Like a picture, a grunt can be worth a thousand words. The Minister for Media and Communications needed to do no more than make an annoyed sound to convince the chairman of Television New Zealand that the government was, well, annoyed.
Paul Goldsmith would surely have known that he needed to do no more than grunt when TVNZ board chair Andrew Barclay inexplicably raised a contentious One News item in a call he initiated with the minister. A low, short guttural sound said it all.
When interviewed about the call, Goldsmith pressed ‘play’ and stated: “He brought up the story in question, I did not make any comment, as it would be inappropriate for us to discuss editorial matters.”
It would not only be inappropriate, but it would also be unlawful. Section 28 of the Television New Zealand Act states that no shareholding minister (in this case Goldsmith) may give a direction in respect of the gathering or presentation of news or the preparation or presentation of any current affairs programme or content.
A grunt is not a direction. But it speaks volumes.
By now you’ll know what prompted it. A story, stating gang members now slightly outnumbered police, ran before a piece that might be seen as proof that the government’s ‘tough on crime’ policy was working. The later story said there were fewer victims of violent crime and serious repeat youth offending had fallen.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell did not like that – ‘annoyed’ is probably not strong enough – and took to Facebook to say so. A contrite TVNZ news executive rang Mitchell after seeing the post and a second, more positive story followed.
The post was not a direction. But it spoke volumes.
That episode, and another matter to which I’ll return shortly, got me thinking about attempts to influence editorial policy. I faced my share of it as editor of the New Zealand Herald.
It began the day I was appointed and I was given a direction by the board. The chairman told me that the paper must not advocate the use of violence toward a political end. Given that the then-owners were Irish, I could see where they were coming from. I raised no objection. Who would? That was the only direction I ever received from the board, although I did get a call from Tony O’Reilly (chair of the parent company) who – fresh from a meeting with Nelson Mandela – asked if I would mind helping to promote the cause of generic AIDS drugs in Africa.
Attempts to influence from outside the board were more frequent and sometimes more subtle. I received a call from a manager asking whether I was aware that a close associate of the company was a director of a firm that had received negative comments in an editorial. I replied that I was aware, and left a pregnant silence. “Oh, he stammered, “that’s alright then”.
Less subtle were requests that I go to talk with the heads of companies who were not pleased with our coverage. I met some. The vast majority only wanted to see positive coverage but that, I told them, was not the primary role of a newspaper. Few got a climbdown. I recall only one instance, where we had muddled the facts.
Sometimes, the influence is on the pocket. An occupant of the Herald editor’s chair before me felt the full wrath of an industry body (and all of its members) over a story that was correct and would not be retracted. The organisation threatened to withdraw substantial advertising, but still the editor would not back down. The advertising stopped but, with the full backing of the managing director, the editor stood his ground. Months later the advertising returned – it had hurt them as much as it hurt the newspaper, and it sent a message. There was no retraction.
Even prime ministers tried their luck. They were regular visitors to the editor’s office and used the opportunity to press their cases. Often, they would play good cop, bad cop solo acts. Those meetings were private, but I do take some pride in the fact that four successive prime ministers from both sides of the political spectrum described the Herald at one time or another as “The Opposition”. Another phrase for it is “holding power to account”.
I am certain that my counterparts and successors have had to withstand attempts to influence or dictate coverage. All, I am sure, would have been mindful of the fact that if you give in once – without proper cause – you’ll be on a slippery slope.
Irrespective of what transpired between government ministers and TVNZ on the crime story, the broadcaster will be seen as caving in to political pressure because it aired a subsequent, more positive, take on the declining crime statistics. TVNZ will be regarded as susceptible to pressure – irrespective of the fact that it has statutory protection against political interference in editorial content.
Slippery slopes bring me to the other matter.
NZME, publisher of the New Zealand Herald and owner of NewstalkZB, has announced the appointment of Hamish Rutherford as chair of its editorial advisory board. Rutherford is a highly experienced former journalist, but it is the ‘former’ that creates a problem. He is, and will continue to be, a lobbyist with government relations agency BRG. Before joining the agency, he was Chief Press Secretary to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Rutherford told RNZ’s MediaWatch that he had been upfront about his other work and would continue to be. The agency’s principal, Georgina Stylianou, said any potential conflicts of interest would be dealt with quickly. NZME chairman Steven Joyce says the advisory board did not make editorial decisions and would be bound by the company’s conflict of interest policies.
I have no doubt that Rutherford will abide by those rules but one of the subtleties of influence is that it works on our own minds. The people he has worked for, and the information he has accrued in each of his positions, cannot be dismissed by a declaration.
Like all of us, Hamish Rutherford is susceptible to confirmation bias or the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs or values. It is a sort of cognitive shortcut. The effects of these background influences can be subtle. Avoiding them takes work and sometimes we are unaware of the influences in play.
It affects not only our decision making and argument, but also our impressions. We can use conscious means to counteract these tendencies in deciding a course of action. However it is harder at a subliminal level, such as the impressions we gain of events and people. Hamish Rutherford will have to apply considerable rigour to avoid being influenced by his other work.
And, for NZME, it is also a matter of the impressions they give. Appointing a government lobbyist and former Luxon media minder will feed the confirmation bias of those who believe the Herald is being pushed to the Right by its substantial shareholder Jim Grenon.
And you can add conspiracy theory to the mix. The NZME editorial advisory board does not meet publicly. We do not know what is discussed and what results from those discussions. It may not make editorial decisions, but what influence does it have?
Prime Minister Rob Muldoon was adept at applying pressure, although he was not very subtle about it. One of your predecessors at the NZ Herald allowed him to visit the Herald’s picture library and sort through the photos of him. Much to the horror of the picture editor, my brother Rob Tucker, he demanded the removal of most of them because he didn’t like the expressions various Herald photographers had captured. He got his way. He tried it on with me when I was editor of the Herald’s rival, the Auckland Star. After he lost his job as the PM, I asked him to write us a weekly column (which we placed below Tom Scott’s, the two separated by an image of barbed wire). I always read both before they were published, and one day feared Muldoon was defaming someone. I removed the offending sentence. He rang to berate me, telling me he had fought a couple of dozen defamation cases…and won them all. Sure, I said, but it’s my newspaper and in my view what you wrote was potentially dangerous, to us both. I did agree to let him know in future if I was cutting something. I never had reason to, as it turned out. That week, his radio show was mainly devoted to an attack on my integrity. However, he continued his column, and a year or so later called in to ask if I was okay with him publishing them in a book. I was happy to agree to that. Later, I invited him to speak to my journalism students each year. I noted that the very few who were impertinent enough to challenge his position on some issues went on to distinguished careers.
An anonymous contributor has offered a comment on a Paul Goldsmith Facebook post. I would be grateful if it could be resent with the poster’s name attached. Knightly Biews does not accept anonymous comments.