Let’s make no bones about it: New Zealand’s demotion in the latest World Press Freedom index is a disgrace. But who cares?

World Press Freedom Day last Sunday was not a day for New Zealanders to celebrate – we have fallen six places and are no longer in the top 20 nations on the index – but, frankly, it’s a day that passes largely unnoticed by the average Kiwi.

It ranks with the likes of World No-tobacco day (May 31, in case you didn’t know) and the International Day of the Snow Leopard (October 23).

The brutal truth is that, although most New Zealanders consume news one way or another, they have little regard for the health of the institutions that are the primary providers.

It does not matter whether the news is consumed through mainstream media or via the second, third or fourth iterations created on social media: It must first be sought, sifted, scribed, and recorded by journalists. Most of those journalists work within organisations dedicated to the craft of newsgathering.

Journalists themselves care about the state of the environment in which they do their jobs. So do the bodies that employ them. Academics who study them care about that environment and so, too, do a relatively small number who understand its importance to civil society. Most, however, do not give the state of our media a second thought. Continue reading “NZ’s World Press Freedom ranking should be sounding alarms” →