An iconic photograph of Diana Princess of Wales came to mind as I contemplated the year ahead. It shows her on a dusty Angolan track, dressed in blast vest and visor, flanked by signs with skull-and-crossbones and a stark warning. I recalled the image because media this year will need to be very careful where they tread.
Care, of course, comes with the territory but the figurative landmines that media could face this year go beyond the usual hazards. Some will be sown by the Covid pandemic while others will take advantage of the frayed tempers that result of seemingly endless restrictions. Some will be planted by groups marching to the drumbeat of polarised opinion while others will result from the mistaken placement of measures to protect New Zealanders. And a few will be ‘own goals’, where the media step backwards onto their own devices.
As the country moves into its third year of pandemic, we can expect an increase in the intolerance that was becoming all too apparent in 2021. It will manifest itself in a variety of ways and require media to walk a narrow and winding path – bounded on each side by those death-head signs – that preserves legitimate freedom of expression while minimising public harm.
Anti-vaxxers are rather careless in their minelaying. Almost all their mines are simply laid on the ground in plain sight. Science and common sense are effective countermeasures, and the anti-vaxxers tend to step on their own devices in fits of wild exaggeration. Journalists have become reasonably adept at dealing with this particular hazard and, as the threat of pandemic recedes, we may hear less of it.
In the meantime, however, we can expect ongoing attacks on various aspects of the Covid response. The danger for journalists will lie in being able to differentiate between genuine public interest and blatant self-interest wrapped in a New Zealand flag. Media shouldn’t expect the latter to warn them of the minefield through which they rush to the rescue.
Growing intolerance in the third year of the pestilence will also see perspective being warped and degraded. Journalists will need to judge whether what they are being told is a proportionate response or beyond the bounds of fairness. Excessive language and acts may seem to make good copy, but could the potential effect on the public be more explosive than the situation would justify?
That is not to suggest suppressing coverage. Intolerance and excess can be communicated to the public without replicating the language and behaviour of a perpetrator whose actions may, in fact, be motivated by the publicity they could receive. Reported speech and paraphrase mean journalists can bear witness without falling for the propaganda.
Other forms of intolerance will be more challenging for journalists in the coming year.
Take, for example, cancel culture. This enjoins journalists and media organisations to effectively erase facts in acts of historical and even contemporary revisionism and suppression. The dilemma facing the journalist is that, superficially, the reason for cancellation – say, an egregious breach of human rights such as slave-trading – may look valid. In reality, an ideologically based demand that the public record be ‘cleansed’ or that certain people be denied a voice for authentic opinions is an affront.
Yet, how well prepared are journalists and their organisations to resist cancellation demands? Sadly, the source may be an academic institution, a respected cultural organisation, even a government agency. The controversy that surrounded seven academics who put their name to a Listener letter on mātauranga Māori and science won’t be the last.
The challenge for journalists will be two-fold. They must expose cancel culture and resist pressure to censor valid but perhaps unpopular viewpoints. At the same time, media must avoid standing on a landmine by supporting bogus causes.
They will need to create an intellectually sound defence against assaults by sometimes powerful forces because, ifjournalists don’t resist cancel culture, society risks falling into what German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann called “the spiral of silence”.
Perversely, perhaps, media in 2022 will also run the risk of standing on a mine because they didn’t know when to shut up. Some media outlets are preoccupied by opinion. Red-rag columnists (and highly-opinionated reporting that is ‘legitimatised’ by calling it “analysis”) risk polarising an audience that is increasingly open to confirmation bias and denial.
Polarisation is a concept we might like to associate principally with the United States, but New Zealand is not immune. It is both a cause and a consequence of the intolerance that has been growing here. At its extreme are increasing threats of harm against politicians, including the prime minister, but there a lower-level manifestations that festoon social media. If media start chasing polarised audiences, the strategy will blow up their faces. It will alienate those on other parts of the spectrum and do no more than accelerate the decline in the level of trust that people reside in media.
Sadly, media will also face hazards in the commendable efforts many are making to better align journalism with the underlying principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. With backing from the Public Interest Journalism Fund, a range of projects will be unveiled in 2022. The aim of many will be to provide a more equitable dimension to reportage and coverage of Te Ao Māori. That has already led to unfounded claims that the media has been ‘bought off’ on Treaty issues (and, by implication, criticism of Māoridom). Media organisations can readily meet the objectives of the projects, and give the lie to ‘sell-out’ claims by the way they perform this year. However, they are standing in front of one particular landmine that could cause an own-goal.
Many media outlets have made significant efforts to promote te rēo Māori. Those efforts are laudable, and reflect what seems to be a general desire by New Zealanders to recognise our indigenous language’s official status and to assimilate more of it into their communication. It is fair to say that many Pākehā are on a steep learning curve. However, these efforts face a potential backlash when te reo Māori (beyond the growing list of words with which the general population is familiar) is used by mainstream media without an accompanying English translation. The result is frustration. And that can breed resentment. This is one landmine that is so easily avoided by those outlets recognising the educative element of their use of te reo Māori and providing an accompanying translation.
The public will know when any of these landmines are triggered but there are others that will explode inside the newsroom and the effect may not be felt immediately outside the organisation.
Anyone who has worked in a news organisation knows the working environment can be a minefield. That will be no more so than when they move from ‘wartime’ pandemic conditions into a post-Covid ‘normality’.
Like the vast majority of businesses in New Zealand, media organisations learned to operate with many of their employees working from home. With the Traffic Lights set to red, that is likely to continue…and for good reason. However, the point may come during this year when remote working is no longer a necessity but becomes an option.
There are attractions for employers in work-from-home situations. If enough work remotely, the organisation’s physical space requirements – and overheads – can be reduced. Media organisations have already demonstrated a remarkable ability to keep operating with many staff working from home. And, long before Covid struck, some of their journalists already enjoyed the flexibility of home-based work. The experience of the past two years has shown that these numbers can grow. There is talk here and elsewhere of it becoming the norm. As the old Russian proverb says: There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution. However, moves in that direction require careful planning as there are several landmines that could be planted in their path.
Last November the Reuters Institute at Oxford University released the results of a survey across 42 countries on moves toward hybrid newsrooms. A third had already decided to introduce a hybrid model and half were considering it. Forty per cent flagged reduced office space and three-quarters said they would be redesigning their newsrooms.
The dynamics of a newsroom will be fundamentally changed by a hybrid model and if it isn’t done properly it could blow up in the news organisation’s face. Redesign, for example, needs to be a cooperative endeavour. It is not solely a physical exercise. Changes to physical spaces affect the ways in which people work – including those operating from home.
The Reuters report signalled potential issues with a hybrid workforce. It found managers were concerned about issues like ‘proximity bias’, where the voices of those working remotely get ignored whilst those physically in the office (and close to decision makers) benefit by being there in person. There are also issues over getting people physically together, fostering team spirit, and motivating staff that managers rarely saw face to face.
The report concluded that that news organisations contemplating the hybrid model needed to have clear rules around meetings, processes to monitor mental wellbeing, documented processes, sophisticated communications systems, and workload management. It identified “big questions” around how much flexibility to allow and whether it should be based on specific roles or equally applied.
Get it right and the hybrid newsroom offers a dynamic and creative environment. Failure to work through the issues before adopting a permanent hybrid newsroom could create a veritable minefield of problems. Sooner or later, they will affect how…and how much…news is delivered.
This is the first Tuesday Commentary of the year. From this week the commentary will also be available as a podcast.
Yes, 2022 will have minefields to negotiate but there will be high points and journalism to celebrate. International forecasts express a degree of optimism about the state of the industry, and we trust that will also be reflected in New Zealand.
It’s a little late but HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Happy new year.