Local journalism faces genuine crisis. Towns across New Zealand risk becoming “news deserts” where civic life unfolds without professional scrutiny. Dr Gavin Ellis’s comprehensive report for Koi Tū documents this decline with sobering thoroughness.
Ellis deserves credit for mapping an urgent problem. His 48-page analysis reveals how newspaper closures correlate with reduced civic engagement, higher corruption rates, and weakened democratic participation. The data is extensive, the international scope impressive. …
His analysis faces several challenges: dismissive treatment of legitimate concerns raised by New Zealand’s experience with the $55 million , questionable assumptions about market failure, and weak international evidence for subsidy effectiveness.
Ellis describes criticism of the PIJF as a “disinformation campaign.” This mischaracterises legitimate concerns about the fund’s design and consequences. The problem wasn’t imaginary bribery but the structural risk created when government funding comes with political conditions.
The fund required recipients to commit to specific political interpretations and policy positions as eligibility criteria. Whatever the merit of those positions, requiring journalists to affirm particular viewpoints to access taxpayer money creates obvious independence concerns. The problem isn’t the content of the conditions but the principle of conditioning media funding on political alignment.
I generally rate what Eliis says, but his characterising PIJF as a disinformation campaign is outrageous. The definition of disinformation is people saying something that is objectively false, and knowing it is false.
The criticism of PIJF is that it required all media applicants to sign up to a left-wing view of what the Treaty of Waitangi means. This is not disinformation. It is legitimate criticism.
The fact Ellis himself is unable to distinguish between legitimate criticism and disinformation, shows why the media is in such trouble.
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
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