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.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Newshub's putdown of female Finance Ministers

Is Newshub's putdown of NZ's only two female Finance Ministers, Ruth Richardson & Nicola Willis, misogyny?

Of all the Finance Ministers that MainStreamMedia & Jacinda Ardern could attack, how ironic they turn their fire on our first ever female one, Ruth Richardson, and second female one, Nicola Willis. Newshub's front page characterization of this year's budget is that it was the Mother of All Disappointments.

Peter Dunne: Media students and jobs

There has been a positive but restrained response to the deal announced between Stuff and Warner Brothers Discovery to “save” TV3’s six o’clock nightly news bulletin, currently screened under the Newshub label. According to Stuff, the deal will mean that around 40 of the jobs involved can also be saved.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: NZ's Media Just Got More Biased - The Stuff Monster Grows Tentacles

To all Fat Cats - you Missed the Chance to Buy Newshub for $1 & re-balance the news

The Newshub saga is still rolling on as a developing story with further announcements due. It appears that Stuff may be taking over Newshub's TV3 News - which means a left-wing media monster is in the process of growing tentacles & getting bigger. 

Chris Trotter: Why Newshub Failed.

TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared to present levels) amount of commercial advertising. This arrangement reinforced both the public character and the public obligations of the state broadcaster. As the network’s primary funders, the viewing public constituted TVNZ’s most important clientele. These were the citizens to whom TVNZ’s professional broadcasters believed themselves accountable.

Murray Reid: Complaint to News Hub

“Album to Commemorate Invasion of Rangiaowhia to be Released”.

Meriana Johnsen.  22 November 2023 

 

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/11/album-to-commemorate-invasion-of-rangiaowhia-to-be-released.html

My complaint relates solely to the following sentence: "More than 100 people at the pā - half of the women, children and kaumātua who were living there - were murdered, raped or injured”.

Point of Order: We remain “New Zealand” on the Oz side of the Tasman......

.....but Newshub fixed that when Luxon fancied a feed of KFC

Remember the “rogue” subeditor who caused a huge fuss at RNZ when it was found he had been doctoring – he would say “correcting” – Reuters reports about the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

We don’t know for sure – but it looks like he might have joined the editorial team at Newshub.

Robert MacCulloch: Battle of the "experts"

Who are Newshubs "Highly Regarded Economists" trying to discredit the Nats?

The economics news has been dominated the past couple of weeks by Newshub insisting that the National Party's tax plan doesn't "add up". Here's the headline the outlet has been running, "National's foreign buyer tax costings likely have a roughly $530 million fiscal hole each year, according to several highly regarded economists. It's more bad news for the party which has faced constant questioning and criticism over its tax plan".

However, whilst Newshub is desperate to embarrass the Nats by endlessly scrutinizing their tax proposal, the same level of scrutiny doesn't seem to have been applied to Newshub's own sources. Let's be clear, the critique of National made by these "highly regarded economists" has not been peer-reviewed nor published in a journal and as such has no academic standing. In fact, estimating the effect of a policy change that has never been done before, like removing a foreign buyer ban & putting in a 15% tax on property sales over $2 million, is very hard because there's no precedent & so no data that can be used to show what has happened in the past when such a policy has been introduced.

The econometrics involved in my opinion requires a person to have completed a Masters degree with top honors, or PhD, in economics from a good university. So I looked up the qualifications of one of the folks who Newshub quote as their "highly regarded economist" source who critiqued the Nats proposals - his Linked-In profile says:

University of Otago, Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) in Marketing, 2001 - 2003

I'm happy to be corrected that this chap has done a high-level econ degree not mentioned on his Linked-In profile, but can Newshub please urgently clarify the background of its sources? After all, its' success at embarrassing National hinges on Newshub's sources being more credible than the Party's. On that note, the consulting firm called Castalia that checked over the Nat's numbers includes folks in their Auckland Office like Willem Crowhurst, who has a first class honors degree in economics from the University of Auckland.

Sources:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/09/election-2023-national-s-foreign-buyer-tax-plan-has-530-million-yearly-fiscal-hole-new-report-finds.html

https://nz.linkedin.com/in/nick-goodall-35897850

https://castalia-advisors.com/team_member/willem_crowhurst/

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi - where this article was sourced.

Lushington D. Brady: Who Are You Going to Trust?

How “fact-checkers” lied to your faces

There are some very good reasons that I warn readers to “Always assume that ‘fact-checkers’ are trying to bullsh*t you.” The most important of which is the truth demonstrated time and again: that “fact-checkers” are in reality ‘narrative-confirmation machines’.

To see the truth of that in action, just consider this 2021 Newshub ‘fact check’ of a Voices for Freedom flyer. With not just the $55m of PIJF funding at stake, but the sweet, sweet river of government advertising, Newshub appears to have engaged in a systematic campaign of telling untruths for power.

Karl du Fresne: When political journalism morphs into crude emotional blackmail

Broadcaster Sean Plunket might have been taken aback to discover he was the subject of the second item on Newshub’s 6pm news bulletin a few nights ago. Then again maybe it was no surprise, given that few people are more keenly aware than Plunket of the mainstream media’s eagerness to marginalise – even demonise – anyone who challenges ideological orthodoxy. His key purpose in setting up his online site The Platform, after all, was to counter the ceaseless barrage of woke indoctrination from media outlets that have abandoned journalism for activism.

Karl du Fresne: Hallucinatory moments of optimism

Notwithstanding everything I wrote on this blog site yesterday about contemporary journalism (none of which I resile from), there are days when, in insane moments of giddy optimism, I imagine that the tide might be turning after years of largely sycophantic media coverage of the government.

Take last night’s edition of Newshub’s 6 o’clock news, in which the first item put the heat on the government over the alarming and apparently uncontrollable surge in inflation. Here was a news outlet doing exactly what the media are supposed to do in a liberal democracy: namely, report on issues that affect the community and hold those in power accountable.

That report was followed by politically damaging coverage of the government’s refusal to ease harsh MIQ requirements, with heartbreaking consequences for the thousands of people affected, even after Ministry of Health officials had advised that it was safe to do so.

Later came an item asking why the government was dragging the chain over the resumption of economically beneficial cruise ship visits when comparable countries, notably Australia, have given them the green light.

All this seemed to represent a striking change in tone from Newshub’s usual political coverage.

Graham Adams: Can the Māori Health Authority really boost Māori life expectancy?

The purpose of the new race-based agency is mostly to fulfil the radical co-governance aims outlined in He Puapua.

Patrick Gower asserted recently on Newshub Nation that the burning question David Seymour has to answer in opposing co-governance is:

Why if a Māori child is born, like in the house next door to me, do they live for seven years less than the child born in this [Pakeha] house?

Newshub’s high-profile national correspondent was undoubtedly referring to the claim that the Māori Health Authority will improve poor Māori health statistics, including life expectancy.

It is due to swing into action on July 1, but both Seymour and Christopher Luxon have promised to abolish it if a National-Act government is elected next year.

Pointing at the house to his left, Gower announced his challenge to Seymour with an air of triumph — as if he had gone straight to the heart of the matter with a unique and devastating personal insight.

Chris Lynch: Trust in New Zealand news media nose dives, “No strong case for public funding of commercial news content.”

Trust in news media in New Zealand has fallen “alarmingly” according to a new study from AUT.

From 2020-2022, broadcasters TVNZ, Newshub, RNZ and Newsroom saw the biggest drops – over 10%.

During the same period, the NZ Herald, Newstalk ZB and Stuff also experienced “significant declines in trust.”

Frank Newman: Fact-checking the fact-check

On the 15th of September 2021, Sky News Australia host Andrew Bolt ran a segment on "apartheid" in New Zealand. He introduced it as follows:

"Jacinda Ardern. Prime Minister of New Zealand. She has been the poster child of the left for a couple of years now. But what she is doing to New Zealand actually amazes me. In fact it scares me. Be warned. This is where woke politics is taking us all to a form of apartheid."

During the segment, the Australian news channel host interviewed Dr Muriel Newman, director of the New Zealand Centre for Political Research which she founded in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament.

The interview canvassed a range of topics including: the He Puapua report, Maori representation, the Treaty of Waitangi, the Public Interest Journalism Fund, and Three Waters. The full clip can be seen  HERE.