publishers and platforms, together are overseen and managed accordingly.

“That’s the type of thing we’re desperate for in New Zealand. If we don’t get reform over the next couple of years you are going to see more community newspapers or radio stations or other things no longer able to operate.”

Grieve was one of the media execs who pushed for Commerce Commission approval for media to bargain collectively with Google and Meta for news payments.

Backing the Bill – or starting again?
Local media executives, including Grieve, recently met behind closed doors to re-assess their strategy.

“Some major industry participants are still quite gung-ho with the legislation and think that Google is bluffing when it says that it will turn news off and break its agreements. And then you’ve got another group that think that they’re not bluffing, and that events have since overtaken [the legislation],” he said.

“The technology platforms have products that are always in motion. What they’re essentially saying — particularly to smaller countries like New Zealand — is: ‘You don’t really get to make laws. We decide what can and can’t be done’.

“And that’s quite a confronting thing for legislators. It takes quite a backbone and quite a lot of confidence to sort of stand up to that kind of pressure.”

The government just appointed a minister of rail to take charge of the current Cook Strait ferry crisis. Do we need a minister of social media or tech to take charge of policy on this part of the country’s infrastructure?

“We’ve had successive governments that want to be open to technology, and high growth businesses starting here.

“But so much of the internet is controlled by a small handful of platforms that can have an anti-competitive relationship with innovation in any kind of business that seeks to build on land that they consider theirs,” Greive said.

“A lot of what’s happened in Australia has come because the ACCC, their version of the Commerce Commission, has got a a unit which scrutinises digital platforms in much the same way that we do with telecommunications, the energy market and so on.

“Here there is just no one really paying attention. And as a result, we’re getting radically different products than they do in Australia.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics.

That’s refreshing and will be extremely well received. The public will perceive this unprecedented move as a sign that Luxon has very high standards for his government and is determined that his ministers actually deliver results.

Brutal sackings will be popular

Appearing on 1News’ 6pm news last night, I described the demotions as “brutal sackings”, adding that although I thought the moves would be popular, few should believe Luxon’s explanation that the need to replace Melissa Lee was because they needed someone more senior: “Melissa Lee is one of the most senior, experienced politicians in National. She’s the third-longest serving National MP, so it doesn’t quite add up that she wasn’t experienced. She’s been in that portfolio since 2017” – see 1News’ ‘Collective sigh of relief’ likely over Lee’s sacking – Jennings

The demotions have been strongly applauded by Newstalk broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan who argues that Luxon’s strong style of “performance management” is just what the public wants at the moment – especially after many years in which much worse poor performance has been accepted by prime ministers with a lower threshold of expectations – see: NZ deserves Luxon’s style of performance management

She says that Luxon’s show of strength is a massive contrast with the last government: “What’s happened today will shock a lot of people, because over the last few years we’ve got used to Prime Minsters just putting up with their ministers doing a bad job or behaving badly in public. Kiri Allan, Phil Twyford, Michael Wood, Clare Curran, even Nanaia Mahuta – the Foreign Minister who didn’t like international travel. It took forever for Hipkins or Ardern to demote the under-performers, and they suffered for it – public opinion of them was tainted.”

The “kindness” attribute displayed towards their colleagues by recent prime ministers is now very out of step with an electorate that desperately wants politicians to get things done.

Of course, there’s always been a sense in which prime ministers are expected to be ruthless towards their colleagues – something that former Cabinet Minister Peter Dunne emphasises today in his column, Luxon gets out his butcher’s knife – briefly

In this, he points to the phrase used by William Gladstone, the former PM of Britain: “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.”

Luxon is sending a strong message

Dunne says that Luxon’s brutal ministerial reshuffle “has sent two clear messages – one to both Ministers that they are on their last warning, and that they will be unceremoniously shown the door if anything else goes wrong. The second warning is to all other Ministers about the Prime Minister’s limited tolerance for poor performance and the fate that might await them in such circumstances.”

He also argues that it would have been detrimental for both the Government and Luxon’s own reputation if the two ministers had been kept in place, and so it was smart to get them out of the way before the Budget.

Herald political editor Claire Trevett also stresses how unusual such demotions are – especially this early in a government’s term, and without any more overt wrong-doing: “Usually ministers are stripped of portfolios for a scandal, a breach of the Cabinet Manual, or telling a porky to the Prime Minister or the public” – see: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s reshuffle of Melissa Lee, Penny Simmonds should keep all ministers on their toes (paywalled)

She also says that Luxon has read the room well, unlike previous PMs: “Too often, prime ministers let flailing ministers stay in their jobs too long, either to save face or to risk looking as if they are conceding they made the wrong choice.” But she warns that such demotions are a balancing act, because if you do it too much it becomes a negative: “There is a bit of risk to Luxon in this approach: if you end up moving too many ministers around for shonky performances, it starts to look a bit chaotic.”

National Party insider Ben Thomas has also described the demotions as rather brutal, comparing them to some of former PM John Key’s: If Luxon’s mentor, former prime minister John Key, was the so-called ‘smiling assassin’, the current National party leader might be more like a corporate drone strike: affectless, unperturbed, and delivering the bad news in clinical HR speak” – see his column in The Post: Luxon unleashes the corporate drone strike (paywalled)

But Thomas admits that there’s a chance that the sackings, occurring so soon after Luxon appointed these ministers, might reflect poorly on his original decision to appoint them: “To paraphrase The Thick of It’s Malcolm Tucker, it has usually been thought that if the PM sacks you after a year, you’ve effed up; if he sacks you after a week, he’s effed up by appointing you.”

Newsroom’s political editor Laura Walters also points out how soon the demotions have come: “fewer than 150 days into the term was not a good look for the Government – something Newsroom understands Luxon’s staff raised with him” – see: Melissa Lee’s media Hail Mary comes up short

RNZ’s political editor Jo Moir suggests it’s a bad look in terms of diversity in Cabinet for Luxon to be sacking two women and bringing in a man (Climate Change Minister Simon Watts). But she says for Luxon “competence in the job, or lack thereof, had to trump anything else” – see: Aces in their places: Luxon plays coy over ministers’ competence. But Moir points out the positive of having Watts come into Cabinet: “It will also bring to an end the frustration from climate and environment quarters over the climate change portfolio being outside Cabinet in the first place.”

The other possible message that the demotions send, according to Kelly Dennett of The Post, “is that Luxon is taking delivery seriously; that it’s productivity or bust in this corporate-styled National-led Government” – see: What Luxon really means when he says ‘this is how I roll’ (paywalled)

But she wonders if Luxon is using too much “corporate-speak” in these types of announcements. His phrase that “This is how I roll, this is how I lead” has been derided by a number of commentators. And Dennett argues it’s “not particularly prime ministerial, more what the sneaker-wearing CEOs volley around the boardroom.”

Melissa Lee’s poor performance

Although yesterday’s demotions were surprising due to their timing, no one seems to have been surprised, as Melissa Lee was already in serious trouble. Over the last month or two of major downsizing and threats in various media businesses, Lee has been widely viewed as ineffective and missing in action. Common reactions to her performance have involved the word “clueless” and phrases like “possum in the headlights”.

According to the Herald’s Claire Trevett, Lee was unfortunate to possess the portfolio during a crisis, but also failed to produce credible responses: “Lee’s downfall was that they came to a head on her watch – and she did not have an answer to them by the time they took their toll. Nor had she come up with anything since.”

Ben Thomas is more sympathetic to Lee’s plight, saying there was an element of unfairness in her sacking: “she had been, to differing extents, gagged by her own side. Even before the election, National refused to release her broadcasting policy”. Then during the media crisis, he says that she was stuck in limbo because of coalition politics involving NZ First: “Her office was reportedly barred from clarifying the timeline of policy development with journalists by Luxon’s office, to ease tensions with deputy PM Winston Peters.”

Newsroom’s Laura Walters appears to have more inside information on what has been going on in the Beehive, saying that Lee’s final downfall came when her third attempt to develop a Cabinet paper of solutions to the crisis disappointed the Prime Minister. Walters reports on Lee’s third Cabinet paper failing: “Sources told Newsroom that Luxon… believed the proposals in Lee’s [third] paper did not adequately deal with the complexities of the issues facing the media industry.”

Lee has now been replaced as Media Minister by Paul Goldsmith, and Claire Trevett ponders whether the new minister is simply being “handed a poisoned chalice.” The portfolio has certainly been a difficult one that appears to have defeated previous ministers like Claire Curran, Kris Faafao, and Willie Jackson – all of whom struggled to make much headway in helping the sector to modernise. For more on this, see Colin Peacock’s Media minister rolled as industry awaits plan

Penny Simmonds’ poor performance

Penny Simmonds has lost her cherished Disabilities ministerial portfolio in similar circumstances – as she too has caused the Government embarrassment, but not in a way that would normally lead to a sacking. However her mismanagement of the Disability portfolio led to savage cuts to disability support allowances, which shocked her colleagues and the sector. It was made worse by some intemperate remarks about those in the sector.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis had to intervene in the debacle, returning funding to the disability sector, and making it clear that any such changes in the future would need to be cleared by Cabinet rather than just Simmonds. And according to Newsroom’s Laura Walters, this “was seen by many as a vote of no confidence in Simmonds’ ability to oversee her own ministry.”

Despite this poor performance and bad publicity for the Government, few were tipping her to be fired so quickly. According to Walters, reporting on Beehive information, Luxon needed to demote Lee, and was less inclined to demote Simmonds this early, but “he decided to make both changes in one go to avoid another potential reshuffle down the road should Simmonds not bounce back.”

Also reporting Beehive sources, Ben Thomas says today that “insiders say Simmonds has struggled with the workload across her portfolios, and that the disabilities carer payment changes were not the only significant official-led announcements that passed under her risk radar.”

Luxon is appealing to our anti-political grumpiness

Luxon will win new plaudits from commentators for being decisive and bold, especially after years in which prime ministers have seemed highly reluctant to punish poor behaviour or performance. Luxon and his Government look like they won’t settle for “business as usual” or workmanlike politics.

If that is Luxon’s objective, then he’s smartly tapping into the Zeitgeist, reacting to a public mood that is increasingly grumpy and intolerant towards political complacency and mediocrity. We live in an age of political anger and discontent, which means that this National-led Government will quickly suffer if it protects poor performance.

Two recent IPSOS polling surveys indicate just how volatile and hard to please the public are. Last month, the market research company released its polling, showing that the public wasn’t evaluating the new government’s performance any more positively than it did for the last Labour Government when it was at its most unpopular – the average rating that people gave the National Government was only 4.6/10 – see my coverage of this: Scoring 4.6 out of 10, the new Government is struggling in the polls

Then last week, IPSOS released its survey of New Zealand’s attitudes to politics, which showed that two-thirds of the country believes that “New Zealand needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”, amongst many other rising anti-Establishment beliefs – see my column: Serious populist discontent is bubbling up in New Zealand

Of particular relevance was the survey question in which respondents were asked whether they agreed with the following statement: “To fix New Zealand, we need a strong leader willing to break the rules”. 54 per cent answered “yes”. The same question asked in the rest of the world had an average agreement of 49 per cent. In New Zealand, the demographics who much more likely to agree with the need for a strong rule-breaking leader were rightwing voters (60%), those on low incomes (66%), and Māori (73%).

Notably, political scientist Jack Vowles has also detected this growing grumpiness and desire for strong leadership. His NZ Election Study found that in 2020 43 per cent of the public agreed with the following statement: “A few strong leaders could make this country better than all the laws and talk”. But last year, the survey question found this had increased to 51 per cent.

Luxon and his government are also carrying out their own polling regularly, and will be well aware of how this increasingly anti-political mood means that voters will reward political leaders making strong decisions and being intolerant of mistakes and poor performance. In this sense, when he launched his surprise and ruthless demotions yesterday, Luxon was finally showing that he could be a “strong leader” or perhaps even a “populist” type of politician for our times.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington.

After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

RNZ MEDIAWATCH: By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

In her report, political reporter Amelia Wade reminded viewers more than 30 years of TV news and current affairs — spanning the entire period of commercial TV here — could come to an end in June.

Before TV3 launched in 1989, state-owned TVNZ had been the only game in town.

But for most of its recent history, TV3’s parent company MediaWorks was owned by private equity funds and it was hamstrung with debts.

There were periodic financial emergencies too which seemed to signal the end.

In 2015, the boss Mark Weldon axed the current affairs shows Campbell Live and 3D and replaced them with ones that didn’t pull in more viewers or pull up many trees with their reporting.

“Reports of our death at 6pm have been greatly exaggerated”, host Hilary Barry responded to reports 3 News might be for the chop the following year.

But Weldon persuaded the owners to stump up a significant sum to launch Newshub instead.

When the huge global company Discovery bought MediaWorks loss-making TV channels in December 2020, many in the media were pleased a major media outfit was now in charge.

Using the Official Information Act, Newsroom later reported the Overseas Investment Office fast tracked Discovery’s application and sought no guarantees of a commitment to local news.

The 2021 mega-merger in the US that turned it into “Warner Bros Discovery” excited The Spinoff founder Duncan Grieve.

“Tova O’Brien breaking stories on CNN NZ at 6pm, before an evening of local reality TV souped up by global budgets and distribution — with major sports and drama rights for good measure,” was one scenario.

“It could also swing the other way, with the New Zealand linear asset seen as too small and obscure,” he warned.

After losses including a $35 million one last year, the owners now “propose” to slice out the entire on-screen and online news operation. New Zealand could lose more than 15 percent of its full-time journalists in one go.

Beginning of the end?

“Oh, the irony, right? When those so-called ‘vulture funds’ had it, the operation still continued, albeit always run on the smell of an oily rag. Then a big media organisation was the one which axed it,” long-serving TV3 current affairs journalist Eugene Bingham told Mediawatch.

“I’ve been around long enough to see death by a thousand cuts over the years. But this was a moment we’ll look back on as a watershed moment in democracy and journalism,” Bingham said.

Former MediaWorks executive Andrew Szusterman told RNZ’s Morning Report the next day this decision would also ripple out to local drama and entertainment.

“We’re going to start to see how this is going to impact the production sector. Irrevocably, possibly,” said Szusterman, now the chief executive at production company South Pacific Pictures.

Does Newshub’s demise also kill off Three?

There’s been no shortage of people this week pointing out the appetite for TV news — and linear TV in general — is not what it was. That’s the main reason for the ad revenue slump cited by WBD.

Some who do tune in to Three (and WBD’s other channels) for The Block, Married at First Sight and free movies may not miss the news shows from June 30. So maybe Three will be fine?

“The loss of the newsroom represents the loss of the ability to respond to any event in real time. That is the heart and soul of a traditional TV broadcaster,” Hal Crawford — chief news officer at MediaWorks (and effectively Newshub’s boss) until early 2020 — told Mediawatch.

“When the Queen dies you can send a team to London, you can have someone in the studio talking about it, you can interact in a way that makes people feel like it is alive and a real human entity.”

Channels without the live element news brings are effectively just “content databases”, Crawford told Mediawatch.

“News is the one programme that runs 365 days a year . . . which the schedule is going to rely on to lead into prime time. So the rest of your schedule is going to dwindle. Ratings are gonna fall off and everything is going to go to pieces.

“It really is going to dwindle as a cultural entity in New Zealand because you’re not going to be able to justify the funding from NZ on Air if you aren’t getting audiences. It’s hard for me to see a way out of Three basically going away as a cultural force in New Zealand.”

But TV-style news and current affairs is also now being done online.

After Eugene Bingham’s TV3 show 3D was axed in 2016, four members formed the Stuff Circuit investigative team. Its video documentary productions won awards until it was axed by Stuff late last year.

“Of course, there have been changes in viewing habits . . .  but there’s still a reason that the ‘1’ and the ‘3’ on remotes around the country are worn down. Hundreds of thousands of people at six o’clock flip the channel. Without a TV bulletin there, doesn’t (Three) just become like Bravo, where there’s just programmes running and you either switch on or you don’t?”

In the end, journalists have to confront the fact that not quite enough people these days care about what they do — including executives at media companies, politicians not inclined to intervene and members of the public.

Most New Zealanders are happy to use services like Netflix or Google search or Facebook that carry news and local content but contribute almost nothing to it.

“But I don’t think people quite understand the depth of the problem facing media and the implications. That certainly came through to me watching the broadcasting minister saying, well, people can still watch programmes like Sky for news,” Bingham said.

The National Party went into the last election without a media or broadcasting policy or any specific manifesto commitments.

What should/could the government do?

While Wednesday’s announcement shocked the 300-odd staff, the local chief executive Glen Kyne — close to tears on Newshub at 6 —  told Newshub’s Michael Morrah he had known about the possibility since January.

The government also got a heads-up earlier this week.

Media minister Melissa Lee told reporters WBD made no requests for help, prompting Glen Kyne to tell Newshub WBD did ask both the current and previous government for assistance, such as a reduction in the multi-million dollar fee paid to state-owned transmission company Kordia.

Lee later clarified her comment but was firm that the government had no role to play because this was a case of a private company taking action because “their business model actually wasn’t working.”

On Morning Report, Andrew Szusterman disagreed.

“Channels 7,9 and 10, SBS, ABC, and Fox in Australia all run news services. I don’t think their government would let the last commercial free-to-air news broadcaster just walk away. The fact the broadcasting minister hasn’t fronted . . .  it’s quite shameless,” he told RNZ’s Morning Report.

Stuff’s Tova O’Brien — who famously turned on her former employer MediaWorks on air in real time last year when it closed Today FM — called the minister’s response “cold and tone-deaf” and accused the government of a “glib shrug”.

That was partly because Lee’s first response to the Newshub announcement was to tell reporters: “There’s Sky as well, there’s a whole lot of other media about.”

Sky contracts Newshub to produce its 5.30pm free-to-air news bulletin — and Sky subscribers won’t find any locally-made news on Sky TV’s pay channels.

Lee should have known that. She was a programme-maker before she was an MP and was National’s spokesperson on broadcasting for years in opposition.

Lee declined all interview requests this week — including from Mediawatch — but did tell reporters at Parliament: “I wasn’t as articulate as I could have been. But I am taking this seriously.”

The PM told Stuff he is expecting an update at Cabinet on Monday. The media will be watching that space with pens and cameras poised.

There is legislation currently before a select committee which could compel the big online tech platforms to pay local producers of news for it.

In opposition, Lee opposed it and called it “literally a shakedown” in Parliament. (This weekend Facebook’s owner Meta announced it would not do any more deals with media under Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, prompting a likely confrontation with the government there.)

“The government’s position on this will obviously take into account these latest developments in terms of the wider media landscape. This government is committed to working with the sector on ways to ensure sector sustainability, while still preserving the independence of a fourth estate and avoiding market interference,” Lee said in Parliament on Thursday when questioned.

The government already heavily intervenes in the market by overseeing the state-owned broadcasters and agencies — including TVNZ — and putting over a quarter of a billion dollars every year onto broadcasting, programmes and other content.

The former government also put $80 million over two years into Māori media content, partly in the expectation there might also be a new public media entity to broadcast it.

In 2019, Hal Crawford — boss of Newshub at the time — declared the New Zealand news media is broken.

His chief executive also urged the government to intervene. AM show host Duncan Garner switched the studio lights off as an on-air stunt.

Crawford is now a digital media consultant based in his native Australia. The broadcasting funding agency in NZ On Air hired him in 2021 to review its own spending of public money on the media.

“It’s not a good idea for governments to knee jerk and sponsor particular commercial companies in some sort of bailout,” he said.

“To give money to the people who are in financially the worst position is the most ineffective and unfair use of public money that I can think of. If the market is telling you that something isn’t wanted and needed, you have to listen to that.

“But it doesn’t mean that you have to always listen to the market and do things that have never been done before.”

He cites the Public Interest Journalism Fund which put $55 million into new content and created new jobs for cash-strapped news media companies.

Crawford’s fact-finding report on the planned PIJF in 2021 records media managers feared cuts and possible closures to come.

“Many of our interviewees believed that if an organisation could show that cuts were imminent, they should be able to apply for funded roles under the PIJF. Many saw the dangers in this non-incremental funding, but argued for exceptions in extreme circumstances. Although these arguments are compelling, Funding could evaporate quickly trying to keep the newsrooms of big commercial companies afloat if this became the primary aim of the fund.”

“Around the world and in New Zealand, there’s ample evidence that public funding of journalism is becoming more essential. There has to be a way there, because what we’re seeing with the the planned closure of Newshub is the end result of the factors that we’ve known about for at least a decade,” Crawford told Mediawatch.

“Direct subsidy from the government to a commercial newsroom isn’t going to work. The government has to find a way to sensibly finance news and structure it so that it doesn’t become a political football.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

I was concerned when the story broke last month about inappropriate subediting by RNZ staff of ‘wirecopy’ from international sources such as Reuters. The wire-tampering story broke with particular reference to stories about the war in Ukraine; and, at least for that story, it needs to be understood that Aotearoa New Zealand is an aligned party to that military conflict, so certain sensitivities will apply.

I was then concerned when RNZ chief executive Paul Thomson called the RNZ subedits “pro-Kremlin garbage”. For background see Mediawatch: Further fallout as RNZ takes out the ‘Kremlin garbage’, Evening Report, 18 June 2023. For a senior professional communicator, the RNZ CE set a particularly bad example.

Subsequently, RNZ has undertaken an audit of stories published on its website, so its possible to check out the bias of the sub-edits. It turns out that there is a clear anti-Washington rather than pro-Kremlin sub-editorial line. A number of the stories brought to light – and corrected – relate to Latin America; in addition to stories featuring Ukraine, China, Taiwan, Israel and Ireland. (I have heard it said that the sub-editor in question is not only pro-Kremlin, but also has a disposition towards anti-democratic regimes. I cannot agree; I would assess the sub-editor in question to be an old-fashioned democratic left-winger who, in Cold War times, might once have had some pro-Soviet sympathies.)

Before looking at specific themes of the sub-edits, I present the following quote (8’20”) from Mediawatch, RNZ’s Russiagate, 14 June 2023.

The programme features Hayden Donnell talking to RNZ’s Anna Thomas about the purpose of subediting a “pre-subbed” wired story from an international news agency: “It’s already gone through a pretty robust process at Reuters or AP or wherever you’re sourcing it from. Most of the time it’ll just require an editor formatting it to in-house style, maybe removing some Americanisms, cutting it to length, and plonking it on the website.”

And then: “What can [ie should] you edit with wirecopy? Even if you agree with this person’s edit, the heart of the issue is that you cannot take copy and make substantive changes to its meaning. But you can add context, you can delete sections for length, you can insert relevant local information or quotes. If you cannot make any changes at all, that’s untenable.” [I have sub-edited bits of this second quotation to shorten it, to remove repetition, and to make it more like written rather than spoken language.]

The problem is that even very small additions, deletions and substitutions can subtly alter the meaning of a text. That’s of course a problem here, and it is clear that there has been an intent to steer the meaning in an anti-Washington direction. By way of contrast, disinterested subediting will be like a ‘random walk’ [a statistical concept] meaning that, on average, altered meanings are unbiased. Subeditors who are close to an issue may display unconscious bias, whereas outsourced subeditors (including robotic subeditors) who are distant from the issues in a text may be unbiased but ‘noisy’; such subeditors will on average make more mistakes, and will struggle to appreciate nuance in a text.

While the problem subeditor in question was clearly inserting an anti-Washington bias, his defence may well have been that he [other media stories refer to ‘he’] was correcting a pro-Washington bias in the material he was working on. Certainly, in any Goodies versus Baddies narrative – inherent in war stories – academic or journalist disinterest is largely absent from most stories; these are narrational contexts where a person who is not overtly on one side is too easily characterised as being on the other side. As the question goes: ‘Which side are you on?‘.

Editorial biases are commonly worse than sub-editorial tampering. These in particular involve the decision whether or not to run a story. While these are often dictated by the fast-moving news cycle – meaning that stories about Covid19, for example, were biased towards the beginning of that pandemic, and created an ‘exceptionalism’ towards that disease at the expense of contextual discussion and other health risks – they also reflect self-censorship (partly but not only because of the fear of the wrath of authorities or other power-brokers).

Another form of bias arises in the need to create headlines which will draw readers to a story; a bias compounded by the fact today that most stories have ‘click-bait’ headlines (hyperlinks) which are even more sensational and less qualified than the actual headlines to the stories.

‘Loaded’ Language

Consider this story: Organization of American States head ‘one of worst in history’ – Ebrard. The changes made and then unmade are listed at the end of the story.  With respect to former Bolivian president Evo Morales, the mischievous subeditor replaced “resigned under pressure” with “resigned and fled under threat”. Both versions are essentially true, though the original (and restored) version may have understated the danger Morales faced; or perhaps the modified version overstated the danger.

We also see, in that story, the clause “a presidential vote that the OAS said was rigged” was changed (and unchanged) to “a presidential vote that the OAS claimed was rigged”. This leads to the issue of the degree to which some synonyms are more ‘loaded’ or ‘accusative’ than others. (Note here that if the original story had used the word ‘claimed’, there would have been no issue; the question is the motive of the subeditor in making the change.)

Aside

A common sort of story takes the form ‘A abuses B’, where ‘to abuse’ means any action that is in some sense ‘bad’. Consider this story, about the November 1975 regime change in Australia (commonly known there as ‘The Dismissal’). The allegation is of Washington involvement in precipitating this particular political crisis.

This is an A abuses B story, where (in this case) ‘A’ is the American CIA, ‘abuses’ means ‘dismisses’, and ‘B’ means ‘the elected government of Australia’. The story at its most disinterested level is [passive voice] that ‘The Government was dismissed’. In the active voice, the most neutral version is that ‘sources said that the Dismissal was instigated by the CIA’. The next level would be ‘sources claimed that the Dismissal was instigated by the CIA’. Up another notch would be ‘The CIA allegedly instigated the Dismissal’, or [passive voice] ‘The CIA was accused of instigating the Dismissal’. Finally, the most overt form is the unqualified ‘The CIA instigated the Dismissal’.

In the various stories we read and hear, many which are in the ‘A abuses B’ form, we will encounter the full linguistic range from neutral (‘something bad happened’) to the presentation of an accusation as a fact. Actually, the way a story is narrated is ‘rhetoric’; and neutral rhetoric can be a way to intentionally downplay something, just as accusative rhetoric upplays that same story.

Back to the Main Narrative

We see this in this RNZ story, Two activists involved in land dispute killed in Brazil: police, in which the restored headline is in the passive voice and the word ‘said’ is only implied. The inappropriately sub-edited version is in the active voice with the abused named without ‘alleged’ as a qualification: ‘Death squad shoots dead two Brazilian land activists’.

This story Chile passes bill to boost taxes on rich, spur investment, small business shows that the subversive  RNZ sub-editor is coming from a somewhat conventional left-wing perspective, and not from an autocratic ‘far-right’ Russian perspective. People who are anti-inequality don’t usually regard Russia these days as an exemplar country.

This story for a while contained an inserted and unqualified allegation of a “2014 US-based coup”:Serbia accuses Ukraine and unnamed EU country of Air Serbia bomb hoaxes. It’s an example that shows the anti-Washington stance of the sub-editor. Indeed, articles like these are not the correct place to debate the extent of United States’ involvement (or otherwise) in the regime-change event in Ukraine in February 2014.

In this story we see the explicit anti-Washington subeditorial stance with respect to China over Taiwan, and also the more neutral word ‘says’ preferred by the subeditor over the word ‘worries’ with respect to Japan: South Korea’s president seeks closer Tokyo ties after latest North Korea missile launch. Yet this story’s subediting uses the rhetorical word ‘blunders’ with respect to China, not exactly an endorsement of Beijing.

Finally

I would regard Paul Thomson’s use of the rhetorical word ‘garbage’ to be more problematic than the sub-editors’ word ‘blunders’. Garbage is ‘waste’, not ‘lies’. Waste is a reality of life that should be regarded as normatively neutral, not wicked. In ecology and sustainable economics, waste is indeed a ‘good’, not a ‘bad’; an input as well as an output. It is not professional to oppose bad rhetoric with worse rhetoric.

And, I wonder if the mischievous subeditor has a point in interpreting much of the copy that came his way as having its own bias. If the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT was trained only on copy acceptable to today’s western authorities and power-brokers, would the bot’s outputs really be any more truthful than the ‘pro-Kremlin garbage’ that a frustrated socialist RNZ minion was (for a brief while) turning out?

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Paul and Selwyn deep dive into the battle to control a narrative, waged by all sides in a polarised combative world, and how modern mainstream media institutions, like Radio New Zealand, fall vulnerable in the absence of robust all-sides-considered analysis and debate.

In this episode, Paul and Selwyn analyse how fourth Estate bias, propaganda, and conflict-force fact-vacuums are the challenge of our times in this disinformation age.

Upon this context, Paul and Selwyn consider:

* Why Is the Radio New Zealand sub-editor pro-RU-content debacle symptomatic of a fact-vacuum environment?

* Why is all media vulnerable to disinformation in the absence of robust NATO-Ukraine-Russia analysis?

* What are the unspoken of ‘big picture’ shifts in Russian Federation / Global South relations?

LINKS and REFERENCES:

• https://KiwiPolitico.com
• https://www.dekoder.org/de/person/ekaterina-schulmann-0
• https://www.rnz.co.nz/media/180
• https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/news-extras/story/2018893905/rnz-editorial-audit
• https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/491788/nz-entering-ukraine-conflict-at-whim-of-govt-former-labour-general-secretary
• https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/02/25/russia-ends-nowhere-they-say
• https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-russian-elites-think-putins-war-is-doomed-to-fail

INTERACTION:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

You can continue to interact with this podcast, simply by going to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

Paul and Selwyn will deep dive into the battle to control a narrative, waged by all sides in a polarised combative world, and how modern mainstream media institutions, like Radio New Zealand, fall vulnerable in the absence of robust all-sides-considered analysis and debate.

In this episode, Paul and Selwyn will analyse how fourth Estate bias, propaganda, and conflict-force fact-vacuums are the challenge of our times in this disinformation age.

Upon this context, Paul and Selwyn will consider:

* Why Is the Radio New Zealand sub-editor pro-RU-content debacle symptomatic of a fact-vacuum environment?

* Why is all media vulnerable to disinformation in the absence of robust NATO-Ukraine-Russia analysis?

* What are the unspoken of ‘big picture’ shifts in Russian Federation / Global South relations?

LINKS and REFERENCES:

• https://KiwiPolitico.com
• https://www.dekoder.org/de/person/ekaterina-schulmann-0
• https://www.rnz.co.nz/media/180
• https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/news-extras/story/2018893905/rnz-editorial-audit
• https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/491788/nz-entering-ukraine-conflict-at-whim-of-govt-former-labour-general-secretary
• https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/02/25/russia-ends-nowhere-they-say
• https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-russian-elites-think-putins-war-is-doomed-to-fail

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE:

Paul and Selwyn encourage their live audience to interact while they are live with questions and comments.

To interact during the live recording of this podcast, go to Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/

Remember to subscribe to the channel.

For the on-demand audience, you can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Youtube.com/c/EveningReport/
• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

Fiji’s Media Industry Development Act will soon be reviewed over the next few weeks.

Speaking to The Fiji Times in Lautoka on Monday, Minister for Communications Manoa Kamikamica said the review was one of the main objectives of the coalition government when it came to freedom of the press.

“The Media Decree is going to be reviewed,” he said.

“It is no secret that it is one of the priorities of the coalition government, so hopefully in the next few weeks we will be making some progress on that.”

He said that since the change in government media freedom had been felt among the industry.

“You can see there is already freedom of the press that you can feel when there is a change in leadership.

“So that is a positive for the media industry and I can assure you that the Media Decree review is happening and it will be happening over the coming weeks.”

More communication plans
He added that there were more plans to develop Fiji’s communication sector.

“There are a lot of things to do in communication,” he said.

“There are still a lot of people that have not been reached yet in terms of service delivery so that is a priority of government as well.

“There are also a lot of technological industries that are starting to come to Fiji for example the BPO (business process outsourcing) sector.

“This is one so need to make sure that the government supports and there are a few things we are going to be doing there.

“So there’s a lot to do and we have a plan and we will take it forward.”

Repeka Nasiko is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper has warned the country against complacency over the covid-19 pandemic and to look to Fiji for an example of how things can easily go wrong.

In an editorial today, The New Zealand Herald has also criticised the government over its communication strategy and failure to counter a disinformation campaign threatening the national vaccination rollout.

“Complacency is our greatest enemy, particularly while the director-general of health continues to report no community transmissions in his regular briefings and with just 5 percent of the population having received a second vaccine shot,” said the Herald.

“Fiji has discovered geographical isolation is not enough to avoid the increased transmissible variants of covid. Vigilance and adherence to official advice remains crucial as the best mechanism we have to the defeating this damned thing.

“Raising our prevention and contact tracing game after it has arrived is too late.”

From early on in the covid-19 pandemic, it was obvious that consistent communication was essential for New Zealanders to maintain compliance with key measures to limit transmission of the virus, said the newspaper.

“Now we know ‘influencers’ were deployed in Auckland’s March [2020] lockdown to push messages into social media as the government fretted about online posts undermining the pandemic response,” the Herald said.

Jeopardising NZ’s response
“It appears it was thought overly harsh critics condemning infected people for not self-isolating could truly jeopardise the country’s response. A newly released Cabinet paper said ‘social licence’ was crucial to a strong covid-19 response.

“Such hostility could undermine the overall pandemic response, wrote covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. ‘Public reaction to particular individuals who have not used the covid-19 Tracer app or otherwise failed to follow good practices suggests a possible erosion of this.’

“So, the Government sought help from social media figures who were deemed to have sway in Māori, Pacific, Indian and youth communities. Hosts from radio stations Tarana, Flava, The Edge and Hauraki subsequently posted reassuring photos and messages, using the campaign’s hashtag #stayinforit.

“Contrast this social media influencing tactic with the lack of action around countering misinformation on the vaccine.

“Most will have by now seen or heard of the leaflets put in mailboxes in a concerted campaign to raise unfounded fears about the vaccine and undermine the protection offered by mass immunity.

“The flyer was produced and distributed by a group called Voices for Freedom. Co-founder Claire Deeks ran as a candidate for Advance New Zealand at the last election, and was third on the party list.

“The group claimed to be putting out two million flyers to coincide with the government’s vaccine campaign.”

Information investigation
The Herald noted how investigative journalist David Fisher had sought any communications about what government agencies might do to address the false claims being disseminated about the vaccine and was told “the information does not exist”.

“For all its efforts and expense, Voices for Freedom failed to register as a threat.”

The government itself had not always been clear in all its communications, with some “casual contacts” of positive cases being upgraded to “casual plus” without announcement or explanation in March this year, the newspaper said.

“The Prime Minister was also accused of neglecting her own advice to ‘be kind’ when she publicly criticised a covid-infected person who continued to work at a KFC store.

“Ultimately, the government is well aware the greatest risk is the public passively drifting off the necessary precautions rather than active resistance.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The National Party is in trouble again for its Facebook advertising campaigning. Late last week, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled against one of the party’s social media ads targeting the Government’s vehicle efficiency feebate scheme. The authority ruled it was “likely to confuse or deceive consumers”. The ad had claimed that the feebate scheme would cause the costs of some cars to be increased by $6000 when, in fact, the highest direct fee would be $3000.

National had provided argumentation for its claim, which the ASA ruled “insufficient”, and the party now plans to appeal the decision – see Craig McCulloch’s National told to pull online attack ad, but will appeal ruling.

According to Newshub’s Dan Satherley, despite the ASA’s ruling, the offending ad remained online and there was nothing the ASA could do about this: “As of Friday, the ads remained online. The ASA has no statutory power to force the party to take them down. The ASA has plans to set up a rapid-response unit to tackle misleading political ads with far more urgency next year, which is an election year” – see: National to appeal after ‘car tax’ advert ruled misleading.

National argued that the party had followed the spirit of the law but the ASA have got them on a technical breach: “It has been the previous view and practice of the Advertising Standards Authority that the spirit of the code is more important than any minor technical breaches… People have a right to express their views and this right should not be unduly or unreasonably restricted by rules.”

The whole issue raises questions about whether New Zealand is headed into an environment of “post-truth” online advertising of dirty politics and deliberate deception, as has been witnessed in other political systems. There is increasing debate about “weaponised advertising technology” being used by political parties.

There have been a number of recent media stories investigating the surge of Facebook advertising by various parties, with a strong concern about the dangers this poses for democracy, especially since many of the ads are dodgy. For the best investigation of this, see Q+A’s seven-minute video (and article): Voters warned to prepare for dirty politics as battle steps up online a year out from election.

Here’s the main point: “A year out from the General Election, political observers are warning voters to prepare for some dirty politics, with the battle for votes increasingly being fought online. TVNZ1’s Q+A has discovered New Zealanders are already being targeted with some of the less-than-transparent tactics seen overseas. Like never before, National is churning out the attack ads on social media, it’s campaign machine already in full throttle.”

National is particularly under scrutiny, with allegations that the party is moving into some sort of Trump-like post-truth way of operating. For example, Peter Dunne highlights in the Q+A item how National leader Simon Bridges recently claimed “one person’s facts are another person’s misinformation” when justifying misleading claims by a National MP.

The suggestion is that National is importing aggressive and negative social media tactics from its counterparts overseas – with many noting a recent trip by Bridges to meet with the Australian Liberal Party and Scott Morrison, who were notable for their aggressive social media campaigning that helped them pull off their surprise election victory this year. As the Q+A item notes, the Liberals “had the help of some Kiwi digital whizzes – Young Nats Sean Topham and Sam Guerin, and social media strategist Kelly Boxall, another Kiwi who has recently been working in Simon Bridges’ office.”

The item features Labour’s election campaign chair Megan Woods vowing that Labour won’t be going negative in its election next year, but pointing the finger at National: “I’m worried that we are seeing these green shoots of a reasonably desperate and negative campaign that’s coming through already”.

National’s campaign chair is Paula Bennett, and in the video she defends the party’s rather simplistic attack messages as being helpful for voters: “People don’t have a lot of time in their lives to sit down and wade their way through a 40-page document like this Government sometimes puts out, that literally says nothing. So we are able to take that, condense it down to what matters”.

The social media company Topham Guerin is apparently not actually being employed yet by National, according to Henry Cooke. However he notes that the party’s “current campaigning shows much similarity to the ads used by the Liberals in Australia” – see: Facebook ads will dominate the next election – but our politicians don’t have to tell us about them.

Cooke points to National’s heavy use of Facebook advertising, saying that at one point the party had 14 separate advertisements running. But the parties of Government have also embraced this platform: “Labour also runs a large number of ads on Facebook – 15 as of Thursday evening. Most of these ads promoted Labour policies, both nationally and in specific regions, or simply asked users to sign up for updates on the page. But Labour and the Greens have dipped their toes into negative Facebook campaigning.”

The attractiveness of Facebook advertising is outlined by Cooke: “Facebook ads are much cheaper to both produce and broadcast than traditional television advertising, and can be targeted at minute slices of audience and easily tested with those audiences.”

The question is whether there is enough regulation of these advertisements, especially given the increasing fears about “political parties posting untrue or exaggerated content”. As a possible solution, Cooke points to a new Facebook transparency tool that has been introduced, which might help keep the campaigning cleaner: “The ‘Ad Library Report’ is mandatory in several countries and allows the public to track every ad a political party or issue group puts out on the platform, and see how much money is being spent and who the ad is targeted at.” It keeps an archive of all the ads run by political parties and advocacy groups – so even if a Facebook ad is only up for a short period it can still be located after the fact.

Unfortunately, Cooke reports that none of the political parties have yet signed up to the tool, despite its availability. National is quoted about this: “We are already subject to a rigorous approval process of our ads by Facebook, and public transparency of the ads we are actively running on Facebook at any one time. We have yet to consider the Ad Library Report function in Facebook, and will no doubt make a decision on this in due course.”

Cooke also explores the reluctance, or lack of ability, of authorities to regulate social media political advertising in his article, Stopping viral misinformation in the next election will be a task for all of us. He adds that there’s “good reason” to avoid too much regulation: “We respect free speech, especially political speech.”

New Zealand’s official election agency is a focus for some of this debate: “The Electoral Commission regulates political ads on the authorisation level – but has no jurisdiction over truthfulness.” Cooke does suggest that “The Electoral Commission could look into demanding that parties be more transparent about their online ad spending, if Facebook itself would make them.”

Instead, it’s the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that has responsibility for dealing with claims of accuracy. But, it’s “a voluntary industry body with no legal power to compel anyone to do anything. It also generally takes about two weeks to deal with a complaint, although it does have a quicker response team during elections.”

The role of the ASA is discussed further by RNZ’s Colin Peacock, who reports: “For the last election the ASA ran a ‘fast-track’ process during the campaign period which required a response from the advertiser and any other relevant party within 24 hours of a complaint – and its website says most complaints were settled within three or four days. The ASA told Mediawatch the arrangements for next year’s election have yet to be determined” – see: Oncoming online onslaught of paid political ads?

Peacock points out another important part of the issue – that a lot of Facebook and social media ads are taxpayer funded. It’s unclear to what extent current ads are paid for out of parliamentary funding budgets, but certainly when it comes to the election they will be taxpayer-funded. Peacock explains: “Electoral law changed in 2017 to allow political parties to spend more of their own money on online ads – as well as $750,000 previously earmarked by the Electoral Commission for opening and closing addresses on TV and radio.”

This “weaponised advertising technology” is also discussed by Katie Kenny and Tommy Livingston in a good feature article which discusses “the risks of a post-truth political landscape” – see: Can Kiwis tell fact from fake news in the leadup to the 2020 elections?

In this, a distinction is made between misinformation and disinformation: “While misinformation often arises out of genuine political debate, disinformation is typically a covert attempt by a maligned state or interest group to distort public views.” The suggestion is that it’s the use of the latter which could be a challenge for New Zealand democracy, as it has been elsewhere. The argument is: “Disinformation campaigns contributed to the rise of President Donald Trump in the United States and to Brexit in the United Kingdom.”

Both major parties accuse each other of producing “fake news”, and the article cites challenges that have been made to them to commit not to. Tom Barraclough, who is researching how to detect the use of “deep fakes”, says: “I have not seen any commitment by political parties to refrain from using manipulated imagery or video”.

Technology commentator Paul Brislen also identifies in this article that it’s the Facebook platform that is particularly “dangerous”. This is because “There are growing trends among older people to just use Facebook as a source of news and that alarms me”. Young people are of less concern he explains: “Today’s students are being taught critical thinking skills in the classroom and know not to believe everything they read online”.

This week RNZ’s podcast, The Detail, also looked at the rise of social media amplifying so-called fake news, asking: Is post-truth politics creeping into New Zealand?

In this, Newsroom political editor Sam Sachdeva suggests that “post-truth” manipulation of voters has always been in politics, particularly with the central role of political party spin-doctors, but that it is potentially becoming worse with the use of Facebook and so forth: “I guess the question some people raise is, with the rise of social media, this eroding trust in politicians from the public, and the ability to amplify misinformation, or simplistic soundbites, or key phrases that you want to get out – being able to do that through Facebook, Twitter, or other mediums – has that made it worse?”

As to whether we should worry about the effectiveness of the surge of Facebook ads, it’s worth noting that Claire Robinson – who is the New Zealand authority on political advertising, and published a very good book on its history last week – has given reason not to worry: “Decades of international research has failed to find solid evidence that political ads (of any kind) have any effect on changing a voter’s mind and therefore manipulating the outcome of individual elections” – see: How Facebook has revolutionised the art of political persuasion.

Robinson says that we should be more worried about how governing political parties are now more inclined to put out official information via their Facebook pages instead of through traditional government channels. She says: “Today, video policy announcements are as – or more – likely to be posted on a Labour, New Zealand First or Green Party social media feed as they are to be logged as formal government documents on the Beehive website.”

She suggests this is “insidious” and “potentially more damaging to our democracy” because it means “the lines between the interests of, and accountability to, the public and the political party get blurred”.

In a similar way, this week the Herald’s Claire Trevett has commented that Jacinda Ardern “uses social media in a more cunning way than any Prime Minister has before”, explaining that she “enjoys a benefit none of her predecessors really had, one that was delivered to her by the Twitter and Facebook: easy livestreaming” – see: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s social media stealth propaganda (paywalled).

Trevett also challenges Simon Bridges’ recent claim that Ardern spends too much time on Twitter: “it is untrue. Ardern has tweeted only three times this year. Bridges has sent out at least 30 in the last month alone. The last time Ardern tweeted was in May to acknowledge the death of former Australian PM Bob Hawke. She did not even tweet about meeting Mr Twitter – although Dorsey did.”

Finally, there will be no surprises about what politician is doing the best on Facebook this year, see Zane Small and Taylor Sincock’s report from April about New Zealand’s most Facebook-savvy MPs revealed.

It’s also an idea that’s been spoken about a lot in the last couple of weeks as debate heats up about the Government’s current, and potential, role in keeping the New Zealand media alive and kicking. Of course, there is hyperbole and self-interest in some of the pleas being made by journalists and company executives, but there is also no doubt the industry is in a major decline, which will have an impact on politics.

“Market failure” is another phrase increasingly being used to describe the decline of the “fourth estate” function of holding powers to account. The phrase comes with the consequent notion that this failure should be met with government intervention. The market failure is the notion that traditional media outlets are now unprofitable, which might lead to some – such as TV3 – collapsing, with negative consequences for democracy.

Therefore, there all sorts of hard decisions for the Government to make about the future of the media, about its ownership of public broadcasters, it’s role in funding private media and, generally, its regulation of a sector that is in crisis. Some of these issues were canvassed earlier in the year in my column, The State of the NZ media.

Today, the state-owned broadcaster TVNZ has released its annual report, announcing a 44 per cent decline in profits, down to $2.9 million – see Chris Keall’s TVNZ profit halves, cans dividend. According to this report, “CEO Kevin Kenrick says the company’s financial results are reflective of challenging market conditions.”

And it comes after recent news that TVNZ is also forecasting a $17m loss for the next financial year. Rival MediaWorks is already making large losses from its TV3 channel.

This week also saw the NZME (owner of the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB) announce its profits are down, though its new paywall service is surpassing targets – see: NZ Herald Premium subscriptions hit new milestone, NZME half-year operating Ebitda at $19.4 million.

The article also reports on its main competitor’s recent financial results: “Last week, Australian-owned publisher Stuff (formerly Fairfax NZ) reported a 24 per cent fall in full-year Ebitda to A$28m ($30m) on annual revenue that declined 10 per cent to A$243m ($246m).”

Campaign “for democracy” by TV3’s MediaWorks

The latest round of media industry soul searching has been pushed along with a lobbying campaign by MediaWorks (the owners of TV3, Magic Talk radio, etc), that called for the Government to take action in order to ensure their television channel was not forced to go off air, or collapse in some other way. A number of MediaWorks items were broadcast or published that were designed to pressure the Government to step in and help save the industry.

The most important was an opinion piece on MediaWorks’ Newshub website from its chief news officer, Hal Crawford, who argued that loss-making media outlets like his were in danger of going out of business, which would lead to problems for democracy: “this is a good old-fashioned market failure. The thing that we need, that society needs, is not only under threat, it’s not being provided right now. The small public broadcasting news operations and the commercial players can no longer provide enough news to keep our society healthy at a local and national level. Unfortunately, all the cliches about the free press and democracy are right: we need news to keep this lemon on the road. When markets fail, governments must step in” – see: The problem with news in New Zealand.

The news boss also argued that the many ways TVNZ is being protected by the Government is having ill-effects for competitors such as TV3: “Being one of their competitors, I’m angry about this. I’m angry that the market for television advertising in New Zealand is distorted by this bizarre, anti-competitive set up. I’m angry that my newsroom, Newshub, is part of a business struggling to keep its head above such polluted waters. I’ll be damned if I lay off one more person or say ‘no’ to one more important assignment without expressing it: TV in New Zealand is broken. And it could have a big impact on news in this country.”

For Crawford, the answer is for the state to start funding independent news media operations across the board, in the same way that it funds the judicial system. And elsewhere it has been reported that MediaWorks has been lobbying Government for them to directly fund their Newshub service.

In conjunction with Crawford’s plea for Government help, various other MediaWorks staff and journalists went public, in what has been described by one media-watcher as “an extraordinary” campaign. For instance, AM Show host Duncan Garner broadcast his plea for the Minister of Broadcasting, Kris Faafoi – an old friend of his – to intervene to essentially save their jobs and profession.

This is all covered very well by former news manager at MediaWorks, Mark Jennings, who is rather scathing – see: Garner’s strange outburst fitted PR strategy – and by RNZ’s Colin Peacock – see: A media cry for help.

According to Jennings, Garner’s broadcast was “cry baby stuff”, and he asked: “What prompted it? Is the axe hovering over his and other news shows at Three? Probably.” Jennings is unimpressed with what he sees as the unprofessional use of Garner and other MediaWorks staff (Crawford, Patrick Gower, Sean Plunket) in a PR campaign for the company: “using its own journalists, on its own platforms, to attack a competitor feels like a misstep. It’s the sort of thing the Rupert Murdoch-owned media does in Australia when it attacks the ABC, or others, to further its own commercial interests.”

RNZ’s Colin Peacock was also sceptical about the campaign, concluding: “It remains to be seen if the minister is persuaded by these very public and self-interested pleas for help – and the loftier claims that democracy could die in media darkness. After years of accusing the industry’s critics of talking too much about its problems, it’s extraordinary that a media company is now using its own outlets to do the same – and push them firmly into the face of the government at the same time.”

The owner of another media outlet, the Spinoff’s Duncan Greive, assisted the MediaWorks lobbying campaign, publishing an interview the same day as the Crawford piece with MediaWorks CEO Michael Anderson. In this, Greive reports the feeling in the TV company: “a rising sense that no matter what they do, no matter how hard they fight, how many titles they cut or people they make redundant – that absent some kind of radical intervention, their business is beyond saving” – see: Contemplating the end of Three.

In this interview, the MediaWorks CEO makes it clear that without government intervention TV3, as well as other outlets, might close, and this would impact on politics: “A democratic government has to protect democracy… I have to believe it’s true of any elected government. If that’s true, then a government would need to do what it needs to do to make sure that there’s news diversity. And certainly the government could never find itself in a situation where [there’s] a monopoly on broadcast news. Just for the perceived conflict, you know. It doesn’t work for democracy.”

Debate over the future of TVNZ

A big part of MediaWorks’ angst is the way the Government is treating its main broadcaster, TVNZ, which continues to exist in a state of neither being fully commercial nor a fully public service broadcaster. For although TVNZ’s channels are mainly commercial, the current Government has declared that it’s no longer expected to deliver a dividend to the taxpayer.

To MediaWorks this is a form of subsidy, which gives it an unfair advantage in competing with the private broadcaster. All the while, TVNZ continues to hoover up much of the broadcasting advertising market, leaving MediaWorks unprofitable.

However, even TVNZ is now deemed to be unprofitable, as covered in John Anthony’s Plot thickens for TVNZ as a $17.1 million loss looms. Apparently, TVNZ’s decline represents “its worst financial result in a decade… despite its advertising revenue holding up.”

Furthermore, the article comments that “The falling profit comes as debate around the broadcaster’s future intensifies and the Government comes under increased pressure to deliver on work it’s doing to strengthen public media. Possibilities for TVNZ’s future include the removal of ads for TV One, returning to a charter and merging with RNZ.”

These solutions are highly-favoured by MediaWorks, as well as a number of other commentators. The above article reports that one public media lobby group would like to see this: “Better Public Media Trust director Myles Thomas said he hoped TV One went non-commercial and believed it would happen.” Thomas is also quoted: “The minister has made some intonation that something big was coming.”

Making TVNZ an ad-free service would apparently cost about $150m a year, and would effectively turn TVNZ1, and maybe other channels, into a public service broadcaster.

But former TVNZ broadcaster Mike Hosking thinks that would be a mistake, saying that “If the Government are going down the upheaval track, there will be more tears and disappointment than there will be problems solved” – see: TVNZ’s in trouble and they should blame their own bad decisions, not Google.

Hosking argues that turning TVNZ into a proper public service broadcaster wouldn’t really fix anything but just become a subsidy for elites: “given few watch, would anyone really care if TVNZ 1 started showing a lot of Māori programmes, bird documentaries, foreign travel shows, and long-format interview specials? No. But having worked for TVNZ under the charter invented by the last Labour government I can tell you for nothing it is not a recipe for any sort of success. But if success is not your guiding principle to start with, then it becomes a sort of creative outlet for the worthies and the single agenda ‘artists’ who have previously plied their trade at the NZ On Air application box”.

Another former TVNZ broadcaster, Damian Christie, takes the opposite approach, suggesting that it’s the NZ On Air model that is broken, with an unhealthy focus on ratings which is preventing quality TV from being made – see: The truth about public service television in New Zealand.

For Christie, it would be a mistake to go back to the old days of TVNZ’s Charter, and concludes that “public service television and advertising don’t work well together.” His suggestion is this: “Why not make TVNZ 1 commercial free and have TVNZ 2 offset at least some of the costs?”

Others wonder if we have gone beyond these old possibilities, with Finlay Macdonald saying that nostalgia for public service broadcasting and other current proposals for change ignores the fact that “Some of the best current affairs ‘TV’ is now found online” – see: An ad-free TVNZ? Technology has moved on, why can’t we?.

Similarly, see Anna Rawhiti-Connell’s No way back from media’s forbidden fruit. She argues that although the news media is indeed in a precarious position, the answer has to be bigger than just trying to save TVNZ and MediaWorks. For example, the 6pm news model is not necessarily worth saving.

The problem is more “the whole internet and 20-something years of radically changing human behaviour.” The public is now consuming our media in very different ways, and this isn’t about to change: “our VPN using, ad-blocking, Netflix smorgasbord-loving selves indulge in behaviour every day that contributes to the strangulation of the model that sustains and supports the things we hold so dear.”

A mega-merger of broadcasters?

The current rumoured proposals for TVNZ also involve merging the broadcaster with RNZ, and possibly Māori TV. The existence of this proposal has been confirmed by Nanaia Mahuta, according to Maori TV’s Heta Gardiner: “The Minister of Māori Development has officially confirmed a merger involving TVNZ, RNZ and Māori Television is an option that’s been discussed at Government level. Nanaia Mahuta confirmed the option has in fact been placed on the table but it wasn’t her preference” – see: Māori Development Minister confirms consideration of MTS, TVNZ, RNZ merger.

For the best analysis and discussion of the proposal, see Duncan Greive’s Assessing the TVNZ, RNZ and Māori TV merger that everyone is talking about. He says, “the case for a megamerger is compelling” and this option “is likely the cleanest way of averting this growing media crisis.”

After describing the merits of the individual broadcasters, Greive says the merger would be good for democracy: “the problem-solving it does for commercial media is ultimately less important than the upside it contains for the country and its democracy. A combined government mega-media agency would help paper over one another’s cracks, and create a kind of rebooted NZBC, one which could safeguard New Zealand against some of the chill political winds blowing around the world.”

Of course, there continue to be noises about two of the biggest private media companies merging – see Tim Murphy’s StuffMe 2: the return of the beast. He discusses the fact that a merger of Stuff and NZME would require legislative change from the Government, “along the lines of the law which allowed Fonterra to be created”.

And in another recent column, Murphy forecasts some big cuts and possible closures coming in the Stuff empire – see: Stuff floating on cloud Nine.

Hard decisions for the Government

The Government has indicated that it will respond to debate about TVNZ later in the year, and it’s currently undertaking a larger review of media under the watch of broadcasting minister Kris Faafoi.

Thomas Coughlan says the Government has some hard choices to make, and “the problem is fairly simple: take TVNZ non-commercial, or prop-up MediaWorks with cheap Government loans and NZ On Air funding. Either way, a lot of money is on the table” – see: The Government won’t help MediaWorks – there’s no money.

The problem for Faafoi, Coughlan says, is that the necessary money is not available: “what work he manages to achieve will be heavily constrained by how much the Government and viewers, are willing to spend on broadcasting. Currently, the answer is ‘not a lot’.”

The answer, according to economist Shamubeel Eaqub is for the Government “to find a way to tax Facebook and other internet companies more before their dominance of the advertising market kills off local media companies” – see Dan Satherley’s Taxing internet giants key to saving media industry – economist.

Eaqub says: “Ultimately if we want to fix the media, we have to create long-term sustainable funding that is not up at the whims of politics.” But he doubts that the current Government is going to be bold enough.

The NBR’s Brent Edwards has recently interviewed Kris Faafoi about some of these issues, including whether the Government will front up with the necessary cash – see: No silver bullet for news media problems (paywalled).

Edwards reports: “Faafoi said it was really important that the country had a strong fourth estate and that was why the government was intent on ensuring the future of public broadcasting.” And as to the whether Faafoi thinks the public would care if TV3 goes under, he says: “I hope they would because, as a former journalist, I do think having a strong fourth estate is important.”

Edwards has also written about some of these difficult issues facing the Government, arguing that there’s a simple choice to be made about TVNZ: “to either throw it to the commercial wolves – let it sink or swim but, let’s be clear, it would sink – or turn it into a fully-fledged public broadcaster” – see: MediaWorks’ pleas raise new fears for journalism and democracy (paywalled).

But helping out TVNZ would not, Edwards says, resolve the situation and might lead to other difficulties: “if we accept a healthy news media is critical to a well-functioning democracy then taxpayers do have some interest in their survival. It would be a sham democracy if the public became reliant on a single public broadcasting behemoth to provide them with news, analysis and commentary. But if taxpayers’ money is going to be used to sustain journalism, how would the government ensure an equal playing field? All media organisations would surely deserve some support, not just those television channels that cried loudest.”

And if it all goes badly, then Edwards foresees a degraded democracy without a proper media helping inform the public: “Perhaps democracy will be played out solely on social media as individual parties and candidates spin their messages directly to voters. But the day politicians do not have to worry about critical journalism, or even about someone pleading on the telly, then that’s the time to worry.”

Finally, it seems that ultimately Labour and National don’t much like public broadcasting, and this can be seen in their reluctance, so far, to properly fund it – see Duncan Greive’s article, One chart which reveals NZ’s incredible 30 year decline in public media funding.

By Gorethy Kenneth in Port Moresby

Cabinet will review social media platforms in Papua New Guinea when it convenes on Thursday, says Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

Speaking at Government House yesterday after announcing four new ministers and a mini reshuffle, O’Neill said the government would crack down on fake news that was being spread on social media.

He was adamant that the government would review social media platforms and this would be the first task of the new Communications and Information Technology Minister Koni Iguan.

READ MORE: PNG plans to shut down Facebook for a month

He said there was too much fake news that was sending bad signals and destroying the nation and its people and this must stop.

“Cabinet will have a complete review of social media in the country, led by Minister for Communications,” O’Neill said.

“There is a lot of fake news destroying our people, destroying our society. We have lived without social media for thousands of years before.”

O’Neill said too much fake news and false information was being circulated which was destroying the government, the nation and its people.

Minister’s first task
“Government will review the social media platform and that will be the first task of the newly appointed Communication Minister,” O’Neill said.

“I want to assure you that the Communications Minister’s first responsibility will be to review that so we can make sure that the correct information and the truth are put forward to the nation so that they can be well informed on what is happening in the country.

“Fake news is destroying our country and recently one of our young people got murdered in Boroko because of fake news. This cannot continue, we must put an end to it so I want to assure you that cabinet at its first NEC (National Executive Council) meeting which will be held on Thursday we will look at how we can manage this going forward.”

O’Neill said that the Attorney-General had now been directed to make sure he brought the ICAC Bill to Parliament in the next session so that people are comforted on the fact that our government is working in making sure that this bill saw the light of the day.

“Our officials have been very slow, we are frustrated by that but I can assure you that we are trying to get it through on the floor of Parliament as quickly as possible so we can address some of the fake news and fake allegations that are going around in the country,” O’Neill said.

“It is our responsibility, the government’s responsibility, so we will review that so we can make sure that the correct information and the truth and facts put forward so everyone will be well informed of what is happening in the country.”

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior Post-Courier journalist.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is winning praise for her campaign to clean up the internet, and in particular for her announcement of the “Christchurch Call” Summit to be held with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris next month. And if they can come up with some meaningful and effective ways to make the internet less available to terrorists and violent extremists then this will be a major accomplishment.

Regulating the internet is notoriously difficult, however. It might be one of the big issues of our time, but no one seems to have the answers for how to do it in a way that will be both effective and satisfactory. There’s a good chance the whole episode will amount to yet another talkfest of platitudes and politicking. This is certainly the view of Newstalk ZB’s Barry Soper, who forecasts an outcome of “full, frank and meaningless words” – see: Irony to New Zealand and France’s terrorism summit next month.

Not only this, Soper suggests that the motivations for the summit are opportunistic: “The idea no doubt came from the French President Emmanuel Macron who’s been haemorrhaging in the opinion polls at home… The international voice of reason and compassion Jacinda Ardern would have immediately come to mind and the pledge she’s now calling the Christchurch Call was born.”

The Herald’s political editor takes umbrage at such scepticism, declaring this type of view out of place: “They are the sort of critic who would never start anything unless success were guaranteed. The suggestion that Ardern do nothing after the murders of 50 people in New Zealand were live-streamed and shared on social media is to deny human nature and New Zealand’s own instincts” – see: Jacinda Ardern is knee-deep in planning joint initiative with France.

Audrey Young predicts real change will emerge from a difficult area of reform: “It won’t eliminate the evils that lurk within social media. But it won’t be nothing either.” She sees it as a positive sign that Ardern and Macron are being so inclusive in their approach: “Ardern’s natural instincts are to collaborate as broadly as possible… That factor alone makes it important to get co-operation from social media themselves, rather than using heavy-handed regulation or attempting to bully the corporates into participation.”

However, as with other international agreements, the more people you bring to the table, the greater the likelihood of a watered-down outcome. And this is the point made in Tom Pullar-Strecker’s article, The devil will be in the detail of the ‘Christchurch Call’. This reports Colin Gavaghan, director of the Centre for Law and Policy in Emerging Technologies at Otago University, as cautioning against going too broadly: “The risk, he argues, is you can end up with texts that are pitched at such a level that ‘no-one could disagree with them’ but which don’t tend to mean anything in practice.”

Pullar-Strecker’s article emphasises the uniqueness of this summit, as normally the outcomes are relatively pre-determined, with a text negotiated in advance for participants to sign up to. This won’t necessarily happen in this instance.

The success or otherwise of the initiative will be determined, it seems, by how ambitious the internet regulation campaign ends up being. Ardern, herself, is very keen to see a narrow focus for the regulations, which deal specifically with the online sharing of terrorist acts. Ardern says: “This is not about freedom of expression. This is about preventing violence and extremism and terrorism online”.

This approach is easier than going down the route of attempting to take on “hate speech” and extremist politics in general. And that is also the advice of Paul Brislen: “There are a number of things they should be looking at. The trick will be narrowing it down to something that is achievable because there are so many things that are getting out of control with the world of social media that need a regulator to step in… Trying to stay focused is going to be critical” – see Thomas Coughlan’s Speculation rife on value of ‘Christchurch Call’.

But even a focus just on violence and terrorism could be incredibly difficult. The same article makes this point: “Victoria University of Wellington media studies lecturer Peter Thompson said just defining what terrorism was presented difficulties. ‘It’s not a straightforward thing to decide what is and isn’t terrorism: live-streaming mass murder, well yes, but how do you decide which groups are considered terrorists or not?’ he said.”

Rick Shera from Netsafe and Internet NZ is also pleased that the Government is focused on dealing to the narrower and less contentious issue of terrorism: “I’m glad we are sticking to violent extremism and terrorism. Once you go into fake news, damage to democracy and other forms of online harm it becomes very difficult. Freedom of speech and the US position on that make it hard to make gains, so if the target is narrow it may be easier” – see Colin Peacock’s Does social media reform have the law on its side?

In this article by Peacock, the major issue of the United States is brought into the debate. After all, the US tech companies are based there, and benefit from that country’s very strong ethos and constitutional protections of political freedoms. This is lamented by some participants in the debate. For example, Internet NZ’s chief executive Jordan Carter is quoted, saying “The nature of their black and white constitutional protections on free speech in the US – and the current state of their politics – don’t leave me with any confidence that they will be able to drive change in this area”.

Clearly, the strong US resistance to censorship and over-regulation of speech means that Ardern’s “Christchurch Call” could run into problems. And it’s not just the US Constitution that might stymie reform, as explained by tech expert and journalist Bill Bennett, in Peacock’s article: “The problem with the US is they have two things that stop them from acting. One is the First Amendment which is all about free speech and not censoring people. The second thing is something called Section 230 that gives social media companies an out. They are not responsible for things posted on their site”.

There are, however, some major debates going on in the US about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. And the above article reports internet law academic Eric Goldman suggesting that any subsequent changes from that debate might be crucial: “He thinks cutbacks of Section 230’s scope do pose serious risks to free speech online. So is it the outcome of this behind-the-scenes legal argument playing out in the US right now – and not a headline-making political summit in France – which will really determine whether internet giants take responsibility for extreme content on their platforms?”

For the best discussion of these political freedom issues, see Gordon Campbell’s column, On Ardern and Macron’s campaign against violent social media content. In this, Campbell explains what might be coming after two decades of self-regulation of the internet, given the strong political appetite for serious regulation.

He worries that Ardern and co will end up going beyond just the clampdown on terrorist and extremist violence, and might produce something that impacts on general political activity: “Once you get beyond those low hanging fruit….it becomes difficult to censor online content without doing real damage to freedom of expression, and to genuine political dissent. It would be unfortunate if the best friends of the Ardern/Macron initiatives turn out to be the tyrants in countries that would (a) dearly love to see tech companies forced to hand over the keys to encryption, and (b) would readily embrace further restrictions being put on the online content their dissidents are allowed to post.”

He also believes regulation could ultimately prove unpopular, which is why Facebook and the like want it to be carried out by governments, “presumably, so that the politicians then get to wear the backlash once people realise the full implications of allowing the state to define and police the content deemed acceptable on the Net.”

Mostly likely, there will be simple progress made in Paris, such as tightening up of Facebook Live. The big question will be whether online providers end up having to do more vetting of content before it’s published, which would be of huge consequence, and what Campbell calls a “disastrous outcome”.

And he gives the example of his own media platform, Scoop: “Every year, Scoop also publishes close on a million New Zealand press releases issued by all and sundry. In that respect, Scoop functions as a national community noticeboard. It rejects press releases that contain libels and/or socially inflammatory hate speech. Imagine though, if Scoop was required to pre-check every one of those press releases for accuracy, balance and for whether or not they might hurt the feelings of people in public office. It would not be remotely practical or affordable for Scoop to do so – and its efforts would be gamed by those with malice in mind against the organisations issuing the press releases in question.”

Similarly, Internet NZ’s Jordan Carter suggests that relying on artificial intelligence to vet and remove content could be a problem: “Applying overly tight automated filtering would lead to very widespread overblocking. What if posting a Radio New Zealand story about the Sri Lanka attacks over the weekend on Facebook was automatically blocked? Imagine if a link to a donations site for the victims of the Christchurch attacks led to the same outcome? How about sharing a video of TV news reports on either story?”.

Carter has his own list of “six thoughts” about how to make the regulation of the internet work, including keeping the scope of the exercise narrow, and striking the right balance between “preventing the spread of such abhorrent material on the one hand, and maintaining free expression on the other” – see: How to stop the ‘Christchurch Call’ on social media and terrorism falling flat.

There really will be difficulties, no matter what approach is chosen. Claire Trevett points out: “As with climate change, making the right noises and getting the desired results are two very different things. It will be something akin to Hercules wrestling the Hydra. As soon as one head is chopped off, another two will appear” – see: PM Jacinda Ardern gathers allies to wrestle the social-media Hydra.

And it’s the politicians themselves who might have the most to lose, given their increasing preference to use Facebook and the like “to bypass the filter of the traditional media and speak directly to supporters and voters. This has some pluses for those politicians – but not necessarily for democracy. Over-reliance on social media over journalistic media allows them to escape questioning on issues they may not want to face. Macron has also come in for criticism for trying to stifle the ‘Yellow Vest’ protest use of social media. Ardern herself has been known to vote with her fingers when it comes to expressing her disapproval with certain social media platforms.”

Facebook and Instagram have been key parts of Ardern’s campaigning, and Trevett points out that “in the last election, Labour spent $475,000 on advertising on Facebook – four times as much as National – as it tried to appeal to younger voters.”

Finally, for the lighter side of the debate and some apparent irregularities in social media regulation, see Hamish McNeilly’s Gone in 20 minutes: Facebook strips student nude mag cover and Andrew Gunn’s We’re taking urgent steps to address this.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

Is the National Party’s latest online advert deliberately designed to provoke a backlash from liberal opponents? And is National trying to feed the fire of a growing culture war in New Zealand? It’s seems so, and the party’s desired result is being achieved.

The taxpayer-funded 30-second video was launched on social media on Wednesday. You can see the ad about KiwiBuild here on Twitter: They’re all sizzle, no sausage. So far, it’s had 48,800 views on this single tweet.

The piece of advertising propaganda was immediately attacked by opponents as being sexist, particularly because it incorporated some backward gender stereotypes, with a young woman being lectured to about the failures of KiwiBuild by a young man being condescending. Some labelled it “man-splaining”.

Most prominently, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern correctly pointed out that the ads looked like they came from the 1970s, referring to their backward nature. But she was careful not to take too much of the bait, saying “I think if people see the ad they can make their own judgement on it”.

Others have been readier to express condemnation and even outrage. For example, the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Julie-Anne Genter attacked it as a portrayal of a gullible woman being mansplained to by two patronising males.

Plenty of other commentators have condemned the ad – today the Herald’s Damien Venuto wrote about how the woman in the ad was “the literal embodiment of every dated blonde joke ever told” – see: The mistake National keeps making in its terrible ads. He warns the party that they are stepping “into a giant advertising turd by belittling a large portion of the voting public: namely women.”

Venuto predicts that the ads will backfire, giving Labour an electoral advantage: “These ads reinforce the notion that National is the old, rich party, looking to maintain the power dynamics that have long existed in New Zealand society. If anything, it gives Labour further impetus to reinvigorate the smart unifying message delivered in its previous election campaign.”

There has been widespread criticism. Linda Clark tweeted sarcastically, “Policy is complicated. I needed a man to help me understand it”. Another posted: “I am actually in furious tears over how sexist that National ad is. Blatantly, explicitly, intentionally sexist. How are we meant to move away from a culture of violence towards women when our political rhetoric expressly permits this?” – see: National Party’s KiwiBuild attack ad comes under fire as sexist and incorrect.

But was all this negative reaction actually exactly what the National Party was seeking? Commentator Danyl Mclauchlan admits that it might be a “grand conspiracy theory”, but that this is “exactly what they wanted to happen”. He wrote an article yesterday arguing “Progressives are actually the primary target for this ad and it is designed to offend them. Offense and controversy makes things newsworthy and earns you coverage in the mainstream media, thus potentially reaching a far greater number of viewers” – see: Notes towards a grand unified theory of the terrible National Party sausage ad.

Quite clearly the strategy has worked, with National’s ad gaining huge amounts of media coverage. In this regard, Mclauchlan argues that it’s a clever attack advertising strategy, which has some parallels with the operating style of the US President: “This is Trump’s great innovation in political marketing: you don’t need to pay for advertising you just repeatedly outrage progressives, especially those who work in the media, and they’ll give you all the free coverage you could hope for.”

Mclauchlan concludes: “Presumably there will be more: maybe the next shocking thing will be the next National Party ad, giving online progressives the chance to spend the whole year furiously amplifying National’s talking points.”

Could National’s strategy actually therefore be primarily designed – not just to get more attention, as Mclaughlan argues – but also to push the party’s liberal opponents into furthering their reputation as being obsessed by being “politically correct” or “woke”?

This is what I argued this morning on Newstalk ZB, saying “Most supporters of National will just see this ad and think ‘oh National is criticising KiwiBuild’, whereas National’s opponents read much more into it, they’ve seen it and been provoked by it and fallen into the trap” – see: People outraged over ‘sexist’ National attack ad have ‘fallen into trap’.

Essentially National’s strategy is a highly cynical attempt at a type of “reverse dog whistle politics” – because their own base and the voters they are trying to win over don’t pick up on any underlying offensiveness of the advertisement, but opponents do and they react accordingly. As I explain on Newstalk ZB, “Many others fell into the trap, gave it publicity and called it out and for a lot of New Zealanders they would have seen the ad and thought it just seems like a silly ad and thought the complaints about it… were a bit over the top.”

Therefore, a “cringe-worthy and clumsy” ad manages to feed into, and thrive off, the growing culture wars in New Zealand. Because the context in which National has launched this ad is one of 1) heightened sensitivity towards social justice, sexism, and gender politics, and 2) a reaction against such “woke” politics, with a lot of frustration and abhorrence at social justice progressives and their outrage.

Hence, National Party deputy leader, Paula Bennett has been able to come out and defend the ads, strongly positioning her party as in opposition to “outrage culture”. She has been reported as saying that “it’s easy to find offence if you’re looking for it”, and people need to “lighten up”.

On RNZ, Bennett “was asked if she thought young, blonde women need government policy explained to them by men” and she responded: “Oh, no more than fat brown ones or any other male that I might know or anyone else. It’s got nothing to do with gender it’s got nothing to do with hair colour it’s got nothing to do with any of that sort of thing” – see: Paula Bennett defends ‘no sausage’ mansplaining ad on KiwiBuild.

This article also points out that National’s male MPs were being put under pressure in Parliament and by the media, essentially being quizzed as to whether they are sexist and whether they “mansplained”. National was probably quite happy about this narrative of their MPs being under attack.

And if they were any doubt that this “woke-provoking” strategy was being used, then it’s worth noting that National’s pollster David Farrar blogged to say: “National will be delighted that woke activists on Twitter are so stupid they managed to get all this free publicity for the advertisement” – see: Woke activists fall into trap.

Newstalk ZB’s political editor Barry Soper has also viewed National’s ad as being designed to provoke a strong reaction from opponents: “Today it’s the talk of the town, mainly because these days everyone’s so politically sensitive, careful about what they say for fear of causing offence and National knows it. Which is why the ad’s had the impact it has” – see: National’s Kiwibuild ad the talk of the town. On National’s strategy, Soper says “It’s brilliant and it’s had the desired effect: getting everyone fired up and the public talking.”

Also at Newstalk ZB, Heather du Plessis-Allan has come out strongly against the ad, saying “it’s a clever ad. But it’s disappointing” – see: Make no mistake, National’s BBQ attack ad is sexist.

Not only does du Plessis-Allan draw attention to the backward gender stereotypes in the ad and the “mansplaining”, but also to the apparent use of sausages in the ad as a putdown of the Labour Party and Jacinda Ardern: “The sausage is a phallic symbol FYI. If that sounds too conspiratorial to you, you’re being naive. This is an effective political ad and effective political ads almost always contain some sort of subtle dog-whistle. And very little in such an ad is an accident. The sausage is deliberate.”

Nonetheless, the impact seems to be working – with a backlash building against the advert complainants. The Herald reports the following readers’ comments with examples of people cheering on the ads: “PC gone mad”, “Bloody brilliant” and “People need to get over themselves” – see: ‘People need to get over themselves’: Swell of support for National’s ‘sexist’ BBQ ad.

Finally, National’s attack conjures up memories of other attack ads run by the party in the past, and the classic to watch is their 1975 Dancing Cossacks video.

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

A public broadcasting advocacy group has condemned Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s plan to commercialise Pacific broadcasting as not being able to provide quality public interest journalism to the country’s neighbours.

Supporters of Australian Broadcasting in Asia and the Pacific, a group linked to ABC Friends, has asked Morrison to rethink his plans.

“If Mr Morrison wants to restore a fresh initiative like the Australia Network he is dependent on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation which has the experience and professionalism to create strong partnerships with Pacific nations,” the supporters statement said.

READ MORE: Morrison to unveil broad suite of measures to boost Australia’s influence in the Pacific

“The voice of Australia through Radio Australia, and more recently via a wider range of ABC media platforms, has long been valued by people in the Pacific and many ABC broadcasters have become popular in the region.”

Australian foreign policy would not be enhanced by the “commercial news judgements of Fox or Sky News”, which did not provide independent analysis of complex issues.

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Professional broadcasting in the Pacific depended on “two-way respectful communication” that enhanced understanding of diverse perspectives in the region, the advocacy group said.

Clear expectations
In recent months Pacific leaders had made clear their expectations of Australian/Pacific public broadcasting:

• Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwal has called for rebuilding public interest broadcasting;
• In a speech to the Lowy Institute, Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi had called for the Pacific voice to be heard in Australia; and
• Other Pacific leaders had echoed this call, as well as Secretary-General of the South Pacific Forum.

“Significantly, if Australia were to accept this approach to Pacific broadcasting it would become the only nation to rely on the commercial sector to deliver its ‘soft power’ diplomacy.

“Just imagine Canada or Britain giving such a significant national task to commercial interests!” said the statement.

ABC Friends national president Margaret Reynolds urged Prime Minister Morrison to reconsider this public policy shift and take advice from the Department of Foreign Affairs which was more familiar with the needs of Pacific nations and managing diplomatic relations.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz