News media’s hellish year, as seen by a cock-eyed optimist

Hidden in every nightmarish landscape there has to be a glimmer of hope. And, unless we look for it, we are sentenced to a form of purgatory. So, while I am struggling to retain my optimism in the face of claims that I am naïve beyond my (advanced) years, I refuse to see New Zealand media’s past year only in terms of what has been lost.

I was heartened to see that New Zealand Geographic has reached the 10,000 subscribers it needed to continue publishing. I was encouraged by Duncan Greive’s note that The Spinoff added 3,000 recurring members in less than two weeks in response to a plea for financial support. He said in an email: “The goal remains the goal, but between the new members and some one-off donations, we’re feeling much better about where we’re at going into summer, and cautiously optimistic that with a lot of work we can achieve that big goal some time in the new year.”

Then my old colleague Tim Murphy also came to my rescue with an email that included a link to Newsroom’s report to readers for 2024 (you can read it here). In the report was a section titled “Journalism with impact”. It listed the news site’s prominent investigations and analyses, demonstrating that accountability journalism is alive in this country. It was work of which Murphy and his co-editor Mark Jennings could be justly proud.

Had other outlets chosen to follow Newsroom’s end-of-year example I am sure they, too, could have pointed to where their journalism had worked as it should – speaking truth to power.

Our journalists can take real pride from some of what they have done. They demonstrate they have the knowledge, talent and intellect to deliver on their solemn obligations. That’s the good news.

However, the news is never all good. In the past, I have referred to such fine examples as ‘oases of good journalism’, recognising that they exist in an otherwise arid desert. There is still much wrong with the way the editorial content of our news media is being produced and that, together with a raft of systemic failures, has placed the industry in jeopardy. And in 2024, the sand encroached even further.

The loss of arable land is set out in the latest JMaD News Ownership in New Zealand Report. I do not need to cover its content in detail. You can read the report here . However, Professor Wayne Hope summed up what is facing our news media. He wrote of a “perfect storm” that has “decimated news media organisations, journalistic culture and the mass mediated domain”. He described the current situation as “historically momentous”, adding: “For contemporary defenders of public sphere principles, anxiety and uncertainty prevail.”

The comprehensive JMaD report then listed a litany of reductions, contractions and closures that collectively have represented an unprecedented loss of journalistic output and plurality or, as Wayne Hope put it: “…the desiccation of an already-weakened mediated public sphere.”

His use of the word “mediated” is important. Contrary to what some may think, the “unmediated” digital public sphere is not the realisation of free expression and democratisation of information. It is a space controlled by regulation-avoiding transnational corporations who make no distinction between the sharing of cat videos and the spread of malevolent disinformation by bad actors.

A mediated public sphere, with content produced by professional journalists bound to codes of practice and values predicated on public good, is not simply nice-to-have. It is an indispensable part of a democratic society. As British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer wrote in The Guardian in October: “Journalism is the lifeblood of democracy. Journalists are guardians of democratic values. These simple facts are so woven into the fabric of our society that we often take them for granted.”

We do so at our peril, and we are in peril now.

JMaD’s “perfect storm” has not abated. On Friday I watched the final broadcast of Whakaata Māori news bulletin Te Ao in which Peata Melbourne recalled its past highlights. I was left with an overwhelming sense that this uniquely Māori visual perspective will be lost to whānau who do not access the digital service that will now be its sole outlet. Similarly, the Christmas present for residents in up to 13 communities around the North Island will be the loss of their local NZME community newspaper. Stuff’s remaining community newspapers in Northland have already closed this year.

I suspect that what we are seeing are the consequences of irreversible downward trends in newspaper finances and no publishers, including Stuff, NZME and Allied Press, will be immune.

Meanwhile TVNZ is quietly preparing viewers for a move away from linear broadcasting to streaming. How often does One News now invite us to “go to the menu at the side of your smart TV and click on ‘News’…” When that is the sole option (and the 6 pm bulletin is no longer destination viewing) what will happen to a newsroom that has already been reduced and relegated? And will TV3’s Stuff-supplied news survive when Warner Bros-Discovery – with the same overseas-driven indifference with which it closed Newshub in July – inevitably moves all its New Zealand operations to a streaming platform ?

Read through the JMaD report and you will be left in no doubt that the business model for news media is broken. Yet the government seems intent on applying an overtly neoliberal approach in the minimal moves it has made this year. Its most notable achievement has been to remove the ban on Sunday and Christmas advertising for broadcasters. Let the market rule, amen.

Its Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill is similarly market driven: Let the parties negotiate. It picked up where the Labour-led government left off, then put the Bill on hold until next year. The delay may be to allow it to add Australia’s hardball approach that Canberra announced last week . Or it may not, if our government has been spooked by equally hardball talk from Google.

Next year the government will be confronted by the reality that the media system cannot fix itself. If it wishes, the industry can recapture the social purpose of its content, but the systemic issues have gone beyond the point where the players have all the tools necessary for a structural reset.

Next year – and, if not next year, then certainly before the next general election – the coalition government will be faced with the need for major intervention to prevent the loss of elements of journalism without which democracy will be demonstrably weakened. Failure to act in those circumstances will have repercussions that no political party should wish to contemplate.

Be in no doubt: Next year there will be further closures. And some of the blame for that may rest with the present government. Yesterday the Minister for Local Government, Simeon Brown, announced “reforms” to the sector which include removing a requirement that local authorities place public notices in newspapers. With the stroke of a pen, the government may deny community and regional titles, in particular, a source of revenue upon which they rely and without which they could die.

The government does not seem to have heeded the warning on the front page of the Westport News when the Buller District Council announced it was moving most of its advertising from the paper (a move later rejected by councillors). The owner left no doubt the loss of that advertising threatened its survival. Yesterday’s announcement visits the same potential fate on many more newspapers.

We must hope for two things. First that the coalition government has an epiphany and accepts it must act to save journalism at every level. And, second, that politicians in every party have the sense to base intervention on public good and do not see it as a misguided opportunity to strengthen their own position. Change must be predicated on providing the means for journalists to meet their solemn obligations in a sustainable, independent, pluralistic setting.

It can be done. While some may see me as Dr Pangloss (the hero’s tutor in Voltaire’s Candide) and given to irrational optimism, I refuse to be cowed.

However, after a year like 2024 and the prospect of worse to come, I admit I need some of Pangloss’s spirit to keep me going. As he lay dying after being thrown into a fire, and before he spat out his last tooth along with “a great quantity of corrupted matter”, Pangloss said to Candide: “All is well, all is for the best”.

We can but hope.

This is the final column of 2024. The Tuesday Commentary will resume next February.

Meri Kirihimete me te tau hou

*An earlier version of this column contained a paragraph that has been deleted as it misunderstood Stuff’s current corporate structure and moves to formalise its subsidiary entities.