It would be far too boastful to use the phrase ‘great minds think alike’ but the Herald’s Simon Wilson and I had the same thought on the general election result: There is a parallel with what happened in Britain in 1945. British voters turned their back on the man who had led them through the Second World War, and New Zealanders wanted to turn their backs on storm and pestilence.
Wilson commented that Churchill’s rival, Labour leader Clement Atlee, promised a welfare state, and that looked like the kind of peace voters believed they deserved. In 2023 “it has meant that one thing trumped everything in this election. We want to forget. Move on and forget. Don’t tell me about the pandemic, I have to find the money to feed my family.”
We do not need Winston Peters’ Royal Commission into Media Bias and Manipulation, but it is high time we took a coordinated approach to the shape of our media landscape.
The New Zealand First manifesto coyly refers to a Royal Commission of Enquiry into Media Independence, but that is no more than a watered down title for the initiative the party announced with a petition back in June. And its Kaipara ki Mahurangi candidate, Jenny Marcroft, made the focus clear during the Better Public Media election debate last week when she referred to it as “a Royal Commission on Media Bias”.
This looks like vindictiveness. Such an enquiry would be no more than a witch-hunt, an opportunity for New Zealand First to address perceived slights and settle scores against journalists and their employers.
To be fair, though, at least NZ First (along with the Greens) has a detailed section on media policy in its manifesto. Some of its proposals, such as joint funding of media internships, have real merit. Sadly, its lead policy on media bias has none.
Let’s assume for a moment that NZ First does become the kingmaker in a new government. Giving in to Winston Peters’ wishes on the royal commission would be an easy concession, particularly if it traded away some of NZ First’s more wayward proposals.
Such an enquiry would be a disaster. Its true purpose, implicit in the petition title and Marcroft’s description, would be to level charge after charge against mainstream media organisations. In the process, the already depleted levels of trust in them would be further eroded, and their democratic purpose and role in social cohesion called into question. As the saying goes: No good will come of this.
Had it proposed a wider enquiry into the future of media, it may have been onto a winner. And, if Mr Peters does get his formal enquiry, it will be vital to move heaven and earth to broaden its remit to dilute (and hopefully eliminate) its misguided origins. Continue reading “Winston’s Royal Commission: Threat or opportunity?”→
It was vintage Winston Peters – a class act that took my mind back through countless encounters with journalists asking questions he did not want to answer.
The 78-year-old with seemingly several centuries of political experience did to Jack Tame on 1News’ Q&A last weekend what he did to the same interviewer on the same programme three years ago: He answered questions with umbrage. At least this time he didn’t repeatedly call him James.
Tame was trying to get Peters to admit his New Zealand First Party had not costed its policies. He tried to pin down Peters on the cost of a dedicated gang prison and seemed to believe it would be a new prison rather than the re-allocation of existing spaces between institutions. After a verbal pas-de-deux he was told: “Look, I’m not going to have a fiscal argument with you when you don’t know what you’re talking about”.
The interviewer moved to a policy on funding the elderly in residential care and after repeated questioning on cost was told: “Can I just tell TV1: You’re a taxpayer-owned operation. The taxpayer is entitled to a proper interview here, not you thinking you’ll do what you did last time…I’ll answer your question if you’ll just shut up for five seconds.” Neither did, but Peters went on to say the party’s imminent manifesto would explain the policy “but, of course, you couldn’t wait for that.” The manifesto was due to be published later that day. It wasn’t, and the following day Peters announced he had delayed publication until after Wednesday’s official cash rate announcement.
Then to co-governance and a complex exchange about Peters’ past knowledge of government policy and a report which he claimed had been withheld from him. A sample of his personal slights aimed at Tame: “Don’t show your inexperience”, “Jack, I know you’re desperate but you’re not going to stop this surge in our campaign with lies and deceit”, “you’re a waste of taxpayers’ money”. On party funding: “This is amazing. Jack, take your dirt and go somewhere else.”
He accused Tame of being “corrupt”, suggesting his “masters” were “trying to get rid of New Zealand First”.
And so it went on, culminating in a final salvo at the host: “People are going to say ‘Winston, why did you bother coming today’. Democracy is about hearing both sides of the story, not hearing arrogant, jumped-up, overpaid [journalists] who think they know more about this country…you just made a case here for us to get the broadcasting portfolio after the election.”
He was asked if that was a threat: “No, it’s not a threat. It’s a promise that you’re going to have an operation that is much more improved on what it is now.”
It is time to bring back the Great Wall. No, not the one that protected China’s emperor from nomadic hordes on the Eurasian Steppe, nor the one that kept civilising Romans safe from the dreadful Picts: I’m talking about the one that separates news from advertising.
I can sympathise with media organisations scratching for revenue while their traditional business model is showing durability akin to the wall that once cut Berlin in half. However, that search for earnings carries considerable risk when it threatens the traditional barrier between journalism and commercial interests. It’s all about trust and I will return to that.
I have never liked advertisements that look like news stories but have bowed to the inevitable so long as they carried a clear label that they are just that – advertisements. And that label must be obvious to anyone who sees or hears it. I prefer ADVERTISEMENT top and centre, but I accept PAID CONTENT in the same place.
What you won’t hear me calling it is ‘native advertising’. There is nothing native about it. ‘Native’ means indigenous and ‘native advertising’ is a bad example of colonisation. It is the phase used by advertising executives in polite conversation to justify the format, but it never appears on what they produce. Their current preferred label appears to be (in lower case or sotto voce) ‘partnering with….’ although ‘sponsored content’ may be a publisher’s preference. Too often, however, the label is the last thing you see, if you notice it at all. ‘Job done”, says the advertising executive, because the content and the brand are imprinted before the provenance.
I find this sort of advertising at best irritating and at worst misleading. However, I suppose I have reluctantly learnt to live with it.
What I have not accepted – and will not accept – is the use of bona fide journalists to purvey this sort of content. I do not care whether their bosses have some form of conscience-salving agreement over ‘editorial control’: It crosses a line that I do not believe should be crossed. Continue reading “Bring back the Great Wall that once protected the news”→
