Last week, David Seymour demanded in a press release that Willie Jackson should “come out and deny that he is meeting with journalists this week to discuss how they should report on the Treaty”.
Seymour’s challenge to the Minister for Broadcasting and Media was based on reasonable grounds. As he put it, “This government has form when it comes to encouraging media to report its version of the Treaty. The $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, for example, was only open to media who were willing to report Labour’s view of the Treaty.”
The Act leader was following up on a social media post by the Taxpayers’ Union which reported a “senior media source” had told it that “Stuff had invited competitors to a proposed meeting tomorrow [at an Auckland marae] with Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson with the apparent purpose of agreeing to a set of principles or guidelines for how Māori and Treaty matters should be reported on by those in the mainstream media industry.”
The union suggested this amounted to “media collusion” and that the Commerce Commission should investigate “possible cartel behaviour”.
Newsroom’s co-editor Tim Murphy was derisive of these allegations, tweeting in response: “This, from the Taxpayers’ Union and Act has to be a contender for 2023’s bottom-of-the-barrel ‘scandal’. Stuff invites media to discuss diversity and representation in the industry, agreeing a statement if they wish. The minister agrees to speak. That’s it. That’s the conspiracy.”
Unfortunately for our mainstream media chiefs, much of the public would indeed think the journalists’ meeting could have plausibly included discussions with Jackson about how to present the Treaty — as well as suspicions that they sometimes collude on what views they are willing to publish.
In an interview on The Platform with Sean Plunket on Friday, the executive director of the Taxpayers’ Union, Jordan Williams, pointed out what appeared to be a follow-the-leader decision by major news media organisations last month to reject an advertisement from Bob McCoskrie, the director of conservative Christian lobby group Family First.
The full-page ad — which had been scheduled to run in six major daily newspapers on Wednesday 19 July to coincide with the launch of the group’s “What is a woman?” campaign — was rejected at the eleventh hour by Stuff, NZME and Allied Press, even though it had been initially approved.
An email from Allied Press, which owns the Otago Daily Times, said: “We pulled [the ad] because we wanted to make sure the industry [were] all in it together.”
As Family First put it: “It should concern all of us that newspaper editors are now banding together to censor advertisements that they disagree with. Where does this place their coverage of the political debate leading up to the general election? What else are they censoring?”
To further illustrate just how narrow the range of topics and voices acceptable to the mainstream media has become, Jordan Williams cited the lifetime ban on Dr Michael Bassett’s columns being published in any of NZME’s newspapers — despite the fact he is a noted historian who was a Labour Cabinet minister and a member of the Waitangi Tribunal for 10 years.
When independent Christchurch journalist Chris Lynch asked Stuff publisher Sinead Boucher last week if Jackson was meeting journalists to discuss how to report Treaty issues, she dismissed it as a “total load of rubbish”.
Boucher: “As I gather, the minister is speaking for 10 minutes at the end of an industry training day and will be facing robust questioning on government media policy. He will not be talking about the Treaty or how media should cover it. It would be entirely inappropriate for a minister or anyone in government to instruct media how to cover any issue. They would surely be torn to pieces by the journalists if they attempted it!”
Really? Such an air of wounded innocence from a powerful media figure is touching but divorced from reality.
NZ On Air, whose board is appointed by the Minister of Broadcasting, made it clear in the criteria for accessing taxpayer cash from the Public Interest Journalism Fund that the Treaty should be presented as a “partnership” (specifically “a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”). And the media’s general acceptance of that interpretation has been critical to Labour’s push to insert co-governance everywhere from health and education to the conservation estate and water management.
A later document, titled “Te Tiriti Framework for News Media”, which was commissioned by NZ on Air and published in March last year, expanded on what that meant in practice.
While NZ On Air said that following the recommendations in the Te Tiriti guide was not mandatory, the report begins with a firm instruction: “Mass news media organisations need to consider, explore, build on and implement this framework in ways that show commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”
Examples of the “guidance” include:
It is very difficult to see the criteria for Public Interest Journalism funding and the Te Tiriti Framework as anything other than the government instructing media how to cover an issue. Why then wouldn’t public figures such as Seymour or Williams immediately wonder what was going on at a meeting to which selected media organisations (as well as the Media Council and the Broadcasting Standards Authority) were invited to hear Willie Jackson speak while others, including The Platform, were not?
And it’s not as if Seymour and the Taxpayers’ Union lack grounds for being alert to the possibility of Jackson overstepping the line as a minister.
Last December, he was reprimanded by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern over remarks made to Jack Tame on Q&A about the proposed merger between RNZ and TVNZ which included what looked like a suggestion that Tame could be out of work as a current affairs host if the merger didn’t proceed. Jackson criticised Tame for conducting what he perceived as “such a negative interview” and said he was “disappointed” in the host.
Jackson said in his apology: “There’s no intention to interfere in terms of anything with regard to the new [media] entity and if it came across like that in the interview then I’m sorry because the reality is editorial independence is everything.”
And, of course, Kiri Allan, then Minister of Justice, also had to apologise in April for remarks made at a RNZ farewell for her then-fiancée Māni Dunlop over its culture and treatment of Māori staff. She was admonished by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and apologised, admitting her remarks could have been interpreted as “me telling RNZ how to manage their staff or company”.
In short, this is not a government whose ministers always show respect for ministerial propriety when it comes to dealing with the media. Suspicion is warranted.
Boucher’s comment about journalists tearing to pieces a government minister perhaps better describes the approach our media Brahmins often take to anyone daring to object to the Public Interest Journalism Fund’s prescription for the way media should handle the Treaty.
Media grandees have dismissed critics of the fund as “conspiracy theorists” — and accused them of running “a classic disinformation campaign”.
Calling someone a “conspiracy theorist”, of course, is a slur, not an argument, and often indicates defensiveness about a point of view rather than willingness to argue a case on its merits.
As it happens, Stuff’s report following the media training session at the marae featured Jackson’s comments about the Public Interest Journalism Fund and why it ended in June. Asked why it wasn’t extended until the news bargaining bill came into force, which would require the likes of Google and Meta to forge deals to pay media organisations for news shared on their platforms, he replied:
“It wasn’t my decision [to not extend it] and, ah, the other side of it is we got a huge amount of criticism for that [fund].”
So while the government can obviously see how damaging the fund was to its own reputation with regard to interference in the media, senior journalists are still shooting messengers who have the temerity to bring the issue to the public’s attention.
It brings to mind Upton Sinclair’s famous quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
The union suggested this amounted to “media collusion” and that the Commerce Commission should investigate “possible cartel behaviour”.
Newsroom’s co-editor Tim Murphy was derisive of these allegations, tweeting in response: “This, from the Taxpayers’ Union and Act has to be a contender for 2023’s bottom-of-the-barrel ‘scandal’. Stuff invites media to discuss diversity and representation in the industry, agreeing a statement if they wish. The minister agrees to speak. That’s it. That’s the conspiracy.”
Unfortunately for our mainstream media chiefs, much of the public would indeed think the journalists’ meeting could have plausibly included discussions with Jackson about how to present the Treaty — as well as suspicions that they sometimes collude on what views they are willing to publish.
In an interview on The Platform with Sean Plunket on Friday, the executive director of the Taxpayers’ Union, Jordan Williams, pointed out what appeared to be a follow-the-leader decision by major news media organisations last month to reject an advertisement from Bob McCoskrie, the director of conservative Christian lobby group Family First.
The full-page ad — which had been scheduled to run in six major daily newspapers on Wednesday 19 July to coincide with the launch of the group’s “What is a woman?” campaign — was rejected at the eleventh hour by Stuff, NZME and Allied Press, even though it had been initially approved.
An email from Allied Press, which owns the Otago Daily Times, said: “We pulled [the ad] because we wanted to make sure the industry [were] all in it together.”
As Family First put it: “It should concern all of us that newspaper editors are now banding together to censor advertisements that they disagree with. Where does this place their coverage of the political debate leading up to the general election? What else are they censoring?”
To further illustrate just how narrow the range of topics and voices acceptable to the mainstream media has become, Jordan Williams cited the lifetime ban on Dr Michael Bassett’s columns being published in any of NZME’s newspapers — despite the fact he is a noted historian who was a Labour Cabinet minister and a member of the Waitangi Tribunal for 10 years.
When independent Christchurch journalist Chris Lynch asked Stuff publisher Sinead Boucher last week if Jackson was meeting journalists to discuss how to report Treaty issues, she dismissed it as a “total load of rubbish”.
Boucher: “As I gather, the minister is speaking for 10 minutes at the end of an industry training day and will be facing robust questioning on government media policy. He will not be talking about the Treaty or how media should cover it. It would be entirely inappropriate for a minister or anyone in government to instruct media how to cover any issue. They would surely be torn to pieces by the journalists if they attempted it!”
Really? Such an air of wounded innocence from a powerful media figure is touching but divorced from reality.
NZ On Air, whose board is appointed by the Minister of Broadcasting, made it clear in the criteria for accessing taxpayer cash from the Public Interest Journalism Fund that the Treaty should be presented as a “partnership” (specifically “a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”). And the media’s general acceptance of that interpretation has been critical to Labour’s push to insert co-governance everywhere from health and education to the conservation estate and water management.
A later document, titled “Te Tiriti Framework for News Media”, which was commissioned by NZ on Air and published in March last year, expanded on what that meant in practice.
While NZ On Air said that following the recommendations in the Te Tiriti guide was not mandatory, the report begins with a firm instruction: “Mass news media organisations need to consider, explore, build on and implement this framework in ways that show commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”
Examples of the “guidance” include:
- “Māori have never ceded sovereignty to Britain or any other state.”
- “…our society has a foundation of institutional racism.”
- “For news media, it is not simply a matter of reporting ‘fairly’, but of constructively contributing to Te Tiriti relations and social justice.”
- “Repeated references by the government to the English version [of the Treaty], in which Māori supposedly ceded sovereignty, have created systematic disinformation that protects the government’s assumption of sole parliamentary sovereignty.”
It is very difficult to see the criteria for Public Interest Journalism funding and the Te Tiriti Framework as anything other than the government instructing media how to cover an issue. Why then wouldn’t public figures such as Seymour or Williams immediately wonder what was going on at a meeting to which selected media organisations (as well as the Media Council and the Broadcasting Standards Authority) were invited to hear Willie Jackson speak while others, including The Platform, were not?
And it’s not as if Seymour and the Taxpayers’ Union lack grounds for being alert to the possibility of Jackson overstepping the line as a minister.
Last December, he was reprimanded by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern over remarks made to Jack Tame on Q&A about the proposed merger between RNZ and TVNZ which included what looked like a suggestion that Tame could be out of work as a current affairs host if the merger didn’t proceed. Jackson criticised Tame for conducting what he perceived as “such a negative interview” and said he was “disappointed” in the host.
Jackson said in his apology: “There’s no intention to interfere in terms of anything with regard to the new [media] entity and if it came across like that in the interview then I’m sorry because the reality is editorial independence is everything.”
And, of course, Kiri Allan, then Minister of Justice, also had to apologise in April for remarks made at a RNZ farewell for her then-fiancée Māni Dunlop over its culture and treatment of Māori staff. She was admonished by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and apologised, admitting her remarks could have been interpreted as “me telling RNZ how to manage their staff or company”.
In short, this is not a government whose ministers always show respect for ministerial propriety when it comes to dealing with the media. Suspicion is warranted.
Boucher’s comment about journalists tearing to pieces a government minister perhaps better describes the approach our media Brahmins often take to anyone daring to object to the Public Interest Journalism Fund’s prescription for the way media should handle the Treaty.
Media grandees have dismissed critics of the fund as “conspiracy theorists” — and accused them of running “a classic disinformation campaign”.
Calling someone a “conspiracy theorist”, of course, is a slur, not an argument, and often indicates defensiveness about a point of view rather than willingness to argue a case on its merits.
As it happens, Stuff’s report following the media training session at the marae featured Jackson’s comments about the Public Interest Journalism Fund and why it ended in June. Asked why it wasn’t extended until the news bargaining bill came into force, which would require the likes of Google and Meta to forge deals to pay media organisations for news shared on their platforms, he replied:
“It wasn’t my decision [to not extend it] and, ah, the other side of it is we got a huge amount of criticism for that [fund].”
So while the government can obviously see how damaging the fund was to its own reputation with regard to interference in the media, senior journalists are still shooting messengers who have the temerity to bring the issue to the public’s attention.
It brings to mind Upton Sinclair’s famous quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
9 comments:
MSM should be shunned like the sell out's they are. Let them wither and die on the vine.
The media are a disgrace to their profession and the nation.
Whoever of them stays or leaves, their credibility and integrity are damaged forever.
And who's funding Baucher's STUFF ?
Do we know exactly what did take place at the meeting? The blatant conditions for the PIJFund received remarkably little attention whilst it was running. Only a miniscule proportion of the general public would have been aware of details. I dont recall the conditions ever beng read out on the RNZ media reports. To the contraray, staff blatantly maintained that the conditions were not an influence.
Now that the PIJF has ended, are the media still legally required to stick to the "Party" line on Te Tiriti? Or can they now choose to be real independent journalists again?
I always hold the idea in fact that when one sees smoke there is always a fire.
The entirety of what you write here is kindling, cones and logs for that fire and Willy Jackson has provided for the 'newspaper'.
The striked match was the cash the media got from the PIJF bribe/blackmail and we now have a lot of smoke (to go with the mirrors) and flames that like gaslight are real and strong.
Nothing that the MSM and Jackson do and say today are without question of their integrety to truth which is clearly now not told, questioned or held to account.
To my mind mainstream 'journalism' in New Zealand is a corrupted covenant and like Sinclairs quote it is now hard to get them (like the Public Service) to say something outside of what they are prescribed when their salaries depend on doing what they are told.
In response to Alan G, the influence reached far beyond actual articles.It was a clear indication to msm of the path they need follow in general for favourable government treatment. Contrary articles outside of the Fund would have largely eliminated chances of consideration for articles possibly within. The effect continues. The blatancy of it all was incredible. But as the public rely on the msm for notification, very few ever realised the full situation. With Labour headed down the gurgler the msm are faced with a dilemna of who to suck up to now. With National's vast war chest the msm will avoid doing for the party what can be purchased via advertising.
Indeed, as you note "It is very difficult to see the criteria for Public Interest Journalism funding and the Te Tiriti Framework as anything other than the government instructing media how to cover an issue." But it's far worse than just the $55M of PIJF that was up for grabs. Check with any outlet who did NOT sign up for PIJF whether they have been given the opportunity to carry ANY government advertising, e.g. the copious amounts spent on Three Waters, COVID, Road to Zero ($192M on its own), Anti-Smoking, etc, etc. Such spending, which completely eclipses the $55M PIJF was, and continues to be, the real incentive towards compliance by the so-called MSM.
I understood that the MSM got $50M of COVID funding, therefore a total of $105M over the last few years.
Did anybody else note that when Simon Dallow on TV1 news the other night cross to Australia to a reporter there with a triple barrelled Arabic name, he did it in te reo ??
Is Simon that stupid or was he simply reading the autocue that his masters had scripted ?
Corrupted media organizations.
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