The media landscape has changed rapidly in the past few years, and so has the way people consume news. As Treadwell says in the survey results, “trust in news and news outlets keeps declining and journalists and media companies need urgently to form relationships with their audiences and with communities to rebuild that trust”. Additionally, education also plays a big part in efforts to increase media literacy among the general population. As a society, Aotearoa must come together to protect itself from the harm of disinformation.
NZ Herald
Talk about missing the point of the survey. I think we can all agree that New Zealand is coming together to protect itself from disinformation by not consuming opinions that masquerade as news.
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But I’m baffled. The NZ Herald says AI and misinformation are to blame, but Dita de Boni says it’s the Atlas Network; which is it?
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It seems only one legacy media person has grasped the impact of the latest trust survey. That person is Heather du Plessis-Allan:
Well, the news media has just been given a a massive wake up call.
A report has just landed from AUT showing how much trouble the media is in. These guys talked to more than a 1000 people to find out what they think of the media and they found trust in the media has fallen from 53 percent in 2020 to 33 percent this year.
That is big. Four years ago, half of us trusted the media. Today, only a third.
And this is not a blip, it’s fallen every single year from 2020. It’s gotten smaller in ’21, smaller in ’22, smaller in ’23 and then smaller in ’24.
And the main reason? Bias.
87 percent of respondents said the reporting in the news is biased and not balanced and many respondents shared the view that mainstream news was “clearly biased to the left”.
And that is not their imagination, because that backs what journalists say about themselves. There was a study a couple of year ago asking Kiwi journos which way they lean, and 81 percent said left-of-centre.
People aren’t dumb. They see it – and now we find out it’s the main reason why they don’t trust the media any more.
NewstalkZB
We see them. They’ve done this to themselves because of their bias and yet they are blaming us, the audience, instead of their management and their journalists. They are bent, we know it, and we won’t be gaslit anymore.
Now this isn’t a revelation to you and I, because we have discussed this for years now on this show – that the left leaning bias is problem for the media.
And we are seeing it play out right now, with this new Government being given absolutely no honeymoon whatsoever because their conservative, liberal and centre-right ideas are an anathema to left-leaning journalists, who rail against it every single day.
Now the real question is, can the media turn this around?
And I’m going to make a prediction – no.
Because this isn’t a revelation to you and I, but I genuinely think newsrooms up and down this country don’t believe this is true. That is my experience of talking to editors in various media. They don’t see it, or they do and they make excuses.
If if they wanted to change it, the bias is so deeply ingrained it’ll be very hard to undo.
So really, the benefit of this research is probably not for the legacy media, because they probably can’t change things. It’s for you and I – to tell us we’re not imagining it.
NewstalkZB
No, we aren’t imagining it. This survey has been going on since 2020 and each and every year the results are similar: we don’t trust them, we aren’t going to trust them, and it’s not us, it’s them that have the problem.
Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. Cam blogs regularly on the BFD - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Essential to turn this around - ASAP. The future of NZ depends on this.
CRT always defies when crossed - there is massive defiance now as people are questioning their attack on a legitimately elected government.
Continue to challenge - NZ's future depends on this.
Cam, I'm loving it. Karma mate, karma. You are correct, they really can not see it. That is the main difference between the left and the right, the left blame everyone else, and the right have ability to understand what the problem is and take responsibility for the issues.
Karma mate, it's taken a while but it's happening. Don't listen to Dita and her dangerous radical mates, karma is what's being served because of THE MEDIAS ACTIONS.
This comment confirms the media IS mis and disinformation, and that’s without getting into their wilful blindness and nefarious propagandising of the rights of exhibitionist and predatory men’s feelings at the expense of women’s rights, of the so-called safety and efficacy of the Covid vaccine, masks, lockdowns, and promotion of inane and arbitrary rules such as only being allowed to go to the supermarket and not the butcher or green grocer etc (remember those days?!!):
“As a society, Aotearoa must come together to protect itself from the harm of disinformation”
Aotearoa is not our country’s name. It is New Zealand. Colloquial use is fine, actually lovely (I learned basic Te Reo 20 years ago - fell in love with the language and culture), but the media have been pushing it as our new name, just like they and every woke business have been aggressively pushing ‘Kia ora’ and ‘Nga Mihi’ in all communications. It is one thing for this change to happen organically over a long period of time, quite another to have it forced on us all in 3 short years.
Newsgrub, NZH, One news, Stuff all enthusiastically jumped on these false narratives. They are all complicit in the erosion of our democracy, basic human rights and our economy. Where was their critique when that sweaty little arrogant man decided to change the RBNZ mandate and print money like it was a game of monopoly?
They not only unconditionally supported everything the Labour govt did, but actually went out of their way to promote it and squash any questions to the contrary. They always turned off comments on FB around any Covid, Treaty or rainbow issues, labelling any dissenters as racists, bigots and conspiracy theorists.
They were the Squealer to Labour and the Green’s Napoleon.
The only way the MSM will ever be able to potentially earn our trust back is if they apologise for such egregious behaviour, stop propagandising falsehoods and disinformation, and go back to simply reporting the news honestly, factually and without bias.
It's more than just bias, it's BS.
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