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

Erica Stanford needs to give social media review a well-aimed kick

When politicians kick the can down the road it is usually an excuse to do nothing. The Government’s decision to ‘review’ proposals to ban social media for under-16 year olds does not fall into that category. It is the right thing to do, but the can needs to be kicked into next year.

The review was precipitated by a private member’s bill sponsored by National MP Catherine Wedd. By her own admission, that bill “closely mirrors the approach taken in Australia”.

The review must include an assessment of the actual consequences of Australia’s recent federal law banning youngsters from the platforms. That law does not come into force until December.

Canberra’s ban has been widely praised but there are numerous questions over how it will be implemented and how effective it will be. The Australians have a trial underway on an Age Check Certification Scheme, which will assess technology to be used to determine whether people are the age they claim to be when accessing social media. It is due to report next month but, as of now, we don’t know whether it will even work.

Nor do we know whether it will have unintended consequences. For example, there is a proposal by Google that would allow users to store copies of their passport or driver’s licence for age verification purposes. Personally, I would retreat into the analogue world of typewriters, pens and letter paper before entrusting social platforms with such precious proof of identity.

That is just one aspect of the ban that has a question mark hanging over it. Another is how the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg will react to YouTube carving out an exemption for itself when they have not. During the Australian federal election campaign Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was expecting “major pressure”.

Albanese indicated his government would not buckle to that pressure and the legislation contains stiff penalties for non-compliance. However, another of the unanswered questions is how effective those measures will be.

And what would be the overall effect of the likes of Trump-emboldened American platform operators simply pulling plug on Australian operations? After all, Canada was subjected to a news ban by Meta, and Australia is an even smaller market. Can Australians live without social media? Would it push users toward security suspect TikTok if its Chinese owners opted not to join any boycott?

As I say, Australia attracted widespread international praise for tackling the problem of young people’s use of social media. However, that praise was not universal. Leaving aside 12 year olds who think it is “crazy”, opposition to the ban included an open letter signed by 140 international academics and mental health groups. They argued the ban was too simplistic and that systemic regulation (covering social media across the board) was needed. Human rights advocates claimed it infringed on young people’s rights, including access to information and privacy.

The technical, legal, and social fallout from the law will not be resolved in advance of its implementation. Court challenges, for example, may rely on actual evidence of unacceptable inroads or consequences.

In other words, there is much to play out before the Australian blueprint is proven fit for purpose. It would be folly for this country to “closely mirror” it until that fitness test has been passed.

I don’t much care whether the National Party’s motive in usurping Catherine Wedd’s private member’s bill was to take the credit for attacking a serious social issue, or to simply kick the can down the road when it had ‘more important things’ to worry about. Importantly, our solution will no longer turn on Wedd’s Bill.

The review has been placed in a very competent pair of hands – Education Minister Erica Stanford. She is a better choice than Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith, whose preoccupation with other weighty portfolios has seen media issues placed on a back burner this year. Continue reading “Erica Stanford needs to give social media review a well-aimed kick” →

Steven Joyce may be just what NZME needs

The impending appointment of Steven Joyce as chair of NZME may be the best thing that has happened to the media company in quite some time.

The former National government minister has a background that is eminently suited to recharging a board that has been at a strategic low ebb.

Joyce’s political past will doubtless give rise to criticism from the Left that he is a Capital-C-Conservative ‘plant’. He is certainly no Keir Hardie but nor is he hard right.

I admit that my perceptions of Steven Joyce changed after he left politics. Like many, my view of him had been based largely on media reports. I thought he was hardline, doctrinaire and sometimes brutal. That changed after I had read his autobiography On the Record and had a long conversation with him over lunch.

Joyce is not the man I had imagined. And his political leanings are more small-c-conservative than I had thought. Witness this line from his book when he is deciding which party he might join at the start of his political career: “While I was attracted to some of ACT’s policies, it could be a little uncompromising and doctrinaire, and in my experience the world was a little more complicated and nuanced”. So is Steven Joyce.

I do not expect a Joyce chairmanship of the NZME board to be defined by his political past. I expect it will without doubt be defined by his knowledge of the media scene and his strategic and governance skills. Continue reading “Steven Joyce may be just what NZME needs” →

Rise in press freedom ranking but ‘could do better’

Let’s start with the good news: New Zealand has risen three places in the World Press Freedom Index and has the highest ranking of any Commonwealth country. It now sits at 16th.

The latest index was released on World Press Freedom Day on Saturday.

Last year Canada was five places ahead of us. This year it is five places behind, pulled down particularly by coverage of indigenous rights protests which has seen journalists arrested. We continue to outrank the United Kingdom by four places. Our neighbour across the Tasman continues to lag well behind – weighed down by the concentrated ownership of its media. However, Australia has improved by 10 places and has risen from 39th to 29th.

The top of the index continues to be dominated by countries in Northern Europe: Norway, Estonia, Netherlands., Sweden, Finland, and Denmark again fill the first six places.

Last year, the United States had dropped ten places to 55th in the face of public distrust and official antagonism. Many may have been surprised to see it is now down only two more places to 57th. The reason is simple: The index reflects activity in the previous January to December year.  The open assaults on media and challenges to the Constitution by the Trump Administration had yet to register. Expect next year’s ranking to plummet.

Conditions for journalism are poor in half of the world’s countries and, for the first time in the index’s 23-year history, the global state of press freedom is now classified as a “difficult situation” – only one place above the bottom.

The index measures five main indicators: Political, social, legal, economic, and security. Its authors, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), say economic pressures are proving a major – yet often underestimated – factor in seriously weakening the media. And here is where New Zealand’s good news ends. New Zealand is picked out as one of the countries adversely impacted by media shutdowns.

Reading the country-by-country analysis it appears New Zealand owes its rise in the ranks more to the deterioration of other nation’s media freedoms than improvements in our own position. Continue reading “Rise in press freedom ranking but ‘could do better’” →

There is a well-worn pattern to Winnie on the warpath

I fully expect New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to gaslight more journalists and make more chilling threats against news organisations over the coming months. He acts like he is gearing up early for a general election.

His fractious exchange with Corin Dann – who he labelled an “arrogant wokester loser” via social media –  on Morning Report last Wednesday was far from novel. It was classic piece of political gamesmanship that drew on a very, very long tradition of shooting the messenger. Nor was Peters’ veiled threat against RNZ’s finances particularly novel.

As far back as the eighteenth century journalists were being targeted. Edmund Burke is reputed to have given us the title the Fourth Estate but is also (less reliably) credited with the following: “Political journalists defy the laws of nature: They are both scum and dregs.” American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said he would prefer newspapers without government to government without newspapers. However, he also compared journalists to carrion crow feeding off “the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of lambs”.

Patrick Day, in The Making of the New Zealand Press, stated that initially journalism in this country was held in higher regard than in Britain – in spite of the fact that the press here was based on English traditions. A century later, however, things had changed. Keith Holyoake used off-camera intimidation to try to cow interviewers but it was one of his successors who began the unhappy tradition of denigrating (on-air) reporters who ask awkward questions. It became a set piece for that extraordinarily complex character, Robert Muldoon.

Muldoon’s 1976 altercation with television reporter Simon Walker on Tonight looks like the template that Peters all-too-regularly uses to derail awkward interviewers. The interview involved presenting the then Prime Minister with a series of awkward facts that called into question his recent “The Russians Are Coming” warning on Soviet ship movements (which followed the Dancing Cossacks commercial that helped to get him elected in 1975). Muldoon questioned the right to put the questions and lambasted the “smart alec interviewer”. You can view that interview here. It has a familiar ring that belies the fact it is almost fifty years old. Continue reading “There is a well-worn pattern to Winnie on the warpath” →