Karl du Fresne: Why the Maiki Sherman-Lloyd Burr incident is a matter of public interest

A good and respected friend – like me, a former newspaper editor – takes the view that the furore over TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman’s alleged verbal abuse of Stuff press gallery journalist Lloyd Burr is not news; that at best, it would warrant a mention in a gossip column.

Fair enough, but I differ. If the high-profile journalists who provide the public with political news and comment are bitchy, entitled, childish, over-stimulated and perhaps inclined to run off at the mouth after a few drinks at the end of a long day, I think we deserve to know. That knowledge is potentially very helpful in judging how much notice we should take of them, or indeed whether we should take any notice of them at all.

John McLean: The Pravda Post

The paper propagandizing for a New Zealand neo-Marxist Government in waiting

Pravda was the official newspaper of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. Although Pravda means “Truth” in the Russian language, the Pravda newspaper wasn’t about truth. Quite the opposite. It was propaganda for the Soviet regime.

JC: Media at Airport Failed To Fly

A humorous and short clip was shown on the Stuff website on Tuesday showing the predictable media scrum made up of the predictable so-called journalists at Wellington Airport lying in wait to pounce on their posse, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. They had no doubt risen early to ready themselves for this momentous moment (men smartly dressed and ladies with lipstick and powdered noses) when they could destroy the man there and then. These leftie luvvies appeared to be in a high state of excitement: salivating at the opportunity, following a bad poll, to relieve him of his prime ministership on the spot.

Karl du Fresne: Stuff's operating model: cheap and lazy

Last Tuesday’s edition of my local paper, the Wairarapa Times-Age, devoted an entire page to an Associated Press (i.e. American) feature story about affluent middle-class professionals taking extended career breaks.

The people mentioned in the story are representatives of an elite US metropolitan class who can afford to put their careers on hold while they spend months enjoying a “reset” in exotic locations such as Egypt and Brazil. It’s hard to imagine a story less relevant to readers of a paper in a New Zealand provincial town where many people are struggling.

Peter Bassett: From Impartiality to Instruction - How Journalism Rewrote Its Own Rules

For most of the 20th century, journalism operated on a simple but demanding premise: tell the public what is known, what is disputed, and who is arguing what — then step back. Readers were treated as adults, capable of weighing evidence and reaching their own conclusions.

That settlement has quietly collapsed.

Ani O'Brien: Marc Daalder writes opinion, not journalism

Marc Daalder’s ideological tantrum, complete with foot stamp, begins with the headline,“Cabinet overrode health advice”. It tells you from the outset that Cabinet have been naughty! It takes a normal feature of democratic government (elected ministers making decisions!) and reframes it as scandal, as though unelected officials are supposed to govern and elected politicians are an unfortunate interference.

Karl du Fresne: Death Wish 2025

I did something last Sunday that I hadn’t done for probably a year or more. I listened to RNZ’s Mediawatch. 

There was a time when I tuned in to the show every week. But as with so much RNZ content, I grew disenchanted to the point where I simply decided I was better off without it.

Karl du Fresne: What privilege looks like in 2025

Two weeks ago, in a blog post headlined What privilege sounds like in 2025, I made the case that the broadcasting organisation formerly known as Radio New Zealand is the embodiment of privilege. 

I argued that the dwindling number of New Zealanders who listen to the state radio station are in fact doubly privileged. Not only are they able to hear taxpayer-funded content that’s carefully curated so as not to offend their sensibilities or challenge their cosy assumptions, but they are spared the indignity of being bombarded with crass, intrusive advertising. That wretched fate is reserved for the proles who choose to tune into commercial radio (which, in this context, essentially means NewstalkZB). 

Ani O'Brien: The media missionaries destroying NZ journalism

New Zealand’s press gallery doesn’t just fail to hold power to account, it is part of the power it’s meant to watch.

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.

Roger Partridge: Why subsidising news won't save democracy

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.

Karl du Fresne: On objectivity, balance and honesty in journalism

Several weeks ago I listened to a discussion on America’s National Public Radio network about objectivity in journalism. The three participants included Adam Reilly, the politics reporter for the Boston TV station GBH, and Callum Borchers, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
The third guest on the panel, Juliette Kayyem, was not a journalist, but a politically well-connected former Democratic Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts and occasional columnist for the Boston Globe.

Kelli Ballard: Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Journalism?

The dangers of incorporating AI into the news product.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the way of the world now. It is gaining use and popularity in just about every aspect of our lives. From medical advancements to entertainment, it is reshaping society even as it battles controversy and skepticism. For one thing, this emerging technology does not have enough oversight, and no one knows for sure what the long-term repercussions might be. For another, AI makes it easy to spread disinformation, further eroding the trust people have in the news. So, why are so many news outlets turning to artificial intelligence to deliver their information?

Insights From Social Media

Steven Mark Gaskell writes > Welcome To The Newsroom: Leave Objectivity At The Door, Bring Your Cultural Fluency

There was a time when journalism prided itself on objectivity, scrutiny, and a healthy dose of scepticism toward those in power. But welcome to 2025, where the newsroom’s guiding principle is no longer “hold power to account,” but rather, “don’t ruffle cultural feathers unless they’re Pākehā.”

Penn Raine: Golden Child

Our friends have four adult children who joke about whose turn it is to be ‘golden child’. They judge this accolade on which of their lives and careers is currently most admired. The corollary to this is which of them could stuff up the most and avoid a proper telling off.

In our country these days there is a whole group of golden children who never get the level of ticking off that they deserve. So who are they?

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: There's a lot of remarkable things about yesterday's c-word column

There are a lot of remarkable things about that C-word column yesterday, and one of them is that it is still up online, and apparently no one is sorry for this.

If you haven't seen this column, let me get you up to speed on this:

Yesterday, Sunday Star Times columnist Andrea Vance did something that I would venture no other mainstream columnist has ever done in this country - she called a minister of the Crown a c-word in the newspaper.

Centrist: Is the Herald abandoning its role as a newspaper of record in favour of clickbait?

David Harvey of The Halfling’s View notes that NZME’s restructuring of the New Zealand Herald will prioritise engagement metrics over traditional journalistic values.

Editor-in-chief Murray Kirkness confirmed that the newsroom will publish fewer stories, cutting those that fail to “resonate” with audiences. According to Harvey, this means newsworthiness will take a backseat to digital metrics such as page views and video engagement.

Karl du Fresne: Marching blindly into the post-journalism era

Herewith, two unrelated (or perhaps not) examples of the insidious bias that pervades the mainstream Western media. Neither is necessarily of any great consequence on its own, but each is telling in its own way.

Graham Adams: NZ Herald struggles with how to gain readers’ trust

Manurewa Marae ‘scoop’ falls between clickbait and journalism.

Last week, NZME, the owners of the NZ Herald, announced 38 newsroom staff would be losing their jobs.

Most of those being dismissed were “production journalists”, which includes sub-editors. The Herald has undertaken culls of such employees several times over recent decades. Inevitably, the ensuing rash of grammatical and spelling mistakes in their publications, along with plain gobbledegook, means at least some of them will soon need to be rehired.

Greg Treadwell: 14 community newspapers due to close....

With 14 community newspapers due to close, too many parts of NZ are becoming ‘news deserts’

When media company NZME proposed the closure of 14 community newspapers last week, the so-called “news desert” encroached a little further into the local information landscape.

Karl du Fresne: Here's the news - life will go on

I’ve asked this question before, but it’s time to ask it again: do TV journalists have any idea how precious and self-absorbed they look?

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests they don’t. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve witnessed an unedifying orgy of self-aggrandisement as Newshub journalists and broadcasters very publicly and ostentatiously mourn the imminent loss of their jobs.