Tag: Winston Peters

There is a well-worn pattern to Winnie on the warpath

I fully expect New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to gaslight more journalists and make more chilling threats against news organisations over the coming months. He acts like he is gearing up early for a general election.

His fractious exchange with Corin Dann – who he labelled an “arrogant wokester loser” via social media –  on Morning Report last Wednesday was far from novel. It was classic piece of political gamesmanship that drew on a very, very long tradition of shooting the messenger. Nor was Peters’ veiled threat against RNZ’s finances particularly novel.

As far back as the eighteenth century journalists were being targeted. Edmund Burke is reputed to have given us the title the Fourth Estate but is also (less reliably) credited with the following: “Political journalists defy the laws of nature: They are both scum and dregs.” American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said he would prefer newspapers without government to government without newspapers. However, he also compared journalists to carrion crow feeding off “the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of lambs”.

Patrick Day, in The Making of the New Zealand Press, stated that initially journalism in this country was held in higher regard than in Britain – in spite of the fact that the press here was based on English traditions. A century later, however, things had changed. Keith Holyoake used off-camera intimidation to try to cow interviewers but it was one of his successors who began the unhappy tradition of denigrating (on-air) reporters who ask awkward questions. It became a set piece for that extraordinarily complex character, Robert Muldoon.

Muldoon’s 1976 altercation with television reporter Simon Walker on Tonight looks like the template that Peters all-too-regularly uses to derail awkward interviewers. The interview involved presenting the then Prime Minister with a series of awkward facts that called into question his recent “The Russians Are Coming” warning on Soviet ship movements (which followed the Dancing Cossacks commercial that helped to get him elected in 1975). Muldoon questioned the right to put the questions and lambasted the “smart alec interviewer”. You can view that interview here. It has a familiar ring that belies the fact it is almost fifty years old. Continue reading “There is a well-worn pattern to Winnie on the warpath” →

Pall of disinformation over year of committed NZ journalism

I would like to concentrate on the positive achievements of New Zealand journalism in the past year, but I fear any optimism has been smothered by the single most effective disinformation campaign this country has seen in years. I refer to the slandering of the entire news industry.

I can point to countless examples of good, and sometimes courageous, journalism that were produced in 2023 but their light will be smothered by the pall created by those claiming New Zealand journalism is a profession not only open to bribery but which has been found guilty as charged.

The ‘smoking gun’ is said to be the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund.

That fund is no different to those that a number of countries have created to assist ailing news media. In the United Kingdom, the BBC administers the Local Democracy Reporting Service that pays for journalists in regional news organisations. It has been doing so since 2021. Since 2018 Canada has had five separate funds designed to support the news industry in that country and the Australian federal government also supports the Public Interest Journalism Initiative and a number of other support mechanisms.

However, on reflection, there is one difference: The New Zealand Public Interest Journalism Fund had a reference to recognising Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

I suspect that is the real genesis of the disinformation campaign that was started by faceless individuals, amplified by people who should know better, and finally given the ultimate ‘validation’ by a deputy prime minister intent on exacting utu for perceived (and largely imaginary) slights by the media. Continue reading “Pall of disinformation over year of committed NZ journalism” →

It was graphic election night coverage and a touch of déjà vu

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.”

I think he’s right.

Winston Churchill put on a stoic public face after his defeat by Atlee (despite his private anguish), and on television on Saturday night Chris Hipkins did the same in acknowledging National leader Christopher Luxon’s victory. Continue reading “It was graphic election night coverage and a touch of déjà vu” →

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?” →