Simon O'Connor: The path to irrelevance

With so much media reporting at odds with public sentiment or clearly one-sided - be it in New Zealand or as we have seen recently in the United States - the direction of travel is not positive.

There are many lessons to take away from the United States’ elections, but one that has immediate relevance to New Zealand is the yawning gap between the views of mainstream media and the public.

In recent days, the almost uncompromising bias of many in mainstream media has been very visible just as it was during the US Presidential election - both in terms of what we saw from US media and in New Zealand’s media.

As everyone knows, there is currently considerable focus on the protests around the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. Regardless of where readers sit on the Bill itself, the lack of professionalism of many in legacy media has been on clear display.

A senior TVNZ executive, touted to be the next head of news and content, decided it was entirely appropriate to attend the protest and publicly share her attendance on social media. While for many people, separating personal and professional life is possible - it does not readily apply in this situation. Even if just a perception of bias, it is hard to understand how someone can both attend a protest in a partisan fashion and simultaneously claim to be objective when reporting about it (or in this case, directing others to do so). That TVNZ has recently made much of its new professional and impartial approach, such decisions by this executive member and others makes such pronouncements a joke.

On TVNZ’s Breakfast show, a reporter meeting protestors decided it was entirely appropriate to break into song in support of proceedings. Just like the executive above, we once again have the absurdity of someone taking a clear side while also saying they can objectively report on the matter.

The examples do not end here. A seasoned RNZ reporter thought it perfectly fine to attend the protest - not to cover the event neutrally, but to actively support it. She and the TVNZ executive have both removed their social media promotions of such actions, but the damage is done by having occurred in the first place.

Stuff did a puff piece on the leader of the hikoi, waiting till almost two thirds of the way through a hagiography-length article to mention he was a Maori Party candidate and still has direct ties to the Party, and works at Parliament. They also mentioned his mother, but as almost an after-thought, mentions she is a Maori Party MP. None of this lessens Eru Kapa-Kingi’s leadership and focus, but it is relevant information to the reader. The bias continues when the reporter talks of him as having learned ‘pakeha law’, as if law is now a secondary concept to ethnicity (we can ‘thank’ the Supreme Court in part for this absurdity).

Then we can step back and compare the coverage of two similar events. In as many days we have had the hikoi and Brian Tamaki’s ‘Make New Zealand Great Again’. While different agendas, both employed large scale disruptive behaviours - notably, blocking roads. Two screenshots below illustrate very different headlines:

While coverage of the hikoi could be best described as fawning, Tamaki’s protest was mocked and condemned despite both groups using the same tactics.

The key point is not what these respective protests are about. The key takeaway is that the public sees through the media’s reporting on these matters. Just as in the United States a few days back, the public’s perspective is almost the opposite of what media say it should be.

It should be quickly noted, the same reflections also applies to celebrities. Again, looking to America, it was clear the views of celebrities was not just ignored by the voters but disdainfully dismissed. Here in New Zealand we have the same dynamic beginning, with local celebrities including Lorde opining of how “graceful” the likes of the haka in parliament was. Now, she is welcome to share her opinion but she and others (such as Jason Momoa) might wish to reflect on the US experience, where such views of celebrities only highlighted the opposite and emphasised how out of touch they are with the ordinary person.

There is a yawning - and dangerous - gap between what the mainstream (and celebrities) believe and report and what the public see and think. As someone who believes we need a strong objective fourth estate, this gap is dangerous for it leads to a loss of confidence in media. We see this in all the statistics - be this trust in media tanking; readership/viewership declining to near terminal in some cases; financially, as more and more media outlets close or retrench; and of course, the rise of new forms of media to fill the gap.

We need a strong and trusted media as part of our democracy. Sadly, as also in the United States, we see many in mainstream media almost willfully and arrogantly heading to their own doom. So enraptured with what they believe to be right, they cannot see the disconnect with the public sentiment. The public are sick and tired of being told what to think on various matters and being hectored on what they are meant to accept as truth.

In the United States we have seen many in media double down around their beliefs and approach to reporting. As I wrote in a Substack last week, for many media personalities it is the voter/reader/viewer who is wrong - and wrong for not only their view but for not accepting the ‘truth’ that media was promoting.

If New Zealand media continues down its current path, in parallel with what we are seeing in the United States, then the final trajectory is clear. Failure and irrelevance.

Postscript. We should also be concerned around photos circulating of police officers actively supporting the protest while in uniform. While personal views on such matters are good and welcome, there is also a level of professionalism required. Put succinctly, it is precisely actions like this which continue to erode the public’s trust in our democratic institutions. We should be demanding better of our police, parliament, courts, media, and other institutions. Only the revolutionary welcomes such behaviours and as one of my radio show guests pointed out recently, such revolutionaries are very good at tearing things down, but hopeless at building anything up.

Simon O'Connor a former National MP graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and Political Studies . Simon blogs at On Point - where this article was sourced.