DTNZ: Wishart taking media to court over lazy climate reporting

Veteran journalist Ian Wishart is crowdfunding legal action against TVNZ, RNZ, TV3 and the Broadcasting Standards Authority, accusing them of “churnalism”, copying climate press releases without their own fact-checking.

Wishart, editor of Investigate Magazine, has set up a Givealittle Page to raise $35,000 for two High Court challenges. He said trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low, and regulators like the BSA – which is now being disbanded – have contributed to a lack of standards in reporting. A recent Curia poll taken by RCR, showed 51% of people now trust the independent media more.

Rodney Hide: The Herald’s Shameful Attempt to Overthrow a Democratically Elected Prime Minister

On Tuesday 21 April 2026, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called for a formal confidence vote in his leadership and won it decisively. The issue, he stated, was now settled. Yet in the preceding weeks, the New Zealand Herald, under the direction of its political editor Thomas Coughlan, had conducted what amounted to a sustained, calculated campaign aimed at destabilising and ultimately removing a democratically elected Prime Minister.

Graham Adams: Media talks up Winston Peters’ rise

The path to election glory has traps.

NZ First’s prospects at the election after a run of good polling are being talked up by increasingly enthusiastic commentators. But if a week is a long time in politics, more than six months is an eternity. And there are traps aplenty for the party to navigate before November 7.

Listening to the media, however, you might think the continuing rise of Winston Peters and NZ First is unstoppable.

Mike's Minute: National's internal stirrers need to quieten down

You know exactly how today is going to go.

The Prime Minister does the media rounds this morning. There will be no shortage of cortisol spiked journalists hanging off every word, double dissecting every pause and utterance—many of them desperate to write something disparaging about a man they’ve already decided they dislike.

I wouldn’t be Luxon for quids. He’s been dealt a sh*t hand.

Matua Kahurangi: Winston Peters calls out the Left’s hypocrisy on Gaza

Winston Peters has hit the nail on the head again. His latest post calling out the hypocrisy of the left over Gaza isn’t just political theatre, it’s a reminder of how shallow and performative the outrage machine has become.

He was right to ask where the questions are in Parliament? Where’s the media coverage that actually demands answers from those who claim to care about peace?

JC: Why Do the Left Not Learn

The question is something of a conundrum. I am referring specifically to their behaviour and strategy. From their perspective politics is littered with examples of how these two things hurt them in all sorts of ways. They seem to have become obsessed with the nasty side of politics. They have a propensity to go after the person and not the policy. This fanaticism extends, unsurprisingly, to their comrades in the media who seem to think, irrationally, this is a good idea.

Roger Partridge: Beyond grievance politics - New Zealand’s search for common ground

Trust in New Zealand is fracturing before our eyes. The 2025 Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer reveals a society divided by mistrust. Most alarming is the collapse in media trust. It has plummeted to just 35% – down from 41% three years ago.

But the damage extends beyond the media. For the first time, New Zealand’s trust index has fallen below the global average, dropping to 47% compared with the global index of 56%. Trust in government has fallen to 45%, while business trust stands at 54%.

Thomas Harrington: The Limits of Transactionalism

We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” - C.S. Lewis “Men Without Chests”

I recently returned from Spain where I participated in a seminar on The Defeat of the West, the most recent book by the well-known French historian Emmanuel Todd. Whether one agrees with all, part, or none of his thesis—I find myself in the second category—it is a compelling and suggestive read, one that in typical Todd style relies on the innovative mixing of demographic, anthropological, religious, and sociological theories to make its case.

Geoff Parker: New Zealand is being ruled by fear

Activist agenda driven Maori have virtually taken full control of New Zealand by utilising the vehicle of fear.

New Zealanders are frightened to speak out against this seditionist agenda, on social media, at meetings and/or social gatherings for fear of being labelled ‘racist’ or confrontation. In the case of social media the pack attacks can be very vitriolic.

Jeffrey A. Tucker: The Revolution of 2024

People are out and about, smiling at each other. It’s been true since the morning after the election, the results of which defied every prediction. Who doesn’t like to see the smug elites who have ruled the world for five awful years taken down a peg?

More than that, there are hints of a return to sanity. Mainstream advertisers are suddenly returning to X, putting their economic interest above their tribalist loyalties. The editor of pro-lockdowns Scientific American, which had long blessed totalitarian measures as true science, has resigned.

David Farrar: Did Labour break trust in Government?

This chart [below] uses data from the General Social Survey. As you can see trust in four vital government institutions increased slightly from 2016 to 2018. Since then it has plummeted for all four institutions. A movement of an entire point on a ten point scale is huge.

David Farrar: Another media comparison

The media have moved on from Labour’s Associate Foreign Affairs Spokesperson saying that the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of 1,000+ Israeli civilians was justified. They ran one story, and abandoned it despite the lack of apology or sanction.

Bobbie Anne Flower Cox: How to Defeat the Censorship Industrial Complex

One of my colleagues, a medical doctor, that I often “tour” with on what many refer to as the “freedom” circuit, texted me a meme a while ago that I just love. Well, to be honest, I actually despise it because of what it symbolizes, which is the tremendous struggles we’ve endured the past four and a half years to get our voices heard by the masses. But part of me likes the meme because it completely embodies what life was like in 2020 for those of us who were speaking out almost from the moment the government said, “Lockdown! Just for 2 weeks to flatten the curve.”

Barrie Davis: Free Speech in Universities or Where’s Voltaire?

In a recent article in The Post, “The problem with the Government’s proposed ‘free speech’ law for universities” (here), Professor Nic Smith, Vice-Chancellor of Te Herenga Waka (was Victoria University of Wellington), wrote “Paradoxically, I believe insisting on everybody having a platform will diminish our capacity for people to talk respectfully together about difficult topics and discuss conflicting ideas.” Yes, that is seemingly absurd and self-contradictory, but I fail to see how it could be true.

Suze: Teaching the Truth about NZ History

Which version of NZ history are they teaching?

Last week a Northland school librarian hurriedly removed history books from a high school library lest student minds become contaminated by the “racist” propaganda. Why the panic, you ask, and how did the books get there?

2023 is the first year that NZ history is a compulsory subject in schools. Stuff have outdone themselves with accounts of horrifying reactions to books on NZ history that challenge the “authorised” (substitute sanitised) version of the Treaty, essential to implementing co-governance, separate Maori law and institutions.

Kate Hawkesby: Three things have stood out to me as a bit of a let-down this week

So as we end the week three things have stood out to me as a bit of a let-down this week.

One; the gangs and their cosy relationship with Police. Two; the media. Three; the teachers.

I'll start with the Mob and the coppers.

Karl du Fresne: What's wrong with NZ journalism: No. 227 in a series

Christopher Luxon suggests New Zealand needs more babies, and a hysterical TVNZ reporter – possibly fresh from binge-watching The Handmaid’s Tale – draws a parallel with Nazi eugenics.

National announces that it will reintroduce prescription fees, and it’s immediately interpreted as an attack on women and linked with Luxon’s personal position on abortion.

Frank Newman: The lost Post

 

The Dominion Post is dropping “Dominion” from its name. 

Today Stuff published quite a lengthy article that appeared to be a slightly confusing mix of nostalgia and justification, although for the latter one must read between the lines. Here >>>

Presumably, “Dominion” is a representation of colonialism that the folk at Stuff do not want to be associated with. So it will soon be simply known as the Post. 

But which post? Fence post as a tribute to farmers? Post as in postage and our increasingly anorexic postal service. Or perhaps last post, as in remembering our fallen soldiers. Or maybe post as in postscript and a prophecy about legacy media.

Guy Hatchard: The Ardern Government is Throwing Money at the Media and the Fake Science Brigade

… in the Belief the Public Will Swallow Anything, No Matter How Absurd.

It is surprising what tripe you read in the newspapers, and more surprising—the government is funding it. Te Punaha Matatini hosts the government’s Disinformation Project, which is hitting the headlines again. According to Principal Investigator Kate Hannah (MA in history), the government should be allowed to dictate to high street stationer Whitcoulls which magazines it can sell to the public. Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t this a bit close to book burning?

Hannah is concerned that the magazine New Dawn has questioned the efficacy of the Covid vaccines (among other things like Atlantis and fake Moon Landings). I don’t read New Dawn, but if there is one thing that the public has figured out, it is the lack of efficacy of Covid vaccines. They don’t seem to prevent transmission, hospitalisation, or death.

Garrick Tremain: Obedience

 Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on training the media!