Tag: media reform

Winston’s Royal Commission: Threat or opportunity?

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?” →

Media regulation: Time to shut up and get on with it.

A decade ago this month, the Law Commission produced a fit-for-purpose blueprint for  regulation of New Zealand news media by a single body. The News Media Standards Authority did not happen and today we are no closer to changing oversight that is well past its use-by date.

The commission’s recommendations were set out in a report titled The News Media Meets ‘New Media’: Rights, responsibilities, and regulation in the digital age, produced by a team led by eminent media law expert Professor John Burrows.

The foreword to the report stated it was about how the law should respond to a challenge that had been articulated by then Chief Government Scientist, Sir Peter Gluckman. In an address on the impact of technology on adolescents, Sir Peter had expressed the view that the internet and digital technology have brought about the most profound change in how humans communicate since our species first acquired speech.

One might have thought that his perspective, and the report’s call for fundamental changes to media regulation, would have been an urgent wake-up call. Continue reading “Media regulation: Time to shut up and get on with it.” →

Our media keep buggering on (apologies to Winston Churchill)

I have just read a brilliant essay by Irish journalist and intellectual Fintan O’Toole about the decline of the British identity. I see strong parallels with what is happening to New Zealand media.

In the essay, published by Foreign Affairs magazine, O’Toole puts context around the decline of Britain as a world power, the rising nationalism of the non-English elements of the United Kingdom, and the effects of Brexit. All of this has contributed to ‘Britishness’ losing its lustre.

“The United Kingdom created a beta version of democracy in the eighteenth century: innovative and progressive in its day but long since surpassed by newer models,” O’Toole wrote. “The country has, however, been extremely reluctant to abandon even the most egregious anachronisms. The biggest transformation in its governance was joining the European Union, and that has been reversed. It now has to make a momentous and existential choice—between a radically reimagined United Kingdom and a stubborn adherence to KBO [a Churchillian phrase: ‘keep buggering on’]. If it chooses the latter, it will muddle on toward its own extinction. Continue reading “Our media keep buggering on (apologies to Winston Churchill)” →