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

Covid ‘protest’ straight from agitation playbook

Escalation: Expect that word to start appearing in reports of the activities of the ragbag that is using the Covid vaccination as a rallying point.

Commentaries last week, particularly a couple of excellent pieces on The Spinoff, suggested New Zealand was entering a dangerous phase in which, to quote its editor-at-large Toby Manhire, “suddenly things could turn very, very nasty”.

Events of the past few weeks have been drawn straight from the agitation playbook. It started with small and relatively innocuous ‘protests’ that gained media attention more through fears they could become super-spreaders for the virus than any of the anti-vaccination messages being spouted. Continue reading “Covid ‘protest’ straight from agitation playbook” →

Beware of Geeks bearing gifts (again)

Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg share an unfortunate character trait: An inability to accept the truth.

The former U.S. president’s response to being confronted by unpalatable reality is to fabricate large and elaborate lies. Facebook’s founder indulges in cynical diversion.

The scale and depth of Trump’s deceptions over the 2020 election was well-canvassed at the weekend in a two-hour special by CNN’s Jake Tapper titled Trumping Democracy: An American Coup.

Zuckerberg indulged in a massive rebranding exercise to divert attention from the revelations to both the U.S. Congress and British Parliament by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen that screamed out the need for regulation. The corporate Facebook has transmogrified into Meta, short for Metaverse – a vast expanse that threatens to take the world beyond post-truth to post-reality.

His abiding denial of truth, however, lies in diverting attention from Facebook’s appropriation without payment of media content for commercial gain. The company only faces up to that reality when it is forced to do so by governments (such as Australia) whose patience with the social media giant has run out.

Such setbacks have not diminished Facebook’s preferred narrative and last week the diversion tactic reared its head here in New Zealand with an announcement by Meta of “a four-part investment to help New Zealand’s news industry to thrive in a changing digital world”. Continue reading “Beware of Geeks bearing gifts (again)” →

MediaWorks cuts the last tie to the past

MediaWorks’ decision to cut its ties with Newshub and establish its own news service was inevitable.

The news bulletin service it took from Newshub after the news service’s sale to Discovery as part of the Three deal was a compromise that could not stand the test of time. Continue reading “MediaWorks cuts the last tie to the past” →

Did I just buy my last radio?

When I bought a new radio last week, I wondered whether it was the last one I would buy.

No, I’m not planning to part this mortal coil any time soon, but I did wonder whether the wireless was headed for the scrapheap.

After all, smartphones are the new Swiss Army Knife and podcasts are a growth market. Conversely, the daily reach of radio among New Zealand audiences has dropped by 30 per cent since 2014 and it is a straight-line rate of decline.

So here I was, splurging $27.00 on a portable pocket AM FM transistor radio (with emergency flashlight, I might add) and hoping that radio wasn’t dead before Amazon managed to deliver it across Covid-tossed seas. Continue reading “Did I just buy my last radio?” →