New Zealand-based Canadian billionaire James Grenon owes the people of this country an immediate explanation of his intentions regarding media conglomerate NZME. This cannot wait until a shareholders’ meeting at the end of April.

Is his investment in the owner of The New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB nothing more than a money-making venture to realise the value of its real estate marketing subsidiary? Has he no more interest than putting his share of the proceeds from spinning off OneRoof into a concealed safe in his $15 million Takapuna mansion?

Or does he intent to leverage his 9.6 percent holding and the support of other investors to take over the board (if not the company) in order to dictate the editorial direction of the country’s largest newspaper and its number one commercial radio station?

Grenon has said little beyond the barest of announcements that have been released by the New Zealand Stock Exchange. While he must exercise care to avoid triggering statutory takeover obligations, he cannot simply treat NZME as another of the private equity projects that have made him very wealthy. He is dealing with an entity whose influence and obligations extend far beyond the crude world of finance.

While I do not presume for one moment that he reads this column each week, let me suspend disbelief for a moment and speak directly to him.

Come clean and tell the people of New Zealand what you are doing and, more importantly, why.

Over the past week there has been considerable speculation over the answers to those questions. Much of it has drawn on what little we know of James Grenon. And it is precious little beyond two facts.

Backed right-wing Centrist
The first is that he put money behind the launch of a right-wing New Zealand news aggregation website, The Centrist, although he apparently no longer has a financial interest in it.

The second fact is that he provided financial support for conservative activists taking legal action against New Zealand media.

When I contacted a well-connected friend in Canada to ask about Grenon the response was short: “Never heard of him . . . and there aren’t that many Canadian billionaires.”

In short, the man who potentially may hold sway over the board of one of our biggest media companies has a very low profile indeed. That is a luxury to which he can no longer lay claim.

It may be that his interest is, after all, a financial one based on his undoubted investment skills. He may see a lucrative opportunity in OneRoof. After all, Fairfax’s public listing and subsequent sale of its Australian equivalent, Domain, provided not only a useful cash boost for shareholders but the creation of a stand-alone entity that now has a market cap of about $A2.8 billion.

Perhaps he wants a board cleanout to guarantee a OneRoof float.

If so, say so.

Similar transactions
Although spinning off OneRoof could have dire consequences for the viability of what would be left of NZME, that is a decision no different to similar transactions made by many companies in the financial interests of shareholders.

There is a world of difference, however, between seizing an investment opportunity and seeking to secure influence by dictating the editorial direction of a significant portion of our news media.

If the speculation is correct — and the billionaire is seeking to steer NZME on an editorial course to the right — New Zealand has a problem.

Communications minister Paul Goldsmith gave a lamely neoliberal response reported by Stuff last week: He was “happy to take some advice” on the development, but NZME was a “private company” and ultimately it was up to its shareholders to determine how it operated.

Let me repeat my earlier point: NZME is an entity whose influence and obligations extend far beyond the crude world of finance (and the outworn concept that the market can rule). Its stewardship of the vehicles at the forefront of news dissemination and opinion formation means it must meet higher obligation than what we expect of an ordinary “private company”.

The most fundamental of those obligations is the independence of editorial decision-making and direction.

I became editor of The New Zealand Herald shortly after Wilson & Horton was sold to Irish businessman Tony O’Reilly. On my appointment the then chief executive of O’Reilly’s Independent News & Media, Liam Healy, said the board had only one editorial requirement of me: That I would not advocate the use of violence as a legitimate means to a political end.

Only direction echoed Mandela
Coming from a man who had witnessed the effects of such violence in Northern Ireland, I had no difficulty in acceding to his request. And throughout my entire editorship, the only “request” made of me by O’Reilly himself was that I would support the distribution of generic Aids drugs in Africa. It followed a meeting he had had with Nelson Mandela. I had no other direction from the board.

Yes, I had to bat away requests by management personnel (who should have known better) to “do this” or “not do that” but, without exception, the attempts were commercially driven — they did not want to upset advertisers. There was never a political or ideological motive behind them. Nor were such requests limited to me.

I doubt there is an editor in the country who has not had a manager asking for something to please an advertiser. Disappointment hasn’t deterred their trying.

In this column last week, I wrote of the dangers of a rich owner (in that case Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos) dictating editorial policy. The dangers if James Grenon has similar intentions would be even greater, given NZME’s share of the news market.

The journalists’ union, E tu, has already concluded that the Canadian’s intention is to gain right-wing influence. Its director, Michael Wood, issued a statement in which he said: “The idea that a shadowy cabal, backed by extreme wealth, is planning to take over such an important institution in our democratic fabric should be of concern to all New Zealanders.”

He called on the current NZME board to re-affirm a commitment to editorial independence.

Michael Wood reflects the fears that are rightly held by NZME’s journalists. They, too, will doubtless be looking for assurances of editorial independence.

‘Cast-iron’ guarantees?
Such assurances are vital, but those journalists should look back to some “cast-iron” guarantees given by other rich new owners if they are to avoid history repeating itself.

I investigated such guarantees in a book I wrote titled Trust Ownership and the Future of News: Media Moguls and White Knights. In it I noted that 20 years before Rupert Murdoch purchased The Times of London, there was a warning that the newspaper’s editor “far from having his independence guaranteed, is on paper entirely in the hands of the Chief Proprietors who are specifically empowered by the Articles of Association to control editorial policy”, although there was provision for a “committee of notables” to veto the transfer of shares into undesirable hands.

To satisfy the British government, Murdoch gave guarantees of editorial independence and a “court of appeal” role for independent directors. Neither proved worth the paper they were written on.

In contrast, the constitution of the company that owns The Economist does not permit any individual or organisation to gain a majority shareholding. The editor exercises independent editorial control and is appointed by trustees, who are independent of commercial, political and proprietorial influences.

There are no such protections in the constitution, board charter, or code of conduct and ethics governing NZME. And it is doubtful that any cast-iron guarantees could be inserted in advance of the company’s annual general meeting.

If James Grenon does, in fact, have designs on the editorial direction of NZME, it is difficult to see how he might be prevented from achieving his aim.

Statutory guarantees would be unprecedented and, in any case, sit well outside the mindset of a coalition government that has shown no inclination to intervene in a deteriorating media market. Nonetheless, Minister Goldsmith would be well advised to address the issue with a good deal more urgency.

He might, at the very least, press the Canadian billionaire on his intentions.

And if the coalition thinks a swing to the right in our news media would be no bad thing, it should be very careful what it wishes for.

If the Canadian’s intentions are as Michael Wood suspects, perhaps the only hope will lie with those shareholders who see that it will be in their own financial interests to ensure that, in aggregate, NZME’s news assets continue to steer a (relatively) middle course. For proof, they need look only at the declining subscriber base of The Washington Post.

Postscipt
On Wednesday, The New Zealand Herald stated James Grenon had provided further detail, of his intentions. It is clear that he does, in fact, intend to play a role in the editorial side of NZME.

Just how hands-on he would be remains to be seen. However, he told the Herald that, if successful in making it on to the NZME board, he expected an editorial board would be established “with representation from both sides of the spectrum”.

On the surface that looks reassuring but editorial boards elsewhere have also been used to serve the ends of a proprietor while giving the appearance of independence.

And just what role would an editorial board play? Would it determine the editorial direction that an editor would have to slavishly follow? Or would it be a shield protecting the editor’s independence?

Only time will tell.

Devil in the detail
Media Insider columnist Shayne Currie, writing in the Weekend Herald, stated that “the Herald’s dominance has come through once again in quarterly Nielsen readership results . . . ” That is perfectly true: The newspaper’s average issue readership is more than four times that of its closest competitor.

What the Insider did not say was that the Herald’s readership had declined by 32,000 over the past year — from 531,000 to 499,000 — and by 14,000 since the last quarterly survey.

The Waikato Times, The Post and the Otago Daily Times were relatively stable while The Press was down 11,000 year-on-year but only 1000 since the last survey.

In the weekend market, the Sunday Star Times was down 1000 readers year-on-year to stand at 180,000 and up slightly on the last survey. The Herald on Sunday was down 6000 year-on-year to sit at 302,000.

There was a little good news in the weekly magazine market. The New Zealand Listener has gained 5000 readers year-on-year and now has a readership of 207,000. In the monthly market, Mindfood increased its readership by 15,000 over the same period and now sits at 222,000.

The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly continues to dominate the women’s magazine market. It was slightly up on the last survey but well down year-on-year, dropping from 458,000 to 408,000. Woman’s Day had an even greater annual decline, falling from 380,000 to 317,000.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Aotearoa New Zealand union representing many of NZME’s journalists says it is “deeply worried” by a billionaire’s plans to take over its board.

Auckland-based Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon is leading a move to dump the board of media company NZME, owners of The New Zealand Herald and NewsTalk ZB.

He has told the company’s board he wants to remove most of the current directors, replace them with himself and three others, and choose one existing director to stay on.

He took a nearly 10 percent stake in the business earlier in the week.

Michael Wood, negotiation specialist at E tū, the union that represents NZME’s journalists, said he had grave concerns.

“We see a pattern that has been incredibly unhealthy in other countries, of billionaire oligarchs moving into media ownership roles to be able to promote their own particular view of the word,” he said.

“Secondly, we have a situation here where when Mr Grenon purchased holdings in NZME he was at pains to make it sound like an innocent manoeuvre with no broader agenda . . .  within a few days he is aggressively pursuing board positions.”

What unsaid agendas?
Wood said Grenon had a track record of trying to influence media discourse in New Zealand.

“We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”

“We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”

He said it would be important for New Zealand not to follow the example of the US, where media outlets had become “the mouthpiece for the rich and powerful”.

E tū would consult its national delegate committee of journalists, he said.

Grenon has been linked with alternative news sites, including The Centrist, serving as the company’s director up to August 2023.

The Centrist claims to present under-served perspectives and reason-based analysis, “even if it might be too hot for the mainstream media to handle”.

Grenon has been approached for comment by RNZ.

Preoccupations with trans rights, treaty issues
Duncan Greive, founder of The Spinoff and media commentator, said he was a reader of Grenon’s site The Centrist.

“The main thing we know about him is that publication,” Greive said.

“It’s largely news aggregation but it has very specific preoccupations around trans rights, treaty issues and particularly vaccine injury and efficacy.

“A lot of the time it’s aggregating from mainstream news sites but there’s a definite feel that things are under-covered or under-emphasised at mainstream news organisations.

“If he is looking to gain greater control and exert influence on the publishing and editorial aspects of the business, you’ve got to think there is a belief that those things are under-covered and the editorial direction of The Herald isn’t what he would like it to be.”

Greive said the move could be connected to the NZME announcement in its annual results that it was exploring options for the sale of its real estate platform OneRoof.

“There are a lot of investors who believe OneRoof is being held back by proximity to the ‘legacy media’ assets of NZME and if it could be pulled out of there the two businesses would be more valuable separate than together.

“If you look at the shareholder book of NZME, you don’t image a lot of these institutional investors who hold the bulk of the shares are going to be as excited about editorial direction and issues as Grenon would be . . .  but they would be excited about the sale of OneRoof.”

Wanting the publishing side
Greive said he could imagine a scenario where Grenon told shareholders he wanted the publishing side, at a reduced value, and the OneRoof business could be separated off.

“From a pure value realisation, maximisation of shareholder value point of view, that makes sense to me.”

Greive said attention would now go on the 37 percent of shareholders whom Grenon said had been consulted in confidence about his plans.

“It will become clear pretty quickly and they will be under pressure to say why they are involved in this and it will become clear pretty quickly whether my theory is correct.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The New Zealand Herald copped criticism for publishing a front-page attack ad targeting the National Party leader this week — but it was far from the first time ads like it have appeared in print.

Meanwhile, questions were asked about other coverage that looked like it might be taking sides as the official Aotearoa New Zealand election campaign period begins.

“You’ve got to survive in the media. You got to take the ads,” Newstalk ZB morning host Kerre Woodham told listeners last Monday, explaining the the controversial Council of Trade Union ad labelling the National Party leader Christopher Luxon “out of touch and too risky”.

“You’ve got to survive in the media. You got to take the ads,” Newstalk ZB morning host Kerre Woodham told listeners last Monday, explaining the the controversial Council of Trade Union ad labelling the National Party leader “out of touch and too risky”.

It was clearly an election advocacy ad — and it was identified as such in the Herald. But as soon as the ad came through the NZME ad department, the senior editors there must have known devoting the front page to it would become a news story.

The afternoon host at the Herald’s NZME stablemate NewstalkZB, Andrew Dickens, certainly thought so.

“I think this is news. This is why I’m talking about it on the radio. I’m not involved with this decision.  . . but I think they need to write about it and say how they actually determine who gets the ‘wraparound’,” he told his listeners.

Blue sticker ads
The Herald top brass wasn’t keen on that, but election ads on the front page aren’t entirely unprecedented.

A former Herald editor, Tim Murphy, pointed out the Weekend Herald has allowed the National Party to add detachable blue stickers late in previous campaigns.

And once papers opened the door to wraparound front-and-back page ads for retailers (who paid a pretty penny for them during the covid-19 crisis), it was only a matter of time before someone selling political messages rather than fridges took up the space as well.

The CTU ad was within the rules for political promotion by third parties. As long as they registered, they can spend the thick end of $400,000 on ads doing down political opponents if they want to.

Gordon Campbell on scoop.co.nz said that apart from the front-page spot, there was nothing really novel about an ad criticising a party leader who was actively campaigning as the embodiment of his party’s policies.

And while the CTU’s campaign also appeared on billboards and social media platforms the same day, it was its appearance on the front page of a paper obliged to cover the campaign fairly which raised eyebrows.

“This will probably backfire on the Herald,” Andrew Dicken told his listeners, at the same moment one texted in to say he had cancelled his subscription to the Herald because of it.

‘False’ ads not acceptable
Andrew Dickens told his listeners NZME radio stations had rules too — and could not accept ads that are “false, wrong, or lies or defamatory.”

Newstalk ZB found that out back in 2019, when it ran a political ad in which Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere said no suburb would escape Auckland Transport’s “crazy plan” to cut the speed limits on Auckland roads.

The Advertising Standards Authority said that claim was false and the campaign ad, which had run for two weeks, should be dropped.

NZME told the Authority it had presumed the client’s script and figures provided were correct.

“Our team has been reminded to be vigilant when accepting advocacy advertisements to avoid this from reoccurring,” NZME said.

In other words, they promised to do fact checks before cashing cheques from people peddling political propaganda at election time.

But at that time, the Weekend Herald had just published another controversial political ad all about Christopher Luxon.

The half page ad showed former Prime Minister John Key morphing into Christopher Luxon in the style of Dick Frizzell’s famous “From Mickey to tiki” illustration.

Luxon was not even a member of the National Party at that point, let alone a candidate, but the client for that ad turned out to be property tycoon Steven Brooks, who really wanted Luxon to be the next party leader.

His involvement should have been declared on the ad, which had the appearance of unauthorised party political advertising.

Ads they didn’t want

While that’s all history now, Newstalk ZB listeners on Monday were also phoning concerns about ads that the Herald wouldn’t print in the recent past.

They were part of a campaign from the lobby group Family First, which our three biggest newspaper publishers all declined to run.

Family First leader Bob McCoskrie has accused them of colluding to cancel the ad, which had the slogan: “What is a woman?” and the website address for a campaign declaring it was “time to push back” against gender self-identification.

MoCoskrie said the ad departments of each publisher initially accepted the ad but editors subsequently decided they weren’t fit to print.

But while the paper publishers exercised their right not to print the ads, they did go up on billboards in public.

Last month the Advertising Standards Authority complaints board upheld a complaint about them, ruling the ad was “misleading and not socially responsible,” but only because the identity of the advertiser — Family First — wasn’t sufficiently clear for an advocacy ad.

From today, September 10, until the day before the election we are in the official election period overseen by the Electoral Commission.

During this time special rules and a separate dedicated code of broadcasting practice apply to what are known as “election programmes”, defined as radio or TV advertisements by or for a party or candidate which encouraged voters to vote in particular ways or for particular parties or people.

Broadcasters and publishers will be paying extra attention to balance and fairness now, with the watchdogs running a fast-track process for complaints about seriously misleading claims and serious allegations.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Why did criticism of a modest sum spent on a single mini-documentary made two years ago suddenly spring up in the news in two national networks this week — and then disappear?

“I’m just so sick of everything getting taxpayer money for these projects. Why can’t people just pay out of their own pocket?” Newstalk ZB deputy political editor Jason Walls asked on air last Tuesday.

“I just keep seeing these things crop up time and time again, when we have hospitals overwhelmed. Twenty thousand dollars is not tons of money in the grand scheme of things, [but] that sort of stuff keeps adding up,” he added, noting Three’s latest Masterchef series aired and screened without draining the public purse.

More public money than ever is being spent on media content these days — and the spending does deserve scrutiny.

But the single project that triggered his concern this week was not a costly one — or especially newsworthy.

Siouxsie and the Virus is a short online video shot in March 2020 and it has been online for almost two years now, with its sources of public funding noted at the end. It snapshots Dr Siouxsie Wiles’ life in “fly-on-the wall”-style as New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown.

It was made for the online platform Loading Docs which describes itself as “a launchpad for New Zealand documentary shorts.”

Enables short documentaries
It enables local makers to produce short documentaries which are then available to other media outlets. It is backed by the NZ Film Commission, the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air and Māori broadcasting funding agent Te Māngai Pāho.

Walls’ objections were rushed out as a news story online by Newstalk ZB and its sister paper The New Zealand Herald. The stories were shared on social media with the claim “the amount spent has left some gobsmacked.”

“Would you pay $20,000 for a documentary about ‘science superhero’ Dr Siouxsie Wiles? Because you already did,”  the Herald’s story began.

On the air Walls had referred to $20,000 of Film Commission funding but said he wasn’t sure how Siouxsie and the Virus had been funded.

It turned out that sum relates to a different project yet to be made.

Loading Docs producer Julia Parnell told Mediawatch that Loading Docs provided $6000 in production finance and $2000 towards the post-production for Siouxsie and the Virus.

The funding model requires filmmakers to raise other funds themselves via crowdfunding.

Parnell told Mediawatch that Siouxsie and the Virus raised $7685 through the crowdfunding platform “Boosted”.

Boosted by The Herald
Ironically the mini-doco was also boosted by The New Zealand Herald back in 2020.

“It was launched in partnership with The New Zealand Herald on their platform, along with a high-profile story in [Weekend Herald supplement] Canvas. It then went on our platform, TVNZ On Demand, RNZ, PlayStuff and The Spinoff. It has had over 200,000 views and it has been so appreciated by audiences,” Parnell told Mediawatch.

Initially the director, Gwen Isaac, was funded to make a completely different film about a Kiwi MMA fighter in Japan.

“When the covid lockdown happened, we had to pivot and find something else. The director was able to get that access (to Dr Wiles) in that week prior to covid. It was a society-changing moment and we were able to capture it. I’m very proud of that,” Parnell told Mediawatch.

“Loading Docs has a platform-agnostic approach which means that more New Zealanders can connect with our work and the work of our documentary makers,” she said.

On social media, Dr Wiles pointed out on Thursday she made nothing from the mini-doco, and $20,000 would have cost each New Zealanders about half a cent.

She also pointed out NZME — the owner of Newstalk ZB and The Herald  – received $9 million in covid wage subsidy in 2020 that would have taken $2.25 out of the pocket of every Kiwi.

LOL I just found out how much taxpayer money NZME who owns the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB got in the first half of 2020. $8.6 MILLION! If you are a taxpayer, that’s $2.23 you paid. Oh, and their net PROFITS after tax rose by $1 million to $7.8 MILLION. https://t.co/pq6WhvnXyO pic.twitter.com/kOxQk0v5yM

— Dr Siouxsie Wiles (@SiouxsieW) July 21, 2022

Wage subsidies repaid
Some media companies  — including Stuff and The Spinoff – repaid wages subsidies received in that year when business subsequently stabilised.

NZME has not, even after profits and revenue increased in 2021.

NZME CEO Michael Boggs told Mediawatch in April they used the wage subsidy for the intended purpose of retaining jobs and NZME declined the second tranche of wage subsidy when it was on offer.

Dr Wiles’ observations would have been relevant additions to The Herald and ZB online news stories highlighting the “gobsmacking” Film Commission funding decision, but by this time anyone who went looking for that would only find that those stories were not online anymore.

The Herald‘s link yields an error message that says, “Oops, looks like a dead end”.

The stories have been scrubbed from The Herald and ZB social media feeds without explanation.

Thanks @MediawatchNZ for looking into the dangerous hitjob Newstalk ZB and NZ Herald did on me last week. This was never about asking questions about the use of taxpayer funds. I honestly believe it was about stoking outrage, attacking the arts, & undermining & harming me. https://t.co/SdwWwF90z1

— Dr Siouxsie Wiles (@SiouxsieW) July 23, 2022

First funding questioning
Loading Docs’ Parnell said this was the first time the funding of any production had been questioned in the media.

But it’s not the first time ZB’s Walls has criticised public spending on media content.

Last year he labelled a range of arts projects bankrolled with covid recovery funds “a smorgasbord of abject waste” under the headline: Not a single cent more for podcasts, poetry and picture books in the name of ‘covid recovery.’ He wrote:

“It’s easy to take aim at the Creative NZ funding and to poke holes in what the government’s decided to fund through its $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund.”

Last year NZME secured up to $2995,702 from the PIJF to employ 15 reporters “to fill gaps in court reporting” in 11 of its publications — as well as two national reporting roles.

In 2020 — the year Siouxsie and the Virus was made — the PIJF allocated up to $200,280 to NZME for “a kaupapa editor and an audio innovation editor to improve access to news for blind and low vision New Zealanders.”

NZME also received up to $940,188 over two years “to retain reporting roles in its free community newspapers across Rotorua, Napier, Hastings, Whanganui, Manawatū, Taupō, Horowhenua, and Kapiti.”

More funding
An interactive NZME project exploring “how and when land became part of the Pākehā property system in Aotearoa New Zealand” got a further $80,500.

And just this month, the PIJF fund announced $255,000 of taxpayers money for a Herald series called Unraveling Anxiety.

This is based on a series of videos for The Herald’s website showing how people from different cultural backgrounds coped with anxiety disorders during covid-19 lockdowns and after.

It’s the kind of idea you might expect to find on a platform like Loading Docs, but so far The Herald and ZB have not aired any views on whether that is unjustifiably draining money from the public purse at a time of stress in our hospitals.

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

Watch Siouxsie and the Virus on YouTube

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Covid has now killed around 1700 people in New Zealand, but much of our news reporting and commentary has focused on how we’re moving on from the pandemic. Why is there such a mismatch between that media coverage, and the reality of a virus that’s inflicting more suffering and death than ever before?

On her show last week, Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan made a momentous announcement in an almost blithe, off-hand manner.

“The pandemic’s over for all intents and purposes but we’re still having to deal with this nonsense. Isn’t that ultimately why we’re feeling miserable because we all want a break? If I was in government what I’d do right now is ‘green setting guys, go for your life, party party, whatever’. Just for the mental break of it.”

The announcement that the pandemic is over would have been news to the families of the eight people reported to have died with covid-19 in New Zealand that day.

But du Plessis-Allan is far from an outlier in wanting to place a still raging pandemic in the rearview mirror.

Recently a senior Stuff executive sent staff a memo telling them their audience is “over covid” and has “actively moved on from covid content”.

It implored them to find cracker non-covid stories on topics including cons, crime, and safety, the cost of living, NZ culture, and stuff everyone is talking about.

Much wider group
Stuff’s audience is part of a much wider group that’s actively moving on from covid.

National leader Christopher Luxon just returned from a whirlwind overseas tour with the news that most people he met were no longer even talking about covid.

“It’s interesting to me I’ve just come back from Singapore, Ireland, and the UK. In most of those places we didn’t have a single covid conversation. In places like Ireland there’s no mask wearing at all.”

Luxon is right. Many places around the world have dropped their covid restrictions.

But even if we’re determined to ignore it, covid has remained stubbornly real, and is continuing to cause equally real harm.

In the United States, hospitalisations and reinfections are rising with the increasing prevalence of the BA.5 strain of omicron.

In the UK, about 13,000 hospital beds are currently occupied by covid patients. Hospitals are dealing with staff absences, exhaustion, persistent backlogs and problems discharging patients, and the UK government is considering bringing back restrictions if the situation gets any worse.

Same story as here
If that all sounds familiar, it’s because pretty much the exact same story is playing out here.

Association of General Surgeons president Rowan French delivered some dire news to RNZ’s Morning Report about hospitals’ current troubles with scheduling elective surgeries.

“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it,” he said. “We don’t say that lightly but I think it is the worst we’ve ever seen it, particularly with respect to our ability to treat our patients’ elective conditions.”

French said those issues were exacerbated by a wave of covid-19 and winter flu.

Covid patients were taking up a lot of the beds that would normally be used by people recovering from surgery, and he couldn’t see an end in sight to the crisis.

There’s a jarring mismatch between that kind of interview and the concurrent harping about the need to move on from covid.

That’s producing cognitive dissonance, not just in the public, but among media commentators, some of whom are now bobbling between berating our minimal remaining efforts to mitigate covid-19 and lamenting the damage being caused by the uncontrolled spread of the virus.

Mental oscillations
In some cases, these mental oscillations can take place in mere hours.

On the morning of July 6, Newstalk ZB Wellington host Nick Mills had harsh words for the epidemiologists urging caution over covid.

“Michael Baker, let us get on with our lives. You go back to your lab. Do some intelligent work. Get paid truckloads of money doing it, and live in an extremely flash house. But for me, I don’t want to hear from you anymore. I want to get on with my life and our life.”

On du Plessis-Allan’s panel show The Huddle later that day, he had a different message about the severity of the latest wave.

“I’m absolutely terrified because it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” he said. “If we have to go back [to a red setting] – and it will all be based on hospitals gonna have to be overcrowded — these numbers are terrifying.”

Maybe if Nick Mills had listened more closely to Professor Michael Baker, his research on BA.5 wouldn’t have come as such a nasty surprise.

To be fair to these hosts, their contradictory approaches to covid are pretty relatable.

Sick of the sickness
Even without any hard data to hand, it’s safe to say many people are sick of the sickness, and some are prepared to live in a state of suspended disbelief to act like that’s the case.

But covid isn’t over, and now many leading experts are saying it may never be.

Last week The Project commissioned a poll which showed 38 percent of people agree with those experts. They believe covid is here for good.

Afterward presenter Kanoa Lloyd quizzed epidemiologist Dr Tony Blakely about whether those respondents were right.

“It’s possible,” he said. “It’s rolling on. Remember influenza in 1918, we still get influenza every year. This is a coronavirus. It could keep coming up every year.”

Dr Blakely is among a number of epidemiologists and healthcare workers who have gone to the media lately to deliver the message that there is still a pandemic on.

On last weekend’s episode of Newshub Nation, the aforementioned Professor Michael Baker compared covid to the “inconvenient truth” of climate change — a global threat that demands real change and ongoing action to mitigate.

Common sense safety
He went on to link covid precautions to another common sense safety measure.

“If you go out when you have this infection and infect your friends and family, you are going to be killing some people — just like drinking and driving,” he said.

At The Spinoff, microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles stuck with the driving metaphor, imploring people to make popping on a mask as natural as clicking in your seatbelt.

This recent flurry of cautious messaging stands in stark contrast to much of the media coverage over the last few months.

Despite the fact 10 to 20 people per day have been dying of covid-19, that is had a muted response outside of the pro-forma coverage of the Ministry of Health’s 1pm press releases.

When covid-19 has been covered, the death toll has usually been superseded in the news by complaints from businesses about the few restrictions that remain.

Maybe that’s not such a surprise. News organisations have a powerful commercial incentive to give their customers what they want, and as Stuff’s executive said, audiences have moved on.

Like drunk party guest
But, like a drunk party guest at 3am, coronavirus does not care that you’re tired of it and you want it to leave.

A month ago, Newsroom’s Marc Daalder made that point in a prescient piece headlined “Covid isn’t over, it’s just getting started“.

He said the media needed to adjust from covering covid as a crisis to seeing it as an ongoing concern like the road toll or crime.

“It’s no longer temporary. It’s here to stay with us. And I don’t think that journalists have really figured out how to cover it as a daily issue, just like we cover all of the other daily issues that are really problematic,” he said.

“In some respects, it’s a bit bigger because it has a much more serious burden in terms of deaths and hospitalisations and long covid than something like the road toll, but just because it’s not a temporary crisis anymore, doesn’t mean that we should be ignoring it.”

Daalder said reporters could reorientate their coverage, writing more human interest stories on issues like the impact of long covid, and looking forward at how the virus and the fight against it will evolve.

“I think we are poorly served by media coverage, after the peak of the first omicron wave, in which there was no looking forward to what’s going to be happening in the short term or the long term.

Omicron peaked … and then?
“There was just this all this focus on what would happen when omicron peaked, and then it did, and, and nothing filled the void after that. And so I think it’s quite natural for people to assume that covid is over.”

Journalists could also apply more pressure to the government over the continuing levels of preventable suffering and death being caused by cmicron’s spread, Daalder said.

He has advocated for the return of the alert level system, which he believes was much more simple and comprehensible than the traffic light system implemented late last year.

“There’s not really very much accountability journalism that looks at holding the government accountable for essentially abandoning vulnerable people to the whims of the virus,” he said.

“You have this sort of very strange juxtaposition in the [parliamentary] press gallery where the covid minister will be asked by one person: ‘Are you concerned about BA.5? It’s starting to spread in New Zealand. Should we be increasing our restrictions?’

“And then in the next breath, the question is ‘Why aren’t we in green? When will we ever get to green?’.

Better balancing
“I’m not sure that either of those get to the heart of the present issue, which is that the current settings aren’t aren’t even aligned with a non-BA.5 world.”

Daalder said news organisations should find ways to balance their commercial incentives and the public interest role of journalism when it comes to important, but not always clickable, stories like covid or climate change.

“There’s an extent to which you should follow what audiences want. And you shouldn’t necessarily be trying to force something down their throats that they don’t want.

“But with something like covid, where it’s such a huge, important thing that’s happening, and that’s going to keep happening, regardless of whether you write about it or not.

“I think that’s where you know that that mission of journalism to tell the truth really comes in and overrides maybe some of the audience imperatives.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz