By the time US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on China and Canada last Monday which could kickstart a trade war, New Zealand’s diplomats in Washington, DC, had already been deployed on another diplomatic drama.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz had said on social media it was “difficult to treat New Zealand as a normal ally . . .  when they denigrate and punish Israeli citizens for defending themselves and their country”.

He cited a story in the Israeli media outlet Ha’aretz, which has a reputation for independence in Israel and credibility abroad.

But Ha’aretz had wrongly reported Israelis must declare service in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) as part of “new requirements” for visa applications.

Winston Peters replied forcefully to Cruz on X, condemning Ha’aretz’s story as “fake news” and demanding a correction.

But one thing Trump’s Republicans and Winston Peters had in common last week was irritating Mexico.

His fellow NZ First MP Shane Jones had bellowed “Send the Mexicans home” at Green MPs in Parliament.

Winston Peters then told two of them they should be more grateful for being able to live in New Zealand.

‘We will not be lectured’
On Facebook he wasn’t exactly backing down.

“We . . .  will not be lectured on the culture and traditions of New Zealand from people who have been here for five minutes,” he added.

While he was at it, Peters criticised media outlets for not holding other political parties to account for inflammatory comments.

Peters was posting that as a politician — not a foreign minister, but the Mexican ambassador complained to MFAT. (It seems the so-called “Mexican standoff” was resolved over a pre-Waitangi lunch with Ambassador Bravo).

But the next day — last Wednesday — news of another diplomatic drama broke on TVNZ’s 1News.

“A deal that could shatter New Zealand’s close relationship with a Pacific neighbour,” presenter Simon Dallow declared, in front of a backdrop of a stern-looking Peters.

TVNZ’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver reported the Cook Islands was about to sign a partnership agreement in Beijing.

“We want clarity and at this point in time, we have none. We’ve got past arrangements, constitutional arrangements, which require constant consultation with us, and dare I say, China knows that,” Peters told 1News.

Passports another headache
Cook Islands’ Prime Minister Mark Brown also told Barbara Dreaver TVNZ’s revelations last month about proposed Cook Island passports had also been a headache for him.

“We were caught by surprise when this news was broken by 1News. I thought it was a high-level diplomatic discussion with leaders to be open and frank,” he told TVNZ this week.

“For it to be brought out into the public before we’ve had a time to inform our public, I thought was a breach of our political diplomacy.”

Last week another Barabara Dreaver scoop on 1News brought the strained relationship with another Pacific state into the headlines:

“Our relationship with Kiribati is at breaking point. New Zealand’s $100 million aid programme there is now on hold. The move comes after President [Taneti] Maamau pulled out of a pre-arranged meeting with Winston Peters.”

The media ended up in the middle of the blame game over this too — but many didn’t see it coming.

Caught in the crossfire
“A diplomatic rift with Kiribati was on no one’s 2025 bingo card,” Stuff national affairs editor Andrea Vance wrote last weekend in the Sunday Star-Times.

“Of all the squabbles Winston Peters was expected to have this year, no one picked it would be with an impoverished, sinking island nation,” she wrote, in terms that would surely annoy Kiribati.

“Do you believe Kiribati is snubbing you?” RNZ Morning Report’s Corin Dann asked Peters.

“You can come to any conclusion you like, but our job is to try and resolve this matter,” Peters replied.

Kiribati Education Minister Alexander Teabo told RNZ Pacific there was no snub.

He said Kiribati President Maamau — who is also the nation’s foreign minister — had been unavailable because of a long-planned and important Catholic ordination ceremony on his home island of Onotoa — though this was prior to the proposed visit from Peters.

On Facebook — at some length — New Zealand-born Kiribati MP Ruth Cross Kwansing blamed “media manufactured drama”.

“The New Zealand media seized the opportunity to patronise Kiribati, and the familiar whispers about Chinese influence began to circulate,” she said.

She was more diplomatic on the 531pi Pacific Mornings radio show but insistent New Zealand had not been snubbed.

Public dispute “regrettable’
Peters told the same show it was “regrettable” that the dispute had been made public.

On Newstalk ZB Peters was backed — and Kiribati portrayed as the problem.

“If somebody is giving me $100m and they asked for a meeting, I will attend. I don’t care if it’s my mum’s birthday. Or somebody’s funeral,” Drive host Ryan Bridge told listeners.

“It’s always very hard to pick apart these stories (by) just reading them in the media. But I have faith and confidence in Winston Peters as our foreign minister,” PR-pro Trish Shrerson opined.

So did her fellow panellist, former Labour MP Stuart Nash.

“He’s respected across the Pacific. He’s the consummate diplomat. If Winston says this is the story and this is what’s happening, I believe 100 percent. And I would say, go hard. Winston — represent our interests.”

‘Totally silly’ response
But veteran Pacific journalist Michael Field contradicted them soon after on ZB.

“It’s totally silly. All this talk about cancelling $104 million of aid is total pie-in-the-sky from Winston Peters,” he said.

“Somebody’s lost their marbles on this, and the one who’s possibly on the ground looking for them is Winston Peters.

“He didn’t need to be in Tarawa in early January at all. This is pathetic. This is like saying I was invited to my sister’s birthday party and now it’s been cancelled,” he said.

Not a comparison you hear very often in international relations.

In his own Substack newsletter Michael Field also insisted the row reflected poorly on New Zealand.

“While the conspiracy around Kiribati and China has deepened, no one is noticing the still-viable Kiribati-United States treaty which prevents Kiribati atolls [from] being used as bases without Washington approval,” he added.

Kiribati ‘hugely disrespectful’
But TVNZ’s Barbara Dreaver said Kiribati was being “hugely disrespectful”.

In a TVNZ analysis piece last weekend, she said New Zealand has “every right to expect better engagement than it has been getting over the past year.”

Dreaver — who was born in and grew up in Kiribati and has family there — also criticised “the airtime and validation” Kwansing got in the media in New Zealand.

“She supports and is part of a government that requires all journalists — should they get a visa to go there — to hand over copies of all footage/information collected,” Dreaver said.

Kwansing hit back on Facebook, accusing Dreaver of “publishing inane drivel” and “irresponsible journalism causing stress to locals.”

“You write like you need a good holiday somewhere happy. Please book yourself a luxury day spa ASAP,” she told TVNZ’s Pacific Affairs reporter.

Two days later — last Tuesday — the Kiribati government made percent2CO percent2CP-R an official statement which also pointed the finger at the media.

“Despite this media issue, the government of Kiribati remains convinced the strong bonds between Kiribati and New Zealand will enable a resolution to this unfortunate standoff,” it said.

Copping the blame
Another reporter who knows what it’s like to cop the blame for reporting stuff diplomats and politicians want to keep out of the news is RNZ Pacific’s senior journalist and presenter Lydia Lewis.

Last year, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese questioned RNZ’s ethics after she reported comments he made to the US Deputy Secretary of State at the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga — which revealed an until-then behind closed doors plan to pay for better policing in the Pacific.

She’s also been covering the tension with Kiribati.

Is the heat coming on the media more these days if they candidly report diplomatic differences?

“There’s no study that says there are more people blaming the media. So it’s anecdotal, but definitely, both the public and politicians are saying the media (are) making a big deal of things,” Lewis told Mediawatch.

“I would put the question back to the public as to who’s manufacturing drama. All we’re doing is reporting what’s in front of us for the public to then make their decision — and questioning it. And there were a lot of questions around this Kiribati story.”

Lewis said it was shortly before 6pm on January 27, that selected journalists were advised of the response of our government to the cancellation of the meeting with foreign minister Peters.

Vice-President an alternative
But it was not mentioned that Kiribati had offered the Vice-President for a meeting, the same person that met with an Australian delegation recently.

A response from Kiribati proved harder to get — and Lewis spoke to a senior figure in Kiribati that night who told her they knew nothing about it.

Politicians and diplomats, naturally enough, prefer to do things behind the scenes and media exposure is a complication for them.

But we simply wouldn’t know about the impending partnership agreement between China and the Cook Islands if TVNZ had not reported it last Monday.

And another irony: some political figures lamenting the diplomatically disruptive impact of the media also make decidedly undiplomatic responses of their own online these days.

“It can be revealing in the sense of where people stand. Sometimes they’re just putting out their opinions or their experience. Maybe they’ve got some sort of motive. A formal message or email we’ll take a bit more seriously. But some of the things on social media, we just take with a grain of salt,” said Lewis.

“It is vital we all look at multiple sources. It comes back to balance and knowledge and understanding what you know about and what you don’t know about — and then asking the questions in between.”

Big Powers and the Big Picture
Kwansing objected to New Zealand media jumping to the conclusion China’s influence was a factor in the friction with New Zealand.

“To dismiss the geopolitical implications with China . . .  would be naive and ignorant,” Dreaver countered.

Michael Field pointed to an angle missing.

“While the conspiracy around Kiribati and China has deepened, no one is noticing the still viable Kiribati-United States treaty which prevents Kiribati atolls being used as bases without Washington approval,” he wrote in his Substack.

In the same article in which Vance called Kiribati “an impoverished, sinking island nation” she later pointed out that its location, US military ties and vast ocean territory make it strategically important.

Questions about ‘transparency and accountability’
“There’s a lot of people that want in on Kiribati. It has a huge exclusive economic zone,” Lewis said.

She said communication problems and patchy connectivity are also drawbacks.

“We do have a fuller picture now of the situation, but the overarching question that’s come out of this is around transparency and accountability.

“We can’t hold Kiribati politicians to account like we do New Zealand government politicians.”

“I don’t want to give Kiribati a free pass here but it’s really difficult to get a response.

“They’re posting statements on Facebook and it really has raised some questions around the government’s commitment to transparency and accountability for all journalists . . .  committed to fair media reporting across the Pacific.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

It was Thursday, and the body of Kiingi Tuheitia was being escorted to the barge to take him to his resting place on Taupiri maunga.

That prompted Morrison — the presenter of TVNZ’s Te Karere and Marae — to recall that council permission was required in 2006 for Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu to make the same journey.

RNZ MEDIAWATCH AND READ MORE:

Times have changed.

“In 2008 after the Waikato River settlement … a request was put in by Waikato Tainui that they had more control over the river. This time they could say: ‘We’re taking our King on the awa at this particular time,’” Morrison said.

“That’s mana motuhake for you,” Molyneux replied.

Times have changed a lot for the media since 2006 too.

Whakaata Māori now has two TV channels, which both carried live coverage of the ceremonies over five days.

The Kiingitanga’s own channel also broadcast live throughout on YouTube and Facebook as well.

The Kiingitanga’s own channel live broadcast.

Another broadcaster who joined that epic broadcast on Friday, Matai Smith, reminded viewers that the notion of media is not what it was in 2006 either.

“We know that we live in a world of TikTok and Instagram. [We know] the relevance of the Kiingitanga to Waikato Tainui, but also to us here in Aotearoa — and many of us could be seen as quite ignorant of the significance of this kaupapa,” Smith said.

After Kuini Nga wai hono i te po became the eighth Māori monarch — and the second youngest ever anointed — Mihingarangi Forbes also made the point about social media on RNZ’s Morning Report.

“I’ve been checking the socials because she is 27 years old, and the average age of Māori is also 27 years old. This is the way that this generation communicates,” Forbes said, noting that her own social feeds filled up with tributes to the new Kuini.

While the tangihanga itself was a sombre and highly ceremonial occasion, the live coverage also had moments of levity on the paepae — and between broadcasters and their guests.

All this played out at Tuurangawaewae marae less than a fortnight after dignitaries and the media gathered for the annual Koroneihana celebration of the coronation of Kiingi Tuheitia.

The historic moment in te ao Māori and New Zealand history was covered comprehensively over five days thanks to collaboration between Whakaata Māori and the iwi radio network Te Whakaruruhau. It was probably the longest continuous multimedia coverage of any event in our media’s history.

So how was all this done?

One of those in the media pack at Tuurangawaewae throughout was former Whakaata Māori presenter Kawe Roes, who is now a digital media reporter for Waatea News.

The Auckland-based Waatea also provides news to Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori — the national iwi radio network.

“Tainui and the Kiingitanga already have systems in place to make it easy for broadcasting. They’ve been doing live streams for nearly 15 years,” Roes told Mediawatch.

“In my years of broadcasting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the amount of talent that was put into making sure Kiingi Tuheitia had the best broadcast for his tangihanga for the whole world to watch.

“Once Tuheitia had taken the throne, he literally became the king of social media. By doing that so early Kiingitanga and Koroneihana events were able to transition from a special broadcast that might have been done in the TVNZ days to a livestream.

“The hardest part wasn’t getting anyone there. We had so many people to choose from, including journalists like myself who are versed in te reo and English. You also had Māori journalists who were just versed in English and Iwi radio networks were also part of that.”

Roes said it was one big collective effort.

“The kaupapa was that the broadcast was more important than the brands. Even though we’re in different organisations, we all know each other. We’re a very small family, and I think by having that rapport made the job easier.

“We shared all our knowledge. I was sharing knowledge of Kiingitanga and Tainui whakapapa with a New Zealand Herald reporter.”

Just last month, Waatea News cut ties with the New Zealand Herald after it published Hobson’s Pledge adverts opposing iwi applications for customary marine titles.

“We put that to the side. If I, as a Māori journalist, can’t help him then what am I doing on my job, really?

“At the end of the day, we’re here to put out an amazing story. And for me, that’s what made it beautiful.”

Were they broadcasting in the service of Kiingitanga and iwi around the country? Or to be the eyes and ears of people who could not be there? To capture it all for history? Or all of the above?

“From our Māori broadcasting perspective, it was all about quality … because we knew it was going to be historic. The journalists, they took all the knowledge around them, and they put out some amazing content.”

Back to the future

The Kiingitanga evolved to deal with the Crown over urgent matters such as land sales and alienation. Now there is a young queen who is of the digital generation at a time when Māori/Crown relations are again tense and controversial.

“So it’s going to be interesting to see how she shapes Kiingitanga into this modern age. She is the boss. She is now the queen of Māoridom and how she wants to roll with tikanga, how she wants to roll in a digital space is up to her,” Roes said.

“From what I can tell, a lot of the status quo will remain. The only thing I would suggest is be careful who you’re talking to, not because of what you’re going to say, but we don’t want to overuse the majesty, and people end up hōhā listening to her.

“The reality is — in my Tainui perspective — we look at them with a sense of tapu. That means you don’t naturally go up to them and start talking. But we might see her going to Waitangi for instance.

“With young people, that might be where she thrives a bit more, and she can connect more with rangatahi — and she’s an easy lady to talk to.”

Māori media have treated the Kuini’s accession in a reverential way. But when seeking the voice of Māoridom on political or controversial things, that will have to change.

“I think the King changed the media landscape when throwing out support for the Māori Party. We’ve got an example there on how we can critique and how we can ask questions.

“But you’ll only ever get to the monarch through spokespersons, and that’s why you have people like Rahi Papa and (Kīngitanga’s chief of staff and adviser) Ngira Simmonds, who bring those thoughts to the media. Tainui are across how to deal with media — an iwi who have been dealing with the Crown for 166 years.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Dr Gavin Ellis

Integrity is the most valued element of a news organisation’s reputation. Without it, it cannot expect its audience to lend credence to what it publishes or broadcasts. So, The New Zealand Herald has dealt itself an awful blow.

Its admission that it used generative AI to scrape content and then create an editorial about the All Blacks came only after it was caught out by Radio New Zealand. RNZ’s subsequent revelation that it may have found another three robot editorials in The Herald was met with sullen silence.

All the country’s largest newspaper will say its that it should have employed more “journalistic rigour”.

That is not good enough. It does not explain why the paper made the bizarre choice to employ Gen AI to create what should be its own opinion. It does not explain why there was no disclosure of its use (although to do so on an editorial should raise more red flags than a North Korean Workers Party anniversary). It does not tell us how widespread the practice is within publications owned by NZME (The Herald editorial was reprinted in its regional titles).

It does not explain why even the most basic subediting was not applied to an obviously deficient piece of writing when editorials have previously been checked and rechecked to prevent the most minor of errors. And it does not reveal what went wrong in the editorial chain of command to allow all or any of the foregoing to occur…or not.

RNZ Mediawatch’s Hayden Donnell did an excellent job in “outing” The Herald’s practice. I admit that when I read the All Blacks editorial my reaction was that it was a particularly badly written leader that had been shoved into the paper unedited. That would have been bad enough, but it never occurred to me that it might be the scribbles of a robot hand.

Donnell had the insight to put it through AI detection software and, like the Customs Service’s First Defender against drugs on Border Patrol, it returned a positive reading. It indicated it was most likely the product of Gen AI. His finding was revealed on Mediawatch last Wednesday. A follow-up fronted by Colin Peacock on Sunday’s Mediawatch revealed a further three editorials — all on sporting subjects — had returned similar readings to the first.

Peacock told listeners the publisher had declined to comment.

AI-created editorials: What in HAL’s name was the Herald thinking?

The Herald’s own disclosure of the issue to its readers was buried in Shayne Currie’s Media Insider column. Headed “AI and that NZ Herald editorial”, it was the fourth item after an interminable piece on TVNZ’s ongoing fight with former Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria, TVNZ’s CEO paying her own way to the Olympics, and the release of the Wall Street Journal reporter held in Moscow on fabricated charges.

The item about itself assumed everyone had already caught up with the RNZ story and simply began by saying newsroom staff had been called to a meeting “to discuss use of artificial intelligence (AI), following a case in which NZME says it should have applied more “journalistic rigour” in the way AI was used to help create a recent NZ Herald editorial”.

It quoted Herald editor-in-chief (and NZME’s chief content officer-publishing) Murray Kirkness setting out the general principles on which The Herald and other publishers used artificial intelligence. He went on to say:

“I’m keen to hold another of our regular All Hands meetings next week, which will include discussion about our use of AI now and into the future.
“As always, trust and credibility are vitally important to us and will be part of the discussion.
“Next week’s session will be an opportunity for us to talk further about our use of AI and the standards we need to maintain as we use it.”

That does not signal to me — or to other Herald readers — that he accepts there is a major issue facing him and his editorial department. Much as NZME might like to minimise what has happened, this is a serious matter that requires no small amount of damage control.

That daily column headed “We say” is more than just one of the many opinion columns peppered throughout the paper. To my way of thinking, it was supposed to be the considered, intellectually rigorous view of the masthead, one from which the public might form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions.

It was also the place from which the powerful could be called to account. As such it always played a significant role in determining the integrity of the masthead and the trust that readers resided in it. That is why its production each day was the direct responsibility of the editor or deputy editor.

I have been both an editorial writer and an editor. I know, from direct experience, the rigour that must be applied to the processes in its production — from robust discussion of the subject, to determining a justified point of view, and ensuring its accuracy and quality. I have felt the weight of responsibility in its publication each day, a weight that is the greater when calling people to account. Our editorials were unsigned because they represented the view of the masthead. The editor took direct responsibility for what it said.

My mentor, and one of my predecessors as editor of The New Zealand Herald, John Hardingham, wrote in the Manual of Journalism about the delegating nature of the editorial structure. He added the following:

One duty, however, is never delegated. That is the expression of the newspapers’ opinions through its leading articles or editorials. The editor, or the deputy editor, personally chooses the daily topics for comment, defines the approach in consultation with the specialist leader writers, and sub-edits the completed work.

That signalled the significance attached to the editorial column. Even if its readership level is low compared with other parts of the newspaper, that significance is not lost on those in power, and they have learned over time that they ignore editorials at their peril. What is said in the name of the masthead may be the touchpaper that ignites a crowd.

Shayne Currie informed readers on Saturday: “Once upon a time, The Herald had a dedicated team of editorial writers, or at least senior editors who had a special focus to consider the newspaper’s opinion on daily issues. Now, the responsibility falls on a wide cross-section of staff, including journalists who might be specialists in particular areas.”

I sense this is yet another indication of NZME’s laser focus on its digital content. The print edition is a legacy medium which, like a geriatric, is offered palliative services while the real effort is devoted to those with the promise of longer life. The fact the editorial is now written by a “wide cross section” suggests (along with the truncation of letters and addition of forgettable photographs) that the company is unwilling to devote resources to the page that was once the most direct link between paper and public.

That would not be lost on staff who could then be forgiven for regarding the editorial writing assignment as a chore rather than a privilege. Using AI to write the editorial may be a manifestation of that attitude. Sadly, all of this ignores the fact that the editorial also appears in digital form and should be accorded the same status it used to enjoy in print.

Shayne Currie used an unfortunate turn of phrase in the paragraph reproduced above. He said “responsibility falls”. The duty may fall to that wide cross-section but responsibility continues to sit where it has always been — with the person at the top of the editorial tree.

As such it falls to Murray Kirkness to fix what is a deepening problem that has been created not only for The Herald and its fellow NZME publications but for the wider media as well.

The AI generated editorial disclosure is a gift from the gods for those who seek to undermine news media and other institutions. I can hear the repeated refrain: “Don’t believe what they say: It is written by a robot”.

Doubtless, it will be extrapolated to embrace the entire content of the paper: “There aren’t any reporters: It’s written by robots.” Sound implausible? If people believed the claim the country’s reporters and editors had been bribed by the Public Interest Journalism Fund, anything is possible.

The editor-in-chief will have to deal with two related issues.

The first is integrity. I have no doubt that AI can be a useful tool in researching the subject of an editorial but never in writing one. The view of the newspaper must be created by the women and men who know and understand the intrinsic values that cannot be scraped from existing data.

Murray Kirkness must give readers an ironbound guarantee that Gen AI-written editorials have stopped, and will not happen again.

The second is transparency. Artificial intelligence has an undoubted place in the future of journalism where it can have immense benefits in, for example, the “digesting” of vast amounts of data and the processing of information. However, its use must be carefully proscribed by a publicly accessible AI code of conduct, which must also set out standardised forms of guaranteed disclosure of when and how it is employed. Failure to follow the code should be a disciplinary offence that could lead to dismissal.

The Herald must show that it is putting its house in order. It is always ready to hold others accountable. It did so last year over an RNZ staff member’s “Russia-friendly edits” of stories on the war in Ukraine, and did so this year over TVNZ’s missteps with redundancies.

It’s time to hang out its own laundry and show that it intends to be whiter-than-white.

There is a lot riding on the “regular All Hands meeting” at NZME tomorrow. If it minimises or ignores the damage done, it could reap the product of a seed unintentionally sown at the top of the first New Zealand Herald editorial on 13 November 1863. It was a quotation:

“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Sage advice, true, but we should also not lose sight of the fact that the quotation is from Act 1 Scene 3 of Hamlet – one of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Warner Bros Discovery has done a deal with Stuff to provide news to replace Newshub. It will keep news on TV channel Three from July 6 and help Three retain some viewers.

It also means important income for Stuff, but it will also stretch the company’s staff, finances and technology.

Stuff will provide a one-hour bulletin each weekday and a half-hour on weekends.

Stuff will also retain a live Newshub website.

Warner Bros Discovery chief executive and Stuff publisher Sinead Boucher confirmed the arrangement at a joint news conference today.

Boucher had told her staff the company will “definitely be bringing some Newshub staff” to produce the 6pm bulletins.

She then told reporters she was unsure how many staff would be required, but it would be fewer than “40 to 50” specified in a “stripped back” proposal from Newshub’s own staff.

‘We are digital first’
“We’re not getting into the TV business. We are a digital first multimedia company building a new 6pm product for Warner Brothers,” she said.

Mediawatch understands many media companies approached WBD with proposals to provide news after the company first proposed the cost-saving closure in late February.

However, by the time of the confirmation earlier this month most of those had been rejected by WBD.

Sky TV was also reported to be in the running. It currently runs a Newshub-produced bulletin at 5:30pm each weekday on the free-to-air channel Sky Open and would require a replacement. It also had plenty of TV production facilities.

Sinead Boucher said a Sky bulletin was not included in the deal, but she hoped there would be discussions about that.

Negotiations were carried out in secret both before and after Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) confirmed the complete closure of Newshub on July 5, leaving the company with no news presence.

Stuff refused to comment during the process and Stuff journalists told RNZ Mediawatch on Monday night they were unaware of an impending announcement.

“We didn’t want to raise expectations for Newshub staff when we weren’t sure what would be required,” Boucher told reporters today, explaining that the deal had been done in haste.

Why do the deal – and what’s it worth?
The money WBD is putting into the deal is confidential but it is certain to be just a fraction of the current cost of running Newshub, which would run to tens of millions of dollars a year.

WBD was clearly determined to carve that cost off the bottom line of its loss-making local operation. The financial benefit for Stuff may not be great taking the set-up and running costs into account.

WBD’s Glen Kyne said neither company would comment on specific commercial details, but when asked about the possible profit margin for Stuff, Boucher said: “Both parties are satisfied with where we have ended up.”

But while the audience for TV news bulletins is declining — and the ad revenue has fallen accordingly — it is still substantial for TVNZ 1 and Three. The “appointment viewing” time of 6pm creates a viewing peak which the TV broadcasters use to hold viewers for the entertainment or factual programmes that follow.

Former Newshub chief Hal Crawford told Mediawatch the overall audience for Three could collapse without news in the evening.

“There’s still a reason that the 1 and the 3 on remotes around the country are worn down. 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,” Crawford told Mediawatch.

“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.”

Why Stuff?
Stuff has journalists in more places around the country than any other news publisher.

Stuff’s publisher Sinead Boucher recently told a parliamentary committee it had journalists in 19 locations, even after years of cuts and successive retrenchments.

“We have replatformed our business and have new ways of working. We look at this as starting this bulletin afresh rather than using the broadcast-heavy technology of today,” she told reporters at today’s news conference.

It also has audio and video production facilities at some sites and some senior journalists with TV reporting and presenting experience, such as former Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien, former TV3 current affairs reporter Paula Penfold and senior journalist Andrea Vance.

But Stuff video ventures have not endured. It launched its own free online video platform Play Stuff in mid-2019. It also hired key former TV3 current affairs staff for its own longform video productions but disbanded the Stuff Circuit team earlier this year.

When the Stuff app and website were refreshed recently, short vertical videos were added as a feature, called Stuff Shorts.

Stuff’s weakness has in the past been a dependence on newspaper advertising. It was only last year that Stuff launched its first paywalls for online news for three of its mastheads.

Stuff’s main rival NZME has half the country’s radio networks in addition to newsrooms supplying its newspapers and websites. NZME’s New Zealand Herald has been getting revenue from “premium content” digital subscriptions for four years.

After Boucher acquired Stuff in 2020, Stuff embarked on a digital transition creating more digital audio and video content. It has hired executives from multimedia companies such as Nadia Tolich (ex-NZME now Stuff Digital managing director) and former NZME digital leader Laura Maxwell, now Stuff’s chief executive.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Many observers said this had been coming but few seemed to have a plan for it, including the government. 

Mediawatch looks at what viewers will lose, efforts to resist the cuts and talks to the news chief at Newshub which is set to close completely.

By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

On the AM show last Wednesday, newsreader Nicky Styris suffered a frog in the throat at the wrong time.

Host Melissa Chan Green took over her bulletin while Styris quickly recovered. Minutes later Styris had to take the place of no-show panel guest Paula Bennett.

Just before that, viewers saw co-host Lloyd Burr on his knees fixing the studio flat-pack furniture with a drill.

Three hours later they were at an all-staff meeting at which executives from offshore owner Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) confirmed the complete closure of Newshub by midyear.

On TVNZ’s Midday news soon after, reporter Kim Baker-Wilson was live from the scene of the announcement of Newshub’s demise.

The previous day the roles were reversed, with Newshub’s Simon Shepherd outside TVNZ’s building reporting TVNZ’s Midday had been scrapped, along with the late news Tonight and Fair Go. 

On Wednesday TVNZ also confirmed flagship current affairs show Sunday will cease next month.

So as things stand, it’s the end of the line for all news bulletins on TVNZ other than 1 News at 6, though the news-like shows Breakfast and Seven Sharp survive because they accommodate lucrative sponsored content (“activations” in the ad business) as well as ads.

And TV channel Three will be entirely news-free for the first time in its 35-year history.

Senior journalists led by investigations editor Michael Morrah presented a proposal for a stripped-back and shortened news bulletin to keep the Newshub name alive (and some jobs) but while WBD took it seriously, it eventually turned the idea down.

Another media player to fill the Newshub void?
There have been rumours and reports that other media companies were talking to WBD about filling the Newshub at 6 news void.

Initially light-on-detail reports of lifelines suggested a possible sale of Newshub to another media company. Then there were reports of other media companies pitching to make news for WBD on a much-reduced budget.

Among the names mentioned in media despatches was NZME, which has radio and video studios and journalists around the country, though most of them are north of Taupo.

NZME told Stuff “it was not currently part of the process”.

The Herald’s Media Insider column reported on Tuesday that Newshub was “set to receive a lifeline” and understood Stuff was “among the leading contenders.”

However when Stuff itself reported on Wednesday that Stuff was “understood to be a likely contender,” a spokesperson for Stuff declined to comment to Stuff’s reporter on whether Stuff had been in talks with WBD — or not.

RNZ said it wasn’t in the frame for this. (It recently killed off the video version of its only daily news show with pictures, Checkpoint).

Sky TV has production facilities galore and its free-to-air TV channel Sky Open currently runs a Newshub-made news bulletin at 5:30 each weekday. Sky has only said it was an “interesting idea” — or words to that effect.

“At this point there is no deal,” WBD local boss Glen Kyne told reporters after confirming the closure of Newshub on Wednesday.

Kyne also said the company’s “door has been open to all internal and external feedback and ideas, and we will continue to be”.

But anyone opening that door clearly isn’t willing to do it in daylight — or  tell the rest of the media about it.

Lifelines likely?

If there is to be any kind of “Newshub-lite” lifeline, a key question is: what is WBD prepared to pay for the programme?

Presumably not much, given that they said they had no choice but to carve the cost of Newshub — amounting to tens of millions a year — from its bottom line in line with its reducing revenue.

So is it worth any major media company’s while to commit to making news in video for another outlet? And it would have to be done in a hurry because the last Newshub bulletins screen on July 5.

When Newshub’s owners first announced they wanted to get rid of it in late February, its former chief editor Hal Crawford told Mediawatch the problem with finding a buyer was that minimum viable cost for a credible TV news operation was greater than anyone here was prepared to spend.

Longtime TV3 news boss Mark Jennings (now co-editor of Newsroom) said any substitute service on the fraction of the current budget would have another problem — TVNZ’s 1 News.

“You’re up against a sophisticated TVNZ product so viewers will have an immediate comparison. Probably that won’t be favorable for Warner Brothers,” he told RNZ.

TVNZ has its own news production problems after the cuts they confirmed this week.

“We’re proposing to establish a new long-form team within our news operation, which would continue to bring important current affairs and consumer affairs stories to Aotearoa in a different way on our digital platforms.”

TVNZ declined Mediawatch‘s request to speak to TVNZ’s news chief Phil O’Sullivan about that at this time.

Newshub’s news boss responds

One who did though is Newshub news boss Richard Sutherland — appointed as interim senior director of news at Newshub in January.

It was his second spell at Newshub, during a career in broadcast news spanning four decades at almost every significant national news outlet in the country, including RNZ, where he stepped down as head of news a year ago.

In that time he’s experienced many a financial crisis in the business — but did he see this one coming?

“The last couple of weeks has been coming for quite some time. I think that the so-called legacy news operations have almost done too good a job of keeping the lights on and papering over the cracks. And we just got to a point [the industry] couldn’t paper over the cracks any longer.

“But when you look at audience behaviour and the fall off and revenue, particularly in the advertising market, then that doesn’t surprise me that we’ve got to where we’ve got to.”

But if the audience was big, the ad revenue would be too?

“It’s certainly by no means as big as it once was simply because people have other options available to them. The cliche is that you’re not in a war with the other media, but in a war for people’s attention.”

“It’s not so much the audience has changed so much as the dynamics of the advertising market that has really changed over the last sort of 10 to 15 years. The digital advertising — and the big two main players in that space, Facebook and Google — are eating everybody’s lunch.”

TV ad income on the slide
Annual advertising stats that came out this very week show media in 2023 attracted $3.36 billion across the whole of the media industry — about the same as in 2022.

But TV advertising revenue of $517 million in 2022 slumped to $443 million last year.

“That’s why what the TV industry has found is that can’t cut its costs fast enough to meet the falloff in the advertising income,” Sutherland told Mediawatch. 

Digital-only ad revenue rose by $88 million in 2023 — but it’s Google and Facebook which secures the vast bulk of that.

But if this has been coming for a number of years, as Sutherland says, has there been enough planning for it?

After the closure of Newshub was mooted by its owner last month, seven of Sutherland’s colleagues led by investigations editor Michael Morrah put together a transition plan to keep Newshub on air in a few days.

Shouldn’t this sort of transition planning have been done at high levels over recent years right across the television business?

“Every media company that I’ve worked for or have observed over the last few years has been trying to innovate and get to a more sustainable level. The revenue was just collapsing far faster than anyone ever anticipated.”

“It annoys me when I hear people say older media haven’t innovated enough. We’ve done a lot of innovation. That’s pretty lazy politics to just say: ‘You need to innovate.’

“It’s also lazy politics to say, the government should just come in and bail everyone out. New Zealand Incorporated needs to have a big conversation about what it wants to do with the media and how it wants to fund it.

“For the past few years the industry has been like so many rats in a sack, fighting with each chasing a smaller and smaller amount of ad dollars. We need to get together and work out how we get ourselves collectively out of the sack,” Sutherland told Mediawatch.

Shortly before TVNZ and Newshub announced their cuts, there was a meeting of chief executives including Newshub’s owners Warner Bros Discovery to discuss a shared new service. TVNZ rejected the idea.

“But a lot has changed in the last couple of months. And I would like to think that eventually we’ll get to a point where we can actually have honest and productive conversations about what we can do to help each other as well as maintaining a degree of competition, but also realising that if we just keep fighting with each other, we’re not going to have a sustainable industry,” Sutherland said.

Would Sutherland want to work for a low-budget alternative to Newshub stave off the complete closure? And would Kiwis want such a service?

“There is a segment of the audience that appreciates a very highly produced, well-curated news bulletin every night. And there’s large numbers of people who no longer see that as part of their media diet.

“The trick is to provide options so that people can get what they want when they want it.

“It’s not really for me to say what a possible replacement for Newsub might look like. I’m well away from those negotiations.

“If we reach a stage where the media scene here withers away to nothing, there’ll be no-one to tell the stories. The media uncovers a lot of shady stuff in this country.

“And the fear of media coverage prevents people in positions of power and authority at all levels doing a lot of shady stuff. So it is important to document the ructions of the New Zealand media scene just like we do in other parts of the country.”

Minister in a corner

The day the axe fell at Newshub and at TVNZ, New Zealand’s screen producers’ guild Spada said “while the newsroom cuts have dominated media coverage to date, it is actually the whole production sector being impacted”.

“While TVNZ and Three aren’t giving definitive numbers at this time, Spada has calculated that we are looking at around $50 million coming out of our sector,” said president Irene Gardiner.

Spada is also asking the government to exempt screen funding agencies from the percent public spending cuts and to force the international streaming platform to support local production.

Spada called for” swift and decisive action” from the government on this.

Should they be holding their breath?

When confronted by reporters for a response to the current TV news crisis, Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee said: “If only I was a magician, if I could actually just snap up a solution, that would be fantastic.

“But I’m not a magician, and I’m trying to find a solution to modernise the industry . . .  there is a process happening.”

But the media are not expecting magic — just a plan rather than assertions of a process with no timeline.

She has repeatedly said she’s preparing policy in a paper to take to cabinet, but refused to give any details.

On RNZ’s Checkpoint, persistent and pointed questions from Lisa Owen yielded few further clues.

Newstalk ZB Drive host Heather du Plessis-Allan told Melissa Lee she was being “weird and shady” and the next morning ZB’s Mike Hosking told her she was using “buzzwords that don’t mean anything” and was doomed to fail.

Stuff’s Tova O’Brien reported that the need to consult coalition allies on policy means it can’t be progressed until after Winston Peters returns from overseas at the end of the month.

The under-wraps media policy is also not in the government’s recently-released quarterly action plan.

Meanwhile this week, our two biggest TV news broadcasters ran out of time.

Ex-minister leading resistance to cuts

After his unenlightening on-air interview with minister Melissa Lee on Thursday morning, Mike Hosking’s ZB listeners told him she reminded them of ministers in the last government.

Coincidentally, one of them was also one of few people who did speak out about the crisis while it was unfolding.

Michael Wood represented TVNZ journalists from the E tū union as its negotiations specialist.

E tū  is now taking legal action against TVNZ, claiming it failed to abide by the conditions of their employment agreement.

Could that reverse or wind back any of the cuts TVNZ has announced?

“That does remain to be seen. The collective agreement has very clear processes around what should happen if TVNZ wants to move forward and make changes. It requires [staff members] to be involved throughout the process, and for the company to try and reach agreement with them. Our very strong view is that that hasn’t happened.”

“Staff have said: ‘Look, five years ago, we came to you and said we want to do these things with our shows to make sure they have a sustainable future to make sure that they have a strong online platform.’ And [TVNZ] frankly has not demonstrated strategy and leadership around those things.”

“These are still shows that are very, very popular. Canceling them will reduce costs, but based on TVNZ’s own information that they’ve provided, it will reduce revenue by more.”

It’s been difficult to get any media company executives or even journalists at the two companies affected by these cuts to talk about them, even off-the-record.

Wood is one of the few people who has spoken frankly to broadcasters’ executives, albeit confidentially behind closed doors.

“There is a bit of a delicate dance which has to happen when media companies themselves are making these decisions. And media need to report on that.

“So I have some sympathy, but these aren’t just individual employment issues. This is a public policy issue . . .  about whether we have a functioning and vibrant Fourth Estate.”

Wood was until last year a minister in the Labour government which could have averted the TVNZ cuts.

It spent more than $16 million planning a new public media entity to replace TVNZ and RNZ with a not-for-profit public media entity — but then scrapped it weeks before it was due to begin.

“You’ve just identified one of the core things that we’ve got to deal with. TVNZ, in terms of its statutory form, is neither one thing nor the other. It has a commercial imperative and it also has some other obligations in terms of public good.

“News and current affairs should be at the heart of that — and that is something that we should be much clearer about.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The company says no deal is in place yet with any third party to supply daily news.

Newshub staff learned of the company’s decision at a meeting fronted by Warner Bros Discovery’s Australia and New Zealand chief Glenn Kyne and its Asia-Pacific president James Gibbons today.

In a statement, Gibbons said there was “nothing anyone in our New Zealand networks business could have done better” to avoid the closure.

“It was a combination of very strong economic headwinds both in New Zealand and the global market,” he said.

“The downturn has been severe, and the bounce-back has not materialised as expected.”

Warner Bros Discovery first revealed its proposal to close Newshub on February 28. Newshub Michael Morrah told RNZ’s Midday Report many staff saw today’s decision as inevitable.

‘Many resigned themselves’
“The confirmation was still very upsetting and disappointing, but nothing like the shock of six weeks ago. Many had resigned themselves to the closure,” he said.

“I have worked here for 18 years. We believe in what we do. And know it is important to the people who watch — 900,000 every week. What happens to those people who relied on us to present key news and current affairs?

“And to the investigations that are being worked on?”

Gibbons said $74 million disappeared from broadcast TV advertising in New Zealand in 2023 alone. That was the single largest year-on-year drop over the last three decades outside of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007-8.

“Every business in its own market has to be financially sustainable, and we simply could not continue in our current form.”

Fresh annual figures released yesterday showed total TV advertising revenue in New Zealand TV fell from $517 million in 2022 to $443 million last year.  Digital advertising revenue is increasing but the vast bulk of that goes to offshore tech companies Google and Facebook.

Kyne said free-to-air and news operations were too expensive to run as they were. He was concerned that the move would leave TVNZ as the only service running free-to-air broadcast news, but said there was no other choice.

Impact on plurality
“We are deeply aware of the effect this is likely to have on the plurality of media voices in New Zealand. Having just one TV news operation in New Zealand — that is state-owned — will be an ongoing issue until it is solved.

“But as we noted on the day, it is simply impossible to continue operating in our current form.”

The final day for staff who have been made redundant will be on July 5, and that will also be the final day for the Newshub bulletin, the statement said.

When Newshub’s closure was first proposed in late February, staff were given six weeks to give feedback on the proposal.

“Myself and six colleagues suggested a stripped back Newshub live at 6 and retention of the Newshub (website) to transition from linear TV to a fully-digital model. We thought we had a profitable way forward.

‘We were told the option would be problematic for WBD and produce a downward trajectory for the business,“ Newshub’s investigations editor Michael Morrah told RNZ’s Midday Report.

Other alternative proposals to replace or continue Newshub were also considered amid heavy secrecy, bolstered by the use of non-disclosure agreements.

Considering proposals
In recent days media reports have indicated WBD has been considering proposals from other media companies to create a news service for the company’s channels.

New Zealand Herald media commentator Shayne Currie yesterday reported that Stuff was a leading contender for taking on the organisation’s 6pm news. Some have speculated that NZME, which owns the Herald and Newstalk ZB, could also have an interest.

WBD said today no arrangement with any third party was in place but Mediawatch understands the company has already rebuffed several and is only pursuing projects with one or two players.

Stuff reported yesterday that Stuff was “understood to be a likely contender”  but a spokesperson for Stuff declined to comment on whether it had been in talks with Warner Bros Discovery.

“The main thing is Newshub needs a lifeline. These people deserve a lifeline. Those people who are looking to do these deals, get on and get them done and save some of these people and save some news for Kiwis,” Newshub presenter Patrick Gower told reporters after today’s announcement.

Kyne said the company’s “door has been open to listening to all internal and external feedback and ideas, and we will continue to do so”.

“However, as of now, no deal regarding news output has been made.”

News archives
Kyne said the company was also looking to work with Nga Taonga to preserve its 30-year news archives.

Mediawatch understands that several staff made submissions calling on the company to preserve those archives, with fears that years of work — and New Zealand history — could be lost if they were deleted.

Newshub’s shutdown is the biggest and most far-reaching news closure in the post-covid era.

“Every time we think we’ve landed on stable footing, something comes along and makes it unstable again, forcing us to look at ways of further reducing costs,” Kyne said in a statement when the closure was first proposed.

“We’ve now reached a stage where any further reduction in costs means . . .  proposing to shut down the newsroom and the Newshub website.”

“Everyone can see that the media sector, here in New Zealand, and around the world is facing some very tough circumstances. While Warner Bros Discovery is a large global media company, each business is managed on its ability to sustain itself within the market it operates in.

“Subsidising losses for ongoing years indefinitely is not sustainable,” said Gibbons.

At the time, Warner Bros Discovery said its proposal was is to make the ThreeNow online app “the core of the model, supported by free-to-air linear channels” such as Three, Bravo, Eden, Rush and HGTV.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s media and communications minister is defending pulling out of pre-booked interviews about her portfolio, saying they would have been “boring” for the interviewers.

Last week, Media Minister Melissa Lee cancelled interviews with NZME’s Media Insider and RNZ’s Mediawatch, despite initially agreeing to do them.

It is a tumultuous time for media, with the proposed shutting of Newshub and cancellation of news and current affairs shows at TVNZ, as well as the unclear fate of legislation to make social media giants pay for the news they use.

Lee is set to take a paper to cabinet soon, setting out her plans for the portfolio. She has been consulting with coalition partners before she takes the paper to cabinet committee.

Yesterday, she said that given the confidentiality of the process, there was nothing more she could say in the one-on-one interviews.

“I have actually talked about what my plans are, but not in detail. And I think talking about the same thing over and over, just seemed, like, you know . . . ”

Lee said she received advice from the prime minister’s office, but the decision to pull out was ultimately hers.

‘A lot of interviews’
“I’ve been doing quite a lot of interviews, and I couldn’t sort of elaborate more on the paper and the work that I’m actually doing until a decision has actually been made, and I felt that it would be boring for him to sit there for me to tell him, ‘No, no, I can’t really elaborate, you’re going to have to wait until the decision’s made’,” she said.

It is believed Lee was referring to either the NZ Herald’s Shayne Currie or RNZ’s Colin Peacock.

Asked whether it was up to her to decide what was boring or not, Lee repeated she had done a lot of interviews.

“I didn’t think it was fair for me to sit down with someone on a one-to-one to say the same thing over to them,” she said.

Lee said her diary had been fairly full, due to commitments with her other portfolios.

The prime minister said his office’s advice to Lee was that she may want to wait until she got feedback from the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill process, which was still going through select committee.

‘The logical time’
“Our advice from my office, as I understand it, was, ‘Look, you’re gonna have more to say after we get through the digital bargaining bill, and that’s the logical time to sit down for a long-format interview,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said.

Labour broadcasting spokesperson Willie Jackson said he believed the prime minister’s office was trying to protect Lee from scrutiny.

“There’s absolutely no doubt she’s struggling. If you look at her first response when she fronted media, she had quite a cold response,” he said.

“That’s changed, of course now she’s giving all her aroha to everyone. So they’ve been working on her, and so they should, because the media deserve better and the public deserve better.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The future of Aotearoa New Zealand television news and current affairs is in the balance at the two biggest TV broadcasters — both desperate to cut costs as their revenue falls.

The government says it is now preparing policy to modernise the media, but they do not want to talk about what that might be — or when it might happen.

On Monday, TVNZ’s 1News was reporting — again — on the crisis of cuts to news and current affairs in its own newsroom.

The extent of discontent about the proposed cuts had been made clear to chief executive Jodi O’Donnell at an all-staff meeting that day.

The news of cuts rocked the state-owned broadcaster when they were announced four days earlier.

In fact, it rocked the entire media industry because only one week earlier the US-based owners of Newshub had announced a plan to close that completely by mid year.

No-one was completely shocked by either development given the financial strife the local industry is known to be in.

But it seems no-one had foreseen that within weeks only Television New Zealand and Whakaata Māori would be offering national news to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who still tune in at 6pm or later on demand.

Likewise the prospect of no TV current affairs shows (save for those on Whakaata Māori) and no consumer affairs watchdog programme Fair Go, three years shy of a half century as one of NZ most popular local TV shows of all time.

Yvonne Tahana’s report for 1News on Monday pointed out Fair Go staff were actually working on the next episode when that staff meeting was held on Monday.

All this raised the question — what is a “fair go” according to the government, given TVNZ is state-owned?

Media-shy media minister?
After the shock announcements last week and the week before, Minister of Media and Communications Melissa Lee seemed not keen to talk to the media about it.

The minister did give some brief comments to political reporters confronting her in the corridors in Parliament after the Newshub news broke. But a week went by before she spoke to RNZ’s Checkpoint about it — and revealed that in spite of a 24-hour heads-up from Newhub’s offshore owner — Warner Bros Discovery — Lee did not know they were planning to shut the whole thing.

By the time the media minister was on NewstalkZB’s Drive show just one hour later that same day, the news was out that TVNZ news staff had been told to “watch their inboxes” the next morning.

In spite of the ‘no surprises’ convention, the minister said she was out of the loop on that too.

After that, it was TV and radio silence again from the minister in the days that followed.

“National didn’t have a broadcasting policy. We’re still not sure what they’re looking at. She needs to basically scrub up on what she’s going to be saying on any given day and get her head around her own portfolio, because at the moment she’s not looking that great,” The New Zealand Herald’s political editor Claire Trevett told RNZ’s Morning Report at the end of the week.

By then the minister’s office had told Mediawatch she would speak with us on Thursday. Good news — at the time.

Lee has long been the National Party’s spokesperson on media and broadcasting and Mediawatch has been asking for a chat since last December.

Last Sunday, TVNZ’s Q+A show told viewers Lee had declined to be interviewed for three weeks running.

Frustration on social media
At Newshub — where staff have the threat of closure hanging over them — The AM Show host Lloyd Burr took to social media with his frustration.

“There’s a broadcasting industry crisis and the broadcasting minister is MIA. We’ve tried for 10 days to get her on the show to talk about the state of it, and she’s either refused or not responded. She doesn’t even have a press secretary. What a shambles . . . ”

A switch of acting press secretaries mid-crisis did seem to be a part of the problem.

But one was in place by last Monday, who got in touch in the morning to arrange Mediawatch’s interview later in the week.

But by 6pm that day, they had changed their minds, because “the minister will soon be taking a paper to cabinet on her plan for the media portfolio”.

“We feel it would better serve your listeners if the minister came on at a time when she could discuss in depth about the details of her plan for the future of media, as opposed to the limited information she will be able to provide this Thursday,” the statement said.

“When the cabinet process has been completed, the minister is able to say more. That time is not now.”

The minister’s office also pointed out Lee had done TV and broadcast interviews over the past week in which she had “essentially traversed as much ground as possible right now”.

What clues can we glean from those?

Hints of policy plans
Even though this government is breaking records for changes made under urgency, it seems nothing will happen in a hurry for the media.

“I have been working with my officials to understand and bring the concerns from the sector forward, to have a discussion with my officials to work with me to understand what the levers are that the government can pull to help the sector,” Lee told TVNZ Breakfast last Monday.

A slump in commercial revenue is a big part of broadcasters’ problems. TVNZ’s Anna Burns Francis asked the minister if the government might make TVNZ — or some of its channels — commercial-free.

“I think we are working through many options as to what could potentially help the sector rather than specifically TVNZ,” Lee replied.

One detail Lee did reveal was that the Broadcasting Act 1989 was in play — something the previous government also said was on its to do list but did not get around to between 2017 and 2023.

It is a pretty broad piece of legislation which sets out the broadcasting standards regime and complaints processes, electoral broadcasting and the remit of the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air.

But it is not obvious what reform of that Act could really do for news media sustainability.

Longstanding prohibitions
The minister also referred to longstanding prohibitions on TV advertising on Sunday mornings and two public holidays. Commercial broadcasters have long called for these to be dumped.

But a few more slots for whiteware and road safety ads is not going to save news and current affairs, especially in this economy.

That issue also came up in a 22-minute-long chat with The Platform, which the minister did have time for on Wednesday.

In it, host Sean Plunket urged the minister not to do much to ease the financial pain of the mainstream media, which he said were acting out of self-interest.

He was alarmed when Lee told him the playing field needed to be leveled by extending regulation applied to TV and radio to online streamers as well — possibly through Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

“Are you seriously considering the government imposing tax on certain large companies and paying that money directly to your chosen media companies that are asking for it?” Plunket asked.

“I have actually said that I oppose the bill but what you have to do as the minister is listen to the sector. They might have some good ideas.”

When Plunket suggested Lee should let the market forces play out, Lee said that was not desirable.

Some of The Platform’s listeners were not keen on that, getting in touch to say they feared Lee would bail the media out because she had “gone woke”.

That made the minister laugh out loud.

“I’m so far from woke,” she assured Sean Plunket.

A free-to-air and free-to-all future?
At the moment, TVNZ is obliged to provide easily accessible services for free to New Zealanders.

TVNZ’s Breakfast show asked if that could change to allow TVNZ to charge for its most popular or premium stuff?

The response was confusing:

“Well ready accessibility would actually mean that it is free, right? Or it could be behind a paywall — but it could still be available because they have connectivity,” Lee replied.

“A paywall would imply that you have to pay for it — so that wouldn’t be accessible to all New Zealanders, would it?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked.

“For a majority, yes — but free to air is something I support.”

When Lee fronted up on The AM Show for 10 minutes she said she was unaware they had been chasing a chat with her for 10 days.

Host Melissa Chan-Green bridled when the minister referred to the long-term decline of linear real time TV broadcast as a reason for the cuts now being proposed.

“To think that Newshub is a linear TV business is to misunderstand what Newshub is, because we have a website, we have an app, we have streaming services, we’ve done radio, we’ve done podcasts — so how much more multimedia do you think businesses need to be to survive?

“I’m not just talking about that but there are elements of the Broadcasting Act which are not a fair playing field for everyone. For example, there are advertising restrictions on broadcasters where there are none on streamers,” she said.

Where will the public’s money go?
On both Breakfast and The AM Show, Lee repeated the point that the effectiveness of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money for broadcasting is at stake — and at risk if the broadcasters that carry the content are cut back to just a commercial core.

“The government actually puts in close to I think $300 million a year,” Lee said.

“Should that funding be extended to include the client of current affairs programs are getting cut?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked her.

“I have my own views as to what could be done but even NZ on Air operates at arm’s length from me as Minister of Media and Communications,” she replied.

It is only in recent years that NZ On Air has been in the business of allocating public money to news and journalism on a contestable basis.

When the system was set up in 35 years ago that was out of bounds for the organisation, because broadcasters becoming dependent on the public purse was thought to be something to avoid — because of the potential for political interference through either editorial meddling or turning off the tap.

That began to break down when TV broadcasters stopped funding programs about politics which did not pull a commercial crowd — and NZ started picking up the tab from a fund for so-called special interest shows which would not be made or screened in a wholly-commercial environment.

Online projects with a public interest purpose have also been funded by in recent years in addition to programmes for established broadcasters — as NZ on Air declared itself “platform agnostic”.

Public Interest Journalism Fund
In 2020, NZ on Air was given the job of handing out $55 million over three years right across the media from the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

That was done at arm’s length from government, but in opposition National aggressively opposed the fund set up by the previous Labour government.

Senior MPs — including Lee — claimed the money might make the media compliant — and even silent — on anything that might make the then-Labour government look bad.

It would be a big surprise if Lee’s policy plan for cabinet includes direct funding for the news and current affairs programmes which could vanish from our TV screens and on-demand apps within weeks.

This week, NZ on Air chief executive Cameron Harland responded to the crisis with a statement.

“We are in active discussions with the broadcasters and the wider sector to understand what the implications of their cost cutting might be.

“This is a complex and developing situation and whilst we acknowledge the uncertainty, we will be doing what we can to ensure our funding is utilised in the best possible ways to serve local audiences.“

They too are in a holding pattern waiting for the government to reveal its plans.

But as the minister herself said this week, the annual public funding for media was substantial — and getting bigger all the time as the revenues of commercial media companies shrivelled.

And whatever levers the minister and her officials are thinking of pulling, they need to do decisively — and soon.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It is a response to digital era changes in technology, viewing and advertising — but also the consequence of political choices.

“I can see that I’ve chosen a good night to come on,” TVNZ presenter Jack Tame said mournfully on his stint as a Newstalk ZB panelist last Wednesday.

The news that TVNZ news staff had been told to “watch their inboxes” the next morning had just broken.

It was less than a week since Newshub’s owners had announced a plan to close it completely in mid-year and TVNZ had reported bad financial figures for the last half of 2023.

The following day — last Thursday — TVNZ’s Midday News told viewers 9 percent of TVNZ staff — 68 people in total — would go in a plan to balance the books.

“The broadcaster has told staff that its headcount is high and so are costs,” said reporter Kim Baker-Wilson starkly on TVNZ’s Midday.

On chopping block
Twenty-four hours later, it was one of the shows on the chopping block — along with late news show Tonight and TVNZ’s flagship weekly current affairs show Sunday.

“As the last of its kind — is that what we want in our media landscape . . . to have no in-depth current affairs show?” said Sunday presenter Miriama Kamo (also the host of the weekend show Marae).

Consumers investigator Fair Go — with a 47-year track record as one of TVNZ’s most popular local shows — will also be gone by the end of May under this plan.

If Newshub vanishes from rival channel Three by mid year, there will be just one national daily TV news bulletin left — TVNZ’s 1News — and no long form current affairs at all, except TVNZ’s Q+A and others funded from the public purse by NZ on Air and Te Mangai Paho.

Tellingly, weekday TVNZ shows which will carry on — Breakfast and Seven Sharp — are ones which generate income from “partner content” deals and “integrated advertising” — effectively paid-for slots within the programmes.

TVNZ had made it known cuts were coming months ago because costs were outstripping fast-falling revenue as advertisers tightened their belts or spent elsewhere.

TVNZ executives had also made it clear that reinforcing TVNZ’s digital-first strategy would be a key goal as well as just cutting costs.

Other notable cut
So the other notable service to be cut was a surprise — the youth-focused digital-native outlet Re: News.

After its launch in 2017, its young staff revived a mothballed studio and gained a reputation for hard work — and then for the quality of its work.

It won national journalism awards in the past two years and reached younger people who rarely if ever turn on a television set.

Reportedly, the staff of Re: News staff is to be halved and lose some of its leaders.

The main media workers’ union E tū said it will fight to save jobs and extend the short consultation period.

Some staff made it plain that they weren’t giving up just yet either and would present counter-proposals to save shows and jobs.

In a statement, TVNZ said the proposals “in no way relate to the immense contribution of the teams that work on those shows and the significant journalistic value they’ve provided over the years”.

Money-spinners
But some were money-spinners too.

Fair Go and Sunday still pull in big six-figure live primetime TV audiences and more views now on TVNZ+. Its marketers frequently tell the advertisers that.

TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell knows all about that. She was previously TVNZ’s commercial director.

So why kill off these programmes now?

Mediawatch’s requests to talk to O’Donnell and TVNZ’s executive editor of news Phil O’Sullivan were unsuccessful.

But O’Donnell did talk to Newstalk ZB on Friday night.

“I’ve been quite open with the fact that there are no sacred cows. And we need to find some ways to stop doing some things for us to reduce our costs,” O’Donnell told Newstalk ZB.

“TVNZ’s still investing over $40 million in news and current affairs — so we absolutely believe in the future of news and current affairs. But we have a situation right now that our operating model is more expensive than the revenue that we’re making. And we have to make some really tough, tough decisions,” she said.

“We’ll constantly be looking at things to keep the operating model in line with what our revenue is. Within the TVNZ Act it’s clear that we need to be a commercial broadcaster, We are a commercial business, so that’s the remit that we need to work on.

“Our competitors these days are not (Newstalk ZB) or Sky or Warner Brothers (Discovery) but Google and Meta. These are multi-trillion dollar organisations. Ninety cents of every dollar spent in digital news advertising is going offshore. That’s 10 cents left for the likes of NZME, TVNZ, Stuff and any of the other local broadcasters.”

Jack Tame also pointed the finger at the titans of tech on his Newstalk ZB Saturday show.

Force of digital giants ‘irrepressible’
“Ultimately the force of those digital giants is irrepressible. Trying to save free-to-air commercial TV, with quality news, current affairs and local programming in a country with five million people . . .  is like trying to bail out the Titanic with an empty ice cream container. I’m not aware of any comparable broadcast markets where they’ve managed to pull it off,” he told listeners.

But few countries have a state-owned yet fully-commercial broadcaster trying to do news on TV and online, disconnected from publicly-funded ones also doing news on TV and radio and online.

That makes TVNZ a state-owned broadcaster that serves advertisers as much as New Zealanders.

But if things had panned out differently a year ago, that wouldn’t be the case now either.

What if the public media merger had gone ahead?
A new not-for-profit public media entity incorporating RNZ and TVNZ — Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM)  — was supposed to start one year ago this week.

It would have been the biggest media reform since the early 1990s.

The previous government was prepared to spend more than $400 million over four years to get it going.

Almost $20 million was spent on a programme called Strong Public Media, put in place because New Zealand’s media sector was weak.

“Ailing” was the word that the business case used, noting “increased competition from overseas players slashed the share of revenue from advertising.”

But the Labour government killed the plan before the last election, citing the cost of living crisis.

The new entity would still have needed TVNZ’s commercial revenue, but if it had gone ahead, would that mean TVNZ wouldn’t now be sacrificing news shows and journalists?

“Nobody’s surprised. Surely nobody is surprised that this ecosystem is not sustainable any longer. Something radical had to change,” Tracey Martin — the chair of the board charged with getting ANZPM up and running — told Mediawatch.

“I don’t have any problem believing that (TVNZ) would have had to change what they were delivering. But would it have been cuts to news and current affairs that we would have been seeing? There would have been other decisions made because commerciality . . . was not the major driver (of ANZPM),” Martin said.

“That was where we started from. If Armageddon happens — and all other New Zealand media can no longer exist — you have to be there as the Fourth Estate — to make sure that New Zealanders have a place to go to for truth and trust.”

What were the assumptions about the advertising revenue TVNZ would have been able to pull in?

“[TVNZ] was telling us that it wouldn’t be as bad as we believed it would be. TVNZ modeling was not as dramatic as our modeling. We were happy to accept that [because] our modeling gave us a particular window by which to change the ecosystem in which New Zealand media could survive to try and stabilise,” Martin told Mediawatch.

The business case document tracked TVNZ revenue and expenses from 2012 until 2020 — the start of the planning process for the new entity.

By 2020, a sharp rise in costs already exceeded revenue which was above $300 million.

And as we now know, TVNZ revenue has fallen further and more quickly since then.

“We were predicting linear TV revenue was going to continue to drop substantially and relatively quickly — and they were not going to be able to switch their advertising revenue at the same capacity to digital,” Martin said.

“They had more confidence than we did,” she said.

The ANZPM legislation estimated it as a $400 million a year operation, with roughly half the funding from public sources and half from commercial revenue.

TVNZ’s submission said that was “unambitious”.

“If the commercial arm of the new entity can aid in gaining more revenue to reinvest into local content and to reinvest into public media outcomes, all the better,” the chief executive at the time Simon Power told Mediawatch in 2023.

“It was a very rosy picture they painted. They had a mandate to be a commercial business that had to give confidence to the advertisers and the rest of New Zealand but they were very confident two years ago that this wouldn’t happen,” she said.

In opposition, National Party leader Christopher Luxon described the merger as “ideological and insane” and “a solution looking for a problem”.

He wasn’t alone.

But if that was based on TVNZ’s bullish assessments of its own revenue-raising capacity — or a disregard of a probable downturn ahead, was that a big mistake?

“I won’t comment for today’s government, but statements being made in the last couple of days about people getting their news from somewhere else; truth and trust has dropped off; linear has got to be transferred into the digital environment . . . none of those things are new comments,” Martin told Mediawatch.

“They’re all in the documentation that we placed into the public domain — and I asked the special permission, as the chair of the ANZPM group, to brief spokespersons for broadcasting of the Greens, Act and National to try and make sure that everybody has as much and as much information as we could give them,” she said.

Media and Communications Minister Melissa Lee said this week she was working on proposals to help the media to take to cabinet.

“I don’t give advice to the minister, but I would advise officials to go back and pull out the business case and paperwork for ANZPM — and to look at the submissions and the number of people who supported the concept, but had concerns about particular areas,” Tracey Martin told Mediawatch.

“Don’t let perfection get in the way of action.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

Major media organisations all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch has asked BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it — even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government.

“Palestinian health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people have been killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. They’re blaming an Israeli strike on the hospital.

“But the Israel DefenCe Forces said an initial investigation shows the explosion was caused by a failed Hamas rocket launch.”

That was how RNZ’s news at 8am last Tuesday reported the single deadliest incident of this conflict so far — and likely to be the deadliest one in all of the five times Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza so far.

The Israeli Defence Force also singled out Islamic Jihad for the atrocity — but the absence of hard evidence put the media reporting it in a difficult position.

“It’s still absolutely unclear. There are varying bits of information that are coming out for now. I don’t think anybody can quite say . . . it’s most likely to have been Israel,” the BBC Middle East editor Sebastian Usher told RNZ on Wednseday night.

“They said it seems like it might be a misfired rocket,”

Huge anger on streets
“We can’t say for now, but I don’t think  — in terms of the mood in the Arab world and the Middle East — that that really matters. People out on the streets are showing huge anger and they will reject any investigation, any Israeli claim, to say that Israel is not responsible,” he said.

Reporting those claims and counterclaims creates confusion among the audience. It’s also stoked the anger of those objecting to reporters’ choice of words.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward, for example, was criticised heavily on social media for mentioning the Israeli Defense Force claims — and then expressing doubt about them at the same time.

A video showing a pro-Palestinian protester calling Clarissa Ward “a puppet” has gone viral on social media. So did another falsely accusing her of faking a rocket strike.

The longer version of the video of Egyptian podcaster Rahma Zein confronting CNN reporter Clarissa Ward at the Rafah crossing. It’s raw, sincere, and powerful. Much respect for Rahma, she expressed our collective pain at the Western media’s dehumanization of the Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/yfB7zFYPwe

— Amro Ali (@_amroali) October 20, 2023

Her CNN colleague Anderson Cooper was also criticised online for referring to a huge civilian loss of life during the live report from Tel Aviv in Israel and repeating himself, but then without the word “civilian”.

Among those who, alongside expert investigators, tried to sift the available evidence and cut through the information war was Alex Thompson, correspondent for UK broadcaster Channel Four

“Israel and Hamas can tweet what they like. The truth of what happened here requires independent expert investigation — not happening,” was Alex Thompson’s bleak conclusion.

‘A fierce information war’
“Any doubt is due to a fierce information war that in truth matters little to the victims of the Gaza hospital tragedy,” another British correspondent — ITV Jonathan Irvine — said on Newshub at 6 last Tuesday.

At times, broadcasters have used the wrong words and given audiences the wrong idea.

Last week the BBC’s main evening news bulletin made a rapid apology for describing pro-Palestine protests in the UK as “pro-Hamas”.

“We accept that this was poorly-phrased and was a misleading description,” the presenter told viewers just before the end of the bulletin.

And earlier this month, people protested outside the BBC News headquarters in London about the BBC’s long-standing policy of not labeling any group as “terrorists”.

“You don’t seem to be particularly interested. If the BBC seems to refuse to call terrorists even though the British Parliament has legislated them terrorists — that is a question I haven’t heard the BBC answer yet,” UK government Defence Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC radio flagship news show Today.

“Have you not seen any of the coverage on the BBC of the atrocities, the dead, the injured, the survivors?” the startled presenter asked him.

“How can you say that we’re not interested?” she replied, when Shapps said he had.

An obligation to audiences
The BBC’s deputy chief executive of news Jonathan Munro was at Sydney’s South by Southwest festival this week to talk about how the BBC delivers news from and about conflict zones.

“We’ve already seen journalists lose their lives in this country, working for organisations who are also facing the same dilemmas as we are,” said Munro, who is also the BBC’s director of journalism.

“We’ve got an obligation to audiences to explain what’s going on and that involves lots of people on the ground as witnesses to events, but also the analysis that comes with expert knowledge,” he told Mediawatch.

“Expertise is just invaluable. People like Jeremy Bowen (former Middle East editor and current international editor of BBC News) and our chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and correspondents who are based in that region,” he said.

“But the main story here is the catastrophic loss of life and the appalling conditions that people are living in and that the hostages are being held in — the humanity of that,” he said.

A lot of reporting people will see, hear and read will come from Israel. Reporting from Gaza itself is difficult and dangerous — and access to Gaza at the border is restricted by Israel.

“We have a correspondent in Gaza, but he’s moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south of the strip, a safer option. But he can’t report 24 hours a day, and he is looking after his family which is paramount.

Need for transparency
“So we do have to add to that [with] reporting from Israel and from London by people who know Gaza very well,” he said.

“We have to be transparent about that and tell the audience and then the audience knows that wherever it’s coming from, and you still hold editorial integrity.”

A lot of what people will be seeing from Gaza is amateur footage and social media content that’s very difficult to verify.

The BBC recently launched BBC Verify, dedicated to checking out this kind of material and vetting its use.

“There’s a huge amount of video out there on social media we can all find at the touch of a button. The brand of BBC Verify is a signpost that the material . . . has been checked by us using methods like geolocation and looking at the metadata,” he said.

Even when verified, there are still ethical dilemmas.

For example, BBC Verify used facial recognition software to analyse images of an individual in the Hamas surprise attacks on October 8. It identified one gunman as a policeman from Gaza.

Independently verifying claims
“It’s case-by-case — but something shouldn’t go out on the BBC without us knowing it’s true. There are occasions we would broadcast something and we would tell the audience that we’ve not been able to independently verify a claim . . . and we need to caveat our coverage of the reaction to it with the fact that we do not have our own verification of source material,” he said.

Major media outfits all over the world are copping criticism for the way they’re reporting what’s happening in Gaza and Israel. Mediawatch asks BBC news boss Jonathan Munro how they’re handling it – even when it’s coming from the UK’s own government https://t.co/gm8Fyv4ar1

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) October 21, 2023

Even before the Al Ahli hospital catastrophe amplified emotions, intense scrutiny of reporters’ work was adding to the stress of those reporting from the region.

“Every word you say is being scrutinised so closely and is likely to be contested by one side or the other more or both — and that definitely adds to the pressure,” Channel Four correspondent Secunder Kermani told the BBC’s Media Show last week from Gaza.

“In the Israel Gaza situation it is critical. Every word can be checked and rechecked and double checked for any implication which is either inferred or implied by accident.

“Because our job is to be impartial, tell the reality of the story, and most importantly, share the witnessing of that story by our correspondents,” Jonathan Munro told Mediawatch.

“That’s why we’ve got a significant number of correspondents in Israel and back in the newsroom in London are adding explanations and leaning into that scrutiny on language,” he said.

Adjectives ‘can be dangerous’
“We’re using expertise, our knowledge as an organisation and we’re making sure that at every stage of that every sentence, every paragraph is reflective of what we know to be true.

“But adjectives can be dangerous, because they may imply something which is more emotive than we mean. We have to be quite clean in our language in these circumstances,” he said.

“Of course, people can come on the BBC and express their views in language of their choice. All of those things help to keep our coverage straight and honest and ensure that correspondents on the ground aren’t in danger by slips or mistakes that are made in good faith elsewhere in the BBC output.”

Last week at its annual conference, senior members of the Conservative Party — which is in power in the UK — heavily criticised the BBC for alleged bias and elitism. Some — including home secretary Suella Braverman and former prime minister Liz Truss made a point of praising GB News — the new right-wing TV channel backed by billionaire Brexiteers — for disrupting the news.

“The criticism of the BBC from politicians is as old as the BBC itself. Just because they’re habitual critics doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but we’ve got a well developed set of editorial guidelines which have stood the test of time over many, many difficult stories,” Munro told Mediawatch. 

“The editorial guidelines are robust and public. You can go online and look at them. All of our journalism abides by those guidelines and if you have guidelines that you believe in as an organisation, that’s a significant defence to some of the less well-founded attacks that we sometimes find ourselves on the end of,” he said.

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

Nothing much changed in a 1News Verian poll released last Monday. However, some commentators treated the boring results as a blank canvas on which to express their creativity.

1News presenter Simon Dallow described the results of the newly named 1News Verian poll on Monday as a harsh verdict on the government.

“It is just under three months until the election and Labour seems to have been dented by a series of ministerial distractions,” he said as he introduced the story at the top of the bulletin.

Despite that effort to dress up the poll as a tough verdict on the government, it was mostly notable for how un-notable it was.

Few parties moved more than the margin of error from the last 1News poll in May, which also showed National and Act with the numbers to form the next government — just. National and Labour both dropped the same amount: 2 percent.

You might have thought the damp squib of a result would put the clamps on our political commentators’ narrative-crafting abilities.

Instead, for some it proved to be a blank canvas on which they could express their creativity.

‘Centre-right surge’
At Stuff, chief politics editor Luke Malpass called the poll a “fillip for the right” under a headline hailing a “centre-right surge”.

One issue with that: the poll showed a 1 percent overall drop for the right bloc of National and Act.

“Fillips” generally involve polls going up not down. Similarly, a drop in support doesn’t traditionally meet the definition of a surge in support.

The lack of big statistical swings wasn’t enough to deter some commentators from making big calls.

On Newstalk ZB, political editor Jason Walls said Labour was plunging due to its disunity.

“All [Chris Hipkins] has been really able to talk about is what’s happening within the Labour Party — be it Stuart Nash, be it other ministers who are behaving badly. Jan Tinetti. Voters punish that. And we’ve seen that from the Nats in opposition. They punish disunity.”

It’s uncertain what National’s equivalent 2 percent drop was down to. Perhaps voters punish unity as well.

Wider trends context
Mutch-McKay’s own commentary was a bit more nuanced, placing the poll in the context of wider trends.

On TVNZ’s Breakfast the day after the poll’s release, she said some people inside Labour couldn’t believe the results hadn’t been worse for the party.

Perhaps that air of disbelief also extended to the parliamentary press gallery.

After all, the commentators are right: Labour has had a terrible few months, with high-ranking ministers defecting, being stood down, being censured by the parliamentary privileges committee, facing allegations of mistreating staff, or struggling with the apparently near-impossible task of selling shares in Auckland Airport.

Maybe a sense of inertia propelled some of our gallery members to keep rolling with the narrative of the last few months, in spite of the actual poll result.

Or maybe part of the issue is that hyping up the significance of these polls is a financial necessity for news organisations which pay a lot to commission them.

“You’ve got to squeeze the hell of it. You’ve paid $11,000 or $12,000 for a poll, it’s got to be the top story. It’s got to be your lead. It’s got to have the fancy graphics,” Stuff’s political reporter and commentator Andrea Vance said recently on the organisation’s daily podcast Newsable.

‘Manufacturing news’
“It just feels like we’re manufacturing news. We’re taking a piece of information that’s a snapshot in time and we’re pretending that we know the future,” she said.

Vance went on to say these kinds of snapshot polls don’t actually tell us all much — but she said long-term polling trends are worth paying attention to.

It’s probably no coincidence then that the most useful analysis of this latest poll focused on those macro patterns.

In a piece for 1News.co.nz, John Campbell noted the electorate’s slow drift away from the centre, with Labour losing 20 percent of the electorate’s support since 2020 and National failing to fully capitalise on that drop-off.

He quoted Yeats line, “the centre cannot hold”, before asking the question: “What do Labour and National stand for? Really? Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a growing section of the electorate saying — you’re almost as bad as each other.”

That sentiment has been echoed by other commentators. In his latest column for Metro magazine, commentator and former National Party comms man Matthew Hooton decried the major parties’ lack of ambition.

“At least Act, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori aren’t insulting you with bullshit. Instead they offer ideas they think will make your life better, even if they’ll never happen. So here’s a better idea than falling for the big scare from National or Labour.

‘Reward ideas-based parties’
“How about using your ballot paper to tell them to f*** off and reward one of the three ideas-based parties with your vote instead?” he wrote.

And on his podcast The Kaka, financial journalist Bernard Hickey and commentator Danyl McLauchlan criticised our major parties for their grey managerialism.

“You kind of have to go back to the mid-1990s when so many people just hated the two major parties because they didn’t trust them,” he said.

“We seem to be going through a similar phase now. The two major parties are just these managerial centrist parties. They don’t have much to offer by way of a vision.”

Maybe it’s a little shaky to say anyone’s surging or flopping on the basis of a couple of percentage points shifting in a single poll.

But if you zoom out a bit, at least one narrative does have a strong foundation — voters saying, to quote Shakespeare this time — “a plague on both your (untaxed) houses”.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

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