Author: Gavin Ellis

Gavin Ellis is a media consultant, commentator and researcher. He holds a doctorate in political studies. A former editor-in-chief of the New Zealand Herald, he is the author of Trust Ownership and the Future of News: Media Moguls and White Knights (London, Palgrave) and Complacent Nation (Wellington, BWB Texts). His consultancy clients include media organisations and government ministries. His Tuesday Commentary on media matters appears weekly on his site www.whiteknightnews.com

Winstanley will not turn RNZ into NewstalkZB2

It is as inevitable as death and taxes that Jason Winstanley will change Radio New Zealand, but don’t start pasting the NewstalkZB logo on top of the RNZ tohu just yet.

The outcome of the forthcoming election will play a huge part in determining the mark that the veteran commercial broadcaster will put on RNZ as its new chief executive and, in any event, he will not be there to create NewstalkZB2. You don’t compete by being the same.

Winstanley, currently chief audio officer at NZME and due to take up his new role next year, will have had his eyes wide open when he accepted the new role. He would have known full well that the letter of expectation to RNZ from the incoming minister will be written in ink that is no longer simply blue or red but a weird colour the likes of which we may not yet have seen.

Speculation of change started the moment Winstanley’s appointment was announced. His strongly commercial broadcasting background – plus the reasonable belief that his appointment had been strongly endorsed by the equally-commercial RNZ chair Brent Impey – predictably led to images of a wolfish NewstalkZB poorly disguised with a public broadcasting sheepskin thrown over its microphone. Continue reading “Winstanley will not turn RNZ into NewstalkZB2” →

A bid to round up more than the usual suspects

A famous line from the 1942 movie Casablanca is a good description for the limited outlook of our news media: “Round up the usual suspects”.

No, I am not suggesting that journalists are as duplicitous as Vichy French police prefect Captain Louis Renault, even if he used the phrase to throw his colleagues off the scent (after witnessing Humphrey Bogart’s character shoot a Nazi). Rather, the phrase is a useful way of describing the relatively narrow range of voices we see and hear from our news outlets.

There is a predictability about the sources and the way they are depicted. This is no more so than in the range of opinion writers we see in our newspapers and whose views are replicated on associated digital platforms.

The vast majority are journalists, former journalists, and people with past (or present) associations with the political process. Don’t get me wrong: They make useful contributions to public discourse, but they fall well short of the Habermasian ideal of the public sphere.

Jürgen Habermas had an idealised view that everyone could participate as equals in rational discussion in pursuit of truth and the public good. However, he knew the reality was significantly more limited. That should not stop us, however, for seeking an ever-widening public sphere.

For that reason, I was heartened to see Stuff Digital editor-in-chief Keith Lynch’s call for new contributors to the Stuff platform. Last week he launched a competition of sorts. Its aim is to add different voices to the Stuff conversation. It is a mission I applaud. Continue reading “A bid to round up more than the usual suspects” →

National must come clean over Official Information Act

The National Party needs to come clean on what it intends to do with the Official Information Act. It is simply not good enough for Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith to kick the can past the election.

Last year Goldsmith instructed the Ministry of Justice to prepare a briefing paper on the operation and cost of the OIA. Stuff revealed on Friday that the results had been quietly placed on the ministry website a fortnight ago under the heading Regulatory Stewardship, with no accompanying announcement.

The documents indicate that Goldsmith started the ball rolling last year on possible changes to the OIA by seeking information on the costs of OIA requests across the public sector. Consultants produced a report in November giving indicative costs, which they estimated to be $183.6 million last year. In March the Secretary for Justice, Andrew Kibblewhite, and State Services Commissioner, Sir Brian Roche, wrote to government agencies signalling more detailed requests for information and the consultants, Tregaskis Brown, were commissioned to do more detailed work. They broadly confirmed the original costings in a final report dated 14 July 2026, but repeated a number of caveats (such as the way OIA request numbers were calculated) that could push the real costs significantly higher. Initial assumptions about better ways of proactively releasing state sector information were also confirmed.

Information on OIA patterns and costs, plus advice from the ministry, have been made available to the Beehive progressively throughout the year but last week Goldsmith simply said: “No decisions have been made. We will consider this advice, including the estimated costs, in the next parliamentary term”.

The Official Information Act is the foundation stone of open government in this country. It is the only guarantee we have of transparency over what is being done in our name and on our behalf. Therefore, we have a right to know what is on the minister’s mind. After all, he was thinking about it a year ago. Continue reading “National must come clean over Official Information Act” →

Where are much-needed party policies on media?

Two months out from the election, and we have yet to see new policy from any of the seven main political parties on media and communication.

Only the Greens have a media policy on their website – and it is effectively a repeat of the 2023 policy that was heavy on high-minded rhetoric but very light on functional detail. No party has yet presented voters with practical initiatives that take account of the significant shifts in the media industry since the last election.

Admittedly, this is not the sort of policy that will sway voters, but manifestos are more than vote-grabbers. They represent commitments by each party to use their best endeavours during the coming Parliamentary term to give effect to what they say they will do in the interests of the public good.

Unless there is a sudden avalanche of media policy promises, the signal the parties are sending is that, in this area of public policy, they plan to do very little.

I do not believe our politicians are unaware of the precarious state of journalism in this country. They have been lobbied by every media organisation and left in no doubt that the cuts that have kept newsrooms in operation are not sustainable in even the medium term.

The have been warned we will see the loss of significant news publications and news broadcasts within the term of the next government unless there is a reset. The playing field needs to be levelled to overcome the pernicious effects of uncontrolled foreign digital players in our media market. Continue reading “Where are much-needed party policies on media?” →