Silent majority must speak out to save vital journalism

In the wake of the announcements on Newshub’s closure and TVNZ’s cuts, I received an email from Pat, who lives in the Auckland suburb of Orakei. The email asked a simple question: “Is there anything a member of the public can do to register shock and horror at the loss of current affairs programmes and the talented people who make and present those programmes?”

I replied, suggesting Pat join the advocacy group Better Public Media. More importantly, I believe people like Pat must speak up in defence of what I now call democratically significant journalism.

‘Democratically significant journalism’ describes the sort of journalism that serves the interests of those living and interacting within a public sphere. It enables individual communities to know about themselves, and for communities to collectively share information to inform a broader consensus. In the past I would have said ‘public interest journalism’ but that phrase has been so maligned by people with agendas that benefit from destroying trust in journalists that I have stopped using it.

Pat’s dilemma is shared by all ordinary New Zealanders sensible enough to see the importance of journalism in a democratic society: How do they make it clear that they value it?

Politicians, in principle, acknowledge the necessary role of journalism but, in practice, they have done too little to ensure its survival in the digital age.

Voters, in principle, value living in a democratic society in which power is held to account but, in practice, could not give a toss whether or not a bunch of journalists lose their jobs.

The impending closure of Newshub and the loss of TVNZ’s flagship current affairs programmes won’t be the last threats faced by broadcasters, or by the wider news industry. [Update: The announcement that Stuff will provide a news bulletin to TV3 does not diminish the loss of Newshub staff. The bulletin will rely in large part on reportage by Stuff staff that also appears on the company’s other platforms. I call this mirror news].

In February, New Yorker wrote of “an extinction event” facing American journalism (you can read it here). The threat is no less real here and I wrote about it in my February 27 commentary.

Sadly, too many people are behaving like dinosaurs looking at a large asteroid hurtling toward them and saying (in some saurian dialect): ‘Wow, that’s impressive!’

Media organisations and their journalists hold part of their destiny in their own hands. They have allowed their content to be driven by entertainment value and personalities (including their own). They have lost sight of the need to clearly distinguish between reportage and commentary – to the point where their audience cannot tell one from the other and lose trust in what they read, see, and hear. They paint a relentlessly negative view of the world, leading people to simply avoid the news.

For their part, politicians for the past two decades have failed to correct the distortionary effects of transnational digital platforms that extract huge amounts of money from this country on the endeavours of others, while creating or exacerbating a string of social ills. A multitude of laws have been allowed to become outdated.

It is high time principle started to drive decision-making. News media need to reset their thinking to deliver, first and foremost, the democratically significant journalism that should define the profession. Government should construct new, broad spectrum policy designed to sustain that sort of journalism in a healthy, pluralistic environment. Both will be moved to act more quickly and more positively if there is a public demand for action.

I wrote a book in 2016 titled Complacent Nation. Its introduction spoke of a protracted war between the public’s right to know and political or bureaucratic self-interest. It went on the say the war – waged in part through the Official Information Act – was largely ignored by “a general public that is either indifferent or perhaps beguiled by the belief that ‘we live in a free country’.” The book ended with a line borrowed from Kris Kristofferson: “Please look after the right to know because without it freedom’s just another word”.

Things have not improved in the past eight years. I’ll come back to the Official Information Act later in this commentary but, for its part, complacency has worsened.

Distrust and news avoidance highlighted by the latest JM&D report (see last week’s commentary) has lowered the public’s perception of the news having value, let alone the belief that it is indispensable. Small but very vocal groups have been outstandingly successful in ascribing base motives – to the point of treason – to the work of journalists.

That must change. I believe firmly that a silent majority knows the true worth of standards-driven journalism, and it must find its voice. The question, as Pat asked, is: How?

Letters to the editor will not cut it. That is simply preaching to the converted. Resorting to talkback radio is likely to backfire when hosts eschew any connection with journalism. Television lacks a forum for audiences. Social media posts acknowledging the value of professional reportage and analysis is likely to simply kick a hornet’s nest.

There are two phases to the process of waking the silent majority. The first is to alert it to the danger, and the second is to mobilise it to speak out.

Both phases can be undertaken by the news media themselves, but not in isolation nor premised on self-promotion or proprietary self-interest. It needs to be a whole-of-industry initiative that puts the public first and last.

Sure, there will be a benefit to media organisations if mobilisation results in necessary changes to the media environment, but the driving force must be the survival of democratically significant journalism for the public good.

The industry in which I spent most of my working life has never been able to bring itself to work as a collective whole in the common interest of all. Cooperation has been sectoral and self-serving. Efforts to broaden the newspaper-based news cooperative to include broadcasters was regularly voted down by the New Zealand Press Association Board. Print media and broadcasters continue to have a raft of separate industry bodies. When the Public Interest Journalism Fund came under attack, the industry failed to speak with the single voice that should have condemned any suggestion the country’s news media were open to bribery. Only the Media Freedom Committee and the Media and Courts Committee have broad representation, but the public has, in all likelihood, heard of neither.

Last week I said that a run of surveys (the Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer will now be released this week) were a wake-up call. Add the cuts to TV3 and TVNZ and that call starts to sound like Gabriel’s horn.

New Zealand news media – from the national newspaper and broadcasting organisations to iwi/ethnic/community groups and digital start-ups – must come together to organise a unified campaign to inform the public of the importance of their democratically significant journalism and the dangers that face it. Then they should collectively host independently chaired public meetings around the motu to hear the people and allow those people to voice their support for the changes necessary to sustain the journalism they need, and not the journalism they may sometimes want.

I am certain that Pat will be among those attending.

Official Information

Two stories in the Sunday Star-Times reminded me of both the value of the Official Information Act, and of the institutionalised resistance to it by bureaucrats. The attitudes I exposed in Complacent Nation live on.

The first story related to protracted efforts by the SST to reveal the benefits judges receive in addition to their salaries. After a back-and-forth battle that could earn a commendation from Charles Dickens’ Office of Circumlocution, the Ombudsman will finally take up the case (although the information may now be proactively released).

I have no objection to our judges being well paid and rewarded with ancillary benefits. Many of them forego more lucrative positions as senior law partners or King’s Counsel to serve. However, I equally believe those details should be in the public domain. It should not take almost a year of determined effort by a newspaper for that to happen.

The second story related to SST enquiries in 2022 over the death of a man in Wellington Hospital’s mental health unit in 2017. The newspaper met with a blanket ban on information because the matter was with the coroner.

The Chief Ombudsman has ruled that such a blanket ban is unreasonable, and information that did not prejudice the coroner’s determination should be available in order to comply with the OIA.

Again, why should it take a complaint to the Ombudsman for an agency covered by the Act to meet its obligations?

Government, state agencies, and local authorities are only too ready to proactively release information that shows them in a good light. They routinely take less advantageous requests for information out to the full 28-day limit to respond. And they practice all forms of obfuscation and barefaced stonewalling (“for privacy reasons”) when the news is bad.

The Office of the Ombudsman does a good job in holding these agencies to account, but it should not take that office’s intervention to reveal what the public has a right to know. And, too often, the culprits win because their delaying tactics have taken the sting out of a story.