Is it really about trust, or is it about framing?
Each year, surveys show media trust falling. Commentators blame social media or disinformation. But perhaps the public isn’t rejecting facts. Maybe they’re rejecting how those facts are framed.
“Framing” is the editorial layer added to facts. Which details are spotlighted, which are buried, and what tone guides interpretation? Readers know who the prime minister is. What drives disengagement is the slant: whether stories are cast as triumphs, failures, or excuses.
Tone is the giveaway. Saying “Chris Luxon is the Prime Minister” delivers a fact. Saying “Chris Luxon is the amazing Prime Minister” or “Chris Luxon is the damn Prime Minister” adds a signal. The more the signal annoys you, the more likely you are to tune out.
Media bias by the numbers
AUT’s 2024 survey found just 32% of New Zealanders trust news in general, down from 53% in 2020. Nearly three-quarters now actively avoid it, a figure worse than the global average of 40%.
When asked why, the answer is clear: they think the media is biased and unbalanced. A 2022 Massey study found 65% of journalists identify as left-wing, 12% as right-wing, and 23% as centrist. Readers can see the tilt in coverage.
One standard for some, another for others
Somewhere along the way, audiences have begun to notice that legacy media no longer present the world as it is. They present it as they wish it to be.
When Green MP Benjamin Doyle was embroiled in controversy over a sexualised Instagram post, the NZ Herald ran a 4,000-word explainer titled “Anatomy of a scandal”, portraying Doyle as embattled.
By contrast, earlier this year, when National MP Hamish Campbell was linked to a religious group under FBI scrutiny, the same paper ran a 1,300-word piece headlined “Deeply embedded in religious group under investigation”. This framing implied guilt by association. The inconsistency is obvious. Same outlet. A similar type of story, but with a different treatment.
The same pattern played out with Labour’s 2023 IRD wealth report, which claimed the richest New Zealanders paid just 9.4% tax. Media outlets echoed the framing that the rich weren’t paying their fair share, with practically no investigation. Yet the report’s own numbers, once examined, showed the conclusion was built on questionable assumptions. The “fact” was accepted, but the frame was partisan.
It’s happening across the board
On climate, critics of emissions targets are ignored. On gender, activist jargon is often adopted as fact. On race, Pākehā New Zealanders are cast as the problem, and Māori grievance is presented as the unquestionable centre.
The net effect on audiences due to framing is that what should be a conversation comes off as a sermon, and it’s off-putting. The data suggests that advocacy journalism has backfired. Is it “the louder the sermon, the more people tune out?”
The Centrist is a new online news platform that strives to provide a balance to the public debate - where this article was sourced.
Media bias by the numbers
AUT’s 2024 survey found just 32% of New Zealanders trust news in general, down from 53% in 2020. Nearly three-quarters now actively avoid it, a figure worse than the global average of 40%.
When asked why, the answer is clear: they think the media is biased and unbalanced. A 2022 Massey study found 65% of journalists identify as left-wing, 12% as right-wing, and 23% as centrist. Readers can see the tilt in coverage.
One standard for some, another for others
Somewhere along the way, audiences have begun to notice that legacy media no longer present the world as it is. They present it as they wish it to be.
When Green MP Benjamin Doyle was embroiled in controversy over a sexualised Instagram post, the NZ Herald ran a 4,000-word explainer titled “Anatomy of a scandal”, portraying Doyle as embattled.
By contrast, earlier this year, when National MP Hamish Campbell was linked to a religious group under FBI scrutiny, the same paper ran a 1,300-word piece headlined “Deeply embedded in religious group under investigation”. This framing implied guilt by association. The inconsistency is obvious. Same outlet. A similar type of story, but with a different treatment.
The same pattern played out with Labour’s 2023 IRD wealth report, which claimed the richest New Zealanders paid just 9.4% tax. Media outlets echoed the framing that the rich weren’t paying their fair share, with practically no investigation. Yet the report’s own numbers, once examined, showed the conclusion was built on questionable assumptions. The “fact” was accepted, but the frame was partisan.
It’s happening across the board
On climate, critics of emissions targets are ignored. On gender, activist jargon is often adopted as fact. On race, Pākehā New Zealanders are cast as the problem, and Māori grievance is presented as the unquestionable centre.
The net effect on audiences due to framing is that what should be a conversation comes off as a sermon, and it’s off-putting. The data suggests that advocacy journalism has backfired. Is it “the louder the sermon, the more people tune out?”
The Centrist is a new online news platform that strives to provide a balance to the public debate - where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
This sentence 'commentators blame social media and disinformation ' is so far off the mark it's not funny. Yes that exists but it's not the actual reason.
Until they look at themselves and put their hand up and say, yep, we have an issue they will keep imploding. It's actually too late for them imo they have lost credibility and it's difficult to get it back once credibility has gone.
The problem is them.....nothing else.
Reporters don’t have to invent facts to change the way a reader feels. The simplest tools—word choice, quote order, buzzword adjectives and the quiet omission of context—can turn a routine policy story into a moral drama. Call it framing: the craft of arranging truth.
Certain verbs and adjectives carry built-in verdicts.
Decolonise, right-wing (with a sneer) Slash, rollback, deny, protect—each tells the reader whether to cheer or wince.
Replace them with neutral terms and the emotion drains out.
Where the journalist places quotes matters as much as which quotes appear. The first and final voices usually define the moral centre; everything between simply fills the gap.
When an article describes a measure as “a policy designed to improve wellbeing,” the writer has accepted one side’s self-definition. Adding “supporters say” turns moral claim back into contestable opinion.
Case study: the Māori-ward story
The Guardian’s recent coverage of local-body referendums on Māori wards in New Zealand shows how framing works in practice. The headline—“Guaranteed Māori seats on councils to be slashed by more than half”—already signals injury and loss. The piece then describes the government as “right-wing,” the law change as “forcing councils,” and Labour’s earlier move to bypass referendums as a “remedy.” Each word steers sympathy before the reader reaches paragraph two.
The minister responsible, Simon Watts, receives one line of neutral bureaucracy; Labour’s Kieran McAnulty closes the story, calling the process “a farce.” The first and final quotes align neatly with the reporter’s moral contour.
An academic voice is also enlisted—Lara Greaves, associate professor of politics at Victoria University of Wellington—lamenting that Māori wards were “only just starting to hit their stride.” Her presence supplies what newsrooms prize as credentialed empathy: a scholar’s tone to certify the sentiment.
Just as revealing is what was left out. The story never asked how many people were actually enrolled on the Māori roll in each district, or how many voted. In South Wairarapa, for instance, the Māori roll numbers only about 490 voters — a small slice of the local population. The Maori ward winner got 95 votes, the other, 50.
Without those figures, readers abroad may picture a vast constituency stripped of representation when the proportions are far smaller. Omission is framing by subtraction.
It’s the default grammar of modern journalism: emotion foregrounded, proportion blurred, morality implied. Facts survive, but they’re dressed for export. The story still “checks out,” yet it delivers a feeling rather than a full picture.
Understanding framing—lexical, structural, and statistical—isn’t cynicism. It’s literacy. The more readers see how the craft works, the less likely they are to confuse a well-made narrative with objective reality.
— PB
Another enlightening lesson in framing by the Guardian.
When The Guardian announced Jim Bolger’s death, it wasn’t really an obituary. It was a moral fable dressed as journalism.
“Former New Zealand prime minister Jim Bolger, whose political legacy was defined by his deep commitment to reconciliation with Māori as well as his brutal cuts to welfare and deregulation of the labour market, has died aged 90.”
One sentence in, and the sermon’s written. A life’s work, pre-sorted into moral debit and credit. “Deep commitment” earns redemption; “brutal cuts” confirm original sin. You can almost hear the editorial sigh of relief — thank goodness the old neoliberal repented before the end.
That first line does all the heavy lifting. No neutral phrasing such as “major welfare reforms” or “labour-market liberalisation.” No reference to the inflation crisis that made those measures necessary. Just the preferred adjectives of the age: brutal, deep, committed. Guardian English for we’ve already decided what this means.
Bolger’s achievements are reordered to fit the catechism. Reconciliation with Māori — virtue. Welfare reform — cruelty. Labour deregulation — collateral sin. Chronology is irrelevant; morality trumps sequence. The former prime minister’s journey becomes a familiar Guardian parable: a conservative who sinned through austerity, saw the light, and spent his later years talking about inequality and Treaty settlements.
“Bolger later disavowed neoliberalism,” readers are told — the perfect conversion line. Not “revised,” not “questioned,” but “disavowed.” A word that belongs in a cult, not an obituary. In Guardian theology, absolution requires the full confession.
By the time a Maori voice appears to offer praise, the story is complete. Their words become the final benediction — Bolger’s atonement for the sins of market reform. The fact that his economic stewardship helped rescue New Zealand from the Muldoon debt spiral is quietly buried alongside him. Omitted context isn’t a mistake here; it’s the point. Context dilutes clarity, and clarity is how moral storytelling holds its audience.
Look closer at the chorus assembled for the eulogy. The cast list runs with precision:
• Christopher Luxon, included for token balance.
• Chris Hipkins, offering moral reflection.
• Tuku Morgan, speaking as cultural conscience.
• Teanau Tuiono, the Green Party’s Treaty custodian, blessing the legacy.
And that’s where it ends. Missing are David Seymour and Winston Peters, the two politicians most likely to challenge the sanctified view of the Treaty industry Bolger helped institutionalise. Their absence isn’t oversight —
The Guardian prefers harmony to heresy.
The point isn’t that these men should have been quoted; it’s that their exclusion makes the piece feel complete in precisely the wrong way. Without dissenting voices, the narrative floats frictionless: a nation reconciled, a man redeemed, history resolved.
But journalism without tension isn’t journalism — it’s choreography.
The result is reporting with all the facts intact but the soul prearranged. The adjectives do the judging, the order supplies the meaning, and the reader’s role is to nod along in moral comfort.
Trump’s bellowing of “fake news” always grated, but this is how it’s made: not by fabrication, but by curation — by writing history or rewriting it with the scoreboard decided beforehand.
— PB
yes PB; I also read that Guardian article and reached the same conclusion as you. It was cleverly biased, and just so much disinformation
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