Tar from Trump’s brush could splatter NZ media

Do not look upon incoming President Donald Trump’s widely anticipated assault on the American media with sympathetic detachment. Watch, instead, the way our own media systematically becomes spattered with tar from the same brush.

Attitudes are no longer formed solely from domestic influences. The Internet has not only broken down national information boundaries: It has removed the distinction altogether.

For those who receive most – or all – of their news through social media, the source has become either irrelevant or undefined. As a result, attitudes toward journalists and the institutions in which they work have become as transnational as the platforms from which the viewpoints are formed.

Yes, it’s early days but virtually all of the alarm over Trump’s well-signalled assault on press freedom is being directed at how he will make life very difficult for United States media. It has led to expressions of deep sympathy from abroad for American journalists and a collective exclamation: “Thank God we don’t live there’. Continue reading “Tar from Trump’s brush could splatter NZ media” →

What hazards lie ahead for America’s media?

Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the US presidential election led to a flurry of analysis and prediction today. Among the thought-provoking articles was this, published by the Columbia Journalism Review. Journalism under siege means democracy itself is under siege. You can read Kyle Paoletta’s article HERE.

A day to be gripped by fear

This morning, I am afraid. I am very afraid.

I fear that by the time I go to bed democracy in the United States will be imperilled by a man, the nature of which the Founding Fathers could never envisage when creating the protective elements of the constitution.

The risks will not be to Americans alone. The world will become a different place if Donald J Trump once again becomes president.

My trepidation is tempered only by the fact that no-one can be sure he has the numbers to gain sufficient votes in the electoral college that those same founding fathers devised as a power-sharing devise between federal and state governments. They could not have foreseen how it could become the means by which a fraction of voters could determine their country’s future.

Or perhaps that is contributing to my disquiet. No-one has been able to give me the comfort of predicting a win by Kamala Harris.

In fact, none of the smart money has been ready to call it one way or the other. Continue reading “A day to be gripped by fear” →

Latest canary in coalmine littered with dead birds

 Crux, one of New Zealand’s most outstanding regional digital news start-ups, has “gone into hibernation” and there is a question mark over whether it can emerge from a deep sleep.

The creation of news veteran Peter Newport, Crux has been serving the Southern Lakes area since 2018 (and more recently Dunedin) on a combination of digital advertising, subscriptions, and contestable government funding.

The latter dried up with the present government’s cessation of the Public Interest Journalism Fund, although segments such as Local Democracy and Open Justice continue to be funded. Crux’s access to government money has stopped and the other two sources are insufficient to sustain it.

Newport, as its founder and managing editor, announced the “hibernation” during a media panel at the Queenstown Writers’ Festival. There was no small irony in the choice of venue. Sitting next to him was Media Minister Paul Goldsmith. He said in the announcement of the ‘hibernation’ that the minister had asked for an urgent review of regional media. However, this is probably no more than a reference by Goldsmith to the task of “supporting rural connectivity initiatives around New Zealand”  that he has delegated to his Under-Secretary Jenny Marcroft.

Goldsmith has picked up Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill as a way for our media to extract money from the transnational search and social media platforms. If it has any chance of success (and I have my doubts) one thing is certain: local and regional operators like Crux will receive a pittance, if anything, from such ‘bargaining’. Continue reading “Latest canary in coalmine littered with dead birds” →