Cute AI cats may be fun, but crime scene body bags cross the line

Cute cats dancing a tango on social media may be a bit of fun, but posting AI-generated body bags in a real-life crime scene image defies any common standards of human decency.

The Herald on Sunday’s lead story this week revealed that a Facebook page “dedicated to sharing factual stories sourced from police and trusted news platforms” shared a fake image of body bags being loaded into an ambulance at the scene of an alleged triple homicide in Hastings on April 19.

The incident involved the discovery of a mother and her two young children found dead in their Hawkes Bay home. A 36-year-old man has since been charged with three counts of murder.

The image was posted on a Facebook page called Australia/NZ Crime TV. The post has now been removed. It purported to show a cordoned-off scene with two police cars and two ambulances, into with body bags were being loaded. Quite rightly, the Herald on Sunday chose not to publish the image.

When contacted by the Herald on Sunday a person identified only by their forename said the use of AI was being reviewed and that “our previous use of AI has been limited to generating general graphics that provide visual context to our stories”

The site’s opening title includes the clause: “Some images are altered for legal reasons as investigations are ongoing.” In fact, the use of AI-generated images on the site is extensive and includes the re-rendering of crime scenes. And if that disclosure is expected to warn users of the extensive use of digital fabrication, it falls way short. Continue reading “Cute AI cats may be fun, but crime scene body bags cross the line” →

Every silver lining has a cloud: This one is news avoidance

An increase in public trust in news announced last week has obscured a much less welcome statistic: More New Zealanders are actively avoiding reports of what is happening around them.

The 2026 JMAD Trust in News Report from AUT shows the number of people who sometimes avoid the news has risen to 46 per cent – up five percentage points on last year. The number who occasionally avoid (a higher frequency than ‘sometimes’) is up two percentage points to 19 per cent. Those who often avoid the news has dropped two points to 13 per cent.

Cumulatively, that means that more than three-quarters of us feel the need to switch off at some point. Why? More than half said it was because the news negatively affected their mood and more than a third were” worn out” by the news.

News is now an avalanche that never stops. The old circadian rhythm of morning newspapers, evening television news, and hourly radio bulletins in between has been destroyed by a galaxy of online 24/7 news sources and intrusive smartphone notifications. Updates have turned coherent stories into confusing textbites.

This avalanche may be why a quarter of those surveyed felt there was nothing they could do with the information they received and 17 per cent questioned its relevance to their lives. Forty per cent felt there was too much coverage of conflict or politics and, given the adversarial approach our journalists take to political coverage, it’s probably difficult to distinguish between the two. Continue reading “Every silver lining has a cloud: This one is news avoidance” →

Goldsmith’s expectations and return of a fighter ace

There is no better clobbering machine for a government than the money mallet. So should RNZ prepare itself for another hammering from the coalition government when the 2026 Budget is announced in six weeks time?

In its Budget last year, the coalition gave the state-owned broadcaster a whack by announcing it would receive $18 million less funding over the next four years – an annual reduction of $4.6 million.

The government’s letter of expectation to RNZ last month criticised it for running up a $0.5 million deficit in 2024/5, increasing operating costs by 16 per cent, and employing more staff. Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith went on to say, in a tut-tutting tone, that there was “a vital, ongoing expectation that RNZ deliver improved performance”.

There was no recognition of the fact that the 2024/5 year ended only a month after the 2025 Budget cuts were announced and, since then, RNZ had cut its own budgets in line with its reduced funding, and had reduced staff by 5.3 per cent.

That makes Goldsmith’s letter curious to say the least and invites some reading between the lines.

What I see is a further tightening of the screws. His failure to recognise the moves that have been made since the 2025 budget cuts paints a picture of an organisation that has been profligate when, in fact, it has responded to the 2025 budget as it needed to do. Continue reading “Goldsmith’s expectations and return of a fighter ace” →

When something is this broken, it’s time get a new one

It has never been sublime but now, by God, it is ridiculous: Media regulation in New Zealand has reached the point where the public it is supposed to serve are left confused and incredulous.

The fault lies with successive governments that have seen the issues, then walked away because they think the solutions are too hard or they do not have the guts to confront powerful foreign forces. Governments led by both National and Labour have wilfully ignored the fact that the entire system is anachronistic and needs urgent replacement.

Last week the outdated nature of the system was brought into sharp relief by the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s attempt to ram a round peg into a mouldy square hole. In order to claim jurisdiction over Sean Plunket’s online entity The Platform, the BSA was forced to squeeze every last morsel of possible meaning out of its empowering legislation. Continue reading “When something is this broken, it’s time get a new one” →