Caleb Anderson: Mainstream Media - Have we closed the door behind us?

Notwithstanding some gains, the governing coalition has disappointed in a number of key regards, One of these dealing with the appalling and ever descending mainstream media.

In a well received, but typically testy, interview with Jack Tame prior to the last election, Mr Peters commented on the lamentable state of the mainstream media, its appalling bias, and how this would not be tolerated by a new government. If I recall, Mr Tame said something like "Is that a threat Mr Peters?" ... and Mr Peters responded with something like "Wait and see".

I know, from a number of conversations, that I was not alone in hoping that this issue might be tackled by an incoming government, that the unmitigated bias of state funded media would finally be addressed. After all, we fund it. It has a duty to reflect balance in its reporting.

Well, we have waited ... but we have not seen.

It has been tempting to wonder how our media (and state funded media in the West more generally) could have gotten this bad, and why any pressure to improve seems to lead to a further bedding in.

Audience numbers have plummeted, and continue to fall, advertising revenue is proving harder to attract, public annoyance at the palpable, and barely disguised, aversion to balance, and fairness, has exploded, people simply don't believe what the media report. They are sick of the unrelenting promotion of left wing agendas, and the constant knee jerk denigration of alternatives. They are sick of what is reported infinitum, and what is not reported routinely.

The effort to look balanced, while not being balanced at all, is not working. The DEI quotas are not working. The editorial decisions around what, who, when and how much are not working. The new faces are not working. Bogus reviews, with tightly delineated terms of reference, are not working. These have become exacerbating, rather than mitigating, measures. In short, they are making things worse.

In fact, all of the above have become triggers to greater public frustration, and evidence of the depth of media denial.

So ... if we were to put the media on the psychoanalyst's couch where would we dig?

Here are the likely questions in the psychoanalysts mind.

Why are they so stuck? Why are they so resistant to genuine reflection? Why can they not see where the problem lies when it is obvious to others? Why are they seemingly incapable of change? What is their agenda? What motivates their bias? What deafens them to counter perspectives? Why can they not see that their credibility has gone through the floor, that most people have left the room already, and that the ceiling is about to cave?

And perhaps most of all, do they even care?

It seems to me that they do care, or they would not be in such profound denial. And denial itself hints at inner conflict.

The problem is that they care about only some things (ideas), or they care about these things to the deliberate exclusion of, and counterbalancing of/by other things (ideas). Opinions are no longer buttressed, or delineated, by ideas that elicit critique or perspective.

As a result, most of their goals have become own goals. They just dig themselves into a deeper hole.

Denial is ultimately destiny.

The mainstream media is stuck. It has reached a stage where it is pathologically averse, or even fundamentally incapable, of honest reflection, of taking criticism, of different perspectives, and to even reading the room. They have bought lock stock and barrel into an ideology that demands no compromises, that takes no prisoners, and that is willing to take the hits.

Reporters are now journalists. Journalism invites, or even presupposes, a different type of engagement. Not the reporting of facts, but the taking of positions (note there is no such word as "reportism"). By its very etymology, journalism is inherently political in its orientation, where reporting was/is traditionally not so. As with most of the "isms" (communism, socialism, consumerism, capitalism, recism, sexism) the sufffix "ism" is an invitation to step into what is being reported, rather than engage in objective observation from without. It is positional, and political, in its orientation.

Truth is no longer truth, unless it fits a predetermined presuppositional narrative.

Paradoxically, to many in the mainstream media, push back is confirmation that they must be right, it is proof of the validity of their cause, evidence of why they must put shoulder to the wheel, and pay the price. If the ceiling falls so beit. This is the price of a metaphorical martyrdom and, along the way, the source of endless self-stroking, and back slapping in the green room. A sword worth falling on!

Younger generations won't remember the movie The Truman Show. This movie is about a young man who is unaware that he is living in an entirely fake world, where everyone but him is an actor, and the actions of all are overseen by an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent director in a control room, seemingly in the sky. Truman eventually suspects that things are not right, that the backdrop to his life is fake, that he is not being told the truth, that things are not as they really are. In seeking himself, he sets sail only to find that the horizon is itself a painted backdrop. He feels his way along the backdrop until he finds some steps and a door, he exits and closes the door.

It seems to me that most people have done precisely this with respect to the mainstream media ... They found the stairs, opened the door, and closed it behind them. They have exited the room. There are better options.

As TVNZ, RNZ, and our main newspapers, gear themselves to returning a left wing coalition to power later this year, it is quite OK to ask why we should be funding (or subsidising) the MSM when they fall so short, while they insist on manipulating what we know and think, and while they have so little regard for alternative perspectives, and for free speech itself.

Ideas are important. They must be allowed to butt up against each other. To be properly tested. To be pulled into line and knocked into shape. The media have a role here. Not to pursue ever malleable utopian ideals, but to facilitate open, and even, debate on the issues of our time, to invite different voices to the table, even voices we may not want to hear, to ensure that ideas get a fair airing, to ensure that these ideas are well grounded, and properly tested, to excavate these ideas to their roots to identify their source and predictive intent and, above all, to leave the conclusions to us.

So ... Mr Peters et al ... it's in your hands, unless, of course, the argument itself yields greater short-term dividends than its ultimate resolution.

An awful lot depends on getting this right. As we think, reflect, debate, (and report) so we are!

Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.