New Zealand cannot sit back and see the collapse of its Fourth Estate, the director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, Sir Peter Gluckman, says in the foreword of a paper published today.

The paper, “If not journalists, then who?” paints a picture of an industry facing existential threats and held back by institutional underpinnings that are beyond the point where they are merely outdated.

It suggests sweeping changes to deal with the wide impacts of digital transformation and alarmingly low levels of trust in news.

• READ MORE: The full Koi Tū media report – Dr Gavin Ellis

The paper’s principal author is Koi Tū honorary research fellow Dr Gavin Ellis, who has written two books on the state of journalism: Trust Ownership and the Future of News and Complacent Nation.

He is a former newspaper editor and media studies lecturer, and also a member of Asia Pacific Media Network. The paper was developed following consultation with media leaders.

“We hope this paper helps open and expand the conversation from a narrow focus on the viability of particular players,” Sir Peter said, “to the needs of a small liberal democracy which must face many challenges in which citizens must have access to trustworthy information so they can form views and contribute appropriately to societal decision making.

“Koi Tū’s core argument, along with that of many scholars of democracy, is that democracy relies on honest information being available to all citizens. It needs to be provided by trustworthy sources and any interests associated with it must be transparently declared.

Decline in trust
“The media itself has contributed much to the decline in trust. This does not mean that there is not a critical role for opinion and advocacy — indeed democracy needs that too. It is essential that ideas are debated.

“But when reliable information is conflated with entertainment and extreme opinion, then citizens suffer and manipulated polarised outcomes are more likely.”

Dr Ellis said both news media and government were held to account in the paper for the state in which journalism in New Zealand now found itself. The mixing of fact and opinion in news stories was identified as a cause of the public’s low level of trust, and online analytics were found to have aberrated news judgement previously driven by journalistic values.

For their part, successive governments have failed to keep pace with changing needs across a very broad spectrum that has been brought about by digital transformation.

Changes suggested in the paper include voluntary merger of the two news regulators (the statutory Broadcasting Standards Authority and the industry-supported Media Council) into an independent body along lines recommended a decade ago by the Law Commission.

The new body would sit within a completely reorganised — and renamed — Broadcasting Commission, which would also be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Classifications Office, NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho.

An administrative umbrella
The reconstituted commission would become the administrative umbrella for the following autonomous units:

• Media accountability (standards and complaints procedures)
• Funding allocation (direct and contestable, including creative production)
• Promotion and funding of Māori culture and language.
• Content classification (ratings and classification of film, books, video gaming)
• Review of media-related legislation and regulation, and monitoring of common law development, and
• Research and advocacy (related civic, cultural, creative issues).

The paper also favours dropping the Digital News Fair Bargaining Bill (under which media organisations would negotiate with transnational platforms) and, instead, amending the Digital Services Tax Bill, now before the House, under which the proposed levy on digital platforms would be increased to provide a ring-fenced fund to compensate media for direct and indirect use of their content.

It also suggests changes to tax structures to help sustain marginally profitable and non-profit media outlets committed to public interest journalism.

Seventeen separate Acts of Parliament affecting media are identified in the paper as outdated — “and the list is nor exhaustive”. The paper recommends a comprehensive and closely coordinated review.

The Broadcasting Act is currently under review, but the paper suggests it should not be re-evaluated in isolation from other necessary legislative reforms.

The paper advises individual media organisations to review their editorial practices in light of current trust surveys and rising news avoidance. It says these reviews should include news values, story selection and presentation.

They should also improve their journalistic transparency and relevance to audiences.

Collectively, media should adopt a common code of ethics and practice and develop campaigns to explain the role and significance of democratic/social professional journalism to the public.

Statement of principles
A statement of journalistic principles is included in the paper:

“Support for democracy sits within the DNA of New Zealand media, which have shared goals of reporting news, current affairs, and information across the broad spectrum of interests in which the people of this country collectively have a stake.

“Trained news media professionals, working within recognised standards and ethics, are the only group capable of carrying out the functions and responsibilities that have been carved out for them by a heritage stretching back 300 years.

“They must be capable of holding the powerful to account, articulating many different voices in the community, providing meeting grounds for debate, and reflecting New Zealanders to themselves in ways that contribute to social cohesion.

“They have a duty to freedom of expression, independence from influence, fairness and balance, and the pursuit of truth.”

Republished from Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures.

The brave little shrubs are doing their valiant best to stay intact as a plant pot skids across our balcony in Cyclone Gabrielle’s first caress. With much worse yet to come I need to know what, where, and when.

I need information and, if I have to cut my way through a jungle of official sources, I will still be in the rain forest when Gabby takes me in her crushing embrace.

This, I tell myself, is precisely why we need news media. They draw together an overwhelming range of sources and condense information into a readily absorbed format.

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Then they keep updating and adding to the picture.

As I write this commentary on Monday, that picture is already changing. An hour ago, the rain was a fine drizzle and there was little wind. Now the rain is heavier, and the wind is coming in strong gusts. In another couple of hours I expect the freight train that Northland residents heard as Gabrielle passed through, and the driveway will be a cascade.

Then the triangle of soil (that has already subsided by about 30 centimetres) may slide from the edge of the adjacent bush reserve into the stream below.

From my study window I see only a small picture, but I need a wider view. I need to know how my brothers and their families are faring in Northland and on the Awhitu Peninsula, what our friends in various parts of Auckland and the North Island will be experiencing. And I have a general concern for the well-being of the city I call home.

Good overall picture
I have been well-served by news media — websites, television, and radio — keeping me updated on the impact of the cyclone. I have a good overall picture of its effects so far and how it is tracking.

And I have details. I know which schools are closed. I know power outages are affecting 58,000 households and where this has closed supermarkets and stores. I know that, if possible, the mail will get through, but that Auckland Airport has cancelled most flights and Ports of Auckland is at a standstill.

While I waited for nature to do its worst (no, I shouldn’t say that because I’m sure Gabrielle isn’t the worst sociopath that climate change will spawn), I embarked on an exercise. I wanted to demonstrate the lengths to which members of the public would have to go to stay informed if they did not have the news media reporting on what may be the worst storm in Aucklanders’ living memory.

I assumed, for the purpose of the exercise I began at 10.30 a.m. on Monday, that the average person did not know a lot about the structures and operations of emergency management.

The Auckland version of civil defence has a name that is hard to remember so I started with the Auckland City website. The first thing I noticed was information on how to pay my rates and book an inorganic rubbish collection. Then I spied a banner right at the top headed “State of local emergency”. There was a link to Auckland Emergency Management (that hard to remember name).

The AEM homepage contained 77 links to other websites and sources of information on everything from the location of evacuation centres to Mayor Wayne Brown’s carefully documented declaration of a state of local emergency (vital information when you are trapped in your house under the crushing presence of a downed macrocarpa).

I clicked on the “latest media update” but the link didn’t seem to work. I was invited to click on “Our Auckland” for the previous update. Um, no, all I found was broad general information and direction back to the homepage.

In search of weather
On my return I went in search of the weather and clicked on a link to the Metservice website. There was a fresh update on the red and orange alerts that had been well-canvassed elsewhere, accompanied by a map that was 24 hours old (it was updated shortly thereafter).

Back to the homepage.

Next, I wanted an update on road travel. I clicked first on the Auckland Transport link and then on road closure warnings. Another click and I was looking at eight area designations and found my residence (on the central Auckland isthmus) under “south urban”. Another click I was confronted by an alphabetical list of street names with no indication of the suburb, but it didn’t matter because these were simply streets with warnings of potential closure. The roads that were closed were on a separate list (another click) that did include suburbs.

But what about the highways and byways outside Auckland? That required separate excursions, first to the Waka Kotahi website then to local authority websites such as the Thames Coromandel District Council’s excellent site which also contained warnings of potential coastal inundations from storm surges.

Back to the AEM homepage and another journey to find out about power outages. There were links to the Vector and Counties Energy websites. To check whether my brother in Northland was still without power, I had to leave the AEM site because he is outside its emergency jurisdiction.

The Northpower outages map was easy to use and took me straight to his location (power restored) while the Vector map for central Auckland seems designed to push anxious customers over the edge.

My other brother’s part of the Awhitu Peninsula has communications links that I might charitably describe as tenuous, so I wanted to check whether he still had cellular coverage. I decided to check the three main providers. Spark’s outages information was top of the home page and informative while 2 Degrees was equally useful even though it required scrolling to the bottom of the homepage.

Sales pitches
Vodafone seemed too intent on selling things to me and I gave up on its website, opting instead for a Google search.

What of Gabrielle’s effect on the rest of the country?

Civil Defence now has the much easier to remember title of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). By and large its Cyclone Gabrielle page points me back to the places I had already been, although it offered the alternative of Facebook pages. East Cape seemed to be in for a pounding, so I clicked on the Tairāwhiti Civil Defence Facebook page. Most of its content was in the form of timely warnings rather than updates. Like all Facebook pages, the order of posts reflected the latest addition, not necessarily relative importance. And there were links and more links to other sites.

I returned to the NEMA homepage and completed my exhausting journey with a click back to the Auckland Emergency Management website, satisfied that I had proven my point, at least to myself. A level of digital competence and almost endless patience is required to access the information we seek in emergencies.

All I can say is thank God for news media. They carry out a vital task in emergencies like Cyclone Gabrielle. They bring together a mass of information which can be readily — and quickly — accessed by the public. To that they add their vital role in holding power to account, as they demonstrated during the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and will doubtless do again after this cyclone has passed. You will not find that on an official website.

Crucially, news media are available in forms that do not require digital competence or digital access. Newspapers, television, and radio are readily available and each has its own strengths — print provides in-depth information and advice, television brings home the reality of the storm, and radio has immediacy.

If Gabrielle is as nasty as the scene outside my window is beginning to suggest, we could lose power and mobile coverage. Then all those official websites will count for nothing, but my transistor radio — complete with a new set of batteries — will continue to bring me the news and help me to stay safe.

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 the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

A new study suggests that the news media’s tanking levels of public trust may be made worse merely by association with social media.

The study, released this month by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, has exposed gaps between trust in news via conventional delivery and the same thing consumed via social media.

It doesn’t matter whether people use social media or not: Levels of trust is lower if they simply associate news with the platforms.

• READ MORE: The trust gap: how and why news on digital platforms is viewed more sceptically versus news in general

The gap varies between platforms and between countries but the overall finding is that levels of trust in news on social media, search engines, and messaging apps is consistently lower than audience trust in information in the news media more generally.

And our media is becoming more and more associated with social media.

Many of the country’s main news outlets have done deals with Google to appear on its Google News platform. Click on the app and you’ll see stories from Stuff, Newshub, New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB, Radio New Zealand, Television New Zealand, Newsroom, and the Otago Daily Times.

NZME has brokered a deal with Facebook for the use of content, and other publishers are using the Commerce Commission in the hope of leveling the negotiating playing field.

Split between north and south
The Reuters study (part of the institute’s on-going research into trust in the media) was a split between north and south. The four countries surveyed were the United Kingdom, the United States, India, and Brazil. Two thousand people were surveyed in each country and covered seven platforms: Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube.

New Zealand use of social media more closely follows that of the United States and the United Kingdom than India and Brazil so the data relating to those two nations are quoted here. The full results can be found here.

Google showed the smallest gap between platform and general trust in news. It was only one percentage point behind in Britain where 53 percent express general trust in news. In the US, where the general trust level sits at 49 percent, Google was actually four percentage points ahead.

The same could not be said for other platforms.

To ease the calculation, we’ll say roughly 50 percent of respondents in both countries express trust in news in general. Contrast that with news on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which score in the mid to high twenties.

TikTok news is trusted by only 20 percent on those surveyed, the same number as WhatsApp rates in the United States (the UK is higher on 29 percent).

Only YouTube emerged from the twenties, with its news content being rated by 33 percent in Britain and 40 percent in the United States.

Complex reasons
The reasons for these gaps in perception of news on social media are complex. This is due in part to the fact that social media serves many different purposes for many different users.

News is only a small part of the interchange that occurs. The study shows that no more than a third use Google or Facebook for daily access to news, with other platforms below 20 percent, and on TikTok only 11 percent.

Large portions of the public, in fact, do not use social media platforms at all (although this does not stop them having opinions about them in the survey). Usage varies between Britain and America but a quarter to a third never use Facebook, Google or YouTube and half to three quarters do not use the remaining platforms.

Previous Reuters research has shown levels of trust in news are higher in those who access it on a regular basis. Distrust is highest among those who have least contact with news and with social platforms. This is confirmed by the latest survey.

News organisations may take some comfort from the findings that young people are more trusting of news on social platforms than older people. The gap is huge in some cases.

An average 14 percent of Americans and Britons over 55 trust news on Facebook. That rises to 40 percent among those under 35. The gap for Google is similar and even greater on other platforms.

News aside, however, people have generally positive views of platforms. More than two-thirds give Google a tick and almost as many give the thumbs-up to YouTube. Both are seen as the best platforms on which learn new things.

Facebook doesn’t fare so well
Facebook does not fare quite so well but at 40-45 percent positive rating, while fewer than a third feel positively about Twitter and TikTok.

In spite of these warm fuzzies, however, the surveys reveal “big problems”, particularly with Facebook.

Almost two-thirds of respondents blame Facebook for propagating false or misleading information and it is also seen as the worst culprit in on-platform harassment, irresponsible use of personal data, prioritising political views, and censoring content.

Although opinions expressed by non-users has complicated the Reuters study, both users and no-users express similar views when it comes to these problems. For example, the proportion of Facebook users that say false or misleading information is a problem on the platform (63 percent) is virtually the same as those who say it is in the overall sample.

The study, which includes an even wider range of variables than are included here, attempts to correlate platform usage and ideas about journalism. After all, it is on such platforms — and from the mouths of some politicians — that users encounter discussions about journalism and criticism of journalists.

The survey asked specific questions about journalists. Half the respondents thought journalists try to manipulate the public to serve the agendas of powerful politicians and care more about getting attention than reporting the facts.

Forty percent thought journalists were careless in what they reported, and a slightly higher proportion thought they were only in it for the money.

Criticism of journalism
The researchers then attempted to identify where and how criticism of journalism is encountered. Twitter users are most likely to encounter it. In the United States almost half said they often see criticism of media there and the UK is not far behind.

More than 40 percent of Facebook and Google users in America encounter it and a third of British users of those two platforms say they see it there. Other (newer) platforms have even higher incidences.

So that is where the criticism of journalists is propagated, but who is doing the criticising? Almost half those surveyed in the United States pointed the finger at politicians and political parties, although a similar number also say the hear it from “ordinary people”.

The figures are slightly lower in the UK but around a third identify political or government sources.

The survey also asked whether other public figures were responsible for criticism of journalists. Celebrities and activists figure in around a third of responses but so, too, do journalists themselves.

The surveys also give some pointers about the relative importance of “clicks” or how much attention our newsrooms should give to real-time analytics. The answer is  . . . some.

Respondents were asked to pick the factors that were important in deciding whether they could trust information on online platforms. In both countries fewer than 40 percent said the number of likes or shares were important or very important.

Media source familiarity
Around half paid attention to comments on items but far more important was whether they had heard of the media source. Two thirds were influenced by the tone or language used in headlines and almost 60 percent were influenced by accompanying images.

That finding correlates with another in which respondents were asked who should be responsible for helping to differentiate between trustworthy and untrustworthy content on the internet.

More than two-thirds put that responsibility on media organisations, higher than on tech companies, and significantly higher than on government (although Britons were more inclined toward regulation than their American cousins).

However, if the research proved one thing, it was that the media/social media environment is deeply nuanced and manifests the complexities of human behaviour. The conclusions drawn by the researchers say as much. They leave a couple of important take-aways.

“As a trade-off for expanding reach and scale, newsrooms have often ceded considerable control to these outside companies in terms of how their content is distributed and how often and in what form their work appears on these services.

“Such relationships have been further strained as publishers become increasingly dependent on platforms to reach segments of the public least interested in consuming news through legacy modes, even as platforms themselves have pivoted to serving up other kinds of experiences farther removed from news, recognising that many of their most active users have less interest in such content, especially where politically contentious issues are involved.”

They say the gap they have identified is likely a reflection of this mismatch in audience perceptions about what platforms are for, the kinds of information they get when using the services, and how people think more generally about news media.

“It is possible that the main challenge for news organisations when it comes to building and sustaining audience trust is less about the specific problem of how their journalism is perceived when audiences encounter it online, and more about the broader problem of being seen at all.”

My conclusion
Years ago, we heard the term “News You Can Use” as a response to the challenge of declining newspaper circulation. That was a catchy way of saying “We must be relevant”. The Reuters study is further proof that journalism’s real challenge lies in producing content that ordinary people need to live their daily lives. If that means collating and publishing daily lists of what every supermarket chain is charging for milk, bread, cabbages and potatoes then so be it.

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.

New Zealand’s Ombudsman, Peter Boshier, has given government agency media teams a well-deserved kick up the fundamental over some of their dealings with journalists.

Last week he released his report Ready or not? Thematic OIA compliance and practice in 2022. It is highly critical of the way the teams handle some media requests for information. Incredibly, many did not see such requests as falling under the Official Information Act.

The 66-page report revisits 12 government agencies that were investigated by his predecessor in 2015 and it picks out media teams for particular scrutiny.

• READ MORE: Other Gavin Ellis commentaries

“Most of the agencies I investigated have a Media Team responsible for handling information requests from the news media. These Media Teams operate separately from centralised OIA Teams, which typically process information requests from the public.

“While separating requests in this way is not unreasonable in itself, I am concerned that some of the practices associated with this method of request handling has helped to create a false perception that media requests are not OIA requests and, as a result, that agencies do not need to adhere to OIA obligations when handling them.”

The Ombudsman’s report states unequivocally that media information requests are OIA requests, with the core legislative obligations that those confer.

Some excellent service
As one might expect, there were examples of excellent service provided by media teams. He singled out the Ministry of Health Manatū Hauora and the Public Service Commission Te Kawa Mataaho.

The former was praised for its information handling during the pandemic, while the latter’s performance should be a given — it is the lead agency on implementation of the government’s commitments under the international Open Government Partnership.

However, he didn’t mince words over some of the actions of media teams: “In most of the agencies I investigated, I saw evidence of breaches of the law.”

Given some of Peter Boshier’s other findings, that conclusion should not come as a surprise.

“I was deeply concerned to find that the responses from some agencies to my investigation suggested they did not consider that media information requests fall under the OIA. As a result, it had become embedded in the culture and practice of staff in some Media Teams to refuse information without providing a valid reason under the OIA.

“Those staff considered that the OIA did not apply to their actions and decisions on information requests from the media—in stark contrast to their counterparts in OIA Teams operating in the same agency.”

When he gave the agencies a preliminary assessment of this aspect of their operations, one replied that “placing the constraints of the OIA over the work of the ministry’s media team will add a layer of formality over those relationships and despite the best endeavours of staff, will add to the time required to respond.”

Another said it would affect relationships with the media.

Misperceptions a problem
The Ombudsman disagrees with that assessment. And he went further, saying the perception that the OIA did not apply to media information requests was “simply incorrect”. He saw the misperception as the cause of media teams operating contrary to the law.

He called on the leaders of errant agencies to take immediate responsibility for a cultural shift within media teams and ensure policy, practice, and process changes were made to ensure compliance with the law.

The most common breaches have been failure to give reasons for refusing to give information, and failure to acknowledge a right of appeal to the Ombudsman.

He found distinct types of breaches of the requirement to give reasons for refusal:

• The agency acknowledged that information was being refused, but the reason given for refusal was not a valid one under the OIA, e.g. “That information is not centrally located’ and “We’re unable to provide that information within the given timeframe”.
• No information was given and it was not acknowledged there had been a refusal.
• The agency responded with general information but did not actually answer the question, and it was not acknowledged there had been a refusal.

The investigation revealed a curious relationship between media teams and an agency’s OIA team.

Media teams used a “triaging system” to determine when it was more appropriate for the OIA Team to handle the request. The 12 agencies’ media teams “triaged” requests in a broadly similar manner. Where the request could be answered by the media team within the requester’s specified timeframe — typically a matter of hours or days, to accommodate media deadlines — it would be answered by the media team.

Lack of clarity
If the request could not be answered within the timeframe specified by the requester because it was complex, voluminous, or if it was anticipated that withholding grounds may apply, the media team typically advised the requester that their request would need to be handled by the agency’s OIA team.

Some media teams would tell the requester that their request “would need to be an OIA” without making it clear whether they had forwarded the request on, or whether the requester would need to resubmit their request.

“This language and the practice of separating requests in this way is problematic,” the Ombudsman said, “because it helps propagate the misapprehension that quick turnaround ‘media requests’ are distinct from other information requests. It also implies that the OIA does not apply to them, while ‘formal’ OIA requests ‘must’ go through a regimented, multi-stage process which invariably takes the maximum statutory time limit (20 working days).”

The report is couched in measured terms but I cannot help but feel this two-tiered system is a weapon used against the media. Twenty working days is as good as a refusal in the fast moving world of digital daily news. Peter Boshier acknowledges as much in his report.

“Where requested information cannot be provided in a matter of days, but the journalist finds it untenable to wait up to 20 working days, there is rarely a middle ground; the request is sometimes abandoned by the requester­. It is here that Media Teams’ commitment to responding in only hours or days may be a double-edged sword: when Media Teams cannot reply within the media’s specified timeframe, the request may not get answered at all.

Few agencies I investigated have effective mechanisms in place for providing information ‘without undue delay’, or under urgency if it falls outside the media’s requested timeframe. This ‘now or never’ approach to media information requests reinforces the false perception that the OIA requires a separate process for handling ‘formal’ information requests, and it creates a potential gap in the provision of information which is of great concern to me and does not serve the public interest.”

And he concedes that the two-tiered system fuels perceptions that the Official Information. Act is used as a shield by delaying or frustrating requests for information. However, he denies that the Act itself is at fault. It does not prescribe the processes to be followed, “and an agency’s OIA process can be as agile, flexible and swift as the agency is prepared to make it.”

Loopholes to be exploited
He is absolutely right. What he does not acknowledge, however, is the fact that the sometimes loosely-defined and voluminous reasons for refusing information that are contained in the legislation send a signal to agencies and their employees that there are loopholes to be exploited.

And even outside the OIA there are pressures that work against its spirit. For example, the Ombudsman notes that agencies employ a blanket approach to responses sent to ministers ‘for your information’ under the No Surprises Principle. Even when no input is required from the minister, the material is usually sent three to five days before it is due to be sent to the requester.

The Ombudsman puts it rather delicately — “[It] may lead to the perception that input from the Minister is being sought by the agency that might alter the decision planned for release” — but I read that as saying nothing contentious is released without political approval.

Throughout the report there are sensible and workable solutions to the problem that the Ombudsman has uncovered. Training, policy guidelines and culture change led from the top are all ways in which the spirit of the OIA can be met.

And media teams can start obeying the law.

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.

COMMENTARY: By Gavin Ellis of Knightly Views

Nothing justifies the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the wounding of her colleague Ali al-Samoudi during an Israeli raid on Jenin in the Occupied West Bank. Nothing.

I believe the renowned reporter died at the hands of Israeli armed forces and that she was deliberately targeted because she was a journalist, easily identified by the word PRESS on the flak jacket and helmet that did not protect her from the shot that killed her. Her wounded colleague was identically dressed.

I am left in no doubt about the culpability of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on a number of grounds.

• READ MORE: Behind the tears for Shireen, more evidence of Israel’s daily crimes with impunity
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Several eyewitnesses, including an Agence France-Presse photographer and another Al Jazeera staffer, were adamant that there was no shooting from Palestinians near the scene of the killing. Shatha Hanaysha, the Al Jazeera journalist who had been standing next to Abu Akleh against a high wall when firing broke out, stated they were deliberately targeted by Israeli troops.

Israeli spokesmen who initially laid the blame on Palestinian militants became more equivocal in the face of the eyewitness accounts, although they would go no further than saying she could have been accidentally shot from an armoured vehicle by an Israeli soldier.

That is about as close to an admission of guilt as the IDF is likely to get.

However, perhaps the strongest evidence of IDF culpability is the fact that the killing of Abu Akleh is part of a pattern of targeting journalists. Reporters Without Borders — which has called for an independent international investigation of the death that it says is a violation of international conventions that protect journalists — says two Palestinian journalists were killed by Israeli snipers in 2018 and since then more than 140 journalists have been the victims of violations by the Israeli security forces.

30 journalists killed since 2000
By its tally, at least 30 journalists have been killed since 2000.

Of course, those deaths are but one consequence of the IDF’s disproportionate response — in terms of the number of victims — to actions by Palestinian militants over the occupation of the West Bank. Since the present Israeli government took office last year, 76 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli forces.

There has been condemnation of such deaths, particularly when they include a number of children. So the reaction to the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh was sadly predictable. In other circumstances the outcry would dissipate and Israeli forces would continue to carry out their government’s wishes.

However, three things may make the condemnation louder, longer and more effective.

First was the fact that, although she was born in Jerusalem, she was a United States citizen. This could well explain the US Administration’s statement condemning the killing and its willingness to back a similarly reproachful UN Security Council resolution.

The second factor was that, although a Palestinian, Abu Akleh was not a Muslim. She was raised in a Christian Catholic family. It may not be a particularly becoming trait but the ability of the West to identify with a victim affects the way in which it reacts.

However, it is the third factor that may have the most telling effect on the long-term consequences of her death. I am referring to the desecration of her funeral by baton-wielding armed Israeli police.

Pallbearers assaulted by police
The journalist’s coffin was carried in procession from an East Jerusalem hospital to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in the Christian Quarter of the Old City where a service was held before burial in a cemetery on the Mount of Olives. However, shortly after the pallbearers left the hospital the procession — waving Palestinian flags and chanting — was assaulted by police.

Mourners were hit with batons, stun grenades were detonated, and a phalanx of armed police in riot gear advanced on the coffin. The procession scattered in disarray and, as the pallbearers tried to avoid the police action, the coffin tilted almost vertical and was in danger of falling to the road.

At that point, an Al Jazeera journalist providing commentary on live coverage of the funeral said an an anguished voice: “Oh my God. Such disrespect for the dead, for those mourning the dead. How is that a security threat? How is that disorderly? Why does it require this kind of reaction, this level of violence on the part of the Israelis?”

The horrifying scene was captured by international media and shown around the world

“The Israeli army is asking people if they are Christian or Muslim. If you’re Muslim you weren’t allowed in.” – @ajimran

Israeli occupation forces are attacking Palestinians during the funeral of killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. pic.twitter.com/Xq3VkeOCqn

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 13, 2022

Why did the police act as they did? Apparently because it is illegal to display the Palestinian flag and chant Palestinian slogans. Even after Abu Akleh’s coffin was transferred to a vehicle, police ran alongside to tear Palestinian flag from the windows.

The message was clear: There was no contrition on the part of Israeli authorities for the death of the Al Jazeera journalist. The justification for the police action was pathetic. There were lame excuses that stones had been thrown at them. In other words, it was business as usual.

That may not be the way the world sees it. Nor, indeed, the way it may be seen by many ordinary Israelis who would have been affronted by the indignity shown to the remains of a widely respected woman who died doing her job.

‘Time for some accountability?’
Yaakov Katz, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli newspaper, said on Twitter: “What’s happening at Abu Akleh’s funeral is terrible. This is a failure on all fronts.” In a later message he asked: “Is it not time for some accountability?”

The targeting of journalists aims to intimidate and to prevent them from bearing witness, particularly where authorities have something to hide. That is why, for example, we have seen seven journalists killed in Ukraine, 12 of their colleagues injured by gunfire, and multiple reports of clearly identified journalists coming under fire from Russian forces.

One might have thought the international community — and in particular Israel’s close friend the United States — would have put significant pressure on Tel Aviv to cease such intimidation a year ago after Israeli aircraft bombed the Gaza City building that was home to various media organisations including Al Jazeera and the US wire service Associated Press.

Israel claimed, without any evidence and contrary to AP’s own knowledge, that the building was being used by Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist organisation.

Associated Press chief executive Gary Pruitt said after that attack that “the world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today”. Aidan White, founder of the Ethical Journalism Network described the bombing as a “catastrophic attempt to shut down media, to silence criticism, and worst of all, to create a cloak of secrecy”.

That, no doubt, was what Tel Aviv intended.

Yet there were no recriminations sufficient to change the course Tel Aviv was on. As the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh so tragically illustrates, Israel has continued its policy of intimidation and violence against journalists.

Sooner or later, it will come to realise that such actions diminish a government in the eyes of the world. The death of Abu Akleh and the indignity shown to her remains have added significantly to the damage to its reputation.

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.

Atrocities and total war are not pixilated or sanitised. They bring death with unimaginable brutality and obliterate lives with indifference. It is time to stop protecting the New Zealand public from these grim realities of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Our news media post warnings about disturbing images and then obscure them out of a long-held regard for the sensibilities of readers and viewers over portrayal of death. We see shapeless body bags while those lying in the street are given a dignified digital shroud.

Yes, we read and hear descriptions of what the innocent citizens of Ukraine have had to endure at the hands of Russian invaders. However, we are shielded from most graphic detail of what is being done in a mission to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” a democratic nation that posed no defence threat to its neighbour.

• READ MORE: Other Ukraine war reports
• More Gavin Ellis articles

How often do we see and hear the phrase “Warning: The following item includes disturbing images including dead bodies” when, in fact, we are left to imagine what the body looks like under its obscuring mantle?

I was moved to think about New Zealand media depiction of the victims of war crimes in Ukraine by an essay that appeared in The New York Times last Saturday. Written by long-time photojournalist David Hume Kennerly, it was headed “Photographing Hell”.

Kennerly was a combat photographer in Vietnam and was responsible for the iconic image of a vat of cyanide-laced Flavor Aid surrounded by corpses in the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana. He is no stranger to war and death and was reminded of Jonestown when he saw images of the bodies of civilians lying in the street when Bucha, on the northern outskirts of Kyiv, was retaken by Ukrainian forces.

Those images were denounced by the Kremlin as “fakes” and “provocations”, to which Kennerly responded: “The images of these atrocities were taken by trusted photojournalists. They are the truth, and a record of the mendacity and brutality of the Russian military. As accusations of war crimes mount, these photos are the documentation the world needs to finally understand what is really happening in Ukraine.”

‘Direct line to people’
He went on to describe photographs as “a direct line to people, over the heads of officials, pundits and disinformation” and said some photographs will always have the power to make us confront horror.

One of the images accompanying his essay had that effect on me. It was a photograph of a body bag. It had been unzipped far enough to reveal the side of a face staring resolutely ahead. In death, the man was telling us he was an eye-witness to the atrocity that had taken his life.

The photograph had been taken by Carol Guzy, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who covered the conflicts in Kosova and ISIS-held Mosul. Her photographs taken following the liberation of Bucha are confronting and include bodies being exhumed from mass graves, charred corpses, and open caskets. Yet somehow it is the unseeing eye peering from a body bag that is truly iconic.

Kennerly’s essay recalls similarly iconic images from his time in Vietnam, such as Eddie Adams’ picture of a Vietcong suspect being executed in a Saigon street and Nick Ut’s image of a young girl running naked down a road after being burnt by napalm. They helped to change public attitudes to that war.

He could have added Ronald Haeberle’s photograph of a pile of bodies, victims of the My Lai massacre by American soldiers, that appeared on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and forced the U.S. military to confront its own crimes. And Malcolm Browne’s photograph of a Buddhist monk in the act of self-immolation in Saigon shook the United States and elsewhere. And Larry Burrows’ Life magazine cover story showing a helicopter gunner with a dying pilot at his feet.

Or he could have gone back further. Start with Goya’s depictions of the Peninsular War between 1810 and 1820, then move to Robert Capa’s moment-of-death image of a falling soldier in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and Margaret Bourke-White’s graphic portrayal of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp that appeared in Life magazine in May 1945. Our understanding of those events is rooted in what we were shown more than what we were told. As Kennerly observes in the essay: “Evocative images can affect policy, spur action, and every now and then alter the course of history”.

indelibly on the public record
Now we have Ukraine and Kennerly says many of the photographs from that war deserve to live as indelibly on the public record as the photos of Vietnam (and elsewhere).

But will they achieve that status if news media sanitise and, yes, censor them?

Kennerly ends by saying he’s getting tired of endless disclaimers (there is one at the top of his New York Timescontribution) that warn of “Graphic Material”.

“The best photographs of war might make us want to look away. It’s imperative that we do not.”

I agree, but I concede there is a strong tradition in this country (and in many other places) of shielding audiences from the visual depiction of death. I cannot recall, for example, seeing an unobscured image of the face of a dead person in our media, unless from a safe distance.

I certainly don’t recall publishing one during my editorship of The New Zealand Herald although I certainly saw many confronting images. News agencies observed the practice of sending the image and expecting editors to decide whether or not to publish it.

Jessica Fishman, in a very good US study of how the media censor and display the dead entitled Death Makes the News,notes that news organisations make a distinction between writing about death and portraying it visually. Much of her book is devoted to explaining why images are not published, including the dangers of “death pornography”.

Exceptions made by media
However, she identifies exceptions that media make. More often than not those exceptions are made for bodies somewhere else. Too often they are images of people “who don’t look like us”. Those are poor reasons for publication.

There are some good reasons for being extremely circumspect about publishing images from within your own country when there is a strong likelihood they will be seen by grieving relatives and friends. This is the principal reason New Zealand media do not publish pictures of bodies in fatal road crashes. It was one of the compelling judgements made by New Zealand media following the Christchurch mosque massacre when coverage concentrated on survivors.

Inevitably, however, there will be exceptions to this domestic reticence. For example, in 1972 the Daily Mirror in Britain ran a front page picture of a priest administering last rights to a protester, one of 13 killed by British troops in the Bloody Sunday incident. It is a picture I, too, would have published because it bore witness to demonstrably disproportionate use of state force.

Similarly, I would have published a photograph carried on the front page of The New York Times in 2013. It wasn’t local. It documented a war crime.

The image was of a row of bodies, four of them children, in white shrouds with only their faces visible. They were the victims of a Syrian chemical attack in Damascus.

The paper’s public editor Margaret Sullivan, in a column explaining the decision to publish, invoked the images from Vietnam that Kennerly is now resurrecting. She said they brought home the horror in a way that words never could, and the image from Syria was similarly “capable of changing the narrative, possibly affecting the course of history”. Tragically, that picture has not.

Now we have Ukraine and the strong likelihood that images captured by photojournalists in the war zone will contribute to mounting evidence of war crimes. There are precedents: Photographs taken by Ron Haviv in Bosnia played a material part in the conviction of Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić and a local warlord by the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague.

Images add to outrage
New Zealand publication and broadcast of explicit images of war crimes against Ukraine will not tip the balance of history or convict war criminals. However, as elsewhere, a New Zealand audience’s exposure to them will add to the weight of international public opinion against the perpetrators. Images will add to outrage.

Equally, or perhaps of even greater importance, verified explicit images of war crimes and victims may help to counter Russian propaganda still being freely disseminated in this country through the Daily Telegraph New Zealand website (no connection to the publications of the same name in London and Sydney). It carries, unquestioningly, both RT and Sputnik “news” services.

This is not to say that New Zealand media should declare open season on publishing pictures of the dead. Far from it. We are the better for not being exposed to recurring death pornography.

There are also limits to what the public can be expected the bear. In 1991, for example, Associated Press pulled from the wire an image of the charred corpse of an Iraqi soldier who had failed to escape from a burning truck on the Gulf War’s Highway of Death. One picture editor called it “the stuff of nightmares”. London’s Observer was one of only a handful of papers that ran it — and repeated publication in a book on the war. I vividly recall the image. Would I have inflicted it on a New Zealand audience? No.

Decisions on whether to publish defining images that capture far more than a moment are hard when the central focus is a corpse. It requires not only a determination of newsworthiness but also a self-examination of motives. Publication must serve a higher purpose than merely shocking an audience.

Sadly, pictures that serve that higher purpose will continue to emerge from Ukraine. I hope editors in this country publish them. They were paid for with the lives of innocents.

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.

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/

It is common practice for journalists to share contact details and locations in hostile environments such as war zones. Something is very wrong when news organisations in New Zealand share those details about their staff covering a story in downtown Wellington.

Stuff’s head of news Mark Stevens disclosed last Friday that “competing media have shared contacts of journalists in the field to provide a safety network if things get dangerous”.

It followed incidents during the “Convoy 2022” protest in the grounds of Parliament when journalists were abused, spat on, and assaulted. A Stuff reporter was pushed and shoved and a protester abused a Newshub news crew member and threatened to destroy his video camera.

• READ MORE: Police to act against NZ protester vehicles but admit tow truck operators unwilling to help
• Other NZ covid outbreak media reports

Protesters told reporters to “watch your backs on the street tonight” and that they would be “executed” for their reporting. Placards read “Media is the Virus”, “Fake News”, and accused journalists of treason.

One placard parodied a covid-19 health message: “UNITE AGAINST MEDIA 22”.

Anti-media sentiment is nothing new. The 2020 Acumen-Edelman Trust Barometer showed New Zealanders scored media poorly — and below the global average — in terms of competence and ethics and only 28 percent thought they served the interests of everyone equally and fairly.

Those results did make me wonder what news media Kiwis were actually seeing and hearing but, in such things, perception is everything.

Journalists reasonably thick-skinned
But journalists are reasonably thick-skinned: They can take criticism and even insults. I doubt there is a reporter in the country who hasn’t been on the receiving end. Even death threats are something that goes with the territory.

I’ve received a few in my career. Most were of the “Drop Dead” or “You don’t deserve to be here” variety and only one was a credible threat. That one could have endangered others and was not specifically directed at me (it was reported to the police).

However, something has changed.

A reporter I hold in high regard told me last week that he had received more death threats in the last three months of 2021 than in the previous three decades. I’m not going to name him because to do so will simply increase the likelihood of further attempts at intimidation.

He told me reporters had become the focus of a great deal of anger and resentment:

“A few recent events I’ve covered have seen members of the anti-crowd deliberately moving to within a foot of me, maskless, and breathing or coughing at me, or trying to physically rub against me. That’s not an uncommon experience for those out in the field. And there’s the odd occasion, too, where the threat of physical violence is such that I’ve needed to back-peddle quickly.”

We are seeing a migration of behaviour. The US Press Freedom Tracker recorded 439 physical attacks on journalists in that country in 2020 (election year) and a further 142 in 2021. That compared with 41 in 2018 and 2019.

Tightened security
Last June the BBC tightened security around its staff after an escalation in the frequency and severity of abuse from anti-vaxxers. During Sydney anti-mandate protests last September, 7News reporter Paul Dowsley was sprayed with urine and hit in the head by a thrown drink can.

Then, in November, it came here. A 1News camera operator on the West Coast graphically recorded a foul-mouthed middle-aged man carrying an anti-vaxx placard who shoved him backwards and tried to dislodge his camera: “Do you want this [expletive] camera smashed in your face, you [expletive]?”

The current anti-vaxx movement in Canada has generated similar behaviour. Brent Jolly of the Canadian Association of Journalists said several reporters covering the trucker convoy in Ottawa have said they have been harassed on the scene and online and feel like they have a “target on their backs”.

Evan Solomon, a reporter for CTV, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he had a full can of beer thrown at his head. It missed but exploded inside a camera case. All CTV crews now have a security person with them when filming outside, no longer use lights or tripods, and in one province have removed CTV identification from vehicles.

In Ottawa people have asked reporters to remove their names from stories because they are getting death threats. Broadcasting journalists have been targeted – probably because their presence is more obvious – although one print reporter told the CPJ that she does not wear a mask during protests because it draws attention to her (she is triple vaccinated), does not go into protest crowds at night, and liaises with other reporters to advise current locations and risks.

None of this should suggest a coherent and organised anti-media campaign is sweeping the globe. We are seeing something that is a good deal more orchestrated than organised, in which the anti-vaccination movement is no more than a rallying point, and the media are a target because they are messengers for inconvenient truth.

The proof of that became apparent while I was watching the live feed of the protest in the grounds of Parliament.

‘End the Mandate’ signs
A string of images spelled out how incoherent it was. There were printed “End the Mandate” signs, “My body, my choice” t-shirts, a loony sign saying natural immunity was 99.6 per cent effective, Canadian flags, a figure in Black Power regalia wearing a full-face plastic mask, someone wearing a paramilitary “uniform”, and a man waving the ultimate conspiracy theory sign: “Epstein didn’t kill himself”.

Then there were the actions of the protesters. A few were gesticulating to police and the media, uttering things I could not (and arguable did not want) to hear. Many more were gyrating to rhythms playing over loudspeakers, beaten out on the plastic barriers on the forecourt, or generated in their own heads. It was a sort of group euphoria.

And in a perverse sort of way I think that is what is behind the attitude toward media. 1News reporter Kristin Hall had been reporting the protest and wrote a commentary on the broadcaster’s website. In it she said that despite their varying opinions and causes, the protesters were “united in their distaste for the press”. Then she gave an example of just how incoherent this united front can be:

“‘You’re all liars,’ a man told me today. When I asked if he could be more specific, he said he doesn’t consume mainstream media. People have asked me why I’m not covering the protests while I’m in the middle of interviewing them.”

Unfortunately, it is this lack of logic that makes abuse of media so hard to counter. Media cannot make peace with leaders of a movement because it is a moving feast and the orchestrators are hidden from sight. It cannot be remedied simply by stating facts because these people accept only what supports and ennobles their own disinformation-fuelled world view, a view fed by inflammatory social media that conflates then amplifies discontent on a global scale.

Nor can media offer immediate solutions to pent-up anger aggravated by two years of pandemic.

What media can — and must — do is prevent contagion. They need an inoculation campaign to ensure that the malaise infecting a small group of people does not spread.

Duty of care a priority
Mark Stevens alluded to cooperation between media to keep staff safe and that duty of care is a priority. However, media organisations need to go further. They must, on the one hand, earn the trust of a population that does not generally hold them in high regard. It is best done by demonstrating that journalists are following best professional practice and that means quality reporting and presentation.

On the other hand, they must ensure that the community understands that journalists have a right (indeed, a duty) to report on events in its midst — irrespective of whether or not its members agree with what they are being told.

The United States has an excellent track record in openly discussing professional standards and the role of media in society. We should take some leaves from their book and bring the community more into the conversation.

That is challenging, because the problem does not lie solely with the media but with the system of democracy of which it is a vital part.

Rod Oram, in a commentary on the Newsroom website last weekend, discussed the need for democratic reform:

“We have really struggled, though, to conceive, plan and execute deep systemic change, let alone get as many people as possible involved in that and benefiting from it. But that’s the only way we’ll tackle our deeply rooted economic, social and environmental failures.”

That democratic reform must include the media rethinking how it engages with the public. They must introduce open industry-wide governance to replace anachronistic and sometimes self-serving structures. They must demonstrate their commitment to accuracy, fairness and balance. They must find new ways to be inclusive and pluralistic. They must secure recognition as trusted independent sources of verified facts.

Calling out manipulation
That will take time. Meanwhile the problem of media abuse will continue. The short-term solutions will include calling out those who seek to manipulate a minority to destabilise our society. Here are two good examples:

• New Zealand Herald investigative reporter David Fisher’s (paywalled) enquiry into the activities of one of the rallying voices behind the protest at Parliament, Kelvyn Alp and his use of the Counterspin website.
• Kevin Norquay’s profile of the protest in the Sunday Star-Times that included this resonating quote from Hone Martin of Kaitaia as he was leaving the protest: “We’re not getting solutions here. We’re all in the waka paddling in different directions”.

The short term also requires media organisations to continue to meet that duty of care toward their staff. The Committee to Protect Journalists has developed a four-part “Safety Kit” to provide journalists and newsrooms with basic safety information on physical, digital and psychological safety. It’s a good starting point for any journalist.

Of course, journalists also need to keep matters in perspective. The threats represented by a group of disorganised protesters remains relatively small and, with the right training, journalists can judge the level of risk they face in most situations.

When it came to death threats, for example, I soon learned that I could bin the ones that were written in crayon.

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/2022/02/15/copycat-media-abuse-from-ragtag-bag-of-protesters/

It appears we are a nation of selfish malcontents for whom enough is never enough.

That is one of the conclusions I’ve been forced to draw after seven weeks of covid lockdown in Auckland. And, because my isolation has been broken only by a few medical appointments that are valid reasons for leaving my security-guarded community, I gain my impressions through our media and a diet containing a surfeit of opinion, some of it in the guise of news.

I am confronted daily by examples of peevish bleating, whining, and complaining. I hear demands for certainty where there can be none.

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I hear commentators crying out for an end to level 4 then level 3 lockdown. They range from predictable nay-saying radio hosts like Mike Hosking, Heather du Plessis-Allan and Kerre McIvor to the unscientific Sir John Key, whose syndicated comments were the product of some yet-to-be-revealed stratagem by the former prime minister.

I see New Zealanders demanding that their right to return to this country be met NOW when it is obvious that the number of intending returnees far exceeds the country’s capacity to safely manage them.

I read of business demanding the ability to trade, and parents demanding to take their children to far-flung spots for the school holidays, when doing so risks undoing the constraint that has been put on the spread of the delta variant.

I am told the government is incompetent or that it has gone too hard, and that the police haven’t gone hard enough on gangs and followers of Brian Tamaki.

Nation of whingers?
What else could I conclude but that we are a nation of whingers?

But I have also concluded that some of our news media are exhibiting signs of split personality: While devoting an extraordinary amount of time and space to the malcontents, they are also pursuing positive campaigns to get the eligible population vaccinated.

They also – thank goodness – show a willingness to accommodate the views of members of the medical and scientific community, whose opinions we so desperately need to hear.

The two positions are not, of course, mutually exclusive. Media have a duty to report dissent as well as the positives. However, while front page lead stories supporting efforts to contain the delta variant have far outweighed those that argue against them, I have a sense that this Winter Of Our Discontent emphasis is compromising the vax campaign by legitimising self-entitlement.

In my lockdown musings I have, however, reached one further conclusion that both saddens and frustrates me. It is the realisation that many of those who need to get the message to get vaccinated are beyond the reach of news media.

These are people who do not read newspapers, watch television news programmes, listen to radio news bulletins or access the online services that each provides. They have no idea what a “1pm stand-up” means.

They do not engage with news on any other basis than word-of-mouth or social media and the results are fragmented, selective, and often-as-not wrong. In other words, the commendable media campaigns to raise vaccination levels never reach them.

Getting to the marginalised
Ways need to be found to get to this marginalised part of our community. Perhaps the answer is for the media to go on the road. A media roadshow visiting suburbs with which they seldom positively identify might have benefits beyond helping us to get closer to that magic 90 per cent vaccination target.

I was about to say I had reached another conclusion but that’s too strong a word for it. I have a suspicion that the Winter Of Our Discontent is not a reflection of widespread public opinion. I am led to that suspicion by two polls.

The first was a Spinoff poll in August that showed 72 percent supported the move to Level 4, and the second was a Talbot Mills survey that showed strong support for keeping our border closed until 90 percent of the eligible population is vaccinated.

These suggest to me a greater level of resilience (and common sense) than negative media stories might indicate. It’s also manifested in the (admittedly limited) interactions I have with people these days.

That also might be reflected in a letter I read in The New Zealand Herald last week. It was in response to a story about a man who feared he would not be allowed to witness his wife giving birth to triplets in Auckland if he returned to Rotorua to work.

M.A. Hume of Mt Roskill, who admitted to being “old enough to remember the Second World War”, recalled a friend whose husband died at El Alamein without ever seeing his daughter and others who had not seen their families for four years and had no certainty of returning to them. “In those days,” the letter writer said, “huge sacrifices were commonplace.”

I would like to think that, today, most of us can muster that same sense of self-sacrifice and resolve. Given the announcements last weekend of rising cases in Auckland and a spread to the Waikato, we’ll need it.

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/2021/10/05/media-lessons-from-a-pandemic/

I have been reading the tea leaves in the bottom of the online subscription cup.

My fortune-telling has been assisted by some very interesting international statistics.

The pattern in the bottom of the cup is telling me that the winner-takes-most paywall phenomenon that has characterised the US market may not be repeated in the New Zealand market in the longer term.

• READ MORE: Other Gavin Ellis commentaries

If we follow the American example of great success by the New York Times and Washington Post, The New Zealand Herald (which is the subscription leader in New Zealand with more than 110,000 online premium subscribers) will soak up the majority of those willing to pay for their news.

In the United States, where 21 percent have paid for online news in the past 12 months, more than half subscribe to either the New York Times or Washington Post and less than a quarter to local or regional sites.

In Britain, the heavyweight nationals – Telegraph, Times, and Guardian – command 55 percent of the paid online market and the very small percentage of Brits who are prepared to pay (only 8 percent) won’t look at paying for papers further down the food chain.

However, the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report contains statistics that suggest winner-takes-most may not be a foregone conclusion. We could follow the Scandinavian experience.

Norwegian model
In Norway, where close to half the population pay for online news, the three biggest national titles do command a significant subscriber audience between them but so, too, do regional and local news sites. Almost half of the subscribers take either VG, Aftenposten or Dagbladet but almost 60 percent subscribe closer to home.

In Norway, according to the Reuters survey, local newspapers are seen as the “go-to” source for politics (71 percent), crime (73 percent), coronavirus news (53 percent), and things to do (46 percent).

“Our research this year also shows a link between how attached people are to their local community and levels of local news consumption,” the report states. “Respondents in both Austria and Switzerland are amongst those countries that feel most strongly attached and – like Norway – these are also countries where local news consumption tends to be higher and the value of local newspapers is more keenly felt…

“None of this is to suggest that publishers in countries with more attachment are not also suffering from the impact of digital disruption. We see blind spots and decline in most markets, but the fact that local newspapers in Norway are still valued for a local newspaper bundle of different information services gives them a stronger chance of persuading people to pay for online news.”

New Zealand is a country that traditionally has had a regional and local focus in paid-for news. There are historical reasons for that. Transport in the newspaper industry’s formative period was difficult and the country’s topography means it remains expensive.

Newspapers developed around regional and local population centres. Even if they don’t buy it each day, most people will be able to tell you the name of their local newspaper. It is a different story with free-to-air broadcasting.

After short private enterprise experiments, broadcasting became government-owned and news management centralised. Network technology solidified the national focus of television in particular.

Closest to national daily
We have never had a national daily general newspaper. The closest we came was National Business Review’s five-year stint as a daily from the late 1980s. Efforts a decade later to fly The New Zealand Herald into Wellington and the South Island (The Dominion was briefly flown into Auckland) were expensive exercises that could not be sustained as revenue declined and internet use grew.

And, in any event, the Herald was an additional purchase for the majority of buyers in those centres, not an alternative.

Like most countries, New Zealand is still feeling its way through the conundrum of payment for news in the digital age. There are various forms of subscription in the online news market but the most obvious (and numerically superior) is the paywall.

The New Zealand Herald had first mover advantage on paywalls in the daily general news market (National Business Review had long ago introduced an expensive and impenetrable paywall on anything worth reading on its site). It also has far and away the largest regional population base.

So, although it has done remarkably well with its premium subscriptions, it is premature to put the title up there with the winner-take-most titles The New York Times, Washington Post and Britain’s Daily Telegraph.

Stuff has yet to take the subscription plunge but it will come in one shape or another. The donation strategy it currently pursues is drawing support but it is too haphazard in terms of contributions to cashflow. It relies on goodwill and there is no real downside to not donating. How it characterises its subscription strategy will be the key to success or failure.

If it sells itself as a national news source serving all of the country it may come second. NZME is already pursuing that strategy with the Herald brand. It is banking on New Zealand following the US/UK model and last November unveiled plans to make the Herald “New Zealand’s Herald” by, among other things, rebranding its regional titles – Bay of Plenty Herald, Rotorua Herald, Hawkes Bay Herald and so on.

NZME has first-mover advantage
If the US/UK model is working here, NZME has a clear first-mover advantage. If, however, the New Zealand market does not perform to that model, Stuff may capture the same sentiment that is manifesting itself in Norway. If it capitalises on the legacy value of its regional titles as subscriber brands, that could be more successful than the perception of a bunch of JAFAs playing fast and loose with a local masthead that has been around for more than a century.

This does not necessarily mean a host of separate news sites that could be a nightmare to administer. Technology is now clever enough to construct individual and group offerings that are tailored to need. What appears to be a separate site may, in fact, be a subset of Stuff determined by algorithms.

Stuff might like to look to Canada’s Globe and Mail (whose publisher is one-time New Zealand Herald chief executive Phillip Crawley). It has developed artificial learning technology, which it calls Sophi, to automate and optimise a host of publishing decisions around its paywall.

It can, for example, determine what covid-19 information to put behind the paywall and what to provide free for everyone to access. It is a powerful engine that is now used by 11 different publishers across 50 outlets.

The leaves at the bottom of my cup tell me that regional and local brand identity will play a crucial role when the major paid-for news outlets go head-to-head in a subscription contest.

Time will tell whether the dregs of my cup are better at foretelling the future than the cup of someone’s desk at NZME. If I have any advantage it may be that I make a very nice cup of Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire Tea.

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 column here

The Pacific Media Centre, well established as a champion for media freedom, celebrated its 10th anniversary last week and the milestone has been highlighted on the RNZ National Nine to Noon programme.

Media commentator Gavin Ellis compliments the centre at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) for its “comprehensive” and in-depth “overview” of the Asia-Pacific region, especially on media issues.

The PMC marked its event with a photojournalism book launching and panel featuring media freedom in the Philippines in the face of the spate of extrajudicial killings and also in West Papua.

He notes the contribution by the centre’s director Professor David Robie, both in reporting and scholarship for the regon. Listen at 9min 25sec:

Ellis also pays tribute to journalist Yasmine Ryan who has died tragically in Turkey.

She played a prominent role in reporting the so-called Arab Spring from Tunisia in a wide-ranging international journalism career.

The latest New Zealand media ownership report, also at AUT, highlights the number of privately-owned and digital media outlets. Ellis asks could our largest newspaper groups go the same way?

Gavin Ellis is a media commentator and former editor of The New Zealand Herald.

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