Take out your Donald Trump’s Cautionary Tales exercise book and turn to the next blank page. At the top write the word ‘Accreditation’. Today we are going to talk about ways this process has been weaponised to silence journalists who might say nasty things about the American president.
Like other entries in your exercise book – yes, I know there aren’t many empty pages left – it will serve as yet another warning about the ways the levers of government and democracy can be manipulated to serve the ends of unscrupulous leaders. You may remember that, previously, we talked about the lessons for other democracies that have been coming out of the White House and referred to the application of these lessons as ‘The Trump Filter’. It applies a simple question: “Could this be misused or abused by a future government or leader, the nature of which we do not yet know?”
Today we are going to talk about the ability of governments to grant or withhold access for journalists to the agencies of state. One way or another, it is accreditation. I say ‘one way or another’ because granting it can be direct or indirect, and it may be used not only to silence journalists but to manipulate what the public gets to see and hear.
Accreditation has a long history. In England in 1557, the Company of Stationers received a charter (the 16th century equivalent of accreditation) conferring on its members the exclusive right to own a press. It not only confined printing to London but also conferred powers of search and seizure to confiscate unauthorised books and pamphlets – monopoly in exchange for censorship. Although he almost certainly is ignorant of that history, Mr Trump is currently employing updated forms of licensing and coercion in pursuit of a ‘tame’ media.
The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority may be about to learn that mission creep never ends well. Its provisional decision to claim jurisdiction over Sean Plunket’s online entity The Platform has far-reaching implications.
Its interlocutory decision was marked ‘Not for publication’: That was as naïve as thinking that old warhorse Plunket would meekly accept its finding that the BSA had jurisdiction over online broadcasts. The decision inevitably was published, and there were predictable reactions from the Platform’s owner and from the leaders of the two coalition partners with an inordinate influence on the actions of the present government.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters posted on social media, saying “Why does the Broadcasting Standards Authority think they can make up their own rules in secret meetings to act like some Soviet era Stasi.” ACT MP Todd Stephenson – no doubt acting on instructions from party leader David Seymour – complained to Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith and intimated that ACT is considering a private member’s bill seeking the BSA’s abolition. Goldsmith batted the complaint away as an operational matter.
Both coalition parties see the BSA’s decision as mission creep and, by implication, an attempt to do something that is the prerogative of Parliament. It is for a majority of the House to determine the jurisdiction of its statutory regulators through legislation, not the body empowered by that legislation. Continue reading “BSA’s mission creep could prove to be its nemesis”→
More rides on the replacement of Morning Report host Corin Dann than filling a vacant seat.
It will be a litmus test of how well Radio New Zealand executives can address the challenges facing the state broadcaster, many of which were set out in stark relief in an uncompromising review by former RNZ news chief Richard Sutherland that I addressed in an earlier commentary [add link].
Last Friday RNZ announced that Dann – co-host of its flagship programme since 2019 – would take over the role of Business Editor next year when incumbent Gyles Beckford moves to a part-time role. That means Dann will remain in place while his replacement is sought, and Morning Report will resume after its summer hiatus with a new voice behind the microphone.
That all sounds neat and tidy.
It is anything but straight-forward. Enmeshed in the replacement are a series of strategic threads that Sutherland said the broadcaster must address if it is to arrest audience decline. He said that, overall, RNZ “suffers from a lack of audience clarity, internal cohesion, and urgency”. He also noted its failure to cater fully for the demographic that represented its largest potential broadcast audience – those aged over 50 – and the fact that there was a distinct Wellington focus to Morning Report.
Dann’s replacement will be scrutinised to see how many of those strands have been addressed in the appointment. And once the new host is behind the microphone there will be further scrutiny to determine what changed have been made to the programme over the summer break to attract bigger audiences.
In the spotlight will be RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson and the person he appointed to spearhead a change in RNZ’s fortunes. Yesterday, Pip Keane assumed the new role of Chief Audio Officer. She has an excellent pedigree: A decade on RNZ current affairs programmes and before that working with the likes of John Campbell and the late Sir Paul Holmes.
Both Keane and Thompson will play key roles in the new appointment. It will be a clear pointer to the direction in which Keane wants to push content. And, although it will not be Thompson’s last roll of the dice, it will have an impact on how long he stays in his role.
The RNZ board, and particularly its recent addition Andrew Szusterman, will be watching carefully. Szusterman spent 17 years at MediaWorks before becoming managing director at South Pacific Pictures. He has a strong commercial focus and is audience orientated. He was appointed last month to the RNZ board, which has become increasingly ‘commercial’ under Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith.
In my earlier column I confessed to being a fallen listener: “I was a loyal wake-up-to-it Monday-to-Friday fan of RNZ’s Morning Report. I no longer am.” So, I am hoping to see more than just a new bum on the seat in the RNZ studio. The programme needs a reset.
‘Reset’ might not be quite the right word, given the very short-term meaning Te Pāti Māori gave to the word last week (three minutes and 43 seconds by Stuff’s count) as its leadership reverted to type after committing to change to the party’s processes. If I reach for my thesaurus I might find a better word. ‘Transformation’ would do.
Morning report needs to be transformed if it is to recover its once-dominant position and deliver the changes that Sutherland says RNZ must institute to ensure its immediate future.
It must go head-to-head with the currently unchallenged king of breakfast radio – Mike Hosking on NewstalkZB. RNZ might think it does so now, but its ratings show that it is far from achieving that mission.
Head-to-head, in my book, means pitting a single host against Hosking. It would be unfair to expect Dann’s co-host Ingrid Hipkiss to engage in singlehanded aerial combat against such a foe. It requires a new combatant in the pilot’s seat. Hipkiss is a talented broadcaster and, like Dann, can be redeployed very effectively.
Aerial warfare does not, however, require RNZ to fly the same aircraft as NewstalkZB or equip it with the same weapons.
Hosking’s persona is writ large on his breakfast show (too large for my liking). His own worldview is allowed free rein. It may not be my cup of tea, but I concede he is a very talented broadcaster. His approach obviously works because 433,000 people listen to his show, and that is 100,000 more than Morning Report can claim.
RNZ needs to find someone who can beat Hosking, but not at his own game. We do not simply need an opinionated left-leaning RNZ host pitted against Newstalk ZB’s right-leaning breakfast host in some sort of balancing act. New Zealand deserves better than that.
The transformation requires RNZ to appoint a Morning Report anchor who projects a hard-hitting, interrogatory current affairs style that leaves listeners with an understanding of what has gone before and what is likely to occur during the day. It requires someone with knowledge, credibility, personality, and a heavy dose of Hosking’s quick-wittedness. It requires a new direction for Morning report to give it greater focus and clearer understanding of what its audience needs to know.
This latter need requires RNZ to recognise that its radio audience – and particularly its early morning audience – is in the older demographic. The 15 to 49 age groups do not want to start their day with news and current affairs. Even NewstalkZB is not a must-listen for younger audiences. Sixty per cent of its cumulative audience across the day is aged over 55 and only nine per cent of under 25s listen to it at any time of the day.
While I concur with Victoria University of Wellington academic Peter Thompson that RNZ’s overall audience (streaming, social media, third party content sharing) is trending younger, the same cannot be said of the broadcast breakfast show. If RNZ is to return its flagship broadcast programme to a point where it is effectively competing with Hosking, it must better identify with its audience and meet its needs.
Who could assume the mantle and carry the burden of achieving that?
The New Zealand Herald’s Media Insider Shayne Currie had some fun on Friday speculating over who might be in the running. His musings were on the assumption that Dann’s replacement would be joining Hipkiss on the show. However, there is no golden rule that Morning report should be co-hosted. In fact, when it started half a century ago it had a single host (Canadian Joe Coté) and has had several solo pilots since his departure.
At the top of Currie’s list were (unsurprisingly) John Campbell and Patrick Gower. He then ran through a dozen other names. Another obvious contender, Jack Tame, was discounted by Currie on the basis that, like Hosking and Heather Du Plessis-Allan, he was tied to a multi-year contract with NZME (we can assume Currie was in the know). RNZ stalwarts Lisa Owen and Emile Donovan were on the list.
Hosting Morning Report is not an easy ask. It is on air at 6 am and requires getting out of bed at a time that nature never intended. There would have to be an almighty incentive to get the likes of Campbell or Owen to commit to that highly disrupted lifestyle. My old workmate Paddy Gower might be up for the job (he did a fill-in for a couple of weeks last year) but, again, it would be asking a lot of him. And RNZ does not have cash to play with.
Perhaps it is time to pull a new name out of the hat: Pick someone for their journalistic skills and ability to appeal to an older demographic and use the time before a relaunch in the new year to teach them to be a radio broadcaster. That person will need to be someone who can regain RNZ’s thousands of lost listeners.
Whatever way it is played, the replacement of Corin Dann and the revitalising of Morning Report in 2026 will be pivotal in determining whether RNZ is still in the radio game.
I am tremendously grateful to the current president of the United States of America for adding even greater validity to the defensive mechanism I have named in his honour – The Trump Filter.
Before I go further, I should also thank Mr Trump for adding the word “tremendous’ to the lexicon of verified facts.
But to return to The Trump Filter.
It is a process I have developed against which I test the robustness of political decisions and, in particular, legislation produced by the New Zealand Government.
The filter applies a simple question: “Could this be misused or abused by a future government or leader, the nature of which we do not yet know?”
I don’t pretend the test is a novel one. It is really no more than an assessment of the ability of constitutional safeguards to do their job on behalf of the public. I do, however, suggest that the actions of Donald Trump provide us with excellent benchmarks against which to view the potential future misuse or trashing of things that this country takes for granted or, in some cases, holds dear.
There were warning signs in Trump’s first term, but his current term as president has created unprecedented assaults on institutions once thought fully protected by the US Constitution and the amendments embodied in the Bill of Rights.
Domestically and internationally, he has ridden roughshod over far more than the length of this commentary can accommodate. However, last week the impact of one of his more vengeful acts prompted me to apply The Trump Filter to the current state of a century-old institution in this country.
