There was a tweet doing the rounds yesterday that I kept thinking about. It kept bugging me until I gave up trying to resist complaining about the media in New Zealand again and sat to write this. It’s from the anonymous account @Suitandtie9999. and summarises very recent examples of how New Zealand’s media class protects the political Left while pretending to be neutral.
“If the former Vice President of National, Act or NZ First had appeared on RNZ and said it wasn’t safe to talk about experiences within the party — it would be leading the 6pm news for a week!
In just the last 3 days….
In just the last 3 days….
Willie Jackson launched racist attacks at Ryan Bridge: ‘I know you’re trying to write off all the Māori’s right?’ and ‘You’ve been trying to do that for a while now.’
Marama Davidson shared a video of a person who wants to stand for parliament that has the caption ‘I know it will be hard not to punch David Seymour and Winston.’
Martyn Bradbury called for people to spit in politicians’ food: ‘If you are serving a National, ACT and NZF MP food, make sure you spit in that food.’
And Eru Kapa-Kingi has said he can’t share stories about Te Pāti Māori in order to keep himself and whānau safe.
All these incidents involve the political left and the press gallery and media in general have failed to report a single one.”
Read that again. Every single one of those events should have been a news story. They certainly would have been if it were Cam Slater calling for people to spit in the food of Labour/Green/Te Pāti Māori or Shane Jones who shared a video of a prospective candidate saying she would struggle not to punch Chris Hipkins and Chloe Swarbrick in the face. The incidents involve racial discrimination, political intimidation, incitement to violence, and claims of unsafe internal culture. In a functioning democracy with a watchdog media who reported equally as critically about both sides, those would be leading bulletins.
But they weren’t. Because our media class isn’t a watchdog, it’s a lapdog.
We all know that media bias exists, but New Zealand’s press gallery takes it to a new level. They no longer see their bias because they no longer recognise anything outside of it. They are locked into a great pretence of neutrality.
They’ve built entire careers inside an ideological fishbowl. They swim in the same X/Twitter feeds, quote the same activists, attended the same university journalism schools, and reinforce the same worldviews.
The 2020 official Press Gallery photo with Speaker Trevor Mallard.
Every fresh crop of reporters from Auckland, Massey, or Canterbury’s media studies programmes are taught the same catechism: you are not just observers, you are educators. They are told their job is not merely to report, but to uplift, explain, and “contextualise.” The result is that they firmly believe it is their duty to guide the public toward the “correct” conclusions.
And when everyone in the newsroom shares that creed, they don’t even realise they’re doing it. They think they’re simply telling the truth rather than filtering it.
What is most painful about it all is how transparent the failure of journalism is. The double standards are so blatant it’s almost boring at this point.
If an ACT or NZ First staffer said they couldn’t speak out about party “dysfunction” for “safety” reasons, the media would be running rolling coverage, breathless analysis, and deep dives into “toxic culture.” If a National MP had racially attacked a journalist live on air, they’d be forced to resign before close of business. As I said, if a right-wing blogger called for people to spit in Labour MPs’ food, we’d have condemnations from every newsroom in the country. And jokes about punching members of Parliament, ministers of the Crown, would have triggered the formation of an emergency media panel on “the rise of right-wing violence.”
But when the Left does these things, it’s all mysteriously quiet. No wall-to-wall coverage. No think-pieces about “hate speech.” No hysterical press conferences. Just silence. Let’s all pretend it isn’t happening.
This is not oversight. It is editorial intent. It’s the soft bigotry of ideological alignment: they’re our people, so we don’t destroy them.
View from the press gallery in the debating chamber
The truth is, the people shaping New Zealand’s newsrooms are no longer reporters, they’re missionaries. They’ve confused journalism with activism. They genuinely believe their role is to civilise the unenlightened.
They see themselves as moral gatekeepers in a battle against “misinformation” and “populism.” They’re here to correct you, not to inform you. And they will suppress any inconvenient fact that might strengthen what they’ve been told is “the wrong side of history.”
They don’t even realise that this condescension is the very thing driving the public away. They think the problem is us. The peasants. The Facebook mums. The working-class men. The small-town voters who don’t read The Spinoff or worship at the altar of Stuff’s climate desk.
The arrogance is suffocating.
Tracy Watkins, editor of The Post and Sunday Star-Times, wrote a piece a few days ago that perfectly illustrates the problem. In it, she quotes research showing that people dislike the word “journalism” not because they hate the word, but because it now evokes partisanship and elitism. Well, yes. That much is correct. But she interprets this as a branding problem, a matter of “fatigue” around the word “democracy,” and suggests that the public’s mistrust has been cynically stoked by politicians.
But that isn’t it. The problem is not semantic. It’s not a misunderstanding. People distrust the media because they can see with their own eyes that the press no longer plays fair. They see stories buried when they embarrass the Left and inflated when they damage the Right. They notice that questions about Labour, the Greens, or Te Pāti Māori are treated as “distractions,” while any stumble from the Government is treated as scandal. This isn’t “fatigue”; it’s recognition. The public has clocked the bias that editors either can’t see or won’t admit.
When Watkins insists that journalists are “challenging worldviews” and that the backlash is driven by echo chambers, she misses the obvious: the media is the biggest echo chamber of all. The journalists she defends aren’t being punished for telling the truth, they’re being called out for manufacturing it. Until editors like her stop mistaking criticism for ignorance, and stop congratulating themselves for being “watchdogs of democracy” while guarding only one side, trust will keep collapsing. And no amount of wordplay will fix it.
Take this morning’s political coverage on Stuff: “Labour’s secret bold plan and Luxon’s unpopularity: the Left’s 2026 gamble.”
Click to view
It reads like an internal comms memo for Labour HQ. The entire piece is structured around rehabilitating Chris Hipkins and floating the fantasy that Labour is a credible alternative to the “unpopular” government.
There’s breathless speculation about “a bold new plan,” plenty of ink spilled on Luxon’s “problems,” but zero mention of the chaos, disunity, or radicalism on the Left. Not a word about Willie Jackson’s racism, Marama’s sharing of violent rhetoric, or Te Pāti Māori’s implosions. No reflection on why Labour’s support cratered in the first place.
The narrative gets seeded and by 9am every newsfeed in the country is humming the same tune: ‘Luxon unpopular. Labour re-energised. Voters have doubts.’
It’s rhetorical choreography. This is what narrative control looks like. It’s not just what’s printed; it’s what is omitted.
I often am asked why and how this happens? The answer feels like it should be complex, but it is quite simple. Ultimately it is because New Zealand’s media is now one small inbred ecosystem. Reporters at Stuff, NZ Herald, TVNZ, RNZ, and The Spinoff date each other, move between outlets, and retweet one another’s takes. Editors hire former activists and PR staffers from Labour, the Greens, and NGOs. Public-funded journalism grants go overwhelmingly to progressive topics like “climate justice,” “Māori perspectives,” “gender equity,” and so-called “anti-disinformation.” Every “diversity” initiative is ideological, not intellectual. They want different identities, not different ideas.
So the circle tightens. No one challenges the orthodoxy because everyone is invested in maintaining it. When you live in a world where everyone agrees that Luxon is boring, Seymour is dangerous, and Winston is “problematic,” you stop realising those are opinions, not facts.
There are dire consequences for this. When the media chooses sides, it breaks democracy. Without genuine scrutiny, the Left becomes complacent, arrogant, and corrupt. Without fair coverage, the Right becomes paranoid and resentful. And the public stops trusting anyone.
That’s where we are now. A nation where half the country assumes every front page is propaganda and they’re not wrong.
Think about the cost of that. It results in the public tuning out or turning to increasingly fringe sources that have their own credibility issues. This is how republics rot. Slowly, smugly, and under the approving gaze of journalists who think they’re saving the world.
It’s fashionable to talk about “saving journalism.” Insiders usually focus on optimising digital platforms and investing more in video content. But let’s be honest: the version of journalism we have isn’t worth saving.
What we need is media that tells uncomfortable truths without fear or favour. That means independent platforms. It means journalists who aren’t terrified of their editors, Twitter mobs, or their own Instagram friends. It means audiences willing to pay for honesty rather than outrage.
In the meantime, if the media won’t hold both sides to account, then we must.
Every time they bury a story, we must dig it up.
Every time they twist a headline, we must correct it.
Every time they anoint a saviour, we must scrutinise them.
A democracy that can’t see itself clearly is one that’s already half asleep and I fear that in our slumber New Zealand will slide further into a decline we won’t be able to retrieve it from.
Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.
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