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

Let’s find the sources of Small Democracy

Government assistance and the call for social platforms to pay their way have highlighted the role of the news media in Big Democracy – holding power to account and ensuring an informed electorate – but what about Small Democracy?

Small Democracy exists in  the finer ends of the community. It is the stuff that enables us to live and work in an equitable and informed way at a local level. 

It cascades from region to city to district to suburb. It targets all the community and it targets sections of the community. 

At each layer, there is a need for robust information.

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These are moving times

The Tuesday Commentary takes a break this week while we move into our new apartment. As you can see, the books are packed ready for the shift.

No journalist likes to leave a hole in the page so here is the beginning of a book I wrote in 2014, Trust Ownership and the Future of News: Media moguls and white knights (London, Palgrave). The issues it addresses are as real today as they were seven years ago.

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Thank God Facebook doesn’t supply electricity and water

We have been shocked by Facebook’s Australian news ban because we have been labouring under a misapprehension: We thought it was a public utility.

It was conceived as a utility (for Harvard University students) and founder Mark Zuckerberg has been masterful in characterising the platform as a democratic space since it moved beyond the ivy league university community to embrace ordinary folk like you and me.

The generic term ‘social media platform’ lends further weight to the perception that it is like a digital version of the companies that supply our electricity and phone services. We see it as a multimedia replacement for yesterday’s mail and landline.

So, when the company suddenly cut Australian news media sources – and, temporarily, weather and some emergency services – the shock didn’t stop at the continent’s vast shoreline. Many countries asked, ‘How could this possibly happen?’

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Think twice when the letter begins with ‘Daddy’

Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, is litigious – multiple simultaneous actions against media attest to that. Her latest ‘win’, however, is a useful wake-up call for all journalists.

A pre-trial judgment against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday in  the UK has provided an unequivocal marker on how editors should treat private correspondence that falls into their hands.

Sir Mark Warby last week allowed a strike out claim and found in favour of the Duchess in an action she brought against Associated Newspapers over publication  of the contents of a hand-written letter she sent to her father. Mr Justice Warby was in absolutely no doubt about the contents of her deeply personal letter being revealed in a WORLD EXCLUSIVE in the London tabloid. “Taken as a whole,” the judge said, “the disclosures were manifestly excessive and hence unlawful”.

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