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Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Mike's Minute: Plenty of questions around trust in the media


One of the key questions out of the annual Trust in News survey is, did Covid kill trust in New Zealand's media?

There are several notable numbers and trends and also a couple of problems.

What is trust, is another question. Your trust is not my trust and what you use to form trust is not covered in this.

For example, Newstalk ZB is a mix of news and commentary. Do you trust the news and not the commentary? Or both? Or the opposite? Does the fact Radio New Zealand fell mean you listened to Jim Mora once too often, or they don’t provide a straight bat in their bulletins anymore?

Does the fact Simon Dallow opens the 6pm news with what seems like an increasingly long Māori version of "good evening" affect your outlook on the bulletin that follows?

The upshot is that in the last handful of years our trust in news in this country has plummeted, and badly.

In 2020 it was 53%, now it is 33%.

Where did the trust go? And does the collapse in trust get sheeted back to Covid, the one o'clock lectures from the pulpit of truth and the Government's millions to newsrooms to help them through the period?

The biggest individual falls year on year are with TVNZ and Newshub?

Not far behind was Radio New Zealand. For what it's worth, as a punter, this feels like my story because my trust is way down. I can also argue, to a degree given I work in the trade, that I have a bit of insight and there is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that the media and wider New Zealand do not, and have not, connected particularly well for a number of years.

In my professional opinion gleaned over four decades and counting, it's largely because social media has given a smallish group licence to go nuts with conspiracies, it's because a lot of journalists are very young and very inexperienced with next to no institutional knowledge and as a result they parrot press releases as opposed to asking questions, and it's because they also tend to be left-leaners who were more than open to the Ardern leadership of the day, which they fell for hook, line and sinker.

And so, the rot began.

In other words, they have dug their own grave.

Here's the sad bit - these stats come at a time when bits of the media are on their knees. That, in part, explains why the TVNZ open letter petition at last glance got 12,100 signatures, which hardly a cavalcade of support for what those trying to save their jobs would argue is vital work that we will sorely miss when it's gone.

My question - will we?

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

6 comments:

DeeM said...

You don't miss what you never trusted, and I sure won't miss the MSM when, hopefully, it shuffles of this media coil and fades away.

Trust is easy to define, Mike. It's about whether you believe what you're hearing, based on alternative sources of information, and why certain stories are completely ignored while others are blown out of all proportion, while constantly dismissing subjects you disagree with as conspiracy theories - something you have a tendency to do, Mike.
This is common MSM practice and has alienated 67% of the NZ population, if the survey is to be believed.

There's no coming back from that. A large majority of Kiwis now get their news from non-legacy sources and won't be back.



Anonymous said...

With the internet we can now source news from around the world. It has been evident that something is fishy when major global news stories about New Zealand don't make the news in New Zealand.

Anonymous said...

Mike Hosking: another reason I don’t trust the mainstream media.

Steve said...

“ In other words, they have dug their own grave.”
Exactly …. it’s a perfect example of karma at work. You reap what you sow in this world and I have no sympathy whatsoever for these useful idiot ideologues whose use-by dates have finally arrived.

Anonymous said...

Yep I'm loving the msm demise. I'm thinking that they will try and salvage what they can but more cuts to come as this latest bad news ( that nobody trusts them) starts to bite.

A few more left leaning reporters on the dole will be good.

Anonymous said...

There is still plenty of demand for news in NZ. The problem is with the providers. MSM is currently alienating its audience.

BTW Mike, it's not about covid. Covid is over.