The attack on TVNZ’s John Campbell for having the gall to express a clearly labelled opinion reminds me of an incident that occurred when I was in Rio de Janeiro. Police stormed a bus on which passengers were held hostage. They opened fire, killing a passenger and leaving the gunman unscathed.
Mysteriously, the captured gunman was dead when the police van arrived at the police station…but that’s another story. I am more concerned with well-intentioned actions that hit the wrong people.
Former Dominion editor Karl du Fresne criticised an opinion piece about the national hui at Tūrangawaewae Marae that Campbell penned for the TVNZ website. At the core of du Fresne’s criticism was the belief that a journalist working for a state-owned media organisation invalidated his position by expressing a personal view (critical of government policy) that nailed his colours to the mast. He called for Campbell to be dismissed.
A cover story in the latest issue of North & South interrogated the controversy. It quoted a number of journalists and academics and, although none called for the TVNZ chief correspondent’s head on a pike, most were of the view that his forthright opinion pieces should not have been published. Some felt it affected public trust in journalists, others placed TVNZ in the same public interest journalism sphere as fully taxpayer-funded RNZ (it is not) and saw this as an opinion-free zone (even RNZ is not).
The issue contained an eloquent – and compelling – defence by John Campbell in which he stated: “I have never been, and I am not, partisan. Full stop. My journalism has never, once, supported a political party.” He spoke of “work in which I am able to amplify other voices”. Adding “That’s still the journalism that matters to me most.”
I have no difficulty with John Campbell stating his opinion on the TVNZ website, so long as it is clearly identified as such – and it is. Thinking back to my days as editor of the New Zealand Herald, I liken Campbell to the paper’s then political editor John Armstrong, who wrote attention-getting opinion pieces but did not allow it to intrude into his straightforward reportage that earned the respect of Parliament and beyond.
Campbell is capable of compartmentalising his reportage and his opinion in the same way that he put a wall between his family’s privacy and the celebrity status that is a seemingly obligatory consequence of having a current affairs show in your name.
Memory is an imperfect research tool but, if I think back over John Campbell’s interviews, he can be just as inquisitorial toward politicians of the Left as of the Right. He can ask searching questions of community leaders as well as bureaucrats. That’s simply a journalist doing his job.
Of course, every journalist has unconscious bias based on factors such as ethnicity, culture and upbringing. Good journalists recognise these traits and sublimate or acknowledge them. And there is a big difference between that and the sort of ideologically-driven cognitive bias that creates alternative universes at either end of the political spectrum. Campbell recognises the first, and he is certainly not guilty of the second.
He would probably plead guilty to displaying empathy toward some of his subjects, at times in an overly demonstrative manner. It’s a fine balance, but empathy should not be confused with bias. There are situations – the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle is an example – where a strictly neutral tone would be translated as cold indifference.
North & South devoted 10 pages to Campbell’s Opinion and whether he crossed a line. Yes, it was a topic worth exploring but, after reading it, I could not help but feel it had missed an opportunity to interrogate a much more pressing issue in the realm of opinion: The mixing of reportage and opinion within news stories.
While I seriously question the story’s contention that a few opinion pieces well down the TVNZ website will erode public trust in media (even when fuelled by indignant outrage that increases their prominence), I have absolutely no doubt that such trust evaporates when an audience can’t distinguish between fact and comment.
It is more than a century since the publisher of The Guardian, C.P. Scott penned his famous editorial in which he set out the role of his newspaper:
“Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
Somehow, we have lost sight of that sage advice. The 2023 JM&D report on trust in New Zealand media found that 73 per cent cited opinion and a lack of factual information as a reason not to trust the media. The result pointed to a growing tendency to blur or ignore that distinction between comment and fact.
I do not intend to use an example because that would unfairly point the finger at one person when the issue is almost endemic. We see it in speculation on future moves, in assessments of impact, and in how matters should be viewed by the (unconsulted) public. Some journalists are given the privilege of regularly foisting their personal views on an audience that is left to figure out for itself whether it is being presented with facts, analysis, opinion, or an idiosyncratic amalgam of all three. Sometimes tripping over the line may result simply from too many ill-chosen adjectives.
I do not believe that in New Zealand this mixing of facts and views is driven by the sort of manipulation that Rupert Murdoch has foisted on an unsuspecting – or complicit – public. Rather, it is a reaction to two factors. The first is the faltering appeal of ‘straight facts’ in a social media environment where comment is king, and personalities populate the palace. The second is an attempt to differentiate in a small market with inadequate editorial resources.
It may also be a response to a Post-Truth world, one that will gain new emphasis and new dimensions if Donald Trump wins this year’s U.S. presidential election. In that world there may be no such thing as ‘truth’, only what we wish to make it.
Whatever the motivation, the result is confusion and distrust on the part of the audience. It’s not the sole reason for an alarming decline in media trust, but it certainly contributes to it.
It should not be that way and it need not be.
We swim in a vast ocean of information, one in which misinformation and disinformation create waves that threaten to swamp civil society. There is a vital role for journalism to play in helping to make sense of the tsunami of words, sounds, and images that envelops us every day.
The role lies in first finding the facts and bringing them to public attention. It then has the task of contextualising that information and analysing its import. Those latter functions need to be firmly based on knowledge and established processes such as deductive reasoning, expressed in ways the audience can follow.
Over time, such an approach serves to create trusted sources and to provide news stories that have utility for those who consume them.
Opinion, on the other hand, is no more than that…someone’s point of view. It sinks in a sea already awash with the stuff. There is a real danger that audiences – particularly those who have not grown up in a news-consuming environment – will place opinionated journalists in the same boat as everyone else with a point of view. Journalism as a whole will suffer as a result.
This ‘audience’ has abandoned her lifetime habit of RNZ & TVNZ news because of the partisan bias. I abandoned Campbell when I watched him suck up to David Bain on the steps of the courthouse. I’m ‘with’ du Fresne on the matter of C’s lack of objectivity in his current position despite not bothering with him now. There’s a plethora of other material I give my time to.
I think you speak to a polarizing of population that goes beyond journalism. Interesting that you condemn Campbell in spite of your admission that you have not watched or heard him for years.
Perhaps to the first. I don’t condemn him Gavin…I said I agree with Karl that attacking the coalition govt from his position & isn’t admirable & certainly lacks objectivity. We’re all free to say what we think but he has a pulpit funded by taxpayers & appears to be running an anti-govt campaign, Karl’s point. I don’t find that a stretch & apparently nor do some others.
A misconception Hilary. TVNZ is not “funded by the taxpayer”. It is state owned but is commercially funded in the same way as ZB, The Herald etc.