After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

RNZ MEDIAWATCH: By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

In her report, political reporter Amelia Wade reminded viewers more than 30 years of TV news and current affairs — spanning the entire period of commercial TV here — could come to an end in June.

Before TV3 launched in 1989, state-owned TVNZ had been the only game in town.

But for most of its recent history, TV3’s parent company MediaWorks was owned by private equity funds and it was hamstrung with debts.

There were periodic financial emergencies too which seemed to signal the end.

In 2015, the boss Mark Weldon axed the current affairs shows Campbell Live and 3D and replaced them with ones that didn’t pull in more viewers or pull up many trees with their reporting.

“Reports of our death at 6pm have been greatly exaggerated”, host Hilary Barry responded to reports 3 News might be for the chop the following year.

But Weldon persuaded the owners to stump up a significant sum to launch Newshub instead.

When the huge global company Discovery bought MediaWorks loss-making TV channels in December 2020, many in the media were pleased a major media outfit was now in charge.

Using the Official Information Act, Newsroom later reported the Overseas Investment Office fast tracked Discovery’s application and sought no guarantees of a commitment to local news.

The 2021 mega-merger in the US that turned it into “Warner Bros Discovery” excited The Spinoff founder Duncan Grieve.

“Tova O’Brien breaking stories on CNN NZ at 6pm, before an evening of local reality TV souped up by global budgets and distribution — with major sports and drama rights for good measure,” was one scenario.

“It could also swing the other way, with the New Zealand linear asset seen as too small and obscure,” he warned.

After losses including a $35 million one last year, the owners now “propose” to slice out the entire on-screen and online news operation. New Zealand could lose more than 15 percent of its full-time journalists in one go.

Beginning of the end?

“Oh, the irony, right? When those so-called ‘vulture funds’ had it, the operation still continued, albeit always run on the smell of an oily rag. Then a big media organisation was the one which axed it,” long-serving TV3 current affairs journalist Eugene Bingham told Mediawatch.

“I’ve been around long enough to see death by a thousand cuts over the years. But this was a moment we’ll look back on as a watershed moment in democracy and journalism,” Bingham said.

Former MediaWorks executive Andrew Szusterman told RNZ’s Morning Report the next day this decision would also ripple out to local drama and entertainment.

“We’re going to start to see how this is going to impact the production sector. Irrevocably, possibly,” said Szusterman, now the chief executive at production company South Pacific Pictures.

Does Newshub’s demise also kill off Three?

There’s been no shortage of people this week pointing out the appetite for TV news — and linear TV in general — is not what it was. That’s the main reason for the ad revenue slump cited by WBD.

Some who do tune in to Three (and WBD’s other channels) for The Block, Married at First Sight and free movies may not miss the news shows from June 30. So maybe Three will be fine?

“The loss of the newsroom represents the loss of the ability to respond to any event in real time. That is the heart and soul of a traditional TV broadcaster,” Hal Crawford — chief news officer at MediaWorks (and effectively Newshub’s boss) until early 2020 — told Mediawatch.

“When the Queen dies you can send a team to London, you can have someone in the studio talking about it, you can interact in a way that makes people feel like it is alive and a real human entity.”

Channels without the live element news brings are effectively just “content databases”, Crawford told Mediawatch.

“News is the one programme that runs 365 days a year . . . which the schedule is going to rely on to lead into prime time. So the rest of your schedule is going to dwindle. Ratings are gonna fall off and everything is going to go to pieces.

“It really is going to dwindle as a cultural entity in New Zealand because you’re not going to be able to justify the funding from NZ on Air if you aren’t getting audiences. It’s hard for me to see a way out of Three basically going away as a cultural force in New Zealand.”

But TV-style news and current affairs is also now being done online.

After Eugene Bingham’s TV3 show 3D was axed in 2016, four members formed the Stuff Circuit investigative team. Its video documentary productions won awards until it was axed by Stuff late last year.

“Of course, there have been changes in viewing habits . . .  but there’s still a reason that the ‘1’ and the ‘3’ on remotes around the country are worn down. Hundreds of thousands of people at six o’clock flip the channel. Without a TV bulletin there, doesn’t (Three) just become like Bravo, where there’s just programmes running and you either switch on or you don’t?”

In the end, journalists have to confront the fact that not quite enough people these days care about what they do — including executives at media companies, politicians not inclined to intervene and members of the public.

Most New Zealanders are happy to use services like Netflix or Google search or Facebook that carry news and local content but contribute almost nothing to it.

“But I don’t think people quite understand the depth of the problem facing media and the implications. That certainly came through to me watching the broadcasting minister saying, well, people can still watch programmes like Sky for news,” Bingham said.

The National Party went into the last election without a media or broadcasting policy or any specific manifesto commitments.

What should/could the government do?

While Wednesday’s announcement shocked the 300-odd staff, the local chief executive Glen Kyne — close to tears on Newshub at 6 —  told Newshub’s Michael Morrah he had known about the possibility since January.

The government also got a heads-up earlier this week.

Media minister Melissa Lee told reporters WBD made no requests for help, prompting Glen Kyne to tell Newshub WBD did ask both the current and previous government for assistance, such as a reduction in the multi-million dollar fee paid to state-owned transmission company Kordia.

Lee later clarified her comment but was firm that the government had no role to play because this was a case of a private company taking action because “their business model actually wasn’t working.”

On Morning Report, Andrew Szusterman disagreed.

“Channels 7,9 and 10, SBS, ABC, and Fox in Australia all run news services. I don’t think their government would let the last commercial free-to-air news broadcaster just walk away. The fact the broadcasting minister hasn’t fronted . . .  it’s quite shameless,” he told RNZ’s Morning Report.

Stuff’s Tova O’Brien — who famously turned on her former employer MediaWorks on air in real time last year when it closed Today FM — called the minister’s response “cold and tone-deaf” and accused the government of a “glib shrug”.

That was partly because Lee’s first response to the Newshub announcement was to tell reporters: “There’s Sky as well, there’s a whole lot of other media about.”

Sky contracts Newshub to produce its 5.30pm free-to-air news bulletin — and Sky subscribers won’t find any locally-made news on Sky TV’s pay channels.

Lee should have known that. She was a programme-maker before she was an MP and was National’s spokesperson on broadcasting for years in opposition.

Lee declined all interview requests this week — including from Mediawatch — but did tell reporters at Parliament: “I wasn’t as articulate as I could have been. But I am taking this seriously.”

The PM told Stuff he is expecting an update at Cabinet on Monday. The media will be watching that space with pens and cameras poised.

There is legislation currently before a select committee which could compel the big online tech platforms to pay local producers of news for it.

In opposition, Lee opposed it and called it “literally a shakedown” in Parliament. (This weekend Facebook’s owner Meta announced it would not do any more deals with media under Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, prompting a likely confrontation with the government there.)

“The government’s position on this will obviously take into account these latest developments in terms of the wider media landscape. This government is committed to working with the sector on ways to ensure sector sustainability, while still preserving the independence of a fourth estate and avoiding market interference,” Lee said in Parliament on Thursday when questioned.

The government already heavily intervenes in the market by overseeing the state-owned broadcasters and agencies — including TVNZ — and putting over a quarter of a billion dollars every year onto broadcasting, programmes and other content.

The former government also put $80 million over two years into Māori media content, partly in the expectation there might also be a new public media entity to broadcast it.

In 2019, Hal Crawford — boss of Newshub at the time — declared the New Zealand news media is broken.

His chief executive also urged the government to intervene. AM show host Duncan Garner switched the studio lights off as an on-air stunt.

Crawford is now a digital media consultant based in his native Australia. The broadcasting funding agency in NZ On Air hired him in 2021 to review its own spending of public money on the media.

“It’s not a good idea for governments to knee jerk and sponsor particular commercial companies in some sort of bailout,” he said.

“To give money to the people who are in financially the worst position is the most ineffective and unfair use of public money that I can think of. If the market is telling you that something isn’t wanted and needed, you have to listen to that.

“But it doesn’t mean that you have to always listen to the market and do things that have never been done before.”

He cites the Public Interest Journalism Fund which put $55 million into new content and created new jobs for cash-strapped news media companies.

Crawford’s fact-finding report on the planned PIJF in 2021 records media managers feared cuts and possible closures to come.

“Many of our interviewees believed that if an organisation could show that cuts were imminent, they should be able to apply for funded roles under the PIJF. Many saw the dangers in this non-incremental funding, but argued for exceptions in extreme circumstances. Although these arguments are compelling, Funding could evaporate quickly trying to keep the newsrooms of big commercial companies afloat if this became the primary aim of the fund.”

“Around the world and in New Zealand, there’s ample evidence that public funding of journalism is becoming more essential. There has to be a way there, because what we’re seeing with the the planned closure of Newshub is the end result of the factors that we’ve known about for at least a decade,” Crawford told Mediawatch.

“Direct subsidy from the government to a commercial newsroom isn’t going to work. The government has to find a way to sensibly finance news and structure it so that it doesn’t become a political football.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Kia ora koutou. Ko Ngāpuhi tōku iwi. Ko Ngāti Manu toku hapu. Ko Karetu tōku marae. Ko Myles Thomas toku ingoa.

I grew up with David Beatson, on the telly. Back in the 1970s, he read the late news which I watched in bed with my parents. Later, David and I worked together to save TVNZ 7 and also regional TV stations.

The Better Public Media (BPM) trust honours David each year with our memorial address, because his fight for non-commercial TV was an honourable one. He wasn’t doing it for himself.

• READ MORE: Other Better Public Media reports
• Better Public Media website

He wasn’t doing it so he could get a job or because it would benefit him. He fought for public media because he knew it was good for Aotearoa NZ.

Like us at Better Public Media, he recognised the benefits to our country from locally produced public media.

David knew, from a long career in media, including as editor of The Listener and as Jim Bolger’s press secretary, that NZ’s media plays an important role in our nation’s culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

NZ culture is very important. NZ culture is so unique and special, yet it has always been at risk of being swamped by content from overseas. The US especially with its crackpot conspiracies, extreme racial tensions, and extreme tensions about everything to be honest.

Local content the antidote
Local content is the antidote to this. It reflects us, it portrays us, it defines New Zealand, and whether we like it or not, it defines us. But it’s important to remember that what we see reflected back to us comes through a filter.

This speech is coming to you through a filter, called Myles Thomas.

Commercial news reflects our world through a filter of sensation and danger to hold our attention. That makes NZ seem more shallow, greedy, fearful and dangerous.

The social media filter makes the world seem more angry, reactive and complaining.
RNZ’s filter is, I don’t know, thoughtful, a bit smug, middle class.

The New Zealand Herald filter makes us think every dairy is being ram-raided every night.

And The Spinoff filter suggests NZ is hip, urban and mildly infatuated with Winston Peters.

These cultural reflections are very important actually because they influence us, how we see NZ and its people.

It is not a commodity
That makes content, cultural content, special. It is not a commodity. It’s not milk powder.

We don’t drink milk and think about flooding in Queenstown, drinking milk doesn’t make us laugh about the Koiwoi accent, we don’t drink milk and identify with a young family living in poverty.

Local content is rich and powerful, and important to our society.

When the government supports the local media production industry it is actually supporting the audiences and our culture. Whether it is Te Mangai Paho, or NZ On Air or the NZ Film Commission, and the screen production rebate, these organisations fund New Zealand’s identity and culture, and success.

Don’t ask Treasury how to fund culture. Accountants don’t understand it, they can’t count it and put it in a spreadsheet, like they can milk solids. Of course they’ll say such subsidies or rebates distort the “market”, that’s the whole point. The market doesn’t work for culture.

Moreover, public funding of films and other content fosters a more stable long-term industry, rather than trashy short-termism that is completely vulnerable to outside pressures, like the US writer’s strike.

We have a celebrated content production industry. Our films, video, audio, games etc. More local content brings stability to this industry, which by the way also brings money into the country and fosters tourism.

We cannot use quota
New Zealand needs more local content.

And what’s more, it needs to be accessible to audiences, on the platforms that they use.

But in NZ we do have one problem. Unlike Australia, we can’t use a quota because our GATT agreement does not include a carve out for local music or media quotas.

In the 1990s when GATT was being negotiated, the Aussies added an exception to their GATT agreement allowing a quota for Aussie cultural content. So they can require radio stations to play a certain amount of local music. Now they’re able to introduce a Netflix quota for up to 20 percent of all revenue generated in Aussie.

We can’t do that. Why? Because back in the 1990s the Bolger government and MFAT decided against putting the same exception into NZ’s GATT agreement.

But there is another way of doing it, if we take a lead from Denmark and many European states. Which I’ll get to in a minute.

The second important benefit of locally produced public media is social cohesion, how society works, the peace and harmony and respect that we show each other in public, depends heavily on the “public sphere”, of which, media is a big part.

Power of media to polarise
Extensive research in Europe and North America shows the power of media to polarise society, which can lead to misunderstanding, mistrust and hatred.

But media can also strengthen social cohesion, particularly for minority communities, and that same research showed that public media, otherwise known as public service media, is widely regarded to be an important contributor to tolerance in society, promoting social cohesion and integrating all communities and generations.

The third benefit is democracy. Very topical at the moment. I’ve already touched on how newsmedia affect our culture. More directly, our newsmedia influences the public dialogue over issues of the day.

It defines that dialogue. It is that dialogue.

So if our newsmedia is shallow and vacuous ignoring policies and focussing on the polls and the horse-race, then politicians who want to be elected, tailor their messages accordingly.

There’s plenty of examples of this such as National’s bootcamp policy, or Labour’s removing GST on food. As policies, neither is effective. But in the simplified 30 seconds of commercial news and headlines, these policies resonate.

Is that a good thing, that policies that are known to fail are nonetheless followed because our newsmedia cater to our base instincts and short attention spans?

Disaster for democracy
In my view, commercial media is actually disaster for democracy. All over the world.

But of course, we can’t control commercial media. No-one’s suggesting that.

The only rational reaction is to provide stronger locally produced public media.

And unfortunately, NZ lacks public media.

Obviously Australia, the UK, Canada have more public media than us, they have more people, they can afford it. But what about countries our size, Ireland? Smaller population, much more public media.

Denmark, Norway, Finland, all with roughly 5 million people, and all have significantly better public media than us. Even after the recent increases from Willie Jackson, NZ still spends just $44 per person on public media. $44 each year.

When we had a licence fee it was $110. Jim Bolger’s government got rid of that and replaced it with funding from general taxation — which means every year the Minister of Finance, working closely with Treasury, decides how much to spend on public media for that year.

This is what I call the curse of annual funding, because it makes funding public media a very political decision.

National, let us be honest, the National Party hates public media, maybe because they get nicer treatment on commercial news. We see this around the world — the Daily Mail, Sky News Australia, Newstalk ZB . . . most commercial media quite openly favours the right.

Systemic bias
This is a systemic bias. Because right-wing newsmedia gets more clicks.

Right-wing politicians are quite happy about that. Why fund public to get in the way? Even if it it benefits our culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

New Zealand is the same, the last National government froze RNZ funding for nine years.

National Party spokesperson on broadcasting Melissa Lee fought against the ANZPM merger, and now she’s fighting the News Bargaining Bill. As minister she could cut RNZ and NZ On Air’s budget.

But it wouldn’t just be cost-cutting. It would actually be political interference in our newsmedia, an attempt to skew the national conversation in favour of the National Party, by favouring commercial media.

So Aotearoa NZ needs two things. More money to be spent on public media, and less control by the politicians. Sustainable funding basically.

The best way to achieve it is a media levy.

Highly targeted tax
For those who don’t know, a levy is a tax that is highly targeted, and we have a lot of them, like the Telecommunications Development Levy (or TDL) which currently gathers $10 million a year from internet service providers like Spark and 2 Degrees to pay for rural broadband.

We’re all paying for better internet for farmers basically. When first introduced by the previous National government it collected $50 million but it’s dropped down a bit lately.

This is one of many levies that we live with and barely notice. Like the levy we pay on our insurance to cover the Earthquake Commission and the Fire and Emergency Levy. There are maritime levies, energy levies to fund EECA and Waka Kotahi, levies on building consents for MBIE, a levy on advertising pays for the ASA, the BSA is funded by a levy.

Lots of levies and they’re very effective.

So who could the media levy, levy?

ISPs like the TDL? Sure, raise the TDL back up to $50 million or perhaps higher, and it only adds a dollar onto everyone’s internet bill. There’s $50 million.

But the real target should be Big Tech, social media and large streaming services. I’m talking about Facebook, Google, Netflix, YouTube and so on. These are the companies that have really profited from the advent of online media, and at the expense of locally produced public media.

Funding content creation
We need a way to get these companies to make, or at least fund, content creation here in Aotearoa. Denmark recently proposed a solution to this problem with an innovative levy of 2 percent on the revenue of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney.

But that 2 percent rises to 5 percent if the streaming company doesn’t spend at least 5 percent of their revenue on making local Danish content. Denmark joins many other European countries already doing this — Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and even Romania are all about to levy the streamers to fund local production.

Australia is planning to do so as well.

But that’s just online streaming companies. There’s also social media and search engines which contribute nothing and take almost all the commercial revenue. The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will address that to a degree but it’s not open and we won’t know if the amounts are fair.

Another problem is that it’s only for news publishers — not drama or comedy producers, not on-demand video, not documentary makers or podcasters. Social media and search engines frequently feature and put advertising around these forms of content, and hoover up the digital advertising that would otherwise help fund them, so they should also contribute to them.

A Media Levy can best be seen as a levy on those companies that benefit from media on the internet, but don’t contribute to the public benefits of media — culture, social cohesion and democracy. And that’s why the Media Levy can include internet service providers, and large companies that sell digital advertising and subscriptions.

Note, this would target large companies over a certain size and revenue, and exclude smaller platforms, like most levies do.

Separate from annual budget
The huge benefit of a levy is that it is separate from the annual budget, so it’s fiscally neutral, and politicians can’t get their mits on it. It removes the curse of annual funding.

It creates a funding stream derived from the actual commercial media activities which produce the distribution gaps in the first place, for which public media compensates. That’s why the proceeds would go to the non-commercial platform and the funding agencies — Te Mangai Paho, NZ On Air and the Film Commission.

One final point. This wouldn’t conflict with the new Digital Services Tax proposed by the government because that’s a replacement for Income Tax. A Media Levy, like all levies, sits over and above income tax.

So there we go. I’ve mentioned Jim Bolger three times! I’ve also outlined some quite straight-forward methods to fund public media sustainably, and to fund a significant increase in local content production, video, film, audio and journalism.

None of it needs to be within the grasp of Melissa Lee or Willie Jackson, or David Seymour.

All of it can be used to create local content that improves democracy, social cohesion and Kiwi culture.

Myles Thomas is a trustee of the Better Public Media Trust (BPM). He is a former television producer and director who in 2012 established the Save TVNZ 7 campaign. Thomas is now studying law. This speech was this year’s David Beatson Memorial Address delivered at a public meeting in Grey Lynn last night on broadcast policy for the NZ election 2023.

The integration of RNZ’s digital team with the wider news team was meant to take place during the merger with TVNZ that never eventuated, the organisation’s board says.

It comes after an investigation into the inappropriate edits being written into news stories blamed differences between news teams, a lack of supervision and inconsistent editorial standards.

However, a report released on Wednesday also accused RNZ’s leadership of over-reacting, saying it “contributed to public alarm and reputational damage” while the journalist “genuinely believed he was acting appropriately”.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Dr Jim Mather on RNZ’s ‘integrity and trust’
• READ MORE: The RNZ audit reports
• The Independent External Review of RNZ Editorial Processes

The independent panel was established by the RNZ board after it was revealed in June that some foreign news stories from wire services such as Reuters and the BBC were inappropriately edited.

The panel made 22 recommendations, including merging the radio and digital news teams, a review of staffing levels and workloads, refresher training for journalists, and hiring a new senior editor responsible for editorial integrity and standards. It stressed the creation of a single news team “cannot happen soon enough”.

RNZ has agreed to implement all the panel’s recommendations.

Speaking to RNZ Morning Report, RNZ board chairperson Dr Jim Mather said the recommendations would be initiated as “promptly as possible”.

Dr Mather accepted RNZ had been slower than other public media entities to integrate its digital team with the wider news team — but it had been endeavouring to do so.

“The potential merger of RNZ and TVNZ that was being considered for a number of years was going to be the catalyst for that occurring. That didn’t go ahead so that issue came directly back onto the board table and it has been a priority.

“I wouldn’t say we took our eye off internal issues, it was in anticipation of that potential merger moving forward and recognising that that would incorporate this, so when that didn’t happen, we as a board and the executive team through the chief executive reverted directly back to that plan and that is a priority.”

An area of improvement
Dr Mather said it had been identified as an area of improvement as RNZ “did want a unified leadership” over its news operation.

Dr Mather accepted the panel’s finding that a lack of access to training had contributed to the editorial breach — and said RNZ needed to create a culture where training was implemented and effective.

“The report did highlight that there was intense level of pressure on staff in the digital news content area and also the training needed to be more effective, ie provided on a regular basis, … noted and there needed to be audit and follow-up on confirmation that the training had been effective.

“Once again, that’s another area of opportunity for the chief executive and our executive team to be looking at.”

Dr Mather said there was a “significant body of work” to be done.

“I think responsibility starts with the board, ultimately we are accountable for everything that occurs within the organisation and we accept that our level of responsibility of what’s occurred and with responsibility and leadership comes a requirement to make the necessary corrective actions.”

Publishing complaints
While Dr Mather said he believed RNZ to be a “very transparent organisation”, the report has indicated it could be more “robustly transparent”.

It had noted that other public media entities, such as TVNZ, publish the overall number of editorial complaints and the number they uphold in their annual reports.

“I expect that we will be following suit also,” Dr Mather said.

He said RNZ remained the most trusted media organisation in Aotearoa and it was his “emphatic” objective for that to remain the case.

“We will do whatever we are required to do to remain our country’s most trusted media entity.”

RNZ’s response to breach
Dr Mather accepted that RNZ’s trust was eroded to some extent — but the organisation responded very quickly to restore the public’s confidence and took the issue very seriously.

The panel was critical of chief executive Paul Thompson’s initial public response in calling the edits “pro-Kremlin garbage” and said it contributed to the story gaining international attention.

Dr Mather said he understood why Thompson made the comments he did.

“We are all committed to ensuring that the integrity and trust that is held in RNZ is maintained and that was obviously factored into the way we responded.”

The panel had said the issue was contained to a small section of RNZ and Dr Mather emphasised that the “vast majority” of its news output was of an “excellent standard” – which was reinforced by the panel in the report, he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A board member at RNZ appointed less than a month ago quit this week after making public comments on former Justice Minister Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage of it.

RNZ had asked Jason Ake to stop and the government said he breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentant.

Jason Ake (Ngāti Ranginui) was one of the appointments last month to the boards of RNZ and TVNZ that represented “an exciting new era for our public broadcasters as they continue to tackle the challenges of … serving all people of Aotearoa now and into the future,” according to Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Public broadcaster opinions commentary
• Rob Campbell: Governance a good place for disruptive and transformative thought and debate

“Looking forward to the mahi ahead,” Ake told his LinkedIn followers at the time.

“Hoping to bring an indigenous perspective to the strategic direction at the public broadcasting institution,” he added, honouring the advocacy of pioneers Whai Ngata, Derek Fox and Henare Te Ua “for a much more visible Māori perspective in RNZ’s strategic direction”.

But even before he could be inducted into RNZ or attend a single board meeting, Ake resigned this week in the wake of controversy over social media comments he made about the downfall of cabinet minister Kiri Allan.

“When there’s blood in the water the sharks circle, and they’re more than happy to digest every last morsel and watch the bones sink to the depth. It’s a bloodsport,” he said in a Facebook post.

Referenced mental breakdown
He also referenced former National Party leader Todd Muller, who recovered from a mental breakdown to resume his work as an MP.

Jackson told reporters in Parliament on Tuesday Ake had “often been quite vocal about issues and he’s gonna have to stop”.

RNZ chair Dr Jim Mather had already been in touch to remind Jason Ake of his responsibilities under the Public Service Commission’s code of conduct for crown entity board members.

“When acting in our private capacity, we avoid any political activity that could jeopardise our ability to perform our role, or which could erode the public’s trust in the entity,” the code says.

Ake’s initial Facebook comment was not explicitly or aggressively politically partisan. Most of the comments could be construed as a reflection on the media as much as on politics or politicians.

But there is heightened sensitivity these days because of Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell, who was sacked after publicly criticising opposition parties’ health policies recently. (That was amplified when media commentaries of other government-appointed board members were scrutinised in the wake of that).

In a statement earlier this week, RNZ’s chair acknowledged that  Ake was “new to the board of RNZ”.

An RNZ board member appointed less than a month ago quit this week after commenting on Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage. The government said Jason Ake breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentanthttps://t.co/ttGog3rDLG

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) July 29, 2023

Communications professional
But he is also a former journalist and a communications professional who is currently Waikato Tainui’s communications manager. Along with his partner — Māori communications consultant Deborah Jensen — he is a director of a consultancy called Native Voice.

RNZ said no further comment would be made until Dr Mather and Ake had discussed the matter further.

But Ake did not wait for that.

He went on Facebook again insisting mental health was a topic that needed to be talked about, particularly because it affected Māori so much.

He also referred to “an ideological premise that we as Māori must conform”.

And while he thanked some journalists for “getting the key message”, he repeated his criticisms of the media.

“21 Māori journos got it — more than the entire compliment [sic] of our two major media entities in Aotearoa, who between them have more than 700 reporters on the staff.”

Unable to ‘stay quiet’
After that, Ake told The New Zealand Herald he had resigned from the RNZ board “on principle”, because he would have been unable to stay quiet about broadcasting decisions which impacted on Māori.

“Crown entity governance has its own tikanga and protocols that need to be observed,” Dr Mather said in a statement describing it as “a missed opportunity.”

That was reinforced by Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni.

“It’s really important that they seem to be impartial and they’re not getting involved in the politics in any way. They’ve got really important roles to play and so the public needs to have faith in them being impartial,” she told TVNZ’s Te Karere.

Whanua Ora Minister Peeni Henare told Te Karere that crown entity board members “must represent all of Aotearoa”.

Rob Campbell wrote a piece for The New Zealand Herald the same day, applauding Ake for in his words, “having the guts to speak his truth”.

“They should not remove people, or put pressure on people to resign while in a position because the public views are not mutually shared or inconvenient. Nor should they be censored or silenced. They can appoint new directors when their term has served,” he said.

Obliged to be ‘politically noisy’
In a piece for the Herald explaining his own decision, Ake said that membership of Te Whakaruruhau o Nga Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa, the umbrella group representing more than 20 iwi radio stations around the country, obliged him to be “politically noisy”.

“This would have placed me on a collision course with the political neutrality expectations as set out in the Crown Entities guidelines,” he wrote.

“I made it clear that I came with a deep commitment to the Treaty and ensuring that it is embedded into the fabric and culture of the organisation. The Treaty is by definition a political pact and this required uncomfortable and sometimes public conversations,” Ake wrote in The Herald.

“My presence cannot be a distraction to the transformative mahi ahead of it. It would not be fair on the chair or the other board members and it will undoubtedly stymie progress for the entire organisation,” he added.

But commenting on mental health or broadcasting would not be a problem if he refrained from criticising political decisions or individual politicians, or discussing RNZ in public.

Jackson also appointed Ake to lead the Māori Media Sector Shift review back in 2020.

While in that role, Ake aired opinions on broadcasting broadly mirroring Jackson’s own aspirations for state-owned media.

Boost for Māori creators
“Where is the allowance for decent Māori stories? We’ve got an opinion and a view under a whole range of things that’s not reflected in the television in high rating programmes. It shouldn’t ghetto-ised into digital online platforms only,” Ake told Radio Waatea in 2021.

In another Radio Waatea interview, Ake said RNZ and TVNZ’s merger must be a boost for Māori content creators.

“The human capability and capacity out there is really, really limited. And it doesn’t make sense for the Māori sector to fight with itself in order to bring to the market good content. I think that’s where the merger ought to look for what a decent template would look like,” he said.

Ake also aired concerns about the commercial media organisations getting money from the Public Interest Journalism Fund for Māori journalism, content and topics.

“Why would you put yourself in front of an environment that’s diabolically opposed or structured in a way that doesn’t recognise the value that Māori bring to the discussion?

“The internal culture at some of these organisations is so ingrained that it has become part of the carpets, the curtains and everything else. So there needs to be systemic change inside these commercial organisations,” he argued.

Content funding increased
Māori broadcasting content funding was boosted by $82 million in the past two years, as part of the review which Jackson appointed Ake to oversee.

In the wake of the merger’s collapse, RNZ’s own funding has been boosted — in part to fuel the Rautaki Māori (Māori strategy) Jackson called for in the past and now supports.

Ake has rejected a governance role at RNZ at a time when his input and influence may have had its greatest effect.

He has not responded so far to Mediawatch’s calls and messages.

But his most recent post on LinkedIn announcing his resignation has this footnote for reporters: “Stop ringing me. I have mahi to do.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

ANALYSIS: By Mark Jennings

Until weeks ago, the future of Aotearoa New Zealand’s public media organisations was looking so grim the government was prepared to spend $370 million over four years to merge TVNZ and RNZ and future proof the new entity it was calling ANZPM.

Last December, when the merger plan was under intense scrutiny, then Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern said RNZ “could collapse” if the merger did not go ahead.

Last week, Labour unveiled a very modest plan to strengthen public media. The old, very expensive one, had been thrown on the policy bonfire back in February.

• READ MORE: Other NZ public media reports

The “burn it” decision had been widely anticipated after new PM Chris Hipkins’ started dumping unpopular policies to focus on cost of living issues.

Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson stayed on message when he released the new public media plan last week. “We have listened to New Zealanders and now is not the right time to restructure our public media.”

Under the new plan RNZ will get $25 million more a year, NZ On Air will get a one-off boost of $10m for 2023/24 and TVNZ will get nothing.

Jackson claims the extra money will “deliver world class public media for all New Zealanders.” This seems improbable given the earlier dire predictions.

The additional $25 million a year for RNZ represents a 60 percent increase in its funding. It sounds a lot but the broadcaster has been under resourced for the past 15 years.

Coping with pandemic
When National came to power in 2008 it froze RNZ funding for 9 years. The state broadcaster did get an increase from the Ardern government but it has had to contend with the additional costs of reporting on and coping with the covid-19 pandemic.

Lately, the demands of covering the Auckland floods and cyclone Gabrielle have stretched it further. Newsroom understands RNZ is currently running a deficit of close to $5 million.

The lack of funding is illustrated by the rundown premises RNZ occupies nationwide, its ageing equipment and out-of-date IT systems. Under constant financial pressure it has struggled to attract and keep top journalists.

Some of its best and brightest have been lured away to TVNZ, Newshub, Newsroom and Stuff.

Jackson’s media release said $12 million of the extra funding was for current services and $12 million for a new digital platform. $1.7 million is to support AM transmission so people can access information during civil emergencies.

Stuff, the NZ Herald and RNZ itself all reported (presumably from the media release) on the funding for the new multimedia digital platform. But there is no new platform. This was either clumsy language or a clumsy attempt at spin from Jackson and his comms people.

RNZ’s chief executive Paul Thompson told Newsroom the money would be used to make improvements to RNZ’s existing web platform and mobile app.

‘Fixing things’
“It is kind of fixing things that should have been fixed a long time ago. Our website and app are serviceable and do a good job but if we are going to be relevant in the future we need to be better than that.”

Thompson says the increase in the amount of baseline funding was calculated to restore RNZ to its former state, more than anything else.

“How much would it take us to stabilise our current operations and get them to where they need to be, so that’s well overdue. It is everything from our premises through to our content management systems, to our rostering — just having enough staff to do the job we do. It’s sufficient but we are going to have to spend every penny very wisely.”

A big part of the government’s reasoning for the merger was that minority audiences are under-served by the media.

Jackson now seems to expect RNZ to do the heavy lifting in this area. His media release quoted him saying the funding would allow RNZ to expand regional coverage and establish a new initiative to prioritise Māori and Pacific coverage.

Asked how he planned to do this, Thompson was circumspect. “It has got to be worked out . . . we are going to have to prioritise, we can’t do it all at once.”

Jackson wants other media to play an (unspecified) role in reaching these audiences. He has restored $42 million of funding to NZ On Air. Under the merger plan this money, which was the amount NZOA spent funding TVNZ programmes (mainly drama, comedy and off-peak minority programmes), was being handed to ANZPM to decide how it should be spent.

Production community upset
The local TV production community was upset by this as it far preferred NZ On Air to be the gatekeeper and not TVNZ executives who would likely end up working for the merged organisation.

Jackson has also given NZOA a one-off boost of $10 million for 2023/2024.

“The funding will support the creation of high-quality content that better represents and connects with audiences such as Māori, Pasifika, Asian, disabled people and our rangatahi and tamariki. It is vital that all New Zealanders are seeing and hearing themselves in our public media,” he said in his media release.

One-off funding can be of limited benefit. It usually has to be project-based rather than supporting ongoing programming and the staff that go with it. It is possible Jackson is hoping or expects NZ On Air to use more of its baseline funding to sustain new shows and programmes for minorities.

On the same day as Jackson’s announcement, but with less fanfare, NZOA released its own revised strategy.

The document says, above all, funded content must have a “clear cultural or social purpose.”

Priority will be given to songs and stories that contribute to rautaki (strategy for) Māori, support a range of voices and experiences, including those of people from varying ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, genders, religions, cultures, and sexual orientations.

Unclear about TVNZ
It is unclear where Jackson’s plan B leaves TVNZ. Throughout the merger discussions TVNZ executives, while saying they embraced the idea, were critical of the draft legislation, the level of independence the new entity would have and they often emphasised TVNZ’s commercial success.

Jackson has, on a number of occasions, linked TVNZ to the National Party which opposed the merger and was committed to rolling it back if elected in October.

When he became frustrated in an interview with TVNZ’s Jack Tame, before the merger was abandoned, Jackson used the line “your mates in National”.

During question time in Parliament last week, when asked what more he was doing to strengthen public media, Jackson said he was going to “sit down with Simon and the National Party mates over there.”

He was referring to TVNZ CEO, and former National Party minister, Simon Power.

Jackson said he wanted TVNZ to play a more active role in public broadcasting and, “we are going to traverse things with Simon in terms of a way forward.”

Power recently announced his resignation and will leave TVNZ in June. With many of the TVNZ board, including its influential chair Andy Coupe, likely to retire or be replaced in the next month, Jackson will, in reality, be sitting down with a new board and CEO to discuss his public media ambitions for TVNZ.

If he is interested in the job, RNZ’s Thompson must now be in with a real chance.

Thompson unequivocally endorsed the merger idea and was almost the only advocate able to clearly articulate its benefits. A new board, eager to take the company in a direction more sympathetic to its owner’s vision, might find that attractive.

Mark Jennings is co-editor of Newsroom. Republished with permission.

It has been a decade since The Daily Blog (TDB) came into being informing all and sundry of the political machinations in New Zealand.

Run by the Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury it serves the left of politics.

It had almost five million page views in 2022.

• READ MORE:  How NZ’s Public Interest Journalism Fund can help ‘normalise’ diversity
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“We had just under five million page views last year,” Bradbury told Asia Pacific Report.

“We have professor Wayne Hope from the AUT School of Communications; we have associate professor Susan St John from Auckland University, who is a poverty campaigner; John Minto who is a well-known political activist; and we have Mike Treen, a union boss.”

And they also have one of the country’s leading left analysts, Chris Trotter.

“We have anywhere between 10 to 20 bloggers,” Bradbury said.

TBD has been one of the go to blogsites for the political left.

“I think the idea when we set it up in 2013 was to provide an alternative commentary on the leftwing of opinion shapers,” he said.

Bradbury, who studied English at Auckland University and became a journalist on the job, believes debate is essential when discussing politics.

“I think we enjoy robust debate,” he said.

Nor does he blindly carry a candle for the leftwing government of the day even though he professes to belongs to the left.

“I think you have to be critical of everyone in power regardless of whether they are on your side or not,” said Bradbury, who was given his moniker “Bomber” by the Auckland University student newspaper Craccum.

“If you are writing commentary about the politics of the day you have to equally scathing for when the left are in, or the right are in, or you don’t have any credibility.

“We (TBD) are able to talk about things that are going on in politics and that is happening 24-48 hours ahead of the mainstream media; so I think people that are hungry to find out what is going on and have better oversight into the New Zealand political system can? So they come to us before you see it turn up in the mainstream media.”

He believes that journalism must be held to account.

“We have an obligation if you are the Fourth Estate to hold the powerful to account and the most powerful is the government of the day,” said Bradbury.

Public Interest Journalism
He said the government must provide for more investment in Public Interest Journalism (PIJ).

PIJ, a programme which started three years ago and is set to be concluded this year, needed to be continued, Bradbury said.

“I think it is a good start for the problem we have always had in New Zealand which is the market driven model, which is audience based advertising. We have always had too small a population to be able to support good journalism.

“But, there needs to be a lot more investment in public journalism for it to work.”

Nor does he see it, as many perceive it, as the government attempting to purchase favours from the media.

“I don’t see it as the government buying the media, I know that is a common critique that is used and brought up, but I don’t see it as black and white as that,” Bradbury said.

“We need to have public money go into journalism and there needs to be better checks and balances as to how that money is getting out there.

“There is a problem there, but overall I think that you can’t get a well-funded Fourth Estate that critiques the government of the day without having the state invested in that.”

He is advocating for a campaign to promote the benefits of better public interest journalism.

“We need a public service campaign similar to the one we have on our beaches where we have the ‘swim between the flags’ mantra.

“There has to be more public journalism funding to a vastly different group of media players and, by getting that funding they are able to show a little flag and we have a public campaign where we talk about ‘reading between the flags,’ so they know what they are reading is accurate and true.”

TVNZ-RNZ merger
Although the government has now shelved the TVNZ-RNZ merger after five years of work and many millions of dollars, Bradbury said it was only needed to see what was happening out in the public to realise people did not trust mainstream media.

“I think that the reason why we should have the merger is because we need to have a baseline public broadcasting that people can trust,” Bradbury said.

“We have all seen with real horror what happens when a large chunk of your population no longer believes certain agreed truths and we saw that on Parliament lawns last year.

“It is important to have public broadcasting that is trusted and believed because if we don’t have that it is very difficult to find common ground.

The emergence of rightwing radio — The Platform
“What we are seeing is the fracturing of the media world in New Zealand, and there are people who don’t believe in mainstream media anymore; people who have moved away from it and are searching out their own news,” Bradbury said.

“That’s fine as long as those media that are operating adhere to the basic values of journalism and stick to them.”

Jacinda Ardern
In the TBD Bradbury shared an excerpt from a podcast from TDB’s The Working Group which was rated as the best podcast in New Zealand in August last year by the Sunday Star-Times.

Bradbury related a story from January 24 the week that former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had to endure:

“Matt McCarten tells us a story of how at the end of last year, Jacinda and [her preschool daughter] Neve went out for a coffee with a friend of theirs at a cafe just in their private capacity. The way any mum with their daughter does every weekend.

“However, when Jacinda and their friend and Neve had settled down at a table, two people walked into the cafe after learning of Jacinda being in there, and started screaming at Jacinda and Neve telling them how they intended to hurt and kill Neve and Jacinda.”

“No mother should have feral lunatics screaming death threats at them and their child in a cafe.”

— TDB’s The Working Group

The TDB Working Group of 24 January 2023, Matt McCarten at 41m 46s.

“No doubt there was a tsunami of vileness that I don’t think I have seen in my political life that hit Jacinda,” said Bradbury.

“There was danger with forcing her out the way the angry right activists did, but the danger for them was that it was going create a backlash from the political swing voters who are 50+ female, tertiary educated.

“They would have seen the way Jacinda was forced out and they would have been quite angry with that; and we saw that in the first polls which saw Labour jump back up into the lead was a result of a political backlash.”

Radical social media
With the fracturing of media there has now developed radicalism on social media.
“Now we have a level of radicalism at play within social media,” Bradbury said.

“There are some strident leftwing voices and we’ve certainly seen some middle class identity politics and their de-platforming campaign; and we also have very extreme rightwing bloggers who are taking the debate in a very conspiratorial place which is very dangerous and polarising to the political debate in this country.

“We need healthy debate, but is it healthy when people in that debate have nothing but malice and spite to trade and are actually creating problems and not providing any solutions.”

Journalism
Bradbury believes journalism is at a crossroads but its principles must be upheld.

“Journalism is one of the most important careers in a democracy right now, and I bring it back to the misinformation and disinformation we have seen on so many online formats,” Bradbury said of the covid-19 pandemic years.

“If you can’t trust the material you’re reading, and if you have a citizenship that doesn’t know what is true anymore, then the basic standard of your democracy, the entire foundation that we are built on crumbles.

“So journalism is as important now than ever before.

“This is why we need a strong public service, this is no longer a nice-to-have, because I believe journalism is under so much threat because the alternative is voters who don’t know what is real and what is not.”

Roll on the election on October 14 and once again TBD will be at the forefront.

As a postscript, Bradbury was asked how was TBD faring financially.

He laughed before offering: “We get by, we are here for this election, we’ve been around for 10 years and I am always surprised that there is still a need for it.

“I’ll keep blogging as long as there is a readership for it.”

Sri Krishnamuthi is an independent journalist, former editor of the Pacific Media Watch project at the Pacific Media Centre and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

At least 2500 people have been displaced by Cyclone Gabrielle this week, says Emergency Management Minister Kieran McAnulty.

About 1000 of those are in the Far North and another 1000 in Hawke’s Bay. The rest are mostly from Auckland, with some also in Bay of Plenty and Waikato.

But little is known about the situation in the east, with communications minimal and access hampered due to continued high winds and rain.

• READ MORE:  NZ declares national emergency as Cyclone Gabrielle unleashes fury across North Island
• Cyclone Gabrielle: Flooding and land slips isolate some Auckland regions
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• Follow RNZ’s live news blog

Hawke’s Bay Civil Defence said a women had died in Putorino, after a bank collapsed onto her home.

Wairoa is of particular concern, with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) “working very hard” to find out what is happening in the northern Hawke’s Bay region.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, speaking to media yesterday with McAnulty, said the Telecommunications Emergency Forum “has been activated and is working closely with NEMA and local Civil Defence organisations”.

“The first priority… remains the restoration of regional cellphone signals. High winds and ongoing poor weather is hampering progress in that area.”

There has also been a fibre cut affecting Taupō, Hastings and Napier and other areas.

‘Completely isolated’ Wairoa only has one day’s food, Civil Defence says https://t.co/UBjWe4suda

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) February 14, 2023

Comparisons to Cyclone Bola
Hipkins called Cyclone Gabrielle the most significant weather event in New Zealand so far this century.

“The severity and the breadth of damage we are seeing has not been seen in a generation.”

Asked how it compared to 1988’s destructive Cyclone Bola, Hipkins said he “wasn’t around in this kind of role” then so could not immediately compare the two. Officials were still building a picture of the impact of the cyclone, he said.

“In the last 24 hours or so, Fire and Emergency New Zealand have 1842 incidents related to Cyclone Gabrielle in their system . . . Two-hundred defence force personnel have so far been deployed and there are more on standby.”

Transpower had announced a national grid emergency, following the loss of power to the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, with potential for extended periods of outages, Hipkins said.

“This is a very significant event for the electricity network and the companies have not seen this level of damage since Cyclone Bola . . .

“The situation is changing rapidly and the lines companies are expecting more customers to be affected. They are working to restore power as quickly as possible… but restoration in some parts may have to wait until weather conditions improve.”

Many supermarkets in Northland have been affected and closed. People were asked to only buy what they needed, Hipkins said, urging people to avoid non-essential travel. If it was unavoidable, people should let friends and family know where they were going, he added.

“A high number of roads have been affected by surface flooding and by slips.”

The latest available information is on the Waka Kotahi website, which remained the best source of information for anyone having to travel, Hipkins said.

“On behalf of all New Zealanders I want to extend all of our gratitude to our emergency responders. They are putting in the hard yards and their lives are on the line in the service of their communities.

“To the families of the volunteer firefighters who responded to events in Muriwai last night and to the wider Fire and Emergency New Zealand family, our thoughts and hopes are with all of you.”

“To the men and women of the Defence Force, the linemen and women, the communication companies, the supermarkets, the transport companies getting goods to where they are needed, the roading crews that are making that all possible, thank you to you also.”

Danger remains
The good news is the weather is expected to ease overnight, Hipkins said. But that did not mean the danger would ease as quickly.

“People should still expect some bad weather overnight, particularly on the East Coast . . .  as we know from experience over the last few weeks, even if the rainfall eases off a bit, more rainfall can compound on top of the rainfall that we’ve already seen.

“So when it comes to slips and so on, we could still see more of that even as the weather starts to ease. We’re still in for a bumpy time ahead.”

The prime minister declined to put a figure on what the recovery might cost, but said insurance companies would cover a “significant portion”.

“People will pick numbers out of thin air and they may be right or they may be wrong. It’s really too early to put an exact number on it.”

He said it could impact on already fast-rising food prices, and would not rule out seeking international assistance.

Some farmers’ land has been damaged not just by the flooding, but forestry waste known as “slash”.

Hipkins said something would definitely need to be done to lessen the risk of slash destruction in the future.

Climate change’s contribution
As for climate change’s impact on the sheer scale of the storm, Hipkins rejected a suggestion that his actions since taking over as Prime Minister have weakened New Zealand’s efforts towards reducing emissions.

As a part of his policy reset, Hipkins canned a planned biofuels mandate and extended subsidies for fuel, a major contributor to warming.

“There is significant debate about whether the biofuels mandate was the right way of reducing our emissions from transport, when there are the other alternatives and other things that we can look at,” he explained.

“In terms of extending the fuel subsidies, we have to acknowledge that actually, there are people still having to get in their cars every day to drive to work, and we need to support them through what is a very, very difficult time at the moment.

“That does not in any way — I don’t believe — undermine our commitment to tackling the causes of climate change.”

He said Gabrielle’s impact would have “underscored” the need to keep reducing emissions.

“It is real, it is having an impact and we have a responsibility to do something about it.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Cyclone Gabrielle: Rural Hawke’s Bay residents scramble onto roofs to avoid flooding https://t.co/7qEDU7dSkh

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) February 14, 2023

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed today what pundits have predicted for weeks: the plan for a public media entity has been scrapped — before they even settled on a name for it.

It is the second time in five years Labour has backed away from its public media policy, leaving RNZ and TVNZ in limbo again — along with less-heralded overhauls of the media.

The assumption the government would drop its plan for a new public media entity to be launched on March 1 was sparked by the then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last December.

• READ MORE:  Policy purge: TVNZ/RNZ merger scrapped, income insurance and hate speech laws delayed
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She signalled reforms diverting ministers from the cost of living and post-Covid recovery would be shelved. She told Newsroom the so-called RNZ/TVNZ was “not number one on the government agenda”.

Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson had already made a mess of explaining the policy in a now-notorious TVNZ interview, which also amplified sideline concerns about possible political influence.

Earlier in the year on Mediawatch, Jackson dismissed criticism of the proposed legislation, some of it coming from strong supporters of public broadcasting.

That came back to bite him last month when the parliamentary committee scrutinising the Bill rewrote important parts of it. Recent opinion polls revealed both low levels of support for the merger and little understanding of it, while rival media lobbyists called the new entity “a monolithic monster bad for the country”.

‘Reprioritised spending’
The formerly non-committal opposition leader declared it, not just bad but mad, repeatedly labeling the policy “insane”.

This year Ardern’s successor, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, also spoke of the urgent need to “reprioritise spending” while recent reporting has almost universally described the merger as “on Chippy’s chopping block”.

Today the axe fell, finally and formally, putting a policy five years in the making out of its misery after millions of dollars and years of effort.

He said RNZ’s funding would increase in the short term “around the $10 million mark” and this could be done before the next Budget process.

RNZ put out a statement welcoming the “clarity” and the prospect of more funding. TVNZ was also “pleased to now have clarity . . . and a clear path forward for TVNZ”.

MediaWorks CEO Cam Wallace said he was pleased but too much had been spent on this proposal “at a time when the industry was dealing with decreasing advertising revenues.”

Watch live: Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed the TVNZ/RNZ merger will be scrapped https://t.co/tgagvtE68v

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) February 8, 2023

What was the plan anyway – and what went wrong?
When Kris Faafoi took over as Broadcasting Minister in late 2018, Labour junked its previous policy (launched in 2017 by then opposition leader Jacinda Ardern) of boosting RNZ with $38 million a year to become a truly multimedia public media platform — and ignoring TVNZ.

The government — through the Ministry for Culture and Heritage — launched a Strong Public Media policy instead.

Consultants who kicked off the project in 2019 concluded “the status quo is not an option”.

They said TVNZ and RNZ in their current form were not sustainable, given rapid digitally-driven changes in the media.

Covid-19 stalled the policy’s progress, but Cabinet finally agreed in 2021, greenlighting the creation of a new public media entity to replace TVNZ and RNZ.

They insisted it was not merely a merger of the two, but the enabling legislation unveiled last year was effectively just that.

Budget 2022 allocated $109 million a year until 2026 to fund the new entity’s operations, but Kris Faafoi, Willie Jackson and the PM never gave any clarity about what new services the new entity might offer.

They said yet-to-be appointed executives and governors would decide that, not ministers.

Similarly, no-one in charge convincingly addressed the fear that a hyper-commercial culture at TVNZ would clash with the charter-driven, public service MO of RNZ.

The entire process was carried almost entirely behind closed doors — and without a proper business case — until the public and other media agencies got a fortnight to make submissions on the legislation late last year.

So what next?
Effectively it will be business as usual for RNZ and TVNZ — both of which can pause plans to launch things like admin and IT services as a single system less than a month from now.

RNZ will carry on as a fully-funded bonsai-scale (by international standards) public broadcaster operating on radio and online under its existing charter (which is currently under review) with a yet-to-be announced increase in funding.

TVNZ will carry on as a possibly the world’s only commercial state-owned TV company doing news and entertainment online, which dominates the free-to-air TV market, but makes no significant money for the nation.

At all stages of the merger proposal, TVNZ has reassured advertisers it would still be open for their business. (Last year Willie Jackson chided TVNZ for dragging the chain, a claim denied by chief executive Simon Power on Mediawatch).

RNZ’s board, its chair Jim Mather and chief executive Paul Thompson, strongly backed the plan for a new entity from the early stages.

New Zealand on Air was notified last year around $80 million of its budget would be re-allocated to the new entity, forcing it to urgently pull apart its own funding plans and priorities. Today the PM also announced NZoA could expect an increase in funding.

The long-term plan
There is no long-term plan yet — beyond the status quo, which consultants and Cabinet eventually agreed was “not an option”.

But the Broadcasting Minister — who retained his portfolio in the recent reshuffle — has much to confront.

The collapse of the so-called merger goes beyond RNZ and TVNZ into other overhauls that were supposed to run in parallel with the new media entity’s creation.

Willie Jackson is also Minister of Māori Development, overseeing Māori broadcasting. He secured $80m over the past two years in extra funding for programming. But this was tied to a twice-undertaken Māori media sector shift, which was held back for — and meshed-in with — the new public media entity plan.

Jackson is also in charge of the legislative backstop to ensure tech titans Google and Meta cough up for news media content they share, a significant stream of income for under-pressure news outlets for the future.

And then there is the ongoing overhaul of the oversight of the media designed to better “protect Kiwis from harm”.

The media and online content regulation review has been run by the Department of Internal Affairs under Jan Tinetti, recently promoted to other portfolios.

This is supposed to overhaul four separate overlapping pre-digital agencies regulating the media, but is also unlikely to be “bread and butter” business for Labour in 2023.

The public media entity policy has finally been put out of its misery, but there will be consequences for kicking the can down the road again in a public media system that is still operating on 30-year-old foundations and swallowing a sizable budget for limited public returns.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Iwi leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand have accused opposition parties National and ACT of “fanning the flames of racism”, urging the prime minister to be brave and not walk away from partnership on Three Waters.

With Waitangi events and festivities gearing up for the holiday weekend, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins attended the Iwi Chairs Forum yesterday.

He emerged from the closed-doors meeting saying they had asked the government to continue to work with Māori “to advance the issues that we’ve been working on previously”.

• READ MORE: Other Waitangi Day reports
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Iwi leaders had also, it seemed, laid down a wero [challenge].

“I have also heard their concern that they don’t want to see ethnicity, race, being used as a way of dividing New Zealanders and I was able to absolutely reiterate my government’s commitment to ensuring that we continue to work together to avoid that happening,” Hipkins said.

“Where there is uncertainty, where there is a lack of clarity, that can lead to fear. Politicians who use that fear or exploit that fear in order to try and gain political advantage need to really reflect on their own actions. That’s something my government will never do.”

He was not afraid to get into specifics, either.

“They don’t want the concept of co-governance to be used to stoke fear, and nor do we,” he said.

“I think it’s been misunderstood and those who seek to use misunderstanding around it for political advantage need to reflect on their own behaviour.

“People can form their own judgments about that but I certainly think the opposition — National and ACT have, as they’ve done in the past — they’ve used uncertainty to try and stoke fear.”

The devastating flooding in Auckland this week may have changed some minds about the need for change in management of drinking, waste and stormwater — something Hipkins will be looking to capitalise on.

“I think that we have to accept that as a result of climate change we’re going to see more extreme weather events, and stormwater — which is an integral part of the Three Waters system — is going to continue to come under more pressure,” he said.

The iwi leaders were not shy about it either, with Tukoroirangi Morgan telling reporters they wanted co-governance or a similar partnership retained in the Three Waters legislation.

“The challenge we’ve put to the prime minister today is will he succumb to the attack dogs of the National party and ACT as they fan the flames of racism and anti-Māori sentiments, and throw us under the bus for the sake of keeping alive Three Waters?”

Morgan, it must be noted, has been appointed chair of the entity set to oversee Auckland and Northland’s water.

“There is nothing mysterious about Three Waters — it’s all about pipes under the ground. Our view is as it has always been: we stand here at Waitangi, the cradle of the Treaty of Waitangi, and here is the embodiment of partnership,” he said.

“What we seek from this government is an ongoing commitment that partnership will amplified and affirmed through Three Waters, [it is an] opportunity for the Crown and Māori to work together in a meaningful and significant way.”

Jamie Tuuta, an iwi leader from Taranaki, also warned against allowing Māori to become a political football this election.

“One of the key messages we want to give to the prime minister and other ministers is that they need to stand up, they need to step up,” he said.

“It’s unacceptable — because again, the racist and biased attacks on Māori in 2023 are unacceptable.”

A Pou Tikanga of the forum, constitutional law expert Professor Margaret Mutu, said it was essential race rhetoric was removed from electoral debate.

“There’s a need to understand and address racism in this country and over recent times it’s got a lot more urgent,” Professor Mutu said.

“We need to make sure that work doesn’t slow down, particularly as the extreme attacks coming in are very, very hurtful. We want to try and stop that hurt.”

Te Arawa’s Monty Morrison said the meeting went “very well, it was very open.”

Ngāti Kuri’s Harry Burkhardt said they “were clear about our message, and I think Chris received that well”.

Luxon, Seymour respond
Co-governance was a topic National’s leader Christopher Luxon chose to address when he visited Rātana last week. His speech accused the government of failing to make its position on the matter clear, and allowing it to become a “divisive and immature” conversation.

National had been invited to meet with the Iwi Chairs Forum but declined. In a written statement after the kōrero at Waitangi today, Luxon said the party had been clear about its position.

“We support co-management between government and Māori for natural resources in the context of Treaty settlements. We do not support co-governance of public services or separate bureaucratic systems for Māori and non-Māori,” he said.

“Labour has progressed a divisive agenda and continually failed to set out its views clearly. It is disappointing to see the new Prime Minister try to shut down the discussion rather than clearly setting out Labour’s plans for the public to judge.”

Luxon has previously raised as examples National does not support:

• The Māori Health Authority, which sets strategy for overcoming racial health gaps and commissions kaupapa Māori health services
• The Three Waters legislation allowing equal representation between council and iwi appointees on a strategic oversight group which appoints the management board of the four entities set to take over management of water services

ACT leader David Seymour — who has Ngāpuhi roots — has been even more stridently critical of these, arguing they are race-based approaches which only further divide.

“If the prime minister thinks that ACT is making co-goverment divisive, wait till he hears what Labour’s been up to,” he said.

“Their modus operandi is to divide public affairs between two groups of people based on race — that is divisive and it’s unsurprising that opposition parties are raising concerns.”

He bristled at being labelled an “attack dog” by Morgan.

“Again, it’s a shame. The Iwi Chairs Forum were an organisation we’ve enjoyed good relationships with.

“That kind of language, calling people dogs, well it doesn’t exactly sound like they’re coming to the table to make the situation any better, now, does it.”

Three Waters changes yet to be decided
Since taking over as Prime Minister from Jacinda Ardern, Hipkins has promised his government will focus more on the “bread-and-butter” issues, targeting cost-of-living pressures and cutting back some of the government’s work programme.

Media speculation has highlighted the unpopularity of the government’s RNZ-TVNZ merger and the Three Waters projects, and therefore likely on the chopping block.

Hipkins signalled announcements within weeks about the slimmed-down work programme, but when pressed about Three Waters early this week spoke about the need to change the status quo — statements he repeated today.

“We’ve been doing so many different things, actually we probably haven’t created the space to make sure people understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and that is absolutely, I think, a lesson for us over the last five years and it’s something we have all reflected on and you’ll see some change in that regard.

“I haven’t said a lot in terms of ruling things in and out, but one thing I will rule out is no reform . . .  we can’t continue with the status quo — it is not delivering New Zealanders the water services they need and that they deserve.

“If we leave it just with the status quo, one thing it will deliver is significantly higher rates for households, and I’m not willing to just stand back and say ‘that’s a council problem to deal with’.”

He has, to date, refused to outline what any of the changes to the project might be — saying those decisions are yet to be made by the full Cabinet — but speculation has centred on the co-governance aspect.

“I think everybody acknowledges that what we’re doing now or around the way we manage our water infrastructure in New Zealand is not sustainable, and it has left us with a pretty disgraceful legacy, frankly, of that core infrastructure being run down.”

Taranaki iwi leader Jamie Tuuta said whatever changes came, they expected the same level of engagement and partnership.

“By and large what we ask is that we are respected and that [Hipkins] and his ministers engage openly with us in the event that there are any changes.”

With an election in October, Morgan and the other leaders present at today’s forum are clear: they want bold leadership and partnership, and however this year’s election plays out — they will still be there.

“This is a ongoing journey for us,” Morgan said. “Absolutely, we would want a very clear and unfettered response and commitment from this government that they’re not going to walk away, nor are they going to throw us under the bus for their own political means.

“Iwi will be at this side of the table come the election, we’ll deal with whoever the government is. What is clear in this situation is we are enduring, iwi will remain as the Treaty partner.

“Whether we deal with Hipkins after the election or the National Party, we will see, but all we say is that we want an equitable share in the major decisions that affect our people – that’s our bottom-line expectation.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Iwi leaders warn Hipkins not to bow on Three Waters co-governance https://t.co/upsPqJEbMm

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) February 3, 2023

Tuesday, February 7, at 2pm. That’s when New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ parliamentary year begins and he faces National leader Christopher Luxon in the debating chamber for the first question time of 2023.

He needs to “Win the House”, as the saying goes. That means getting the better of the other side, and Hipkins has to show his caucus that he is up to it.

Hipkins is a vastly experienced parliamentarian, but there is nothing like being in the hot seat directly facing the leader of the opposition.

• READ MORE: Other NZ politics reports

He can be expected to take it to Luxon and ACT leader David Seymour more aggressively than Jacinda Ardern did, he is more of a “take no prisoners” politician than she was and he needs to get some hits in early on.

Hipkins has had a great start with two opinion polls showing Labour has regained the ground it lost to National.

The 1News Kantar poll showed Labour up five points to 38 percent and National down one point to 37 percent.

Newshub’s Reid Research poll had Labour up 5.7 points to 38 percent and National down 4.1 points to 36.6 percent.

Hipkins slightly ahead
In the preferred prime minister stakes, Hipkins was slightly ahead of Luxon in both polls.

Stuff‘s political editor Luke Malpass said the polls showed what no Labour figures dared to consider a fortnight ago — that the party might have better prospects under a leader other than Jacinda Ardern.

“Hipkins, it now appears, could be that person,” he said.

“In other words, by the time Ardern left she might have been a drag on the party vote.”

Luxon dismissed the poll results, saying nothing had changed.

“It’s the same government, and a new leader who can’t deliver,” he said. “It’s going to be an incredibly tight race.”

The poll details, and what the results would mean in terms of seats if an election was held now, are on RNZ’s website.

Labour’s new champion
After settling in to his debating chamber role as Labour’s new champion, Hipkins has to get his next big agenda item off the blocks — ditching policies and programmes that are in the way of his pledge to totally focus on “bread and butter” issues that affect people, which means the cost of living.

This process was started by Ardern at the end of last year and Hipkins needs to get it done and dusted because there’s sure to be the usual cries of “U-turn, U-turn”.

Although Ardern and Hipkins have explained it as necessary to the new focus on dealing with inflation and the cost of living crisis, there Is also an obvious political need in election year.

Labour wants to get rid of liabilities, policies and programmes that are causing trouble and are easy targets for the opposition.

Hipkins needs what MPs call clear air to explain and implement policies Labour hopes will reset the party’s direction, entrench the lead over National and ACT, and deliver a platform for the election campaign.

The new prime minister may be in his honeymoon period but the media knows he has to deliver.

“He will have to show there is more on the tin than just a new sticker, and in pretty short order,” said Malpass.

“It won’t be enough to just chuck the odd media merger and dank old bits of legislation over the side: It will have to be replaced by some actions on the ‘bread and butter’ issues Chris Hipkins says he is concerned about.”

Plagued by troubles
The New Zealand Herald’s political editor Claire Trevett said Hipkins’ job was to convince voters that Labour was focused “on the various troubles plaguing them now — from potholes to hip ops to the price of bread”.

“The talk is one thing, the delivery is another. Hipkins has no real option but to deliver.”

There’s been speculation about which policies and programmes will get the chop or be put on the slow track, and Stuff published a list with the top three being the RNZ/TVNZ merger, the Income Insurance Scheme (which National calls a jobs tax) and Auckland Light Rail.

It said other lesser known projects could join the list.

Hipkins must also deal with Three Waters, which has given the government more problems than anything else.

That’s more difficult because the legislation has been passed, but Hipkins has acknowledged he has to do something about it.

“We are going to look closely at the Three Waters programme,” he told Trevett in an interview. “There’s no question there has to be change. I don’t think we can just sit back and say ‘this is not our problem, this is a council problem’.

“I don’t think that would be responsible. But we also need to bring people along with us and what we are doing.”

Policy clear-out
When it comes to the policy clear-out, Hipkins has much more freedom than Ardern would have had.

She would have faced ferocious opposition attacks for dumping policies she had supported, her words would have been thrown back at her.

But Hipkins is a new prime minister, doing things his way, just as Ardern told him when she said “you must do you”. She was giving him free rein to do it his way.

Did she know Labour was heading in the wrong direction under her leadership, and that it wouldn’t win the next election unless there was drastic change?

One commentator who thinks so is Matthew Hooton.

Writing in the Herald, Hooton said Ardern so badly wanted her government to win a third term that she was prepared to step down.

“Labour’s masterful transition was carefully planned before Christmas by Ardern and her closest allies, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins, and flawlessly executed,” he said.

Capturing the initiative
“Political strategists spend every December working out how to capture the initiative in January, especially in election year. None has ever succeeded like Labour over the last week.”

Luxon hasn’t had a good run-up to the new parliamentary year.

Inevitably, he’s been eclipsed by Hipkins simply because he is the new prime minister but when Luxon has been able to get into the media he might have wished he hadn’t.

“National strategists seem dumbstruck,” Hooton said in his article. “Christopher Luxon was more incoherent than usual trying to explain where he stands on co-governance, the Māori seats, and whether women politicians receive worse abuse than males, pleasing neither the liberal nor conservative wings of his party.”

Stuff’s Andrea Vance said Luxon had actually helped ease Hipkins into the job “by being more mediocre than usual”.

“Somehow Luxon — whose one job last week was to stay on message — managed to drive down a co-governance cul-de-sac at`Rātana, and then spend the rest of the week doing bunny-hop u-turns to get out of it,” she said.

“And how did he manage to piss off women, again? The correct answer was ‘yes’, Christopher. Female politicians patently face more abuse than men.”

Abuse of women
She was referring to Luxon responding to a question about whether women politicians suffered more abuse than men by saying he wasn’t sure.

When Hipkins takes his seat in Parliament on Tuesday he’ll have his revamped front bench alongside him.

The cabinet reshuffle, as RNZ reported, means some of the government’s most contentious portfolios will have a fresh face.

One of the most interesting facets was Hipkins’ decision to appoint Michael Wood as Minister for Auckland.

Hipkins explained the need to “get Auckland pumping” after a difficult couple of years, but there’s a political imperative behind it as well which the Herald’s Trevett saw.

“It is aimed as a pre-emptive counter to the inevitable attacks from Auckland-based opposition leaders such as Christopher Luxon and David Seymour that the Wellington-based Hipkins is a beltway creation and out of touch with Auckland’s concerns,” she said.

“It sends a signal that Hipkins has his eye on Auckland and knows its importance.”

Peter Wilson is a life member of Parliament’s press gallery, 22 years as NZPA’s political editor and seven as parliamentary bureau chief for NZ Newswire. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

How the RNZ/TVNZ merger went from its first reading in Parliament to the legislative extinction list is an example of why New Zealand actually needs more public media and not less. Let me explain.

It has been labelled a grenade, a dog and a monolithic, monopolistic monster. Yet it is actually a reasonable policy that would bring New Zealand public media in line with most other developed countries.

No other developed country has separate national television and radio networks. They have seen how it fails us and said, “no thanks”.

• READ MORE: Other RNZ/TVNZ merger reports

Most other developed countries spend quite a bit more on their public media platforms too. Brits pay $81 each, Norwegians $110, Germans $142, but Kiwis just $27 each year to fund RNZ, TVNZ and NZ On Air.

Even with the government’s funding increase over the next three years, we’ll still be spending less per person than Australia, Ireland or any other country we like to compare ourselves to.

A big part of our public media underspend is successive governments’ policy that TVNZ pay its own way and rely on advertising dollars.

Other countries subsidise their public media because they realise that a reliable source of news and information is too important to be left in the hands of marketers and advertising departments.

Other end of the spectrum
At the other end of the spectrum is the US spending just $3 per person on public media. You have to wonder how different US politics might be if it had fully-funded public media.

It is true that TVNZ does receive funding for programmes through NZ On Air but those shows still have to be simple and entertaining because TVNZ sells adverts around them. Only Sunday mornings have programmes for minorities or long-form political interviews, and of course, that is when there is no advertising.

That is the big difference between public media and commercial media. Public media doesn’t rely on advertising so it isn’t so desperate to get your attention and blast adverts at you.

Public media has time to examine public issues in-depth.

Commercial media needs to make money and with advertising dollars drifting to Google and Facebook, they work even harder to make content as eye-catching, entertaining and easy to understand as possible.

You may have noticed it on TVNZ, Newshub, Stuff or at the New Zealand Herald. These days there are more articles about crime, car crashes and weather bombs because they catch people’s attention.

Political reporting also wants to catch your attention. While public media can spend half an hour discussing a policy in-depth, commercial media want eyeballs so they go for the fun stuff — who’s up and who’s down in the pugilistic soap opera of daily politics. It is entertaining and it’s quick and easy to explain.

Complicated issues
Unlike this opinion piece I’m writing for you now — I’m already halfway through my allotted word count, yet I’ve spent all of them just explaining the background. Complicated issues take more time to explain. I had better get on with it.

It was in this commercial political reporting soap opera that the media merger lost its way. Like many politicians, opposition broadcasting spokesperson Melissa Lee exploited commercial media’s focus on simplification and pugilism to attack the government. She repeatedly claimed the government could not explain why we need the merger, but the government had tried to explain it, only the public hadn’t heard because it is too complicated to explain quickly and simply on commercial media (as I’m trying to do here).

Political reporting fixated on Willie Jackson’s various stumbles as though this reflected the policy, rather than analysing the policy itself.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon also exploited commercial media’s lack of examination. He criticised the merger for being “ideological”, claiming it would destroy TVNZ’s business model, and saying he would demerge it if National win the election.

But none of the interviewers asked Luxon to explain his figures or why the destruction of TVNZ’s business model would be a bad thing. None asked him if demerging would also be “ideological” and none asked if he would get a cost-benefit analysis done before demerging.

Lee and Luxon’s criticism worked. A Taxpayers Union poll in November claimed 54 percent opposed the merger and 22 percent supported it.

Different polling outcome
My organisation, Better Public Media Trust, also polled on the subject but we added some information about the merger, its costs and benefits. We got quite different results with just 29 percent opposing and 44 percent supporting the merger.

That shows what a little bit of information can do to public opinion. It also shows that reliance on commercial media for political discussion is prone to being style over substance, posturing over policy, soap operas over documentaries.

That is why the merger should go ahead. People would see it’s not a dog, grenade or monster, but intelligent, diverse and informative public media. Just in time for the election.

Myles Thomas is chair of the Better Public Media Trust (BPM). He is a television producer and director of various forms of “factual” programming, and in 2012 he established established the Save TVNZ 7 campaign. This article was first published in the New Zealand Herald and is republished here with the author’s permission.

The 980 submissions in response to the Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media Bill are a testament to the importance — and contentiousness — of public media policy.

Most are supportive of the bill’s goal of strengthening public media, but many claim the new media entity it establishes could potentially distort the market, undermine its commercial competitors, and be subject to political interference.

These are critical questions. Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM) will encompass TVNZ and RNZ, with up to NZ$200 million in public subsidies, including a new $109 million appropriation and a further $84.8 million in funds redirected from NZ On Air.

• READ MORE: Merging commercial TVNZ and non-commercial RNZ won’t be easy – and time is running out
• The merger of TVNZ and RNZ needs to build trust in public media – 3 things the law change must get right
• In an age of digital disinformation, dropping level 1 media studies in NZ high schools is a big mistake
• Other ANZPM reports

A key challenge, therefore, will be ensuring the ANZPM public charter is not compromised by the continuing pursuit of commercial revenues. The charter objectives — to contribute to a strong New Zealand identity, te reo and tikanga Māori, an inclusive and connected society, and an informed, participatory democracy — inevitably carry commercial opportunity costs.

Put bluntly, an educational children’s programme, in-depth current affairs or a documentary about Māori culture will attract fewer eyeballs and advertising dollars than an imported drama or a populist reality show like the already controversial FBoy Island.

It may be that the best solution is the creation of an independent regulatory body to oversee charter delivery and the proper use of public funding.

Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson cites ‘no trust’ in defence of public media entity https://t.co/oIkJ6opcsZ

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) September 28, 2022

Internal contradictions
Supporting ANZPM’s noncommercial objectives is the primary justification for providing direct public subsidies not available to competitors. This makes the charter the institutional DNA of the new entity; it should be the end to which all revenues — public and commercial — are the means.

The government’s Strong Public Media Business Case recommended a not-for-profit status, reinvestment of surpluses in public media objectives, and free availability of all first-run content.

It also anticipated additional funding over time to compensate for an expected decline in commercial revenues. But none of this is specified in the ANZPM bill.

On the contrary, ANZPM is merely required to make content predominantly free to access, opening the door to new subscription-based services, the scope of which is not defined.

Meanwhile, Budget 2022 anticipated the return of $306 million in surpluses over six years. Other Treasury communications reveal pressure to assert its fiscal disciplinary oversight, and insistence on measures to ensure ANZPM maintains its commercial performance to reduce reliance on public subsidies.

Moreover, beyond 2026, there is nothing in the bill to ringfence ANZPM’s future funding from annual budget scrambles. Any future government unsympathetic to public media could simply reduce or discontinue the public funding.

MPs start hearing submissions after National’s broadcasting spokesperson Melissa Lee lands punches in Parliament. https://t.co/v21h9Yw3oJ

— Stuff (@NZStuff) September 29, 2022

Culture clash
To anyone familiar with Labour’s previous attempt to restructure TVNZ with a public charter, the alarm bells will be ringing. Internal cabinet disagreements and Treasury demands for commercial performance saw TVNZ paying dividends exceeding its public funding and conflicted over its priorities.

Many in TVNZ resented the imposition of the charter, while commercial competitors resented public money being (mis)used to subsidise programming used to compete for ratings and revenue — including outbidding Sky for the rights to the Beijing Olympics.

The policy ambiguity in the balance of commercial and charter functions is therefore a potential risk in the current bill. RNZ and TVNZ have a very different character and philosophy, particularly in their news services.

If ANZPM combines the RNZ and TVNZ news operations and makes delivering eyeballs at 6pm the priority, its journalistic mission would look very different from a public service focus on in-depth reporting of serious issues.

MPs start hearing submissions after National’s broadcasting spokesperson Melissa Lee lands punches in Parliament. https://t.co/v21h9Yw3oJ

— Stuff (@NZStuff) September 29, 2022

Who calls the tune?
Ensuring the ANZPM entity remains independent and prioritises its charter over commercial performance will depend on the governance structure and institutional status. Board appointments and funding are potential vectors of political influence, while the source of ministerial oversight can significantly influence operational priorities.

As internal government communications reveal, the Bill aims to establish ANZPM as an Autonomous Crown Entity (ACE) rather than a Crown Entity Company (CEC). This has the advantage of giving the Ministry for Culture and Heritage primary oversight and limiting the influence of Treasury (which sought to retain a CEC structure).

However, as an ACE, it would be possible for the minister to issue directions in line with government policy — a potential source of political influence noted in several submissions on the bill.

Both RNZ and TVNZ are currently CECs, for which the Minister of Finance and Minister of Broadcasting and Media are shareholders. Although their boards agree business plans and statements of intent with the government, they are not subject to policy directives, while their governing legislation prohibits editorial interference.

The bad news, however, is that CECs are subject to the fiscal discipline of Treasury oversight which can potentially impose commercial performance objectives.

Independent oversight needed
An alternative option would be to make ANZPM an Independent Crown Entity (ICE) which offers greater autonomy from government. But this is usually reserved for quasi-judicial bodies like the Broadcasting Standards Authority and would make delivery of the charter highly dependent on the internal operational culture of ANZPM.

TVNZ remains the larger part of the new entity and the Minister of Broadcasting and Media has already hinted at its reluctance to grasp the extent to which its values will need to evolve as part of ANZPM. (Former TVNZ boss Ian Fraser once remarked that changing TVNZ’s commercial culture would require a “neutron bomb”).

The risk here is that TVNZ will approach its role in ANZPM as business-as-usual plus government funding.

So, the challenge is to insulate ANZPM from political interference, commercial demands from Treasury (which would compromise the charter and risk market distortion), and from internal subversion by those opposed to the public service mission.

To avoid simply choosing between the (not so) good, the bad and the ugly options, we need an independent regulatory body to review charter delivery, ensure the appropriate use of public funding, and evaluate future funding requirements.

Dr Peter Thompson, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

With only six days left for submissions to the select committee examining the Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media Bill, it is becoming clear this crucial piece of legislation has some significant shortcomings. These will need attention before it passes into law.

The eventual act of Parliament will officially merge Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and Television New Zealand (TVNZ) into a new non-profit, autonomous Crown entity.

Supporters, including Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson, argue the new organisation will help strengthen public media. Others have expressed concerns about the new entity’s likely independence, given its reliance on government funding.

• READ MORE: Crisis, disintegration and hope: only urgent intervention can save New Zealand’s media
• In an age of digital disinformation, dropping level 1 media studies in NZ high schools is a big mistake
• To publish or not to publish? The media’s free-speech dilemmas in a world of division, violence and extremism

TVNZ chief executive Simon Power echoed those concerns earlier this week. He strongly criticised the bill’s current provisions for statutory and editorial independence:

I am not worried about that kind of influence from this government or the next government. I just think if the legislation is to endure it has to be robust enough to withstand different types of governments over time.

Power is right to warn against complacency about media freedom. While New Zealand still ranks highly in the World Press Freedom Index (11th out of 180 countries), there have been times in the past when governments have manipulated or directly censored local news media to suit their own political agendas.

In the current age of “fake news” and disinformation, we need to be especially vigilant. While there are good aspects to the proposed law, it fails to adequately deal with several pressing contemporary issues.

Trust in government and media
As last year’s Sustaining Aotearoa as a Cohesive Society report highlighted, trust in government and media, and the social cohesion it creates, is a fragile thing. What can take decades to build can fragment if it isn’t nurtured.

According to some global measures, this trust is declining. New Zealand still ranks higher than the OECD average, but distrust is growing here.

The Auckland University of Technology’s Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) research centre reports that people’s trust in the news they consume dropped by 10% between 2020 and 2022.

At the same time, the speed and reach of propaganda, misinformation and disinformation have increased dramatically, as witnessed during the covid pandemic.

New Zealand was not immune, as the Disinformation Project has shown. Unreliable and untrustworthy information spread almost as quickly as the virus itself, with an unprecedented spike during the protest at Parliament earlier this year.

Finally, journalism continues to be a dangerous profession. Over 1200 media professionals worldwide were killed for doing their jobs between 2006 and 2020. Online violence against women journalists in particular is on the rise.

New Zealand journalists have also found themselves the target of increased levels of animosity.

Simon Power says bill paving the way for Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media should do more to enshrine its indepndence. https://t.co/iwApyVFz91

— Stuff Business (@NZStuffBusiness) August 30, 2022

What the new law needs
Rebuilding trust in the public media starts with firmly enshrining their independence in law. The proposed charter promises the new entity will demonstrate editorial independence, impartiality and balance. This is a good start, but it is only one of 10 principles.

This key principle (and ways to measure it) should stand alone in the new law to create a bulwark against any rising fear that governments, either directly or by manipulating budgets and appointments, have undue influence.

The commitment to independence should also be reinforced by ensuring some seats on the proposed entity’s board are reserved for representatives of parliamentary opposition parties. Independent annual review of the entity’s independence and integrity should also be required.

Second, there needs to be a clearer commitment to integrity of information, beyond the existing standards of the news being reliable, accurate, comprehensive, balanced and impartial. Recognising the threat of misinformation and disinformation, and developing ways to counter it, should be a core part of the new entity’s remit.

As the bill stands, it is only part of four considerations related to one of several “objectives”.

And thirdly, the law must recognise the independence of journalists and the need to protect them. It’s something of an anomaly that a bill to protect journalists’ sources was put before Parliament (although subsequently withdrawn), while journalists themselves don’t enjoy similar protections.

The new public media entity could lead the way in lobbying on behalf of all journalists to ensure those protections, and the tools journalists require to be an effective Fourth Estate, are consistent with best international practice.

If the law in its final form reflects these fundamental principles, it will go a long way to allaying legitimate concerns about the future independence and integrity of public media in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law at the University of Waikato and Dr Claire Breen, is professor of Law at the University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media Bill — introduced to Parliament this week — will have a long journey before it is fit for purpose.

The Bill gives effect to the government’s plan to replace TVNZ and RNZ with a new entity designed for the digital age, but the legislation as it stands does little more than cement the two public broadcasters together.

On first reading (mine, not Parliament’s), it looks like a legislative instrument to give effect to the merger, but its stated intent and functions are much wider. This is supposed to be the legal foundation upon which a new age of public media is to be built.

• READ MORE: Gavin Ellis: An open letter to the incoming media minister
• Public media: new name, new law, new minister, old questions
• The BBC Charter

The general policy statement accompanying the Bill says: “This Bill seeks to strengthen the delivery of public media services by establishing a new public media entity.” It may achieve the latter, but it falls far short of guaranteeing its objective.

The Bill falls short on many fronts: Matters that should be covered are omitted, others are dealt with in obtuse ways, boilerplate clauses are employed in place of purposeful creativity, and ironclad protection of the public interest is absent.

The Bill’s shortcomings are too numerous to set out all of them, but a few key failings give a sense of how much work must be done on the proposed law through its committee stages.

The Bill states the new organisation will be a Crown entity but does not stipulate the category under which it must fall. We need to go to Schedule 2 Part 1 to find that Schedule 2 of the Crown Entities Act is to be amended to make Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media an autonomous Crown entity.

Why the change?
Both TVNZ and RNZ are currently Crown companies. Why the change?

Was it because autonomous Crown entities “must have regard to government policy when directed by the responsible Minister”? While the new public media organisation will be protected against ministerial interference on matters relating content and news gathering, there are many ways to skin the cat.

Why was the new entity not designated an Independent Crown Entity which is “generally independent of government policy”?

The Bill states that, in accordance with provisions of the Crown Entities Act, the Minister of Broadcasting and Media will appoint the board of the new entity, but the new Bill stipulates at least two of those directors will be nominated by the Minister for Māori Development.

As things stand, that means Willie Jackson will appoint the entire board because he holds both portfolios. The proposed legislation does not anticipate that aggregation of power.

Ministers are writ large across the Bill. There is oversight of the new entity by no fewer than three, possibly four. Aside from the Minister of Broadcasting and Media, the finance minister has direct powers over financial issues and the Māori development minister has Te Tiriti oversight.

The Crown Entities Act provides for the broadcasting minister to appoint a monitor to act as his eyes and ears over the new entity. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage has been working behind the scenes to gear itself to take on that role – and an even wider role across all media if its current strategy framework draft is anything to go by. So, it is possible that its minister (currently Carmel Sepuloni) will also have a look-in.

Independence absolutely vital
I do not think that augers well for the independence that is absolutely vital if the new body is to gain and retain public trust and confidence.

Yes, the Bill does carry over the provisions in existing legislation that tells ministers to keep their hands off editorial matters. However, there are too many other mechanisms by which politicians can influence the direction of the new organisation.

There is a charter that should provide its own protections, given that the relevant minister’s actions must be consistent with it. However, the charter in the Bill consists largely of boilerplate generalities that are less aspirational than the existing RNZ charter.

It is in marked contrast to the BBC Charter, which is erudite, explicit, and carries more direct obligations.

Submissions on the Bill will, no doubt, focus on the charter and it may yet go through iterations that improve it. One necessary improvement relates to the digital environment that made all of this reorganisation necessary. Although there is passing reference to online services, the tenor of the Bill is rooted in the present, not the future.

The entity’s principal purpose is “broadcasting”. That would be fine if the term was defined in broad enough terms. However, it talks of “transmitting” and “reception by the New Zealand public by means of receiving apparatus”. That hardly conjures up pictures of very smart interactive devices and a community for whom one-way linear transmission is antiquated.

The charter does state that one of its principles is “innovating and taking creative risks” but that looks tame alongside the BBC Charter’s clause on technology that states it “must promote technological innovation, and maintain a leading role in research and development”.

Technologically aspirational requirements
I would have thought that, in order to set the stage for a future-oriented organisation built for the digital age, the Bill just might contain some technologically aspirational requirements.

It is not the only element of the new organisation that is absent from the proposed legislation.

Aside from a pressing need to provide far more robust independent governance, the Bill’s most glaring omissions relate to finance and internal structures.

The Bill contains an explicit requirement that RNZ’s commercial-free services will continue, and where a charge is applied to new services on first broadcast it will later be free. There is no reference in the Bill, however, to TVNZ’s current commercial status, nor to annual appropriations from government.

It takes a careful reading of the Bill’s schedules and amendments to those in other acts to determine whether the current practice of channelling RNZ’s funding through NZ on Air will continue. Reading between the lines it appears that a more direct funding stream is being contemplated, with some form of coordination with other bodies such as NZ on Air and Te Māngai Pāho.

The Bill itself makes no direct reference to future requirements for TVNZ to pay a dividend but a tick in a column in the Bill’s schedule suggests the new entity will not contribute to the Treasury coffers.

Beyond that, the finances of the new entity are a deep void. The new organisation faces real challenges in reconciling public funding and commercial revenue. It must also determine the division of expenditure associated with programming to meet the expectations created by both sources.

No legislative guidance
However, there is no legislative guidance on how these challenges should be met. There is total silence on commercial expectations, and on the mechanisms by which any continuity of government funding will be calculated or guaranteed. The Cabinet papers released to date suggest funding matters will be dealt with through the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. So why is that not explicit in the Bill?

Internal structures — which must address the cultural and funding process differences between commercial and non-commercial broadcasting — are apparently entirely in the hands of the Establishment board as there is nothing in the Bill that mandates the unique internal structure that will be needed to satisfy both imperatives. Does Parliament have no view, for example, on whether news and current affairs should be structurally separated from a commercial enterprise, say as a separate subsidiary with its own statutory independence?

Why is there no requirement to follow the Irish precedent whereby the state broadcaster RTÉ must adhere to a Fair Trading Policy that complies with EU rules on State aid? That policy requires RTÉ “to trade in a manner which ensures that public funds are not used to subsidise RTÉ’s commercial activities…[and] that ensures that RTÉ’s commercial activities are compatible with its public service objects.”

These questions, and more, will be raised during the Bill’s select committee hearings. My fear is that the timetable set out for the legislation — it must be passed and in force by the end of the year — will truncate the process to the point where the necessarily exhaustive examination of its provisions will not take place.

Last week I set 12 labours for the new Minister of Broadcasting and Media. This Bill, as it currently stands, will make Willie Jackson’s tasks even more Herculean.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a website called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Dear Minister,

Congratulations on assuming the Broadcasting and Media role.

The announcement of your new portfolio put me in mind of Hercules as King Eurystheus told him there were a dozen small jobs he would like done.

Like Hercules, you will find that the tasks ahead are challenging. Some will seem insurmountable. Yet, the underlying message of that particular piece of Greek mythology is that nothing is impossible.

• READ MORE: RNZ-TVNZ mega-entity named ‘Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media’ in draft law
• Public media: new name, new law, new minister, old questions
• Other public media reports

I would hesitate to suggest that success will lead to immortality, but you will certainly make an enduring name for yourself if you are able to ensure that New Zealand’s media ecosystem is fit for purpose.

In order for that to happen you must undertake, if I may be so bold, the Twelve Labours of Willie Jackson.

Here are the tasks you should address:

1. The new public media entity — ensure it is an entirely new approach to a digital future and not merely a TVNZ/RNZ merger, and enshrine independent governance.
2. Media content review – act as the coordinator for a project to determine how we should address harmful media content, which spans a multitude of issues and ministries.
3. Social media platforms — make them pay for plundering our media and our audiences, and make them accountable for content.
4. Public Interest Journalism Fund – restore public confidence in the fund (by removing requirements seen as linked to government policy) and continue to fund the scheme.
5. Regulatory structures – facilitate the replacement of the Media Council and the Broadcasting Standards Authority by a single, demonstrably independent, body.
6. Private sector survival — investigate alternative mechanisms that replace declining revenue, and incentivise plurality.
7. Māori media — Have a stern talk with yourself, as the Minister for Māori Development, to finally bring something concrete out of the Māori Media Sector Shift that has already been three years in the making.
8. Ethnic media — recognise and support media that directly address often hard to reach communities.
9. Media law — review statutes that were predicated on media structures and methodologies that have long been superseded.
10. Media training — resurrect the Journalism Training Organisation with a mandate to devise curricula standards and assess their implementation by tertiary institutions.
11. Policy balance – work to ensure that the legitimate Te Tiriti initiatives being pursued by the Labour Government do not inadvertently ignore the broader needs of the media sector and its audiences (plural).
12. Technology watch — set up a monitoring group to alert government to technological changes (in areas such as artificial intelligence) that will affect media production, impact and oversight.

I realise that it is no more than 18 months to the next election and, even if you expect another term in government, you will need to prioritise.

Three broad rubrics
The tasks fall under three broad rubrics that are inter-related: Media sustainability, media governance, and social cohesion. Admittedly, they involve some activities that currently sit outside your portfolio but there is a crying need for a coordinator. That can, and should, be you.

The most pressing task is the New Public Media Entity, which both Television New Zealand and RNZ openly call “the merger”. You have inherited a project in the second of its three phases, and I am sure the easiest approach would be to leave it to take its (predetermined) course.

That would be both a lost opportunity and, I respectfully suggest, an abrogation of your responsibility to oversee the establishment of an organisation that is truly fit for purpose.

Your predecessor, Kris Faafoi, is admirably well-meaning and I have no doubt the initiative started under his watch had sound core purposes. However, he tended to lead from behind and the outcomes to date suggest the results will be less than the sum of their parts.

There is a golden opportunity to establish an entirely new organisation, born for a digital future that can accommodate but not be led by its legacy technologies and cultures. Its impact on the overall media landscape will be so significant that it must have a unique multi-tiered independent governance structure to insulate it from government control and to contain its own power.

I see neither of these imperatives in any of the material that has so far entered the public domain and I fear the introduction of draft legislation in the next week or two will confirm my misgivings on both fronts. My hope is that you will intervene to ensure the final form of the bill addresses both opportunities and threats, and your discussions with the Establishment Board gives it the courage to think a significant distance beyond the square.

The Content Review, led by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, also demands your attention. While extremely useful work has already been undertaken on harmful content in various forms of media, there is a real need for strong coordination with your portfolio. My fear is that mainstream media could suffer because, when it comes to policing content, they are low hanging fruit. The real danger with harmful content lies with digital platforms.

Absence of strong government direction
Those social media platforms also demand your attention in other ways. The absence of strong government direction (the antithesis of what is evident in Australia and the European Union) has allowed them to apply a cynical cherry-picking approach to compensating New Zealand media for the material they appropriate.

Unless they are forced to act responsibly, they will continue to serve only their own pecuniary interests and to minimise their responsibilities for content. You have an opportunity to align New Zealand internationally.

Your predecessor performed a real service to media and the public in setting up the Public Interest Journalism Fund. I have to declare an interest here: I have been involved in evaluating applications for PIJF on behalf of NZ on Air. That involvement has allowed me to witness at first hand the determination to pursue journalism that is squarely in the public interest and to see successful applications for projects that hold government — and other forms of power — to account.

Blackened the name
However, oppositions forces (both political and more malign) have blackened the name of the fund. It has been characterised as a bribe that has muted criticism of the Labour government.

It may be a hard ask, given that you represent the very people accused of doing the bribing, but you need to restore the fund’s reputation…and commit to its continuation.

You may feel those tasks will be more than sufficient to keep you occupied for the rest of the current term, but you cannot ignore the other Labours of Willie Jackson. I suggest you coalesce them into a single project: Futureproofing New Zealand Media. It could provide the blueprint for your next term as Minister of Communication and Media.

It may also embrace the idea of my long-advocated Bretton Woods #2 and bring together the many elements that make up our media and their audiences to map a collective future. That would make this old man very happy.

I wish you well with your new portfolio. You bring to the role many years of media experience. Complete these 12 labours and, like Hercules, you will be a hero.

Dr Gavin Ellis ONZM MA PhD

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a website called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

The proposal for a new entity to replace Television New Zealand and RNZ has two fundamental flaws that must be fixed if it is to gain the public’s trust.

The first flaw is the assumption that an existing legal structure — the Autonomous Crown Entity — is an appropriate form of governance. The second is that it has provided inadequate protection from political interference. The two issues are related.

Let me say at the outset that I support the restructuring of public service media. It is an idea whose time has come. It is an opportunity to create, almost from the ground up, a public organisation designed to live up to a digital incarnation of BBC-founder Lord Reith’s dictum that public media should inform, educate and entertain (now, however, in a creative and clever mix).

• READ MORE: Other RNZ and TVNZ merger reports

My concern lies in the need for this new entity to demonstrate from the outset that it will be free-standing and free from influence. By treating its formation little differently from a stock-standard Autonomous Crown Entity (ACE) into which existing organisations are dropped, the government is sending the wrong signals. From Day One (i.e., right now) it needs to be treated very much as a special case.

Let’s not lose sight of what is possible here: The creation of a ground-breaking structure that can set new standards for public service media in the digital age – if it is born out of independent thinking, creativity, and wisdom.

And let’s not forget why it is vital that it succeed in that aim. Public trust in the institutions of democracy and a free society are being systematically undermined. We need to look no further than the darkly manipulated “protest” in front of Parliament.

Stirrers wanted the prime minister and journalists lynched and violent “protesters” set fires and threw paving bricks at police. They were supported throughout by a much wider social media narrative that neither politicians nor the media could be trusted.

Public trust in media eroding
Public trust in media is already on the way down. AUT’s Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy polled trust in media last year and found it had declined across all four industry-wide metrics it had measured in 2020. RNZ and TVNZ remain the most trusted brands but both declined year-on-year. So, too, did all media included in the previous survey.

There is a real need for media institutions in which the public has trust and the JMaD studies point to public service media being at the pinnacle of that structure.

I have no doubt that the Minister of Broadcasting and Media, Kris Faafoi, is well-intentioned. As a former journalist he is only too well aware of the importance of trust and of the need to protect, nurture and champion media independence. Whether his cabinet colleagues have the same set of imperatives is harder to judge.

However, the restructuring requires a longer view than what might happen around the cabinet table over the next few months. We need to be concerned that the structure which emerges is not only fit for purpose now, but will endure for decades and be capable of withstanding winds of political change that on a global scale are showing more negative than positive signs.

In other words, it must be robust enough to survive not only known risks but also some conceivable unknowns: We had a Robert Muldoon, so could we have a Donald Trump?

Unfortunately, the announcement last week provides a less-than-reassuring beginning. The cabinet go-ahead was sparse on structural and operational detail. It did speak of a charter and proposed legislation that will contain a much-vaunted guarantee of editorial independence from ministerial control. However, that is undermined by other planned moves and much of the potential damage could be done even before the new structure is up and running.

Significantly, control of the governance of the implementation phase of the restructuring is one area of the cabinet paper and supporting documents in which there is real detail. Absence of detail elsewhere is explained away by saying these are matters for the Establishment Board to decide.

Seen as the architect
The draft terms of reference for the Establishment Board state it will be responsible for overseeing the detailed organisational design of the new entity and the transition to the new structure. In other words, it is to be seen as the architect. That was certainly the inference in Kris Faaoi’s announcement last week.

Yet the Establishment Board is precisely where the Minister (and his Cabinet colleagues) and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage have a potentially high level of influence.

The Establishment Board is expected to stay aligned to any cabinet decisions and is responsible for ensuring it “progresses government policy” and meets the minister’s objectives.

All members (up to nine) are to be appointed by the minister, who will also appoint the chair. The minister can terminate any member’s term before the expiry date and there is no requirement for him to state cause.

The board will not have its own staff but may ask the Ministry for Culture and Heritage – which will provide the secretariat — to appoint people to provide specialist or technical advice. MCH will also procure other services on the board’s behalf and its chief executive will decide what functions it will delegate to the board. Meanwhile MCH will continue to provide advice directly to the minister.

The Establishment Board will, according to the terms of reference, operate on a consensus basis — not a majority vote — and where it can’t reach consensus “the chair will advise the minister of the difference of opinion”. That begs the question: Does the minister effectively have a deciding vote?

He certainly has a tight hold on what the Establishment Board says in public. The section in the terms of reference relating to the Establishment Board’s relationship with the minister is devoted almost entirely to public statements. There can be “no surprises” (no surprise there) and the chair is the sole spokesperson.

The minister is to be informed of any public comment “either prior to, or as soon as possible after comment is made”, and all press releases must be sent to the minister in advance.

Multiple avenues for influence 
All of this suggests to me that both the minister and the ministry have multiple avenues through which they can influence the way the new structure is put together.

I freely admit there is good reason for liaison. For example, the early activity of the board will take place while the entity’s empowering Act and other law changes are working their way through the legislative process. The board’s thinking on the new entity should be reflected in that legislation and, if it isn’t, we might question why it is not.

However, there are equally good reasons why the Establishment Board should be seen to be independent. If the minister deflected questions on detail by saying they were matters for the Establishment Board, then let it be so.

The way it now stands, it looks (as my betting old dad would say) as though the government is trying to have a quid each way. Hedging bets is not a good way to begin the trust-building process.

Step one in that process should be an unequivocal statement from the minister that the Establishment Board does, in fact, have autonomy and, so long as its actions support the aims of the new entity, it will not be subject to ministerial or ministry direction. It should also have the power to appoint its own advisors.

Then there is the new entity itself. I was frankly surprised that work by a Chief Executives Working Party (to which I was an advisor), a Business Study group, and then a Business Case Governance Group did not produce a unique structure for what will be a unique organisation. Specifically, I expected to see the strongest recommendations for iron-clad protections, and I expected to see such protections accepted by cabinet. That hasn’t happened…yet.

Instead, cabinet has accepted the option of an Autonomous Crown Entity with a traditional minister-appointed board, with two board members appointed in consultation with the Minister for Māori Development. The only aspects that separate it from a stock-standard ACE is a charter (to which I’ll return) and a section that protects the entity’s editorial independence. As it stands, that section is less prescriptive that either the Television New Zealand Act or the Radio New Zealand Act.

Statement of good intentions
Cabinet has approved what is titled a “proposed basis for charter structure” that is little more than a statement of good intentions. Admittedly, no charter should be so detailed that it limits initiative or the ability to respond to changed circumstances.

However, what is missing from this document is an overarching statement that the organisation as a whole will be predicated on autonomy and independence. Instead there is a clause stating that the organisation itself should “demonstrate editorial independence”.

Also missing — or among the 12 redacted sections of the cabinet paper relating to financial implications — is how the new entity will be protected from the cudgel that governments here and elsewhere have used to bring recalcitrant public broadcasters to heel. That big stick is control of the purse-strings.

It is vital that there be some certainty of funding, both for operational reasons and to demonstrate to the public that the entity doesn’t kowtow to government in order to pay the bills.

We do not know what the core level of public funding will be, the term over which it will be paid, and who will set it. Funding, of course, is ultimately in Parliament’s hands and, as we’re talking taxpayer money, that is as it should be. However, it still needs protecting in some way from a vengeful ruling party – and here I want you to think forward to that Trump figure in our possible future. Multi-year funding, for example, is a pre-requisite.

There is still time to put right the governance shortfalls in the proposal.

The first step should be for the government to accept the need for an additional tier of governance that sits, effectively, above the board. Not to second-guess it, but to ensure that it meets the spirit of the charter under which the entity will operate, to review proposed budgets and Crown appropriations, and to act as a shield against external interference from government, the ministry or elsewhere.

Why Guardians are needed
The entity needs Guardians. RNZ’s board is described as guardians but they are effectively the equivalent of company directors (even if they are absolved from the need to turn a profit). The new entity will need something more akin to the Guardians of Lakes Manapouri, Monowai, and Te Anau that were established by Norman Kirk to protect those waters against detrimental effects from the hydro power scheme.

The Guardians of Public Media should, however, differ from that precedent in several fundamental ways.

First, they should not be appointed by a minister but by Parliament. In fact, the board of the entity should be similarly appointed, as is the case with a number of European public service media.

Second, they should produce an annual report, made not to a minister but to Parliament. It should include a judgement on funding adequacy and a review of the entity’s relationship with the minister, the ministry, and government as a whole.

This annual report should replace the proposed yearly review by at least four government departments, but not annual reports to Parliament by the entity itself.

The cabinet paper proposes a five-yearly review of the charter by Parliament. That can be read as a review by the politicians in power. Therefore any parliamentary review should be preceded by a Guardian review of the charter’s fitness for purpose and it is that review that should go to the House. That way, if a ruling party wants to mess unilaterally with the charter, it will be seen for what it is. In addition, each year the guardians should review performance against charter objectives, separate from any assessment by the entity itself.

They should also act as a bulwark against interference in decisions relating to any content produced or disseminated, and that is not limited to news. A shiver still runs down the spines of old broadcasters at the mention of Robert Muldoon’s undoubted role in the decision in 1980 not to screen the drama Death of a Princess to avoid upsetting the Saudi government.

More protection for news
News and current affairs, however, require more protection and guarantees of autonomy than other forms of programming. That was not apparent in the documents released last week. There must be explicit prohibitions — in legislation and in the charter — on both external and internal interference in news operations. A minister is not the sole potential source of pressure. Officials, board members, commercial staff, and management of the entity must be held at arm’s length.

Legislation should also preclude the chief executive from also holding the position of editor-in-chief. Paul Thompson holds both positions at RNZ and has done so without controversy, but the new entity will be both much larger and will be a hybrid of commercial and non-commercial functions.

I believe all of the entity’s news and current affairs functions and decision-making, including the position of editor-in-chief, must be kept within that department if autonomy and independence are to be seen to be real.

Details missing from last week’s announcement and document release created frustration but there may be a brighter side. If the detail has yet to be worked out, there is still time for Kris Faafoi, his cabinet colleagues, his ministry, and the Establishment Board to get it right.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications – covering both editorial and management roles – that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a blog called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

• Read the full Gavin Ellis article here:

https://knightlyviews.com/2022/03/15/fundamental-flaws-in-public-media-plans-call-for-big-fixes/

The New Zealand government last week unveiled the creation of a new public media entity that will incorporate RNZ and TVNZ. It will pave the way for digital innovation as well as adding new capability and services.

This is a big shift and is a lot to get your head around.

In particular, the public media focus of the new entity is a watershed.

• READ MORE: RNZ and TVNZ to be folded into mega public media entity, says Faafoi
• Merging commercial TVNZ and non-commercial RNZ won’t be easy — and time is running out — Dr Peter Thompson
• Other RNZ and TVNZ merger reports

New Zealand has had various combinations of public and publicly-owned commercial media entities in the past, but this takes the public media remit to a new level.

The new entity is designed to ensure New Zealand has one well-resourced, comprehensive public media entity that can weather the ongoing disruptions caused by the almost unbridled power of the FANGS (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google).

Over recent years the media sector has been in flux, with commercial models under strain and audiences fragmenting and often favouring the products provided by the FANGS. This has contributed to increased misinformation and polarisation.

The government hopes the new entity will be strong and flexible enough to adapt to those challenges in a way a stand-alone RNZ and TVNZ would not be able to achieve.

Four key building blocks
To understand what the government is trying to do it is useful to focus on four key building blocks it is putting in place.

First, the new public media entity will be exactly that — an organisation that is centred on public media services that inform and connect the nation, celebrate our culture and identity and equip people to participate in our democracy.

Commercial activity will play an important role and will be required to support this public media focus.

Second, the entity will operate under a public media charter that will enshrine in law its editorial independence. The Charter will be the north star for the organisation, requiring it aspire to and deliver the best attributes of public media.

The draft charter that is proposed in the Cabinet paper looks promising. This, more than anything else this, will ultimately determine the direction of the new entity, its tone and culture and the services it provides.

Third, the policy places a strong emphasis on the new entity’s obligation to support and recognise the “Māori Crown relationship”. This is another big change. Indeed, the purpose of the new entity will require it to contribute to a “valued, visible, and flourishing te reo Māori me ngā tikanga Māori”.

This is vital as the new entity, from day one, needs to capture what makes Aotearoa New Zealand unique, including Te Tiriti. The new entity’s board will include at least two members with Te Ao Māori and tikanga Māori expertise.

And fourth, the new entity will be required to collaborate with other media and support the overall health of the wider media system. This recognises the critical importance of sustaining a plurality of media sources and perspectives in the years ahead.

Mediawatch: Can RNZ + TVNZ = new PME in 2023? https://t.co/6HDIgnY3L1

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) March 13, 2022

Trusted media underpin democracy
Trusted, independent news and current affairs underpin our democracy. The only way to ensure trust in the media is to ensure people have a range of sources and perspectives to choose from.

The new entity will need to support that diversity in meaningful ways, for example, by training the next generation of reporters, producers, presenters, and programme makers for the benefit of the wider industry.

Public media institutions around the world have been on the back foot recently.

In many countries publicly-owned and funded broadcasters have been reined-in, leaned on and co-opted to serve political ends.

This is happening to a shocking degree in Hong Kong, Turkey, Slovenia,and Hungary, and in southern Africa as authoritarian regimes flexed their muscles.

But even in Australia and the UK it has been tough for the ABC and BBC with attempts to question the pivotal role played by feisty, independent public media in a time of crisis and heightened polarisation.

This all points to the value of strong public media to our democratic processes. Both RNZ and TVNZ carry strong reputations internationally. The rebuilding of our public media mandate will enhance that.

Much is still to be determined, including funding levels, and no doubt there will be intense public debate when the draft legislation is opened for public submissions.

RNZ is up for the challenge and will work hard to contribute our valued services and our public media ethos and expertise to the new entity.

The bottom line will be ensuring all the people of New Zealand benefit.

Paul Thompson is chief executive and editor-in-chief of Radio New Zealand. He is also president of the international Public Media Alliance. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. It was first published on the Stuff website.

The announcement of the government’s decision to merge RNZ and TVNZ into a non-profit “public media entity” was long anticipated but, coming in the second year of Labour’s second term, underwhelming in its lack of detail.

Cabinet had discussed the proposal back in 2019, and yesterday’s announcement was expected to be the culmination of extensive planning, consulting, expert committees and corporate accounting reports.

The protracted process was intended to give shape to the broadcasting minister’s vision of a multi-platform public service provider capable of fulfilling its cultural and civil remit into the 21st century.

• READ MORE: BBC funding: licence fee debate risks overlooking value of UK’s public broadcasters
• Closures, cuts, revival and rebirth: how covid-19 reshaped the NZ media landscape in 2020
• Crisis, disintegration and hope: only urgent intervention can save New Zealand’s media

And while it’s significant that the government recognises the importance of strong public media across all platforms in New Zealand, and is committed to its strategic vision, in many respects the announcement raises more questions than it answers.

Video: NZ Herald

Commercial tension
Firstly, how will the organisational and governance structures across radio, television and online services function? Minister Kris Faafoi has indicated that these details will now be delegated to a new “establishment committee”, although the Strong Public Media governance group had delivered a business case to cabinet last year.

Complications arise because TVNZ is a commercial entity, which competes directly with other commercial media for (slowly declining) audiences and advertising revenues, while RNZ is a fully funded public service provider with a charter.

The minister has affirmed that the current non-commercial radio services will be retained. But aligning the commercial television arm and future online services — for example, the integration of the RNZ and TVNZ news operations — entails potentially contradictory priorities, even under the broad directives of a public charter.

Plans unveiled for #NZ‘s new mega public media –
it will operate under a #charter, with “trustworthy #news” as a core service #AsiaPacificReport #RNZnews #RNZPacific #publicmedia #publicbroadcasting #KrisFaafoi @shrek45 @EveningReportNZ #communitymediahttps://t.co/Wf6sLWKP7p pic.twitter.com/5dpefe2XCc

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) March 10, 2022

Secondly, what funding arrangements will support the new public media entity? The ratio of public to commercial revenues and the mechanisms for ensuring its adequacy across future changes of government are critical, but have not been specified — although some redacted figures in related cabinet papers suggest these have been estimated.

The minister suggests these will be determined through forthcoming budget deliberations. If this implies that the level of funding depends on annual budget wrangling with other cabinet portfolios, then there is little hope of gaining substantial and sustainable commitment over the demands of health, education, housing and other policy priorities.

NZME and Stuff voice unease over merger of TVNZ and RNZ, but TV3 owner says ‘so far, so good’. https://t.co/NV9ji1mMJ0

— Stuff (@NZStuff) March 10, 2022

Budget uncertainty
Faafoi’s predecessor, Clare Curran, ran into this problem in 2018. Having announced an anticipated investment of NZ$38 million to develop RNZ’s services, the budget delivered only $15 million.

Prior to that, Labour’s attempt to restructure TVNZ with a dual-remit charter was compromised by cabinet disagreements. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage allocated $95 million of public funding only for Treasury to extract $142 million in dividends.

Crucially, balancing public service and commercial expectations requires the organisational structure and funding arrangements to be in sync. But this is unlikely to happen if one is determined by a committee and the other is left to the uncertainties of the budget.

There are successful public service operators, such as RTE in Ireland or CBC in Canada, which have mixed commercial and public funding. In both cases, though, the public ratio is more than 50 percent. It would be wishful thinking to suppose cabinet would provide 50 percent public funding to align TVNZ’s services with a public charter remit.

That would cost at least $150 million per year — triple the current allocation to RNZ and TVNZ. When reliance on commercial revenue predominates, commissioning and scheduling decisions inevitably reflect the imperative to optimise eyeballs and advertising dollars.

Time is tight
Even with base-line funding assured for the non-commercial RNZ services, without any mechanism to ensure adequate ratios are maintained, there is a risk that future revenue increases will come to depend increasingly on developing commercial spin-offs online.

This would inevitably affect the new entity’s capacity to use the expansion of its online services to deliver more diverse content to a full range of audiences.

The minister has suggested the new entity will be established by 2023. Given the legislation has yet to be drafted, that time-line is already tight. Any further delays or announcements of bold intentions without concrete substance will risk pushing Labour’s public media plans further toward the 2023 election.

If the new entity has not been established before then, and with Labour slipping in the polls, all bets on the future of public media in Aotearoa New Zealand are off.

Dr Peter Thompson is associate professor of media studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Less than half the New Zealand public now professes “overall trust” in news media outlets, despite big rises in audience numbers during the covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis.

The 2021 Trust in News in New Zealand survey released yesterday found the level of overall trust falling from 53 percent in 2020 to 48 percent in 2021 and trust in the news sources used by respondents themselves falling by 7 points from 62 percent to 55 percent.

The drops in NZ mirrored international research findings in the Reuters Digital News Report 2020, which put trust in media at the lowest level since it began seeking such data in 2016.
But our overall trust figure at 48 percent remains high compared to the international average of 38 percent.

• READ MORE: Trust in News in New Zealand 2021

The local survey of 1200 people, run online nationwide by Horizon Research in March on behalf of AUT’s research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy found all news brands experienced erosion in trust over the 12 months, with Newshub and Newstalk ZB suffering “statistically significant” falls.

Respondents were asked to rate 11 media brands out of 10 for trustworthiness (with 10 being completely trustworthy). Average scores out of 10 were calculated from those who knew of each source.

“In general, trust in the news has declined because the news media is seen as increasingly opinionated, biased, and politicised,” says JMAD co-director Dr Merja Myllylahti.

The survey shows New Zealanders want factual information and not opinion dressed up as news, the researchers say.

While news organisations reported fully on the covid outbreak and were rewarded with big rises in readership, viewership and even user donations, the ebbing away of trust will puzzle some newsrooms.

The JMAD report suggests reasons for mistrust in the media include:

• political bias, especially in talkback radio (“They’re pretty right-wing”)
• politicisation of media
• media pushing certain social/other agenda (including climate change)
• media offering opinions, not factual news and information
• not offering a full picture of events
• selective reporting
• poor standard of journalism, including poor sourcing, factual mistakes, poor grammar and low standard of writing

Readers’ trust in news encountered on social media is particularly low, at 14 percent (down 2) in New Zealand and 22 percent (down 1) internationally, and just 12 percent here would trust social media for good news and information on the pandemic.

Trust in news in New Zealand is clearly below Finland, Portugal and Turkey, but much higher than in countries such as Australia, the US and the UK.

The most trusted sources for news and information on the covid-19 virus and pandemic were RNZ and TVNZ, both state owned.

RNZ riding high in online audience
Not only is RNZ the country’s most trusted news source, it has also surged in the online readership stakes, overtaking TVNZ and now closing in on Newshub for third biggest website audience in the latest, March, Nielsen monthly ratings.

In first place, nzherald.co.nz has pushed back to its near record monthly unique audience at 1.95 million, with Stuff – at 1.77m – now around 300,000 down on its own highs of 2.1m due to removing its content from Facebook. Newshub recorded 890,000, just holding off RNZ at 860,000, with 1News some distance back among the second tier sites, at just 720,000.

The rnz.co.nz audience now is about 60 percent higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic hit a year ago, having spiked like those of many news outlets at the beginning of the outbreak in March and April 2020, but unlike some, holding on to much of its gain.

Stuff is no longer officially part of the Nielsen measurement, so its monthly unique number would be less reliable than others, but the Herald site went past it last year and has not been bested for months on end. When Stuff left Facebook, it was anticipated its total audience would drop as most sites receive major contributions to their readership from referrals from the social media giant.

If the government’s mooted merger of TVNZ and RNZ into a new public broadcaster comes to fruition, the joint public news website could be expected to be a serious challenger (even when the current, separate Nielsen audience numbers are unduplicated) to the Stuff and nzherald.co.nz pairing at the pinnacle of online audiences.

Newsroom is not part of the Nielsen survey.

Discovery discovers cost cutting
It was always going to be on the cards. Four months after taking over MediaWorks’ television arm, Discovery Inc is looking to make cost savings.

The process of talking to staff began last week and will play out over the next couple of months. The company is positioning the cuts as the integration of its Australasian businesses.

Discovery already owned the small free-to-air channels, Choice and HGTV when it bought Three, Bravo, and Edge TV off MediaWorks. Sales and back office functions are obvious areas for rationalisation, although the savings are likely to be minor.

In Australia, free-to-air channel, 9Rush is a joint venture between Discovery Inc and Nine entertainment. Discovery also supplies content to Aussie pay TV networks Foxtel and Fetch.

MediaWorks sold its TV arm because it had been losing millions year after year and dragging the profitable radio operation down. Discovery’s options to cut the loses seem limited unless it gives Three a supply of cheap reality programming, but this risks a ratings drop as TVNZ further ramps up its local production.

Three’s news operation is unlikely to escape the cost-cutters’ attention. Sources say Newshub is part of the cost review but staff are likely to be redeployed rather than axed.

Tim Murphy is co-editor of Newsroom. He writes about politics, Auckland, and media. Twitter: @tmurphynz
Mark Jennings is co-editor of Newsroom. This Newsroom article is republished with permission.

The New Zealand government has appointed eight people to oversee a business case for a new public media entity to replace state-owned Television NZ and RNZ.

The Minister of Broadcasting and Media Kris Faafoi says he plans to present the business case – due to be completed by mid-year – to cabinet for approval by the end of the year.

The business case will consider what a new public media entity would cost to develop, implement and operate –  and how it would “collaborate with and complement the work of private media”.

• READ MORE: Work begins on business case of potential new public media entity
• New details revealed as cabinet agrees on RNZ, TVNZ public broadcasting decision

The business case for Strong Public Media is expected to be completed around the middle of the year – a tight timeframe.

The group will be chaired by former NZ First party deputy leader Tracey Martin.

Board appointees
The other appointees are:

• Broadcasting Standards Authority chair Glen Scanlon – a former head of news at RNZ
• Former MediaWorks chief executive Michael Anderson
• TV producer, former reporter  and member of Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council Bailey Mackey
• Broadcasting and technology consultant William Earl
• Dr Trisha Dunleavy, Victoria University of Wellington media academic
• Producer Sandra Kailahi, former journalist at TVNZ’s Tagata Pasifika, Te Karere and Fair Go
• John Quirk, former chair and director of state-owner transmission company Kordia.

Media Minister Faafoi said the Minister for Māori Development, Willie Jackson, was also “leading work to enhance support for the Māori media sector”.

“The Governance Group will oversee the development of a business case . . . which will  look at how a potential new public media entity could meet the changing expectations of New Zealand audiences and support a strong, vibrant media sector,” Faafoi said in a statement

The minister also said the group would “lead work to gather input on a Charter for the potential new public media entity”.

The process has been heavily criticised by the National Party and its broadcasting spokesperson Melissa Lee.

She has said it has taken too long and effectively stalled progress on important projects at both broadcasters, including the review of RNZ’s Charter – which was due to begin next week – and RNZ’s plans for a new youth service, the subject of major controversy in 2020 when plans to reallocate RNZ Concert’s FM frequency and cut back the network were announced, and then scrapped.

The story so far
It was back in 2019 that Minister Faafoi first raised the prospect of a new state-owned public media entity under the banner Strengthening Public Media.

Thanks to a source spilling the beans to RNZ in January 2020, it was revealed the government had settled on that option to replace state-owned RNZ and TVNZ within three years.

But back then cabinet wanted to know more about precisely how it would work and ministers demanded a business case before giving it a green light.

It was even common knowledge that PwC had been hired for the task under the guidance of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage before the minister confirmed all that the following month.

He also said it would have revenue from both “Crown and non-Crown sources”  –  a mix of public funding then and commercial revenue in other words.

(This was re-stated by the minister today, but he has declined to discuss the balance of public and commercial funding until after the completion of the business case).

Those who called it a “merger” were corrected by the minister and officials.

Not just mashing together
They have insisted all along this was not just mashing together the public service non-commercial RNZ – whose foundation is radio – with a heavily-commercialised TVNZ founded on television broadcasting and advertising.

But how a completely new digital-age media organisation with a new charter could be created by 2023 out of the resources of two organisations with very different budgets, priorities and cultures remains an unanswered question.

When MPs asked about that in the annual reviews of TVNZ and RNZ last year, the answer was “wait for the business case”.

When covid-19 intervened in March 2020, Strengthening Public Media took a back seat to saving the media.

The business case was put on ice in April 2020.

But earlier this month, Minister Faafoi told the Parliamentary committee reviewing TVNZ and RNZ that work was back on,

TVNZ‘s chief executive Kevin Kenrick told the committee TVNZ was merely an “observer” in the process.

“This future public media entity is basically being progressed by officials at the Ministry of Culture and Heritage right now,” he said.

But RNZ chairman Jim Mather echoed the minister’s language on strengthening public media when he declared RNZ’s strong support.

“We believe, as a board and executive team, it is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a stronger public media system the would benefit all New Zealanders,” he told Parliament’s Social Services Committee.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The thin veneer of a seemingly robust New Zealand media was ripped off like a plaster on a scab in front of Parliament’s Epidemic Response Committee today exposing its frailties. 

The heads of all New Zealand’s media companies appeared via Zoom and all spoke of the desperate times ahead. 

Stuff, NZME, Television New Zealand, MediaWorks, RNZ, Newsroom, The Spinoff and Businessdesk as well as iwi representation appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee, which is chaired by opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges. 

READ MORE: Media rescue package needed to save industry ‘on its knees’

What was unusual was that all reported that their audience and readership numbers were “skyrocketing” because people needed factual news, whether it was digital readership, broadcast or television. 

However, advertising revenue was at a nadir and that is what was hurting the media owners. 

Former New Zealand Herald editor and media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis in his opening submission said advertising revenue for media companies was estimated to drop between 50 and 75 percent, and there was concern that it would not return even after the Covid-19 pandemic crisis was over. 

“Magazine publishers are indispensable gurus of our unique culture and our habitat, they’ve got to be urgently granted as an essential business status,” he said. 

Media environment plight
“One media representative described the plight of the media environment as it needed an emergency triage and I think that’s right. 

“The government really needs to adopt a three-stage process to deal with the media systems,” he said. 

“The most immediate need is to help them recover some of that cashflow through diverting already committed government enterprise spend for example suspending regulatory and transmission costs for broadcasters, there is a large number of things that can be done. 

“In terms of magazines, just let them publish, post-lockdown government needs to fast-track media restructuring or buying media to find long term solutions and really fast-tracking, sidestepping the Commerce Commission and the process that exist even for distressed businesses,” he added. 

 He backed the proposed merger of Stuff and NZME to buy them some time. 

“There is a number of ways the government can make these businesses more attractive by changing the tax status,” Dr Ellis said. 

“And finally stage three is the post Covid-19 reconstruction, it needs a total rethink redefining the media ecosystem and replacing outmoded ownership structures with a more sustainable model.” 

More redundancies feared
He added that he feared the redundancies at Bauer and NZME would not be the end of it. 

“The elephant in the room is the social media companies, Google, Facebook, syphoning money off media companies,” he said. 

“The bottom line is there will be contractions.

“I am fearful if the financial standing of the owners of MediaWorks and Stuff decline sufficiently they may be minded to follow Bauer and simply close New Zealand operations,” he sounded a warning. 

In response, the Minister for Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said “the government is developing a short-and-long-term package for support to the media industry to deal with the challenges they identified. 

“I’ll be able to hopefully announce those next week but the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the first tranche of support for struggling media companies would be announced next week. 

At the same time, she defended advertising on social media, saying that’s where New Zealanders were. 

Nervous times

Next up at the Committee hearing was Sinead Boucher, the CEO of Stuff, who admitted the company, with the largest website, faced nervous times. 

She said ongoing government support was necessary – either through New Zealand on Air or through other mechanisms – because advertising revenue has “dropped off a cliff”, more than halving in the weeks since March and looking “particularly dire” for April. 

Like all those who appeared, she said the government should shift its advertising from social media giants like Facebook and Google to New Zealand media companies, and also consider special tax breaks. 

Shayne Currie, managing editor of NZME, again pressed for being allowed to purchase Stuff, something which the Commerce Commission has rejected previously. 

“We believe there is a sustainable model there and at the same time it will allow us to be equally strong,” Currie said. 

“I like the moves that just have been announced in France – and France is the first major country which has moved in this direction – and I think Australia will follow very quickly. 

“Last week, it was announced that France has ordered Google, and targeting Google in the first instance, they now need to start negotiating with media companies to pay them for the content that appears on their search engines. 

Moving ahead
“That is a really significant move and I think the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is certainly making similar recommendations along those lines. 

“They are moving ahead this year and it can’t come soon enough in New Zealand,” he said. 

As Kevin Kenrick, the TVNZ CEO, pointed out: “I will just reinforce every dollar the government spends on Google and Facebook is a dollar that is not spent supporting local media by New Zealand.” 

Michael Anderson, who said several people at Mediaworks had been tested for Covid-19, said the difference between TV3 and TVNZ was that TV3 had debts that they had to pay back. 

Meanwhile, in Australia the announcement of almost A$100 million in federal funding and support for regional newspapers and broadcasting during the coronavirus crisis is welcome but a long-term plan is needed to ensure the sector’s future, says the union for Australia’s media workers. 

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) welcomes the belated support for regional media in the form of a $50 million Public Interest News Gathering programme and tax relief for commercial TV and radio.  

This comes after the closure of more than a dozen publications around the country due to reduced advertising revenue due to the pandemic, the statement read. 

MPs ‘understand what is at stake’
It prompted the Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) president Greg Treadwell to say: “The Australian government has moved to help the news media and I expect the NZ government to do the same.  

“It was clear, I thought, during the media company representations to the pandemic committee today that MPs understood the importance of what was at stake. That was something of a relief, to be honest. 

“Media bosses, too, seemed to understand their long-running struggle for financial security has just changed fundamentally in nature. In the background was some of the regular positioning we’ve seen from the various players over recent years – for example, Mediaworks’ resentment that a state-owned company, TVNZ, eats up much of the commercial advertising dollar.  

“But in the foreground was the urgent need to create enough security to enable the serious job of public communications to be done well. After all, these politicians will need the media with an election looming,” he added. 

He said he thought that the NZME-Stuff merger was probably “on again” because there was “little chance of both thriving now, if there ever was”.

The committee appeared “pretty keen” on the idea that there was “no possibility of a plurality of voices if there was not first economic sustainability in a market model”.

“In other words, actually existing diversity is, in the end, treated as a nice-to-have,” Dr Treadwell said. 

“I think one of the main messages today was that the market shouldn’t be killed off in an attempt to save it.  

“The work done on developing new models like The Spinoff, Newsroom and BusinessDesk, should not be lost in the rescue.”

Appearing before the committee today were: media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis; CEO of Stuff Sinead Boucher; managing editor of NZME Shayne Currie, CEO of TVNZ Kevin Kenrick; CEO of Mediaworks Michael Anderson; RNZ CEO Paul Thompson CEO; co-editor of Newsroom Mark Jennings, managing editor of Spinoff Duncan Grieve; co-founder of BusinessDesk Patrick Smellie; and Peter Lucas-Jones representing iwi broadcasters.