If journalism in Western democracies has been on a roller coaster in recent decades, in Aotearoa New Zealand this week it threatened to come right off the rails.
Today’s shocking announcement by owners Warner Bros Discovery of the closure of Newshub by the end of June will leave only state-owned TVNZ and Whakaata Māori providing public-interest, free-to-air broadcast news.
The impact on the country’s already shrinking and fragile public sphere will be considerable, as yet another tranche of sacked New Zealand journalists goes looking for work.
Up to 350 jobs will go, about 200 of which are from the news operation.
The brutal nature of the decision, and the apparent disregard for affected staff, echoes the closure last year of Mediaworks’ Today FM radio station. It should be yet another wake-up call about the vulnerability of the country’s precious and struggling news media to global investment priorities.
Diversity and competition
The news media is core infrastructure for a democracy. Any attempt at a self-governing society requires a well-informed and, to some degree, unified public.
Today, we understand this to mean media that act as the conduit for a significant plurality of voices, ideas and political arguments. And a healthy and diverse media ecosystem is required to enable this.
Yes, television is now less central to our wider, mobile-based news consumption. But to have just one prime-time mainstream television news service for the entire country is a disaster.
TVNZ on its own will not be able to reflect the complex, multicultural and socially diverse country New Zealand is. Neither will it have the competition essential to doing its best work on behalf of the public.
And yet, despite warnings sounded since the internet began to erode news media income, the public sphere has been left to the vagaries of global markets – even more than other socially critical sectors such as education and health.
Loss of trust
Discovery New Zealand made after-tax losses in 2022 of more than NZ$34 million, up $800,000 on the previous year. Hence the decision of its owner, global media behemoth Warner Bros Discovery, to take out another foundation of the already teetering local news industry.
Politicians murmur about how terrible it is, but argue they can do nothing to save Newshub. The impacts of that impotence are as significant as any other challenge the local media face.
Broadcasting minister Melissa Lee today said there would be no loss of plurality in the national conversation because of the closure. She said most New Zealanders now get their news on mobile phones.
But television news also relies on social media, not just the airwaves, for its dissemination. If people are looking on their phones for news, the stories from one of the country’s most impactful newsrooms will no longer be there.
Emergency funding through the government’s $55 million public-interest journalism fund helped during the pandemic lockdowns. But it also triggered allegations from right-wing pundits and politicians that the media had been bought.
Research conducted at the Centre for Media, Journalism and Democracy (JMAD) shows public trust in news is falling dramatically in Aotearoa New Zealand. Early results from this work in 2024 show that decline is accelerating.
The reasons for this loss of trust are complex and are under further study at JMAD. Indeed, the news media itself must look long in the mirror as it works through its trust issues. How did it lose the audience so badly?
But any attempts at rebuilding that trust and its role in a functioning democracy will be futile if the public perceives the production of news to be now largely controlled by self-interested global corporates.
Journalism as a public good
Poor media literacy, active conspiracy theorists, and decades of underfunding of journalism have likely all contributed to the increasing rejection of mainstream news media.
However, it would be foolish to think trust in democratic media can be rebuilt when the industrial forces behind it have only a financialised interest. If news is the daily record of human life, how can it be left to something as remote and disinterested as a global corporation?
None of this is to say the mainstream media should be viewed as entirely trustworthy. Some scepticism of everything, including news, is healthy in a democracy. We need critically thinking and politically active citizens challenging many things, including mainstream media news agendas.
But those serious about democracy understand the mainstream is where society is anchored, stable and productive.
The dangers of an increasingly fragmented and reduced mainstream media are real. It includes leaving open ground for radicalised actors to occupy and facilitate further social disharmony. If things fall apart and the centre cannot hold, as the poet Yeats put it, “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.
The time to restore journalism as a public good and not simply a plaything for shareholders and other investors is overdue. The news in Aotearoa New Zealand today simply confirms that.
Greg Treadwell, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Auckland University of Technology This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article
Up to 350 jobs will go, about 200 of which are from the news operation.
The brutal nature of the decision, and the apparent disregard for affected staff, echoes the closure last year of Mediaworks’ Today FM radio station. It should be yet another wake-up call about the vulnerability of the country’s precious and struggling news media to global investment priorities.
Diversity and competition
The news media is core infrastructure for a democracy. Any attempt at a self-governing society requires a well-informed and, to some degree, unified public.
Today, we understand this to mean media that act as the conduit for a significant plurality of voices, ideas and political arguments. And a healthy and diverse media ecosystem is required to enable this.
Yes, television is now less central to our wider, mobile-based news consumption. But to have just one prime-time mainstream television news service for the entire country is a disaster.
TVNZ on its own will not be able to reflect the complex, multicultural and socially diverse country New Zealand is. Neither will it have the competition essential to doing its best work on behalf of the public.
And yet, despite warnings sounded since the internet began to erode news media income, the public sphere has been left to the vagaries of global markets – even more than other socially critical sectors such as education and health.
Loss of trust
Discovery New Zealand made after-tax losses in 2022 of more than NZ$34 million, up $800,000 on the previous year. Hence the decision of its owner, global media behemoth Warner Bros Discovery, to take out another foundation of the already teetering local news industry.
Politicians murmur about how terrible it is, but argue they can do nothing to save Newshub. The impacts of that impotence are as significant as any other challenge the local media face.
Broadcasting minister Melissa Lee today said there would be no loss of plurality in the national conversation because of the closure. She said most New Zealanders now get their news on mobile phones.
But television news also relies on social media, not just the airwaves, for its dissemination. If people are looking on their phones for news, the stories from one of the country’s most impactful newsrooms will no longer be there.
Emergency funding through the government’s $55 million public-interest journalism fund helped during the pandemic lockdowns. But it also triggered allegations from right-wing pundits and politicians that the media had been bought.
Research conducted at the Centre for Media, Journalism and Democracy (JMAD) shows public trust in news is falling dramatically in Aotearoa New Zealand. Early results from this work in 2024 show that decline is accelerating.
The reasons for this loss of trust are complex and are under further study at JMAD. Indeed, the news media itself must look long in the mirror as it works through its trust issues. How did it lose the audience so badly?
But any attempts at rebuilding that trust and its role in a functioning democracy will be futile if the public perceives the production of news to be now largely controlled by self-interested global corporates.
Journalism as a public good
Poor media literacy, active conspiracy theorists, and decades of underfunding of journalism have likely all contributed to the increasing rejection of mainstream news media.
However, it would be foolish to think trust in democratic media can be rebuilt when the industrial forces behind it have only a financialised interest. If news is the daily record of human life, how can it be left to something as remote and disinterested as a global corporation?
None of this is to say the mainstream media should be viewed as entirely trustworthy. Some scepticism of everything, including news, is healthy in a democracy. We need critically thinking and politically active citizens challenging many things, including mainstream media news agendas.
But those serious about democracy understand the mainstream is where society is anchored, stable and productive.
The dangers of an increasingly fragmented and reduced mainstream media are real. It includes leaving open ground for radicalised actors to occupy and facilitate further social disharmony. If things fall apart and the centre cannot hold, as the poet Yeats put it, “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.
The time to restore journalism as a public good and not simply a plaything for shareholders and other investors is overdue. The news in Aotearoa New Zealand today simply confirms that.
Greg Treadwell, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Auckland University of Technology This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article
16 comments:
That the PIJFund bought the media is not an allegation but a fact. Only have to read the conditions to see that. a decade or few ago the blatancy would have created a colossal furore but now accepted as normal.
Written by a typical academic apologist. The simple fact is that the MSM has a responsibility to deliver balance. It has grossly failed the New Zealand public on that score. Note, I used our country’s true name and not the one made up designed to purposely irritate by your woke scribes. By Treadwell’s definition, I am a conspiracy theorist for not following MSM, I wear that distinction with honour, distancing myself from the poor souls that still swallow your industry’s propaganda.
Since the PIJF/Ardern's bribe corrupted the majority of the brainwashed younger graduates from journalism institutions the NZ public rarely get factual news reports. We are inundated with biased woke opinions and racist re-education from a stone age tribal society with no written language or even a wheel. Most of our senior reporters/presenters were forced into retirement or left the country so we are left with the Marxist dregs to inform us of the propaganda our socialist government released. Without a few brave intelligent people in the media and bloggers on sites such as this we would have remained ignorant of the corruption, nepotism and incompetence of the government and their unmandated social engineering. Luxon should have the guts to get off his woke fence and stop funding media, the rabble will quickly disappear to real jobs and Sir Bob can publish a national newspaper we will all support. Kiwialan.
Greg , your article is OK coming from your left perspective ,and dismiisive when your editor includes Aotearoa in your original article .
However hardworking taxpayers and supporters of the NEW NZ government are fed up to the back teeth with leftist propoganda and crap against this nation- New Zealand.
Most of us do not need hundreds of journalists opinion , just one sensible intelligent article .
Please read Robert McCulloch for academic and Clive Bilby for rural and Gerrard Eckhoff for the general NZ.
You will see NZ is well served . Now get a real job .
Yet more proof, as if it were needed, as to why MSM is in the crap as deeply as it is today.
It is worth repeating that Democracy in New Zealand was doing just fine before Channel 3, TV3 and Newshub came along and I am sure will continue to do so in the future. What the article doesn't address is that MSM had become a major component of the Government propaganda machine and a large number of it's audience has had a gutsful of being told how and what to think. Frankly, I couldn't care less who owns the MSM in New Zealand provided that the news is presented factually and discussion of the events of the day is fair and balanced.
Finally, I will end this diatribe by saying that Bob Jones was spot on when he wrote about the uselessness of Universities and their soft courses so many years ago #whensatirebecomesfact.
Wow, does Greg really believe this rubbish. I know it his opinion, and as such he is welcome to share it. However it certainly puts some history to why our media is where it is when he is a lecturer in journalism.
What Treadell appears to be suggesting, already exists. It’s called TVNZ and RNZ. Public funded media. Now every other Tom, Dick and Harry that launches their own media platform and then discovers (Discovery was the perfect name for Newshub’s owners) that the market share, in both advertisers and audiences, is too small to support them, expect to go cap in hand to the taxpayer for more public funding, all in the name of “democracy”. It’s a blatant con job. No different to when greedy bankers mishandled their business and plead poverty, needing government bailouts, only to reward themselves for their financial incompetence, but wonderful bullshit skill set. Remember the line, “Too big to fail”.
The PJIF may well turn out to have been the most toxic of Jacinda Ardern's legacies to New Zealand.
Research conducted at the Centre for Media, Journalism and Democracy (JMAD) shows public trust in news is falling dramatically
I don't know of the place named after this quote. Research suggests it doesn't exist.
New Zealand, however, I know a bit about and the typer of fiction quoted, again, has it wrong.
Public trust in "news" presented by mainstream media is not "falling dramatically".
Thanks to "journalists" and their schoolteacher proponents it has fallen. Dramatically!
Journalism as a public good and not a plaything for shareholders doesn't seem to work very well at Radio NZ. Lets be brutally frank. The self interest of many journalists in promoting their own political opinions and not reporting news in an unbiased manner has led to the general public increasingly ignoring their work. Trust in journalism is at an all time low and yet they consistently complain when the companies they work for become economically unviable.
I agree with Robert Arthur.
The PJIF was and still is a cancer to truth in our democracy.
Once aligned by either ideology or cash to government driven narrative the Fourth Estate ceases and the fourth branch begins.
Media cannot take government money and still claim independence and those that did are either stupid or arrogant but likely both as they seem to exist in their own bloated and incestuous echo chamber.
Their outright proclivity to protect and serve the previous government was so obvious it obstructed their audiences view of the actual news and now it seems that audience has had the last word about trust and confidence....
PS. Greg, the name of our country is New Zealand. It has been for quite some time now and at last look it has not been changed.
Should the citizens ever actually be asked and the majority deem a change needed then so be it. Until that time the constant use of any other name (like the previous regime and the MSM have done) is simple socio-linguistic eugenics.
Sorry Greg, its because people like you are teaching in our universities how to bring about mistrust in MSM.
And by the way. The the country's called New Zealand.
having heard of the term 'swiftie', i believe the author should be honoured as the first (and hopefully only) 'newshubbie'!!!
btw, did BV just lead a lamb to the slaughterhouse?
Hmm Greg Treadwell, never heard of you. Disagree with the vast majority of this article.
Not sure why you have popped up here or how much you have contributed to the fight against what your industry has created and the very perilous situation journos are now in that you have no doubt helped to create. I only read your article once and I'm not wasting my time to read it again.
I'm assuming you have written this piece as you have an agenda being an AUT lecturer, so im going to assume you teach journos on how to do their job? Perhaps a bit of time for self reflection, how do you think you have done? Has journalism improved under your watch and education regime?
Imo it's only fair that you lot are now under intense scrutiny as the good competent people start to unpick where the rot exists.
I'm going to assume you are a leftie as you mention that jmad are trying to figure out what's going wrong with the news....have you actually watched tvnz1 news recently? If you have, and you can't figure out what's wrong then YOU ARE A VERY LARGE PART OF THE PROBLEM. Also there is very little ownership of the major issues and you seem to want to place the blame on large corporations, so please come clean, you are a leftie, correct?
Again, I'm going to assume through
your written words you allude the news is controlled by large corporations . Are you trying to deflect the role of the last govt in speeding up the demise of your industry? No mention of that, is there. ...infact I think you mentioned that the $55m helped - helped who exactly is probably better question.
David Farrar did some research that shows that over 83% of journos have left or far left leaning views. Im now going to help you out a bit, that this is probably a good place to start to try and figure out what's going wrong.
You said something like - News is important for democracy, - that's probably the only thing you and I will ever agree on, but the balanced fair reporting news I long for has long gone. Please give your self a big pat on the back, not!
I can only conclude that you are doing a terrible job in creating balanced journalism in this country but you won't be getting any sympathy from me and when you lot get down sized hopefully you have a bit of time to figure out what went wrong.
What complete drivel! Ironic that Treadwell is so upset about this, as need only to look in a mirror to see a cause of the problem.
Our country is called NEW ZEALAND.
Any other title is simply just fiction.
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