Some key data:
- NZers who trust the news has fallen from 53% in 2020 to 33% in 2024
- The drop just in the last 12 months was 9%
- This is not due to international trends. In 2020 NZ was 11% above the global average of 42% and in 2024 NZ was 7% below the global average of 40%. This is about NZ media.
- Trust in news is significantly lower than Australia and Canada
- NZ has the highest proportion (75%) of people who actively avoid the news or selected media
- The only news brand with a (just) positive score is ODT on 5/10
- Radio NZ has gone from 7.0 to 4.9
- TVNZ from 6.8 to 4.8
- NZ Herald from 6.3 to 4.7
- Stuff from 6.1 to 4.6
- 87% of those who distrust news think the news is biased and not balanced
- 82% think news too much reflects the political leanings of newsrooms
- 59% think Government support for the media means you can’t trust media to hold Govt to account
Amusingly one journalist in a fit of irony tweeted that the 20% drop was all due to the Atlas Network. You couldn’t be funnier if you tried.
Here’s some things media could to restore trust:
- Welcome diversity of political views amongst staff (and by that I don’t just mean diversity between hard left and centre left) so centre-right people would feel welcome in your organisation
- Abolish corporate policies that forbid people to have conservative views on issues such as whether men can get pregnant
- Don’t have topics where you don’t allow debate such as on the Treaty, trans issues, preferred climate change response etc
- Ensure you have some journalists who don’t automatically think equality of outcome is desirable, as opposed to equality of opportunity
- Have more journalists who understand economics
- Have more journalists who will as aggressively interview Te Pati Maori and Green MPs as they do ACT and NZ First MPs
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
7 comments:
Where has the education of the journalists gone so wrong ? Even before the Ardern's tyrannical reign the decline in unbiased reporting had started.
Is it the socialist -progressivist education into which this generation has been indoctrinated.
In the old days we had school debating and you were assigned the side you had to debate. Hence find reasons that may have run counter to your beliefs. In essays you had to produce arguements for and against a statement.
Somehow we now have opinionated journos who to avoid personal cognitive dissonance refuse to see alternative views, ever. How about the realization tolerance does not have to mean acceptance.
Most of us don't want to live the socialist 'dystopia,' progressives are determined we should accept without resistance.
Totally agree with your comments DPF.
I would add the news media did not hold the powerful to account over covid. We had the spectacle of journalists, mostly frightened young women, begging Jacinda to lock us down.
We had the same journalists supporting every soul destroying thing the government did and never an ounce of empathy or understanding for those who lost their jobs because of the mandates.
Many who lost their job, who couldn't buy a coffee from a cafe, who couldn't even borrow a library book, concluded the media would never stand up for them but would support every restrictive measure of the Labour government.
As a result of the lockdowns many came to despise Jacinda and her supporters including the mainstream media.
I find it incredible that the msm and so many others seem so mystified by the fall in confidence. The public has been and still is fed relentless pro Labourish pro maori propaganda. The msm seem unable to grasp that te reo, maori twaddle, and effective maori control is anathema to the great majority, the only reason this not very extensively obvious being the feared terror of cancellation. Hugely effective only because of MSM cooperation. Refer Laws on Platform.
Why would I spend an hour of my life looking at a TVNZ or TV3 "news" bulletin knowing that it's incomplete at best or an hour of lies at worst ?
Even the weather forecast is skewed as they have replaced all the city names with a new one in te reo ?
Ditto with a newspaper.
There is a big opportunity in NZ for any media organisation that is willing to give their audience what they actually want. This is so basic.
The media deliberately alienates its own audience. It's just so mind-blowingly stupid.
Oddly enough, I don't want change, not yet at least I want the msm demise to be rapid, so let them remain the same, let Winston smack the left reporting retards from pillar to post a little more before they capitulate.
The tide has turned on these guys and the train wreck is just karma. Let these left journos continue to blame everyone else.....lol. bless them, but thanks for the show!
To Erica
Yes - it is a fact that CRT started long before Ardern's actual reign - and involved infiltrating the media (as a key institution in each country) so as to embed Marxist ideology.
The same is true for the public service, police, judiciary, universities - and even Parliaments themselves. All these are the essential CRT areas.
Action passed under the radar -until well established. Now all is very obvious.
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