As thousands take to the streets this week to “honour” the country’s 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the largest daily newspaper New Zealand Herald says the massive event is “redefining activism”.

The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti has been underway since Sunday, with thousands of New Zealanders from all communities and walks of life traversing the more than 2000 km length of the country from Cape Reinga to Bluff and converging on the capital Wellington.

The marches are challenging the coalition government Act Party’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill, introduced last week by co-leader David Seymour.

• READ MORE:  Labour’s Willie Jackson ejected from House for calling David Seymour a liar during Treaty Principles Bill reading
• NZ’s Treaty Principles Bill passes first reading after Māori MP evicted over haka
• Senior NZ lawyers call for Treaty Principles Bill to be abandoned 
• Hikoi day four – From Huntly towards Rotorua
• Live hīkoi coverage on RNZ news blog
• Other Hīkoi reports

The Bill had its first reading in Parliament today as a young first time opposition Te Pāti Māori MP, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, was suspended for leading a haka and ripping up a copy of the Bill disrupting the vote, and opposition Labour Party’s Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson was also “excused” from the chamber for calling Seymour a “liar” against parliamentary rules.

After a second attempt at voting, the three coalition parties won 68-55 with all three opposition parties voting against.

In its editorial today, hours before the debate and vote, The New Zealand Herald said supporters of Toitū te Tiriti, the force behind the Hīkoi, were seeking a community “reconnection” and described their kaupapa as an “activation, not activism; empowerment, not disruption; education, not protest”.

“Many of the supporters on the Hīkoi don’t consider themselves political activists. They are mums and dads, rangatahi, professionals, Pākehā, and Tauiwi (other non-Māori ethnicities),” The Herald said.

‘Loaded, colonial language’
“Mainstream media is often accused of using ‘loaded, colonial language’ in its headlines. Supporters of Toitū te Tiriti, however, see the movement not as a political protest but as a way to reconnect with the country’s shared history and reflect on New Zealand’s obligations under Te Tiriti.

“While some will support the initiative, many Pākehā New Zealanders are responding to it with unequivocal anger; others feel discomfort about suggestions of colonial guilt or inherited privilege stemming from historical injustices.”

The Herald said that politicians like Seymour advocated for a “multicultural” New Zealand, promising equal treatment for all cultures. While this vision sounded appealing, “it glosses over the partnership outlined in Te Tiriti”.

“Seymour argues he is fighting for respect for all, but when multiculturalism is wielded as a political tool, it can obscure indigenous rights and maintain colonial dominance. For many, it’s an unsettling ideology to contemplate,” the newspaper said.

“A truly multicultural society would recognise the unique status of tangata whenua, ensuring Māori have a voice in decision-making as the indigenous people.

“However, policies framed under ‘equal rights’ often silence Māori perspectives and undermine the principles of Te Tiriti.

“Seymour’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill prioritises Crown sovereignty, diminishing the role of hapū (sub-tribes) and excluding Māori from national decision-making. Is this the ‘equality’ we seek, or is it a rebranded form of colonial control?”

Heart of the issue
The heart of the issue, said The Herald, was how “equal” was interpreted in the context of affirmative action.

“Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel argues that true equality acknowledges historical injustices and demands action to correct them. In Aotearoa, addressing the legacy of colonisation is essential,” the paper said.

“Affirmative action is not about giving an unfair advantage; it’s about levelling the playing field so everyone has equal opportunities.

“Some politicians sidestep the real work needed to honour Te Tiriti by pushing for an ‘equal’ and ‘multicultural’ society. This approach disregards Aotearoa’s unique history, where tangata whenua hold a constitutionally recognised status.

“The goal is not to create division but to fulfil a commitment made more than 180 years ago and work towards a partnership based on mutual respect. We all have a role to play in this partnership.

“The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti is more than a march; it’s a movement rooted in education, healing, and building a shared future.

“It challenges us to look beyond superficial equality and embrace a partnership where all voices are heard and the mana (authority) of tangata whenua is upheld.”

The first reading of the bill was advanced in a failed attempt to distract from the impact of the national Hikoi.

RNZ reports that more than 40 King’s Counsel lawyers say the Bill seeks to “rewrite the Treaty itself” and have called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and the coalition government to “act responsibly now and abandon” the draft law.

Media publisher NZME has come under fire for admitting it used artificial intelligence to create editorials that ran in the Weekend Herald and other publications, with a media commentator saying it “can only damage trust”.

RNZ’s Mediawatch revealed late yesterday that NZME had used AI to write an editorial about “Who the All Blacks should pick to play at centre” that ran first in the Weekend Herald on July 20 and another piece about MMA professional Israel Adesanya.

A statement from NZME editor-in-chief Murray Kirkness said AI was used in a way that fell short of its standards and “more journalistic rigour would have been beneficial”.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MIDDAY REPORT: NZME admits AI editorial lacked journalistic rigour
• Herald deploys AI for editorial, admits lack of rigour — Mediawatch

NZME’s standards don’t mandate disclosure but do say stories should be attributed to “the author and/or the creator/provider of the material” in accordance with the company’s Code of Ethics.

A co-author of the annual AUT Trust in News report, Dr Greg Treadwell, told Midday Report it was a poor experiment in AI use.

“I think New Zealanders have to be realistic about the fact AI is going to work its way into the production of news, but I think the Herald has kind of admitted this was a pretty poor experiment in it for a number of reasons, I think.”

Treadwell said the role of the editorial in any major news publication was to be an opinion leader.

‘Not world-shattering’
“I don’t know how many of your readers have actually gone back to have a look at the editorial that the Herald published, but it was sort of a generalist round-up of the arguments for and against Reiko Ioane at centre in the All Blacks back line — not a world-shattering issue, but a really good example of how AI doesn’t really, can’t really do what an editorial should do, which is to take a position on something.

“If you ask it to take a position, it will, and if you ask it to take another position, it will take that position.

“What is lacking here, even if you ask [AI] to take positions, is the original argument we would look to our senior journalists to put into the public domain for us about important issues.”

Public trust in the media was falling and media companies needed to reassure the public it could be trusted, he said.

“When the public hears that AI is being used in places — and perhaps most importantly here is that it wasn’t acknowledged that was being used to create this editorial — then that can only damage trust.

“I think there’s a lot of issues here including that AI can be incredibly useful for data analysis and other things in journalism, but we just have to be incredibly transparent about how we’re using it.”

‘Another world first’
Former Herald editor-in-chief and prominent media commentator Tim Murphy joked on social media the editorial may “have achieved another world first for NZ”.

On the upside, this has got to have achieved another world first for NZ https://t.co/e6UvHMRwXg

— Tim Murphy (@tmurphyNZ) July 31, 2024

The revelation was also panned by some competitor publications, with the National Business Review’s official X account noting that “NBR journalists are intelligent. Not artificial.”

NBR journalists are intelligent. Not artificial.
Just saying.https://t.co/aUJfld3taf

— NBR (@TheNBR) August 1, 2024

RNZ also approached New Zealand Rugby to ask their thoughts on NZME using AI to analyse the All Black team selection.

In a statement, NZR said it recognised the need for media organisations to have well-established editorial policies and standards.

“These ensure high quality sports journalism and play an important role in telling rugby’s stories.

“NZR is satisfied that the New Zealand Herald has made the appropriate steps to amend the story in question.”

“The Herald and other NZME publications use AI to improve our journalism. In some cases, we also create stories entirely using AI tools,” says an explanatory article headlined NZME, NZ Herald and our use of AI.

“We believe that smart use of AI allows us to publish better journalism. We remain committed to our Code of Ethics and to the integrity of our journalism, regardless of whether or not we use AI tools to help with the production or processing of articles.”

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

An open letter to The New Zealand Herald has challenged a full page Zionist advertisement this week for failing to acknowledge the “terrible injustices” suffered by the Palestinian people in Israel’s seven-month genocidal war on Gaza.

In the latest of several international reports that have condemned genocide against the people of Gaza while the International Court of Justice continues to investigate Israel for a plausible case for genocide, a human rights legal network of US universities has concluded that “Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing” and sought to “bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza”.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces target residential buildings, ambulance in Jabalia

The University Network for Human Rights, along with the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School, conducted a legal analysis and the 100-page damning report, “Genocide in Gaza: Analysis of International Law and its Application to Israel’s Military Actions since October 7, 2023.”

The Israeli military have killed more than 35,000 people — mostly women and children — and more than 78,000 people and the UN General Assembly voted by an overwhelming 134-9 votes to back Palestinian statehood on May 11.

In the full page Zionist advertisement in The New Zealand Herald on Tuesday, senior pastor Nigel Woodley of the Flaxmere Christian Fellowship Church in Hastings claimed “the current painful war is another episode in Israel’s history for survival” with no acknowledgement of the massive human cost on Palestinians.

The open letter by Reverend Chris Sullivan in response — dated the same day but not published by The Herald — says:

An advertisement in the Herald supports the creation of the State of Israel.

For the same reasons we should also support the creation of a Palestinian state; don’t Palestinians also deserve their own nation state?

Just as we decry Hitler’s Holocaust, so too must we raise our voices against the killing of 35,000 people in Gaza (most of them innocent civilians), the destruction of 70 percent of the housing, and imminent famine.

It is disingenuous to focus solely on the Arab invasions of Israel, without looking at their cause — the killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which accompanied the creation of the modern state of Israel.

It is never too late for both sides to turn away from violence and war and build a lasting peace, based on mutual respect and a just solution to the terrible injustices the Palestinian people have suffered.

Rev Chris Sullivan
Auckland

New Zealand’s media and communications minister is defending pulling out of pre-booked interviews about her portfolio, saying they would have been “boring” for the interviewers.

Last week, Media Minister Melissa Lee cancelled interviews with NZME’s Media Insider and RNZ’s Mediawatch, despite initially agreeing to do them.

It is a tumultuous time for media, with the proposed shutting of Newshub and cancellation of news and current affairs shows at TVNZ, as well as the unclear fate of legislation to make social media giants pay for the news they use.

• READ MORE: RNZ Mediawatch: NZ media facing an apocalypse now?
• Other NZ media reports

Lee is set to take a paper to cabinet soon, setting out her plans for the portfolio. She has been consulting with coalition partners before she takes the paper to cabinet committee.

Yesterday, she said that given the confidentiality of the process, there was nothing more she could say in the one-on-one interviews.

“I have actually talked about what my plans are, but not in detail. And I think talking about the same thing over and over, just seemed, like, you know . . . ”

Lee said she received advice from the prime minister’s office, but the decision to pull out was ultimately hers.

‘A lot of interviews’
“I’ve been doing quite a lot of interviews, and I couldn’t sort of elaborate more on the paper and the work that I’m actually doing until a decision has actually been made, and I felt that it would be boring for him to sit there for me to tell him, ‘No, no, I can’t really elaborate, you’re going to have to wait until the decision’s made’,” she said.

It is believed Lee was referring to either the NZ Herald’s Shayne Currie or RNZ’s Colin Peacock.

Asked whether it was up to her to decide what was boring or not, Lee repeated she had done a lot of interviews.

“I didn’t think it was fair for me to sit down with someone on a one-to-one to say the same thing over to them,” she said.

Lee said her diary had been fairly full, due to commitments with her other portfolios.

The prime minister said his office’s advice to Lee was that she may want to wait until she got feedback from the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill process, which was still going through select committee.

‘The logical time’
“Our advice from my office, as I understand it, was, ‘Look, you’re gonna have more to say after we get through the digital bargaining bill, and that’s the logical time to sit down for a long-format interview,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said.

Labour broadcasting spokesperson Willie Jackson said he believed the prime minister’s office was trying to protect Lee from scrutiny.

“There’s absolutely no doubt she’s struggling. If you look at her first response when she fronted media, she had quite a cold response,” he said.

“That’s changed, of course now she’s giving all her aroha to everyone. So they’ve been working on her, and so they should, because the media deserve better and the public deserve better.”

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

The future of Aotearoa New Zealand television news and current affairs is in the balance at the two biggest TV broadcasters — both desperate to cut costs as their revenue falls.

The government says it is now preparing policy to modernise the media, but they do not want to talk about what that might be — or when it might happen.

On Monday, TVNZ’s 1News was reporting — again — on the crisis of cuts to news and current affairs in its own newsroom.

• READ MORE: Other TVNZ and Newshub reports

The extent of discontent about the proposed cuts had been made clear to chief executive Jodi O’Donnell at an all-staff meeting that day.

The news of cuts rocked the state-owned broadcaster when they were announced four days earlier.

In fact, it rocked the entire media industry because only one week earlier the US-based owners of Newshub had announced a plan to close that completely by mid year.

No-one was completely shocked by either development given the financial strife the local industry is known to be in.

But it seems no-one had foreseen that within weeks only Television New Zealand and Whakaata Māori would be offering national news to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who still tune in at 6pm or later on demand.

Likewise the prospect of no TV current affairs shows (save for those on Whakaata Māori) and no consumer affairs watchdog programme Fair Go, three years shy of a half century as one of NZ most popular local TV shows of all time.

Yvonne Tahana’s report for 1News on Monday pointed out Fair Go staff were actually working on the next episode when that staff meeting was held on Monday.

All this raised the question — what is a “fair go” according to the government, given TVNZ is state-owned?

Media-shy media minister?
After the shock announcements last week and the week before, Minister of Media and Communications Melissa Lee seemed not keen to talk to the media about it.

The minister did give some brief comments to political reporters confronting her in the corridors in Parliament after the Newshub news broke. But a week went by before she spoke to RNZ’s Checkpoint about it — and revealed that in spite of a 24-hour heads-up from Newhub’s offshore owner — Warner Bros Discovery — Lee did not know they were planning to shut the whole thing.

By the time the media minister was on NewstalkZB’s Drive show just one hour later that same day, the news was out that TVNZ news staff had been told to “watch their inboxes” the next morning.

In spite of the ‘no surprises’ convention, the minister said she was out of the loop on that too.

After that, it was TV and radio silence again from the minister in the days that followed.

“National didn’t have a broadcasting policy. We’re still not sure what they’re looking at. She needs to basically scrub up on what she’s going to be saying on any given day and get her head around her own portfolio, because at the moment she’s not looking that great,” The New Zealand Herald’s political editor Claire Trevett told RNZ’s Morning Report at the end of the week.

By then the minister’s office had told Mediawatch she would speak with us on Thursday. Good news — at the time.

Lee has long been the National Party’s spokesperson on media and broadcasting and Mediawatch has been asking for a chat since last December.

Last Sunday, TVNZ’s Q+A show told viewers Lee had declined to be interviewed for three weeks running.

Frustration on social media
At Newshub — where staff have the threat of closure hanging over them — The AM Show host Lloyd Burr took to social media with his frustration.

“There’s a broadcasting industry crisis and the broadcasting minister is MIA. We’ve tried for 10 days to get her on the show to talk about the state of it, and she’s either refused or not responded. She doesn’t even have a press secretary. What a shambles . . . ”

A switch of acting press secretaries mid-crisis did seem to be a part of the problem.

But one was in place by last Monday, who got in touch in the morning to arrange Mediawatch’s interview later in the week.

But by 6pm that day, they had changed their minds, because “the minister will soon be taking a paper to cabinet on her plan for the media portfolio”.

“We feel it would better serve your listeners if the minister came on at a time when she could discuss in depth about the details of her plan for the future of media, as opposed to the limited information she will be able to provide this Thursday,” the statement said.

“When the cabinet process has been completed, the minister is able to say more. That time is not now.”

The minister’s office also pointed out Lee had done TV and broadcast interviews over the past week in which she had “essentially traversed as much ground as possible right now”.

What clues can we glean from those?

Hints of policy plans
Even though this government is breaking records for changes made under urgency, it seems nothing will happen in a hurry for the media.

“I have been working with my officials to understand and bring the concerns from the sector forward, to have a discussion with my officials to work with me to understand what the levers are that the government can pull to help the sector,” Lee told TVNZ Breakfast last Monday.

A slump in commercial revenue is a big part of broadcasters’ problems. TVNZ’s Anna Burns Francis asked the minister if the government might make TVNZ — or some of its channels — commercial-free.

“I think we are working through many options as to what could potentially help the sector rather than specifically TVNZ,” Lee replied.

One detail Lee did reveal was that the Broadcasting Act 1989 was in play — something the previous government also said was on its to do list but did not get around to between 2017 and 2023.

It is a pretty broad piece of legislation which sets out the broadcasting standards regime and complaints processes, electoral broadcasting and the remit of the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air.

But it is not obvious what reform of that Act could really do for news media sustainability.

Longstanding prohibitions
The minister also referred to longstanding prohibitions on TV advertising on Sunday mornings and two public holidays. Commercial broadcasters have long called for these to be dumped.

But a few more slots for whiteware and road safety ads is not going to save news and current affairs, especially in this economy.

That issue also came up in a 22-minute-long chat with The Platform, which the minister did have time for on Wednesday.

In it, host Sean Plunket urged the minister not to do much to ease the financial pain of the mainstream media, which he said were acting out of self-interest.

He was alarmed when Lee told him the playing field needed to be leveled by extending regulation applied to TV and radio to online streamers as well — possibly through Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

“Are you seriously considering the government imposing tax on certain large companies and paying that money directly to your chosen media companies that are asking for it?” Plunket asked.

“I have actually said that I oppose the bill but what you have to do as the minister is listen to the sector. They might have some good ideas.”

When Plunket suggested Lee should let the market forces play out, Lee said that was not desirable.

Some of The Platform’s listeners were not keen on that, getting in touch to say they feared Lee would bail the media out because she had “gone woke”.

That made the minister laugh out loud.

“I’m so far from woke,” she assured Sean Plunket.

A free-to-air and free-to-all future?
At the moment, TVNZ is obliged to provide easily accessible services for free to New Zealanders.

TVNZ’s Breakfast show asked if that could change to allow TVNZ to charge for its most popular or premium stuff?

The response was confusing:

“Well ready accessibility would actually mean that it is free, right? Or it could be behind a paywall — but it could still be available because they have connectivity,” Lee replied.

“A paywall would imply that you have to pay for it — so that wouldn’t be accessible to all New Zealanders, would it?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked.

“For a majority, yes — but free to air is something I support.”

When Lee fronted up on The AM Show for 10 minutes she said she was unaware they had been chasing a chat with her for 10 days.

Host Melissa Chan-Green bridled when the minister referred to the long-term decline of linear real time TV broadcast as a reason for the cuts now being proposed.

“To think that Newshub is a linear TV business is to misunderstand what Newshub is, because we have a website, we have an app, we have streaming services, we’ve done radio, we’ve done podcasts — so how much more multimedia do you think businesses need to be to survive?

“I’m not just talking about that but there are elements of the Broadcasting Act which are not a fair playing field for everyone. For example, there are advertising restrictions on broadcasters where there are none on streamers,” she said.

Where will the public’s money go?
On both Breakfast and The AM Show, Lee repeated the point that the effectiveness of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money for broadcasting is at stake — and at risk if the broadcasters that carry the content are cut back to just a commercial core.

“The government actually puts in close to I think $300 million a year,” Lee said.

“Should that funding be extended to include the client of current affairs programs are getting cut?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked her.

“I have my own views as to what could be done but even NZ on Air operates at arm’s length from me as Minister of Media and Communications,” she replied.

It is only in recent years that NZ On Air has been in the business of allocating public money to news and journalism on a contestable basis.

When the system was set up in 35 years ago that was out of bounds for the organisation, because broadcasters becoming dependent on the public purse was thought to be something to avoid — because of the potential for political interference through either editorial meddling or turning off the tap.

That began to break down when TV broadcasters stopped funding programs about politics which did not pull a commercial crowd — and NZ started picking up the tab from a fund for so-called special interest shows which would not be made or screened in a wholly-commercial environment.

Online projects with a public interest purpose have also been funded by in recent years in addition to programmes for established broadcasters — as NZ on Air declared itself “platform agnostic”.

Public Interest Journalism Fund
In 2020, NZ on Air was given the job of handing out $55 million over three years right across the media from the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

That was done at arm’s length from government, but in opposition National aggressively opposed the fund set up by the previous Labour government.

Senior MPs — including Lee — claimed the money might make the media compliant — and even silent — on anything that might make the then-Labour government look bad.

It would be a big surprise if Lee’s policy plan for cabinet includes direct funding for the news and current affairs programmes which could vanish from our TV screens and on-demand apps within weeks.

This week, NZ on Air chief executive Cameron Harland responded to the crisis with a statement.

“We are in active discussions with the broadcasters and the wider sector to understand what the implications of their cost cutting might be.

“This is a complex and developing situation and whilst we acknowledge the uncertainty, we will be doing what we can to ensure our funding is utilised in the best possible ways to serve local audiences.“

They too are in a holding pattern waiting for the government to reveal its plans.

But as the minister herself said this week, the annual public funding for media was substantial — and getting bigger all the time as the revenues of commercial media companies shrivelled.

And whatever levers the minister and her officials are thinking of pulling, they need to do decisively — and soon.

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

Television New Zealand’s chief executive has been challenged by the public broadcaster’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver at a fiery staff meeting over job cuts and axing of high profile programmes, reports The New Zealand Herald.

Writing in his Media Insider column today, editor-at-large Shayne Currie reported that Dreaver, one of TVNZ’s most respected and senior journalists, had made the challenge over the planned layoffs and axing of shows such as the current affairs Sunday and consumer affairs Fair Go.

Dreaver reportedly asked chief executive Jodi O’Donnell if she would apologise to staff — “apparently for referring to her watch during an earlier staff meeting on Friday”.

• READ MORE: Mediawatch: Apocalypse now for NZ news – take 2?
• TVNZ plans to axe Fair Go, Sunday, midday and night news in restructure
• NZ media people react with ‘shock’ over plan to close Newshub in June

“TVNZ would not confirm specific details last night, but it is understood O’Donnell pushed back during yesterday’s meeting, along the lines that perhaps she might also be owed an apology,” wrote Currie, a former Herald managing editor.

“One source said she talked at one stage about the response she had been receiving.”

Media Insider quoted a TVNZ spokeswoman as saying: “We expect sessions like this to be robust, but to give all TVNZers the opportunity to be free and frank in their participation, we don’t comment on the details of these internal meetings to the media.”

Dreaver told 1News last night: “We need really strong leadership and we expect to get it. And I’m quite happy to call out and challenge it [and] my own bosses when we don’t get that, just as I would a politician or any other person who deserves it.”

A ‘legend, icon, queen’
Media Insider reported that in a social media post today, Sunday journalist Kristin Hall had described Kiribati-born Dreaver as a “legend, icon, queen” for her Pacific reporting.

Legend, icon, queen

So proud to call @barbaradreaver a colleague https://t.co/FNksH6ih2f

— Kristin Hall (@kristinhallNZ) March 11, 2024

In November 2022, Dreaver was named Reporter of the Year at the New Zealand Television Awards and in 2019 she won two awards at the Voyager Media Awards for her coverage of the Samoa measles outbreak.

In this year’s New Year Honours, Dreaver was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities.

Yesterday’s TVNZ meeting came amid a strained relationship between the TVNZ newsroom and management over the way the company has handled the announcement of up to 68 job cuts, as least two-thirds of them journalists.

The shock news followed a week after the US-based Warner Brothers Discovery announced that it would be closing its entire Newshub newsroom at the end of June.

The New Zealand Herald copped criticism for publishing a front-page attack ad targeting the National Party leader this week — but it was far from the first time ads like it have appeared in print.

Meanwhile, questions were asked about other coverage that looked like it might be taking sides as the official Aotearoa New Zealand election campaign period begins.

“You’ve got to survive in the media. You got to take the ads,” Newstalk ZB morning host Kerre Woodham told listeners last Monday, explaining the the controversial Council of Trade Union ad labelling the National Party leader Christopher Luxon “out of touch and too risky”.

“You’ve got to survive in the media. You got to take the ads,” Newstalk ZB morning host Kerre Woodham told listeners last Monday, explaining the the controversial Council of Trade Union ad labelling the National Party leader “out of touch and too risky”.

It was clearly an election advocacy ad — and it was identified as such in the Herald. But as soon as the ad came through the NZME ad department, the senior editors there must have known devoting the front page to it would become a news story.

The afternoon host at the Herald’s NZME stablemate NewstalkZB, Andrew Dickens, certainly thought so.

“I think this is news. This is why I’m talking about it on the radio. I’m not involved with this decision.  . . but I think they need to write about it and say how they actually determine who gets the ‘wraparound’,” he told his listeners.

Blue sticker ads
The Herald top brass wasn’t keen on that, but election ads on the front page aren’t entirely unprecedented.

A former Herald editor, Tim Murphy, pointed out the Weekend Herald has allowed the National Party to add detachable blue stickers late in previous campaigns.

And once papers opened the door to wraparound front-and-back page ads for retailers (who paid a pretty penny for them during the covid-19 crisis), it was only a matter of time before someone selling political messages rather than fridges took up the space as well.

The CTU ad was within the rules for political promotion by third parties. As long as they registered, they can spend the thick end of $400,000 on ads doing down political opponents if they want to.

Gordon Campbell on scoop.co.nz said that apart from the front-page spot, there was nothing really novel about an ad criticising a party leader who was actively campaigning as the embodiment of his party’s policies.

And while the CTU’s campaign also appeared on billboards and social media platforms the same day, it was its appearance on the front page of a paper obliged to cover the campaign fairly which raised eyebrows.

“This will probably backfire on the Herald,” Andrew Dicken told his listeners, at the same moment one texted in to say he had cancelled his subscription to the Herald because of it.

‘False’ ads not acceptable
Andrew Dickens told his listeners NZME radio stations had rules too — and could not accept ads that are “false, wrong, or lies or defamatory.”

Newstalk ZB found that out back in 2019, when it ran a political ad in which Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere said no suburb would escape Auckland Transport’s “crazy plan” to cut the speed limits on Auckland roads.

The Advertising Standards Authority said that claim was false and the campaign ad, which had run for two weeks, should be dropped.

NZME told the Authority it had presumed the client’s script and figures provided were correct.

“Our team has been reminded to be vigilant when accepting advocacy advertisements to avoid this from reoccurring,” NZME said.

In other words, they promised to do fact checks before cashing cheques from people peddling political propaganda at election time.

But at that time, the Weekend Herald had just published another controversial political ad all about Christopher Luxon.

The half page ad showed former Prime Minister John Key morphing into Christopher Luxon in the style of Dick Frizzell’s famous “From Mickey to tiki” illustration.

Luxon was not even a member of the National Party at that point, let alone a candidate, but the client for that ad turned out to be property tycoon Steven Brooks, who really wanted Luxon to be the next party leader.

His involvement should have been declared on the ad, which had the appearance of unauthorised party political advertising.

Ads they didn’t want

While that’s all history now, Newstalk ZB listeners on Monday were also phoning concerns about ads that the Herald wouldn’t print in the recent past.

They were part of a campaign from the lobby group Family First, which our three biggest newspaper publishers all declined to run.

Family First leader Bob McCoskrie has accused them of colluding to cancel the ad, which had the slogan: “What is a woman?” and the website address for a campaign declaring it was “time to push back” against gender self-identification.

MoCoskrie said the ad departments of each publisher initially accepted the ad but editors subsequently decided they weren’t fit to print.

But while the paper publishers exercised their right not to print the ads, they did go up on billboards in public.

Last month the Advertising Standards Authority complaints board upheld a complaint about them, ruling the ad was “misleading and not socially responsible,” but only because the identity of the advertiser — Family First — wasn’t sufficiently clear for an advocacy ad.

From today, September 10, until the day before the election we are in the official election period overseen by the Electoral Commission.

During this time special rules and a separate dedicated code of broadcasting practice apply to what are known as “election programmes”, defined as radio or TV advertisements by or for a party or candidate which encouraged voters to vote in particular ways or for particular parties or people.

Broadcasters and publishers will be paying extra attention to balance and fairness now, with the watchdogs running a fast-track process for complaints about seriously misleading claims and serious allegations.

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

National says a series of attack ads targeting its leader Christopher Luxon funded by the Council of Trade Unions in the Aotearoa Election 2023 campaign is “disgraceful”.

The NZCTU launched its campaign targeting Luxon today, with billboards going up around the country and social media.

A full front-page wrap-around ad on The New Zealand Herald newspaper declared “Christopher Luxon: Out of touch. Too much risk” under the paper’s masthead, with the word “advertisement” in smaller font at the top of the ad.

• READ MORE: Telling the truth about National isn’t an ‘attack advert’
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The NZCTU’s logo and a link to a CTU-run website outoftouch.nz was at the bottom.

A second full-page ad ran overleaf on page 2, saying Luxon was “out of touch and focused on the wealthiest few”, and highlighting policies like tax cuts, scrapping fair pay agreements and fully funded prescriptions, and concluded with a bullet point saying Luxon “isn’t the right leader in a cost-of-living crisis”.

The National Party’s campaign chair Chris Bishop said the CTU, which has 27 unions affiliated, should be ashamed.

“The union movement is able to spend vast sums of money attacking the National Party and Christopher Luxon,” he said.

‘American-style hatchet job’
“They’re running audio-visual slots, televisual slots, they’ve got billboards in many major cities around New Zealand, this is a highly orchestrated, highly political, highly choreographed American-style hatchet job on Christopher Luxon.

“It’s disgraceful, they should be ashamed of themselves and it’s not what New Zealanders want in this election campaign.”

“Sadly with six weeks to go it’s become very clear that thanks to the Labour Party this is going to become the most negative election campaign in New Zealand history. Jacinda Ardern’s ‘be kind’ has become ‘be nasty’ under Chris Hipkins.”

Bishop would not commit to not attacking Labour, but said it would target differences of policy approach and targeting Labour’s record.

“Of course we are going to attack the Labour Party’s record, we’re going to make no bones about that . . . but the point of pointing those things out is to draw a contrast with National’s different approach and our positive plan for the future.

“We are going to run a strong and vigorous campaign but we are not going to engage in the kind of nasty, personal, petty, vindictive politics that the union movement and the Labour Party are going to engage in.”

‘Play the ball’
Labour’s campaign chair Megan Woods made a similar commitment last week, saying the party would “play the ball, not the person — but we should be holding National and ACT to account for the ideas that they’re putting out there”.

Asked how Luxon was holding up under what Bishop described as “very personal” attacks, he laughed and said Luxon was “completely fine”.

“Look, he’s big enough and ugly enough to handle it, I just think it’s pretty pathetic and I think the New Zealand public deserve better than that.”

He said the CTU was “intimately” connected to the Labour Party.

“It’s in the name, it’s the Labour Party because they’re part of the Labour movement . . .  Craig Renney was Grant Robertson’s adviser and he’s now at the CTU, so they know exactly what they’re doing.”

‘Not nasty at all’ – CTU
Council of Trade Unions president Richard Wagstaff told RNZ the campaign was focused on National’s policies.

“He’s [Luxon] promising to take down fair pay agreements, put people on [90-day] trials, make savage cuts to public services, and all in all we see it as a very serious choice ahead of New Zealanders at this election — perhaps the most serious choice in over a generation,” Wagstaff said.

He denied that focusing on Luxon was unfair.

“It’s not nasty at all, it’s simply saying that Christopher Luxon is out of touch and he can’t be trusted.

“National is focused heavily on Christopher Luxon, launching him as the leader, the buck stops with him and he’s leading these policies so we need to draw attention to Christopher and what he’s saying.

“His instinct in the cost of living crisis is to take over $2 billion out of the climate fund and give an over $2 billion gift to landlords. That, to us, is an out-of-touch policy.”

He said Labour had not been involved in the ad campaign at all, and it was a completely independent intiative.

“This is the National Party’s paranoia, Labour are not even mentioned in the ads, they’re not part of this campaign … we’re not asking people to vote for Labour we’re simply saying that Christopher Luxon and his policies would present a major danger to working New Zealanders.”

He said National was just trying to divert attention “away from the fact that their leader intends to smash industry bargaining, put people on trial periods and generally undermine the interests of working people”.

“We’re just putting that out there . . . it’s important that people look behind the rhetoric and really look at their policies.”

He said the $400,000 National had suggested for total ad campaign cost was an incorrect figure.

“It’s wrong, as far as I know it’s incorrect — I actually don’t know the figure but we don’t have that kind of money to spend on campaigns.”

Union members were happy to have their funds spent on the campaign, he said.

“Absolutely, union members expect the CTU to advance their interests as working people. This is an incredibly important election for the interests of working people.

“We’re not going to sit on our hands while National takes an axe to basic entitlements of the New Zealand working people.”

In an earlier statement, Wagstaff said the ad campaign would be “evidence-based”.

“Christopher Luxon and National will take New Zealand backwards and working people will be the first to feel the pain,” the statement said.

‘Democracy in action’ – Hipkins
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the CTU had run campaign ads in every election he had been involved in, and he had been aware they would be doing so but had not seen the ads until they were published.

He said for National to be offended was “incredibly thin-skinned” given the Taxpayers Union lobbying group, which has typically advocated for right-leaning policies.

“I think the CTU are raising some legitimate concerns around the effects of the National Party’s policies,” Hipkins said.

He said National was “desperately trying to distract attention away from the fact that they’be been caught out with their numbers and their policies just not stacking up. They’re trying to create a diversion here.

“The National Party and their surrogates, including the Taxpayer’s Union, Groundswell, Hobson’s Pledge and so on, have been running attack ads against me and the Labour government since the day I took on the job.

“I haven’t called a press conference or issued a media statement every time they have done that.”

Hipkins presented some “random examples” of the attack ads to reporters.

‘Russian horses’
“This one here, I was particularly touched by this one, actually. This is myself and David Parker on what would appear to be some Russian horses. I actually think I look quite good on a horse, to be frank.

“We have a pretty nasty, despicable personal attack on Nanaia Mahuta, that was, I believe, The Taxpayer’s Union did that one.”

Another ad — published by the National Party — had a photoshopped image of Hipkins’ face on the side of a sticking plaster box.

Hipkins said he did not believe Labour’s own campaign was negative.

“I don’t believe that we are running a negative campaign. We are out there campaigning positively on the things that we’re putting before the electorate, but we are also checking the promises the National Party are making because they simply don’t stack up.

“If they want to be the government, they’re going to be subject to this sort of scrutiny day in and day out — we have been for the last six years.”

“I don’t think critiquing the potential effects of the National Party’s policy is something they should shy away from. That is democracy in action.”

Chris Bishop said National would condemn any third-party ads attacking Chris Hipkins.

‘Completely separate from editorial’ – NZ Herald
In a statement, a spokesperson from The New Zealand Herald said “expression of opinion through advocacy advertising is an essential and desirable part of a democratic society”.

“All advocacy ads must comply with the ASA Codes and Advocacy Principles, as well as our own Advertising Acceptability Policy. Publishing an advertisement does not indicate NZME’s endorsement of that product or message.

“It’s also important to note that advertising stands completely separately from editorial.”

Bishop said he did not have a problem with the Herald running the ad.

“I mean, newspapers have got to sell advertising, I’ve got no issue with the Herald running that ad and I’ve got no issue with other outlets taking advertising money.

“I’ve got an issue with the CTU running it and I think they should be reflecting on it. I think it will backfire, ultimately, on them, and I think New Zealanders will see through it.”

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

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

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

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

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Public broadcaster opinions commentary
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“Looking forward to the mahi ahead,” Ake told his LinkedIn followers at the time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) July 29, 2023

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

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

But Ake did not wait for that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was reinforced by Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aotearoa New Zealand’s ruling Labour’s caucus has unanimously decided to suspend Hamilton West MP Dr Gaurav Sharma effective immediately in the wake of allegations of bullying of and by MPs.

This morning, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office confirmed the meeting to discuss allegations of bullying raised by Hamilton West MP Gaurav Sharma would take place this afternoon.

The meeting addressed Dr Sharma’s status within the party after he took his concerns to the media rather than usual party processes for dealing with disputes.

• READ MORE: Opinion: Labour MP Dr Gaurav Sharma blows whistle on Parliament bullying, takes aim at officials, party whips
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Dr Sharma has complained, however, that using those mechanisms have got him nowhere, saying he had tried dealing with the concerns through the party whip’s office and Parliamentary Service for the past year and a half.

He was not at the caucus meeting this afternoon.

“I note that he did find the time to talk to media,” Ardern said.

“Caucus has determined suspension is the most appropriate response to the repeated breaches of trust from Gaurav over recent days.

No longer in caucus
“This means Gaurav will continue as the MP for Hamilton West and be expected to be present at Parliament. However, he will no longer participate in any caucus events or activities unless caucus’ permission is granted.”

Dr Sharma was emailed, phoned, and text messaged to try to get him to attend the meeting today, she said.

Watch the conference 

Labour’s unanimous decision to suspend MP Dr Sharma. Video: RNZ News

Ardern said she called and tried to message him after the meeting this afternoon, as have others, and she hoped this was not the first he had heard of his suspension.

“We have made efforts to convey this information to him directly.”

The whips directly engaged with Dr Sharma on whether he would attend, she said.

“Originally a range of options were sent and they didn’t receive a response. They then proposed a time and they were told at that time that no, at that time Gaurav had a specific event.

“They then advised that we would set a meeting time at a time that suited Gaurav today, he advised that nearer to 3[pm] would suit so whips suggested 2.30, we then at that point didn’t receive any further engagement.”

All of Labour’s MPs were invited to attend today, she said.

Labour’s caucus has unanimously decided to suspend MP Gaurav Sharma effective immediately https://t.co/qogiWItoxG

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 16, 2022

Decision unanimous
She said the decision was unanimous, and the team was clear that to function as a political party in a place where open debate and dialogue was key, members needed to be able to trust their colleagues.

“You need to feel you can speak openly and freely. That sense of trust has been broken by repeated breaches of our caucus rules over the last five days and that made the decision very clear,” she said.

Ardern and party leadership have continued to refer to the allegations — which in particular accuse former whip Kieran McAnulty of bullying and gaslighting — as an employment concern between Dr Sharma and the staff in his office.

RNZ has sought comment from McAnulty repeatedly but he has not responded.

Ardern said, based on the documents she has reviewed, the Labour whip’s office and Parliamentary Service began working with Dr Sharma to address concerns raised about his staff management. He was then asked to work with a mentor, which he objected to.

“Finally agreement was reached at the end of last year. Further issues were later raised by additional staff members including those in his direct employment, This resulted in another pause on hirinig and again coaching, mentoring and temporary staff in the meantime.

“Gaurav again objected to this intervention and the need for his future hiring of staff or undertakings on his part. A protracted process ensued.”

No other concerns
Ardern said she still had heard no concerns raised by any other MPs about McAnulty.

She said she did not recall Dr Sharma ever raising his concerns with her and she had gone through records of events and text messages after hearing about his concerns last week.

“I have not gone through everything but from what I can see he is a member who I’ve had less engagement with than most, that is fair to say … he’s never raised the issue directly with me, and that is an expectation I would have because it’s set out in our rules.

“First if there’s an issue you go to the whips. If you’re unable to get resolution you go to either the Labour leader or to someone the Labour leader nominates. And if it’s still unresolved you go to caucus. That didn’t happen.

“He did raise them with my chief-of-staff at the end of last year. He told me about that and he also told me the resolution that was reached between them and I’ve seen the messages that demonstrate that. Neither of us heard anything after that until the events that led to this.”

After he published his column in The New Zealand Herald last Thursday, she called him and he did not pick up, she said. She then sent a text to ask about his welfare, rather than relitigating issues.

“I received one message in response, I won’t go into the details on that but it was essentially setting out his perspective on these issues.”

Bullying not widespread problem
She has consistently refused suggestions that bullying is a widespread problem within the party.

One of his allegations was found to have no basis, she said, but he has continued to make them.

“I am equally concerned that staff members have been implicated by the level of detail that’s been shared … we considered whether or not for transparency we should release some of the communications to demonstrate our perspective on what has occurred here but again that runs the risk of exposing staff.”

She said Dr Sharma’s status would be reviewed in December, to allow a chance for a return to caucus if trust with him was able to be restored.

“But in making the decision to suspend, caucus were clear that the team retains the right to revisit the decision at any time if the rules continue to be broken. To be clear, the caucus’ decision was squarely focused on actions over the last few days. What gave rise to those actions also deserves some reflection.”

Ardern said there were grounds for expulsion under the caucus rules, but the team wanted to send a message that while their trust had been lost and they considered the situation very egregious, they were a team that wanted to give second chances.

“If he does that there’s a pathway back, if he doesn’t then he will be expelled.”

She said the exact date in December for revisiting the decision had not been decided upon.

Options at that time could include continued suspension, a return to caucus, or expulsion. At this point, the possibility of sending a letter to the Speaker to request his removal from Parliament under the waka jumping law has not been discussed.

Informal caucus meeting last night
As the meeting started this afternoon, Dr Sharma contacted RNZ claiming an earlier meeting involving some Labour MPs was held last night, without his knowledge.

Ardern said the outcome today was not predetermined at a meeting last night. She said one of the issues of misconduct was that Sharma had been sharing the contents of meetings publicly, which meant people felt they were unable to raise questions or discuss issues.

The reason Sharma was not informed of the meeting last night was “because people did not feel they could have an open conversation with him”.

Sharma claimed he had an image sent to him, a screenshot of the meeting.

“You’d note that probably if someone were deliberately sharing that message it would be more likely a gallery view,” Ardern said.

“I also knew who took that screenshot, it was intended they were trying to capture something else on their phone, the meeting was occurring in the corner at the same time, they accidentally sent it to someone they shouldn’t.

“What they sent was a screenshot of the conversation trying to set a caucus meeting time, it just so happened that they were multitasking … they’re somewhat embarrassed over the situation.”

The meeting last night was not a formal caucus meeting, she said, and she was also clear there would not be a predetermined outcome.

“Natural justice is very important to our team.”

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

Why did criticism of a modest sum spent on a single mini-documentary made two years ago suddenly spring up in the news in two national networks this week — and then disappear?

“I’m just so sick of everything getting taxpayer money for these projects. Why can’t people just pay out of their own pocket?” Newstalk ZB deputy political editor Jason Walls asked on air last Tuesday.

“I just keep seeing these things crop up time and time again, when we have hospitals overwhelmed. Twenty thousand dollars is not tons of money in the grand scheme of things, [but] that sort of stuff keeps adding up,” he added, noting Three’s latest Masterchef series aired and screened without draining the public purse.

More public money than ever is being spent on media content these days — and the spending does deserve scrutiny.

But the single project that triggered his concern this week was not a costly one — or especially newsworthy.

Siouxsie and the Virus is a short online video shot in March 2020 and it has been online for almost two years now, with its sources of public funding noted at the end. It snapshots Dr Siouxsie Wiles’ life in “fly-on-the wall”-style as New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown.

It was made for the online platform Loading Docs which describes itself as “a launchpad for New Zealand documentary shorts.”

Enables short documentaries
It enables local makers to produce short documentaries which are then available to other media outlets. It is backed by the NZ Film Commission, the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air and Māori broadcasting funding agent Te Māngai Pāho.

Walls’ objections were rushed out as a news story online by Newstalk ZB and its sister paper The New Zealand Herald. The stories were shared on social media with the claim “the amount spent has left some gobsmacked.”

“Would you pay $20,000 for a documentary about ‘science superhero’ Dr Siouxsie Wiles? Because you already did,”  the Herald’s story began.

On the air Walls had referred to $20,000 of Film Commission funding but said he wasn’t sure how Siouxsie and the Virus had been funded.

It turned out that sum relates to a different project yet to be made.

Loading Docs producer Julia Parnell told Mediawatch that Loading Docs provided $6000 in production finance and $2000 towards the post-production for Siouxsie and the Virus.

The funding model requires filmmakers to raise other funds themselves via crowdfunding.

Parnell told Mediawatch that Siouxsie and the Virus raised $7685 through the crowdfunding platform “Boosted”.

Boosted by The Herald
Ironically the mini-doco was also boosted by The New Zealand Herald back in 2020.

“It was launched in partnership with The New Zealand Herald on their platform, along with a high-profile story in [Weekend Herald supplement] Canvas. It then went on our platform, TVNZ On Demand, RNZ, PlayStuff and The Spinoff. It has had over 200,000 views and it has been so appreciated by audiences,” Parnell told Mediawatch.

Initially the director, Gwen Isaac, was funded to make a completely different film about a Kiwi MMA fighter in Japan.

“When the covid lockdown happened, we had to pivot and find something else. The director was able to get that access (to Dr Wiles) in that week prior to covid. It was a society-changing moment and we were able to capture it. I’m very proud of that,” Parnell told Mediawatch.

“Loading Docs has a platform-agnostic approach which means that more New Zealanders can connect with our work and the work of our documentary makers,” she said.

On social media, Dr Wiles pointed out on Thursday she made nothing from the mini-doco, and $20,000 would have cost each New Zealanders about half a cent.

She also pointed out NZME — the owner of Newstalk ZB and The Herald  – received $9 million in covid wage subsidy in 2020 that would have taken $2.25 out of the pocket of every Kiwi.

LOL I just found out how much taxpayer money NZME who owns the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB got in the first half of 2020. $8.6 MILLION! If you are a taxpayer, that’s $2.23 you paid. Oh, and their net PROFITS after tax rose by $1 million to $7.8 MILLION. https://t.co/pq6WhvnXyO pic.twitter.com/kOxQk0v5yM

— Dr Siouxsie Wiles (@SiouxsieW) July 21, 2022

Wage subsidies repaid
Some media companies  — including Stuff and The Spinoff – repaid wages subsidies received in that year when business subsequently stabilised.

NZME has not, even after profits and revenue increased in 2021.

NZME CEO Michael Boggs told Mediawatch in April they used the wage subsidy for the intended purpose of retaining jobs and NZME declined the second tranche of wage subsidy when it was on offer.

Dr Wiles’ observations would have been relevant additions to The Herald and ZB online news stories highlighting the “gobsmacking” Film Commission funding decision, but by this time anyone who went looking for that would only find that those stories were not online anymore.

The Herald‘s link yields an error message that says, “Oops, looks like a dead end”.

The stories have been scrubbed from The Herald and ZB social media feeds without explanation.

Thanks @MediawatchNZ for looking into the dangerous hitjob Newstalk ZB and NZ Herald did on me last week. This was never about asking questions about the use of taxpayer funds. I honestly believe it was about stoking outrage, attacking the arts, & undermining & harming me. https://t.co/SdwWwF90z1

— Dr Siouxsie Wiles (@SiouxsieW) July 23, 2022

First funding questioning
Loading Docs’ Parnell said this was the first time the funding of any production had been questioned in the media.

But it’s not the first time ZB’s Walls has criticised public spending on media content.

Last year he labelled a range of arts projects bankrolled with covid recovery funds “a smorgasbord of abject waste” under the headline: Not a single cent more for podcasts, poetry and picture books in the name of ‘covid recovery.’ He wrote:

“It’s easy to take aim at the Creative NZ funding and to poke holes in what the government’s decided to fund through its $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund.”

Last year NZME secured up to $2995,702 from the PIJF to employ 15 reporters “to fill gaps in court reporting” in 11 of its publications — as well as two national reporting roles.

In 2020 — the year Siouxsie and the Virus was made — the PIJF allocated up to $200,280 to NZME for “a kaupapa editor and an audio innovation editor to improve access to news for blind and low vision New Zealanders.”

NZME also received up to $940,188 over two years “to retain reporting roles in its free community newspapers across Rotorua, Napier, Hastings, Whanganui, Manawatū, Taupō, Horowhenua, and Kapiti.”

More funding
An interactive NZME project exploring “how and when land became part of the Pākehā property system in Aotearoa New Zealand” got a further $80,500.

And just this month, the PIJF fund announced $255,000 of taxpayers money for a Herald series called Unraveling Anxiety.

This is based on a series of videos for The Herald’s website showing how people from different cultural backgrounds coped with anxiety disorders during covid-19 lockdowns and after.

It’s the kind of idea you might expect to find on a platform like Loading Docs, but so far The Herald and ZB have not aired any views on whether that is unjustifiably draining money from the public purse at a time of stress in our hospitals.

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

Watch Siouxsie and the Virus on YouTube

The “sorry saga” of former Breakfast celebrated host Kamahl Santamaria’s abrupt departure from Television New Zealand last month has created a political headache for the public broadcaster, says the country’s leading daily newspaper.

The New Zealand Herald said in an editorial in its Sunday edition this was “much more than celebrity tattle”.

Santamaria, 42, a New Zealand journalist who had arrived back in Auckland in April to take on this role after a stellar 16-year career as a news and current affairs anchor at global broadcaster Al Jazeera, abruptly quit TVNZ last month and then went to ground.

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In a profile of the broadcaster on April 27 — the week before Santamaria appeared on his new programme, The Spinoff’s editor-at-large Tony Manhire went beyond the “Mr Serious” image:

“Over the course of those 16 years, the first of which was before the [Al Jazeera English] channel went to air, Santamaria found himself surrounded in the desert city [Doha] by a cluster of other New Zealanders; Anita McNaught, Elizabeth Puranam, Tania Page, Charlotte Bellis and dozens of others behind the scenes who became known as AJE’s ‘Kiwi mafia’.”

The Herald editorial tried to put the controversy in perspective.

“First and foremost, it should always be remembered there are real people who have been affected by what has taken place,” it said, pointing out that Santamaria had been taking over hosting TVNZ’s morning current affairs show after veteran broadcaster John Campbell had left.

“But, after just 31 days on the job, he mysteriously resigned.

“Despite TVNZ saying his disappearance was due to a ‘family emergency’, The Herald spoke with a number of women who claimed to have received questionable messages from him.

“A number of emails sent internally to TVNZ staff about Santamaria’s departure were then leaked to The Herald. One email outlined plans for a review of the state broadcaster’s recruitment processes after the abrupt resignation.”

Middle East angle
According to The Herald, the sequence of events not only called into question TVNZ’s recruitment processes, “but also the response to managing complaints, and the manner in which the state broadcaster responds to questions of public interest”.

The TVNZ controversy was also a headache for Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi at a time when he was trying to “merge RNZ and TVNZ into a non-profit ‘public media entity’ as a multi-platform public service provider capable of fulfilling its cultural and civil remit into the 21st century”.

Meanwhile, said the newspaper, it had been revealed last month that “five Radio New Zealand employees have been accused of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct or sexism in the last five years”.

Three of them had left the broadcaster as a result and the other two people were no longer working for RNZ at the time the allegations were raised with management.

No changes had been made to RNZ’s sexual harassment policy as a result of the complaints, according to information released to The Herald in an Official Information Act application.

“Media organisations, including ours,” noted The Herald, “have struggled to maintain ideal working environments at times. The mix of rolling deadlines, pressures of live news reporting, and vigorous personalities can amount to a brew of tension and manifest sometimes in unacceptable behaviour.

“Other industries will have their own examples and challenges but we all must accept our responsibilities and failings and strive to be better,” the newspaper said.

“But the circumstances at TVNZ give rise to such a raft of concerns, Minister Faafoi needs to insist on full disclosure of what has taken place, and what will be done about it.”

At least one news commentary and current affairs site, The Daily Blog, has offered a different explanation to the Breakfast controversy: “One version of what happened was Santamaria cursing the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and Israel for the assassination of his former Al Jazeera colleague, Shireen Abu Akleh.”

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper today contrasted the “reckless self-expression” of anti-covid mandates protesters and the dangers confronting the people of Ukraine fighting for their survival as an independent nation in the face of a brutal four-day-old invasion by its neighbour Russia.

Critising the rhetoric by protesters against the so-called “draconian” and “authoritarian” covid-19 rules in this country, the New Zealand Herald today mocked the anti-mandates protest in the Parliament grounds in the capital Wellington entering its third week, saying “attacks on people and their freedom are real and dangerous in a country under Russian assault”.

The newspaper said public gatherings carried extra risk in a pandemic. However, while a rally to draw attention to a desperate invasion far away was “at least understandable, the anti-mandate protests [in Wellington and Auckland] seem to be more about reckless self-expression”.

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In an editorial, the paper said “noticing contrasts between two different situations” could provide clarity.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has instantly put claims from a minority of people opposed to covid-19 restrictions around the world in perspective.

“These people have argued that common coronavirus health requirements during the pandemic are attacks on their personal freedom.

“They have talked and written about oppression, coercion and risks over complying with health measures meant to help people survive a frequently deadly and dangerous coronavirus.”

‘Particularly unpersuasive’
Now, said the Herald, these views “sound particularly unpersuasive”.

“As footage and reporting from Ukraine shows, oppression is having armoured vehicles from a neighbouring country roll down your roads.

“Loss of freedom is having to hide in shelters to avoid military strikes from the air or having to walk with your belongings to the border for safety.

“Risk is potentially dying or being injured when your apartment building is hit by a missile.”

What was happening in Ukraine was also what happened in less publicised conflicts around the globe, said The Herald.

“Its harrowing pictures and eyewitness accounts, its timing in the third year of the pandemic, and its unfolding impact, [have] shaken the world.

“Civilians, who if they were elsewhere might be only fighting off a covid infection, are having to handle improvised weapons in Kyiv or join 120,000 others who have already fled to neighbouring countries, according to United Nations estimates.”

Protests against Moscow’s aggression
Protests condemning Moscow’s aggression and expressing support for Ukrainians have taken place in New Zealand and in different countries, including in Russia where almost 3000 people have been arrested.

“In New Zealand, there have been protests against the war at the same time as ongoing demonstrations by people who see vaccination mandates, social distancing, vaccine passports and mask-wearing as an imposition on their rights,” said The Herald.

“There’s been a lot of rhetoric with covid-19 of ‘draconian” and ”authoritarian” rules,” said the newspaper.

“In reality, complying with some restrictions for a period of time, which have involved adjusting goals and behaviours and dealing with economic issues, has meant this country has survived a challenging situation pretty well so far compared with others.

“It has hit harder for some groups in society than others. Yet a lot of people are still finding it fairly easy to cope, with vaccination shots, boosters and masks, even with omicron case numbers soaring to dizzying heights and New Zealand’s death toll rising again.”

“Russian citizens know about authoritarianism. On Friday thousands of Russians bravely took to the streets to denounce their government’s invasion.

“Those citizens in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities knew the risk they were taking and at least 2700 have reportedly been arrested.

Mass displays of dissent not tolerated
“President Vladimir Putin’s government does not tolerate mass displays of dissent. Opponents of the regime have been poisoned and killed. The country’s main opposition leader Alexei Navalny is imprisoned.”

“These rebels on Friday had a cause: objecting to war, the violation of a country’s sovereignty and the deaths, hardship, and displacement being inflicted.”

The newspaper said that anti-war rallies and anti-mandate protests took place in New Zealand on Saturday despite omicron cases hitting 13,000 and deaths from the pandemic reaching 56 — far lower than in most other countries.

“Police said officers outside Parliament were spat on. Protesters have been seen ignoring social distancing and avoiding masks and the Ministry of Health said people attending are coming down with covid.

“Hospitals around the country were reporting visits from people who had been at the Parliament site,” said the newspaper.

• The Herald’s editorial

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper today published an editorial exposing the “unfairness” of global media criticism of Australasian responses to covid-19, showing statistics that demonstrate how well the two countries have done.

While Australia has lost 4243 people to covid-19 out of a population of 26 million, New Zealand has lost just 53 people out of a population of 5 million.

The omicron variant outbreak that has devastated many other countries is only just taking a hold in New Zealand with a record 306 community cases reprted today — 216 of them in Auckland.

• READ MORE: Live RNZ News updates on the protest at Parliament
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“Australia’s announced reopening of its borders to vaccinated tourists and other visa holders from February 21 drew the expected foreign media reaction,” said the New Zealand Herald in an editorial headlined “How hard has NZ really gone on covid-19?”

But the newspaper contrasted the saving of lives in Australasia with the global devastation caused by the covid-19 pandemic worldwide with 403 million cases and 5.79 million deaths.

“The BBC noted that ‘Australia has had some of the world’s strictest border controls throughout the coronavirus pandemic’ with the country ‘even banning its own people from leaving the country last year’.

“Reuters said the move ended ‘two years of misery for the tourism sector’ and AFP summarised it as “the rules have stranded nationals overseas, split families, hammered the country’s multibillion-dollar tourist industry, and prompted often bitter debates about Australia’s status as a modern, open and outward-looking nation’.”

Financial costs, not lives saved
The Herald said that coverage had focused far more on financial costs and Australians stranded overseas than lives saved.

The newspaper cited head of Tourism Australia Phillipa Harrison as saying that Australia had been “a little bit ridiculed” for its border closures and other rules and warning that it could have an impact on its tourism recovery.

“Australia, like New Zealand, has become synonymous with strictness in dealing with the coronavirus. It is a narrative that has taken hold, but is this image fair?” asked the Herald.

Both countries had certainly made the most of their island borders and geographical isolation.

“Australia has a death rate of 163 per million people from covid-19 and New Zealand’s is 11, according to the Worldometer website, The Herald reminded its readers.

“Japan (154), South Korea (134), and Singapore (147) have also done well. Major countries with death rates over 2000 include the US, Brazil, France, the UK, Russia, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Greece.”

Australia’s closures of state borders and Auckland’s lockdown fence had all drawn attention to covid measures in this part of the world, sid the newspaper.

Australasia ‘sticks out’ in pandemic
“It has made Australasia stick out in a pandemic that has been politicised around the world, even though other countries have also used tough requirements.”

The Herald said a time lag between when pandemic events such as variant surged and vaccine rollouts occurred overseas could give the impression other countries had not also been stringent.

“For instance, when New Zealand initially delayed reopening borders, omicron was setting record case numbers overseas and vanquishing delta. France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark are just now starting to ease restrictions but their omicron waves began towards the end of last year.”

On the Oxford Stringency Index, which tracked governments’ coronavirus responses, neither Australia nor New Zealand’s ratings — 55.56 and 62.04 — were out of the ordinary.

“For instance, Canada, Italy, Greece, Germany and France are rated more stringent,” said The Herald.

New Zealand had had vaccination mandates in sectors such as health, education, emergency services, police, and defence.

“In Europe a variety of mandates target specific groups. Germany requires vaccination for the military, in Britain it is compulsory for nursing-home staff. Greece has ordered people aged 60-plus to have it and in Italy people over 50 can be fined if they aren’t vaccinated.

Extensive European border controls
“Austria requires most aged 18 and over to get vaccinated against covid-19.

“European countries have had extensive border and travel requirements. In December, France temporarily banned travellers from Britain and Germany imposed quarantine on them.

“There has also been extensive use of vaccine passports. Ireland had a night-time curfew in December.

“Several European countries have used outdoor mask mandates and required the wearing of specific types of high-quality masks. America’s most populous county of Los Angeles has had a mask mandate for large outdoor events as well as for outdoor spaces at schools and childcare places — on top of indoor mask requirements,” said the newspaper.

“Citizens in other countries have been confronted with huge death counts, infections and long covid. That’s family members and friends lost.

“Kiwi expats have drawn attention to the shortcomings of MIQ, but a new poll shows most voters steady in their views on how the government is performing.

“Once most countries are reconnecting and the pandemic eases, the figures remaining for posterity will show how countries fared in health and overall economic terms.”

Proud of Ardern’s leadership
Among letters to the editor supporting NZ’s MIQ border policies published by the newspaper today, one New Zealander living in Mansfield, Pennsylvania, wrote: “I am proud of the intelligent way [Prime Minister] Jacinda Ardern has dealt with border control during covid-19”.

She added: “Here in the US, the death toll has reached nearly a million. We have been in self-imposed lockdown for nearly two years …

“New Zealanders have never had to live under Trumpism, Hitlerism, PolPotism, or other despotic regimes. Please be worthy of the soldiers, such as the Anzacs, who fought to keep the world safe for democracy. Did they die in vain?

“Please give Jacinda Ardern the respect she deserves.”

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper has praised the “gift of inspiration” over global cooperation in launching the James Webb space telescope at the Christmas weekend, but has decried the failure of the international community to seriously tackle the growing covid-19 public health crisis cooperatively.

The New Zealand Herald declared today in an editorial that the timing, cooperation, and development work involved launching the successor to the Hubble telescope “is in marked contrast with the still muddled, individual country-based approach to the pandemic”.

The launch also could not help but “signify the yawning gap between what people are capable of and what they commonly settle for”, the newspaper wrote.

• READ MORE: James Webb Space Telescope, world’s largest, lifts off into orbit

The launch of the James Webb telescope was a collaboration between the space agencies of the United States, Europe and Canada with people from 29 countries having worked on the project, reports AP.

“It blasted away from French Guiana on a European Ariane rocket. As with previous space missions, it involves vision, ambition and precise calculations that have to work perfectly to pull it all off,” the Herald said.

“The telescope has a 1.5 million km journey ahead, far beyond the moon, with a task of eventually gazing on light from the first stars and galaxies.

“It all hinges on the telescope’s mirror and sunshield unfolding on cue over nearly two weeks, having been tucked away to fit into the rocket’s nose cone.

“If that goes right, the telescope will be able to look back in time a mind-boggling 13.5 billion years.”

Fascinating year for science
The US$10 billion telescope project had capped a “fascinating year for space science” after the “incredibly precise landing of a rover and a helicopter drone on Mars, which resulted in the first powered flight on another planet”, said the Herald.

Noting Nasa’s science mission chief Thomas Zurbuchen’s comment welcoming the launch — “what an amazing Christmas present” — the newspaper contrasted the collaborative achievement with the “muddled, individual country-based approach” over covid-19.

“While the rocket was launching humanity’s imaginative time machine, hundreds of thousands of people on Earth were getting a ‘gift’ of covid at Christmas. Both Britain and France hit more than 100,000 cases on Saturday,” the Herald said.

“The cost of the space project is tiny compared to the US$725 billion the US spent on defence in the 2020 financial year — more than the next 11 countries combined. Next year’s bill is US$770 billion.

“It is closer to the US$50 billion amount the OECD has estimated it would cost to vaccinate the world’s population against the coronavirus and protect the global economy.

“Far more money than that — US$12 trillion — was spent by countries in financial support between March and November 2020.

Time to hatch global covid plan
“Although that support was urgently needed, surely there was also time to hatch a US$50 billion global plan for a coronavirus endgame before the vaccines came on stream in late 2020.

“Now, a year later, each country is dealing with the omicron wave its own way, and progress in distributing vaccines to poorer regions is slow. People feel frustrated the vaccines haven’t guaranteed a return to life as we knew it.

“The vaccines themselves are an amazing scientific achievement: developed quickly and still doing their job of protecting the vast majority of vaccinated people against severe covid disease.

“A study by the World Health Organisation and a European Union agency estimated in November that the vaccines had saved nearly half a million lives in a region of 33 countries.

“But it is hard for people to really absorb achievements that involve prevention: When they work as hoped, at least some people believe it’s proof the threat was overblown.”

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff has appealed to the 1.7 million people in the city to “roll up your sleeves” and get vaccinated immediately to help New Zealand cope better with the covid-19 pandemic.

Writing in The New Zealand Herald today to back the newspaper’s 90% Project for maximum vaccination, Goff said the the city should be aiming for a “summer of freedom for Tāmaki Makaurau”.

“It’s a much better scenario than staying at home in our bubbles, locked down at level 4, and at risk of a disease that may put you or your family in hospital,” he said.

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“The first option is one we all crave. To help achieve it, we need to get as many Aucklanders vaccinated as possible, as soon as possible.

“Ninety percent of the eligible population is a good target, which is why I support The New Zealand Herald’s 90% Project. If we can get higher than 90 per cent, that’s even better.

Goff said that yesterday the city had hit the target of 80 percent of Aucklanders having had at least one dose, with more than half of that number becoming fully vaccinated.

“More than 20,000 people a day have been getting immunised, but more than 200,000 still need to book or get their first vaccination,” he said.

Stringent measures
“New Zealand did the right thing in putting in place stringent measures to stop the incursion of covid-19 into our community. We did better than almost any other country.

“However, new variants of covid, currently delta, make it really hard to stop community transmission and we can’t continue indefinitely closing down our economy to stop its spread. The human and financial costs are huge. And sooner or later we will have to open up again to the world.”

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at today’s covid media briefing that tools used in the future to fight covid-19 did not need to be as disruptive as the ones used now — such as lockdowns — as long as the country achieved a high vaccination rate.

Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield were speaking after the release of new modelling which suggests lockdowns may still be needed if the country achieved an 80 percent vaccination rate.

Ardern said vaccine certificates, better ventilation, some mask use, and the possibility of changing border restrictions so a full 14-day quarantine was not required could be used in the future.

But for now vaccination was the main tool.

“It all comes down to vaccination.”

Lockdowns needed in first phase
She said lockdowns were needed in the first phase of the pandemic because there were no vaccines and everyone had to be isolated.

“With vaccines, we can turn that model on its head,” she said, so positive cases could be isolated as others have the protection of vaccines.

“Children can’t be vaccinated. It will reach them. And we’ve seen it reach them in this outbreak,” she said.

The plan was never zero cases, but “zero tolerance” for covid, she said.

The Health Ministry announced 15 new community cases of covid-19 today, a drop of seven on yesterday.

Ardern said the government’s plan for the future, included aggressively isolating cases, catching cases at the border, and ensuring the health system was not overwhelmed.

“It’s not the Aotearoa way to leave anyone behind,” she said.

“There remains one simple message – Get vaccinated.”

Today was the second day that Auckland was at alert level 3 after five weeks in lockdown.

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

New Zealand’s largest and most influential newspaper has warned the country against “lockdown fatigue” as the major city Auckland entered its fifth week of isolation, saying “unrest is showing”.

Noting the rise in public “anger and recrimination” in response to New Zealand’s outbreak of the deadly delta variant — with a drop to 15 new cases yesterday — The New Zealand Herald warned in an editorial today against the country slipping into a record matching the worst loss of life during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The paper called on New Zealanders to “stay true to the course” of elimination.

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“Past generations proved their worth as New Zealanders in wars and, yes, epidemics. They were less informed or resourced than we are today,” said the Herald.

“A lethal influenza pandemic that coursed through New Zealand between October and December in 1918 killed about 9000 people in two months. No other event has claimed so many New Zealand lives in such a short time.

“Do we want to be the generation that beats this tragic record?”

The newspaper said Auckland had now gone further in a lockdown than previous periods under the highest covid alert level 4 and unrest was showing.

‘Anxiety of the unexpected’
“That is to be expected. Last year’s rāhui [lockdown] was a bother and held the added anxiety of the unexpected,” said the Herald.

“This time around, however, there’s no novelty to Zoom meetings or breadmaking. There are few teddy bears in windows or scrawled chalk messages of support on footpaths.

“This time, Auckland knows what to expect; more of what little happened yesterday and the day before.”

Further cracks were showing too in the solidarity that “this team of New Zealanders once boasted of”, said the paper.

“Anger and recrimination leaped into the throats of many after a couple were charged with exploiting their essential services accreditation to skip through the cordons for a break in Wānaka [a high profile South Island resort].

“Even the brisk walk around the neighbourhood to reset the senses and ‘stretch’ the legs has become a strain on tolerance as people brush past each other on bush tracks, oblivious to the 2m physical distancing rules.

“Whether or not people are wearing masks has become a constant commentary for many on their trudge around the block,” said the Herald.

‘Kindness pushed back’
“Kindness is being pushed to the back teeth by impatience and a lack of forbearance.

“But we are not this. We need to remember we are still the same people who stared this virus down last year. Sure, the delta variant is more infectious, but the same measures are still the best means to break the chain of transmission.

“We cannot afford to relinquish the grip on the elimination effort yet.”

New Zealand’s rates of vaccination were still too low to protect loved and valuable members of New Zealand’s diverse communities.

Only 34 percent of New Zealanders are fully vaccinated with two doses in spite of a recent surge in the vaccination rollout. This is slightly more than the 33 percent unvaccinated

The Herald called on New Zealanders to stick with the government policy and observe the rules.

“Once enough people are inoculated to slow down rampant spread, then restrictions can ease,” it said.

“Let’s get on with it.”

New Zealand’s leading daily newspaper has warned the country against complacency over the covid-19 pandemic and to look to Fiji for an example of how things can easily go wrong.

In an editorial today, The New Zealand Herald has also criticised the government over its communication strategy and failure to counter a disinformation campaign threatening the national vaccination rollout.

“Complacency is our greatest enemy, particularly while the director-general of health continues to report no community transmissions in his regular briefings and with just 5 percent of the population having received a second vaccine shot,” said the Herald.

• READ MORE: Editorial: Controlling the message in times of covid 19 coronavirus
• Fiji’s government goes quiet as covid crisis spirals out of control
• Every claim by Voices of Freedom debunked by scientists

“Fiji has discovered geographical isolation is not enough to avoid the increased transmissible variants of covid. Vigilance and adherence to official advice remains crucial as the best mechanism we have to the defeating this damned thing.

“Raising our prevention and contact tracing game after it has arrived is too late.”

From early on in the covid-19 pandemic, it was obvious that consistent communication was essential for New Zealanders to maintain compliance with key measures to limit transmission of the virus, said the newspaper.

“Now we know ‘influencers’ were deployed in Auckland’s March [2020] lockdown to push messages into social media as the government fretted about online posts undermining the pandemic response,” the Herald said.

Jeopardising NZ’s response
“It appears it was thought overly harsh critics condemning infected people for not self-isolating could truly jeopardise the country’s response. A newly released Cabinet paper said ‘social licence’ was crucial to a strong covid-19 response.

“Such hostility could undermine the overall pandemic response, wrote covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. ‘Public reaction to particular individuals who have not used the covid-19 Tracer app or otherwise failed to follow good practices suggests a possible erosion of this.’

“So, the Government sought help from social media figures who were deemed to have sway in Māori, Pacific, Indian and youth communities. Hosts from radio stations Tarana, Flava, The Edge and Hauraki subsequently posted reassuring photos and messages, using the campaign’s hashtag #stayinforit.

“Contrast this social media influencing tactic with the lack of action around countering misinformation on the vaccine.

“Most will have by now seen or heard of the leaflets put in mailboxes in a concerted campaign to raise unfounded fears about the vaccine and undermine the protection offered by mass immunity.

“The flyer was produced and distributed by a group called Voices for Freedom. Co-founder Claire Deeks ran as a candidate for Advance New Zealand at the last election, and was third on the party list.

“The group claimed to be putting out two million flyers to coincide with the government’s vaccine campaign.”

Information investigation
The Herald noted how investigative journalist David Fisher had sought any communications about what government agencies might do to address the false claims being disseminated about the vaccine and was told “the information does not exist”.

“For all its efforts and expense, Voices for Freedom failed to register as a threat.”

The government itself had not always been clear in all its communications, with some “casual contacts” of positive cases being upgraded to “casual plus” without announcement or explanation in March this year, the newspaper said.

“The Prime Minister was also accused of neglecting her own advice to ‘be kind’ when she publicly criticised a covid-infected person who continued to work at a KFC store.

“Ultimately, the government is well aware the greatest risk is the public passively drifting off the necessary precautions rather than active resistance.”

• Read the full New Zealand Herald editorial

Auckland University of Technology director of diversity Professor Edwina Pio has made a presentation on diversity and the media to New Zealand Herald staff at their NZME headquarters in Auckland.

Dr Pio spoke about how New Zealand as a country based on “heritage, shape-shifting and transformative” possibilities.

She urged New Zealand’s largest media organisation to use its communication power wisely as it created powerful narratives for readers, asking the audience to reflect on how Aotearoa New Zealand was reported.

She emphasised that for the media, every encounter mattered, and that stories must reflect the vast range of voices in the country.

“Top editors matter in many ways. However, research has indicated that non-white top editors in countries like Germany and the UK were zero percent, despite large ethnic populations in these countries,” she said.

“Additionally, many newsroom boards had low or no diversity.”

Her recommendations included the need for systemic diversity beyond policy lurches and the importance of being “compassionate disruptors” to change opportunity structures and move through the power of persuasion and debate.

AUT News items are republished by the Pacific Media Centre with permission.

A leading New Zealand newspaper has branded the knife-edge US presidential election as a “nightmare” scenario in response to fears of civil disorder and a tarnished global image.

“The very face of the American consumerism was forced to mask up,” said The New Zealand Herald today as the nation “hunkered down and waited for the new President to be elected”.

“Crews arrived on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, armed with sheets of plywood to board up each of the 70 boutiques and properties lining the high-end retain strip.”

• READ MORE: Al Jazeera live updates – Biden wins more votes than any US candidate in history
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A similar scene was playing out across the US on anticipation of strife, as former Vice-President Joe Biden held a narrow lead as the final result deopended on six crucial battleground states.

“At the time this edition went to press, it was too close to call with incumbent Donald Trump defying predictions to put in a strong showing,” the newspaper editorial said.

“US retailers hard hit by the covid-19 pandemic have already been hammered by public disorder peaking after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in police custody in Minneapolis which fuelled protests, some violent, across the country.

“US businesses have suffered property damage and theft worth an estimated US$1 billion in insured losses this year, according to conservative estimates from the Insurance Information Institute, making this year’s protests “the costliest civil disorder in US history”.

Display guns and ammunition removed
“A week before the election, Walmart removed all guns and amunition from display, fearing that items would be targeted by frustrated supporters of the losing candidate.”

The Herald said the election was largely a referendum on Trump’s “handling of the virus”. However, while Trump had insisted the nation was “rounding the turn”on the virus, Dr Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, had this week joined “a chorus of Trump administration scientists sounding the alarm about the current spike in infections”.

President Trump has overseen the pandemic in the US “reaching world record numbers – 9.42 million cases and still climbing”.

Outgoing US Ambassador to New Zealand Scott Brown said that no matter who won the US election, it would have no impact on Washington’s relationship with Wellington.

If you just woke up, here’s a recap of the US #Election2020 results so far https://t.co/UOESbTBEZh

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) November 4, 2020

The Herald reported that Brown had said at the US Embassy’s election day party, his country had an “amazing” democracy.

“It may not be pretty, but it’s definitely vibrant,” Brown said.

Herald political columnist Audrey Young called on reelected Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to “take charge” of New Zealand’s relationship following former Foreign Minister Winston Peters who had managed this role in the last term.

On Al Jazeera’s Inside Story programme last night, presenter Imran Khan asked could the US global reputation be repaired?

The tight race for the US presidency was matched by falling global trust in American leadership.

Americans and much of the world were waiting nervously to see whether Biden would be the next US president or Donald Trump extend his stay at the White House.

The US president is often regarded as the most powerful person in the world.

Changes in American foreign policy could benefit or hurt millions of people.

Trump has upended diplomacy in the past four years while Biden has promised to restore some of those ties.

• Watch the Inside Story programme

The New Zealand Herald recently published a column which criticises its own record on race. Teuila Fuatai explains why she felt she had to call out the paper that commissioned her.​

In the column, freelance journalist Teuila Fuatai detailed her concerns about the Herald’s record on race and her efforts to raise those with her editors.

It wasn’t what she was originally commissioned to write.

READ MORE: The Racism Debate: ‘Think about the bigger picture’ – Plea for deeper look at NZ’s race relations – Michael Neilson
LISTEN: Hayden Donnell’s Mediawatch interview with Teuila Fuatai

Her editors had asked for an article about racism in New Zealand more generally, covering systemic issues in institutions like Oranga Tamariki, the police, and the justice system.

Fuatai says she started out trying to follow that brief before a conversation with the New Zealand organisers of Black Lives Matter left her feeling she couldn’t follow through on that brief without addressing the Herald’s coverage first.

“I suppose it was just a week after the first protest march in New Zealand and I thought they’d be a great group to speak to as an anti-racism group,” she says.

“It changed when they basically said they didn’t want to talk to me because the Herald and its coverage was racist and upheld structures of white supremacy.”

Criticism hard to bear
The criticism was hard to hear, but Fuatai agreed with the organisers.

The Herald has been criticised over its coverage of race in the past, notably when it published a 2012 column by Paul Holmes calling Waitangi Day a “complete waste” and in 2014 when it printed a white fist on its masthead along with a promise its Waitangi coverage would be “protest-free”.

More recently journalist Madeleine Chapman highlighted the lack of diversity in the paper’s editorial department.

However, the Herald has responded to the Black Lives Matter protests with examinations of racism and colonial legacies in New Zealand – among them, the piece Teuila Fautai was asked to write.

In late June for example, Herald Māori affairs reporter Michael Neilson looked at “a local dispute about trees, which for many is about much more than just trees” under the headline: How Ōwairaka/Mt Albert tree protest became a flashpoint for racism, colonisation debate.

Nielsen has also written in depth about the “statues issue” under the explicit heading “George Floyd protests and racism”.

Fuatai is now a freelancer, but has been on staff at the Herald, and she says many of the paper’s issues with race are structural and systemic.

Newsroom lack of diversity
“I do think that there is a lack of diversity in their newsroom and I do think that we’ve seen, publicly, problematic coverage pointed out – both recent and historic,” she says.

“From my personal perspective I think that we operate in inherently racist structures. So for the Herald to not be like that – it would be an outlier.”

Fuatai went back to her editors offering to write an assessment of the Herald’s coverage of race.

She cited the example of National Geographic which carried out an audit of its history of racist reporting in the leadup to Martin Luther King day in 2018.

That sort of harsh self-reflection is taking place in an increasing number of news organisations around the world, as journalists are called on to re-examine their treatment of race in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the US, The New York Times underwent a staff revolt after publishing a column by the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton which called for the government to send in the military against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Dozens of journalists said the column put the paper’s Black staff in danger, eventually prompting the Times’ Opinion section editor James Bennet to tender his resignation.

Editors forced to resign
The Times wasn’t alone. A top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer resigned after printing the headline “Buildings Matter Too” during the Black Lives Matter protests.

Editors at other outlets including Variety, Bon Appétit magazine and the fashion and culture website Refinery29 stepped down under employee pressure.

Some newsrooms have moved proactively to improve their coverage. In a tacit acknowledgement of its own failure to cover the issue adequately, The Washington Post has set up a dedicated unit covering race in the US.

Similar discussions are starting to take place here in New Zealand. Under its new owner Sinead Boucher, Stuff is looking to set up a section devoted to covering Te Ao Māori, the Māori world.

Fuatai says editors need to understand the value in promoting people of colour to positions of influence, giving platforms to diverse voices, and catering content to diverse audiences.

“Understand that in 10 years time, your audience and your readership or your viewers – you want to be right there with them in understanding the issues and the conversations that they’re having. Part of that is looking at the makeup of your newsroom. To do that you have to understand the value in actually diversifying,” she told Mediawatch

Fuatai’s first conversation with a Herald editor ended with her being told to stick to her original story brief.

Lengthy editing process
The column published on Monday was the result of a lengthy editing process.

She is pleased with the final result, and with the fact that the paper was willing to confront its record in public.

That sort of self-examination needs to keep happening, not just at the Herald, but in newsrooms across the country, she says.

“You have to work hard to be anti-racist. You have to work against the status quo. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to stand up and say ‘let’s look at ourselves’.”

Challenging racism often means challenging ourselves and those immediately around us. It is difficult and risky, especially in the workplace. A piece about doing it at the NZ Herald – one of the toughest ones I’ve tackled.https://t.co/YtSYmYxBEB

— Teuila Fuatai (@teuilafuatai) June 28, 2020

Herald: ‘We hope to be agents of change’
New Zealand Herald editor Murray Kirkness responded to Teulia Fuatai’s column on Monday with a statement of his own under the headline “We hope to be agents for change”.

“Being accused of racism is a difficult pill to swallow,” he wrote.

“But it would be reckless to dismiss it and say, ‘not on our watch’. We accept the criticism and accept we must do better.”

“We cannot agree with Black Lives Matter’s refusal to engage with Teuila Fuatai. For what hope is there without debate? What future without striving for a shared understanding?

But we can understand their insistence that it is not that group’s responsibility to educate the Herald. No victim should carry that burden,” he wrote.

Kirkness said the Herald’s publisher NZME – which also owns half the country’s radio stations – is committed to accountability and monitors diversity of voice. It formed a diversity and inclusion committee in 2016 overseeing all the company’s media outlets, he said.

“We hope we can be agents for change across society — a role the Herald has fulfilled for more than 150 years,” he wrote.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

New Zealand’s coronavirus reality check last week is a “timely wake-up call” crucial to moving towards a transtasman travel bubble, says The New Zealand Herald.

“There cannot be any complacency or missteps once our border controls are eased. The risks need be managed as well as possible,” said the country’s largest and most influential newspaper in an editorial today.

“There is time to ensure entry processes are running smoothly before the next big step.”

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – US coronavirus deaths near 120,000

The Herald gave its verdict in the wake of a series of shock border lapses in a week that catapulted the country from virtually a 28-day covid-free status to nine active cases – four in the last two days. All are directly travel-related cases.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced at her news briefing today that the government was extending a ban on cruise ships and updating its health order to make clear that travellers may be required to take multiple tests.

This followed weekend reports that Auckland’s covid-19 isolation facilities had reached capacity, with 4272 New Zealanders in managed isolation and almost 900 more expected to arrive in the country in the next two days.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said the first case today was a teenage girl who arrived in New Zealand on June 13 and was travelling with her family, who have tested negative so far, reports RNZ News.

Runny nose, or no symptoms
They were staying at the Novotel Auckland Airport hotel.

Dr Bloomfield said the teenager’s only symptom was a runny nose. The second case was a man in his 30s who had arrived from India on June 15.

He was staying at the Grand Millennium in Auckland and had no symptoms.

“Fortunately,” said The Herald today, “in terms of new coronavirus infections, we have so far avoided much damage after the case of two sisters from Britain [last week] revealed that the isolation and testing systems had not been working properly…

“It is not as though other countries which have largely subdued covid-19 have avoided hiccups either.

“China has battled a spike in Beijing. South Korea had to hose down a virus flare-up centred around nightclubs.

“Germany has hundreds of new cases linked to abattoirs.

“Australia’s outbreak is at a low level, but it is still experiencing new infections and has more than 400 active cases.

Trump’s political rally
“As we held crowded Super Rugby Aotearoa matches for a second weekend, the United States debated the wisdom of President Donald Trump holding an indoor political rally in Oklahoma yesterday, which is experiencing a rise in coronavirus cases.

“On Saturday, the US gained 32,000 new cases – the most in a day since May 1. The states of most concern are Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

What the saga of the two travellers from Britain and other such stories had told New Zealand, The Herald said, was that the public’s trust was easily shaken.

“Quick action to arrest a slide is then essential. The Prime Minister appears to understand that,” the newspaper added.

“Basic and obvious competence is the secret sauce any government and ministry need to maintain trust.”

NZME is insisting a deal for it to purchase media rival Stuff is still on the cards, despite Stuff’s owner saying it has wrapped up talks with no deal.

Stuff and NZME are seeking leave to appeal the High Court decision blocking their merger.

NZME said today it was asking the government to allow it to buy Stuff for a nominal $1.

READ MORE: NZME seeks urgent approval … to help ‘save jobs, newspapers’

Stuff’s owner, Australia’s Nine Entertainment, responded that it had terminated talks with NZME over a purchase plan last week and no deal was in place.

In the latest twist, NZME has since told the NZX that it believed it was still in a “binding exclusive negotiation period with Nine and does not accept that exclusivity has been validly terminated.”

Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher told staff this morning the announcement by NZME came as a surprise.

“There is no deal between NZME and Nine.

Clear no transaction message
“We are really not sure why NZME took this step, given the clear message from our owners that there would be no transaction.”

She said she would get more information and share it during the day.

In its initial announcement this morning, NZME said it was seeking Commerce Commission approval and special legislation from the government by the end of the month to purchase Stuff.

The commission has previously declined clearance for a merger of the two companies, saying it would substantially lessen competition, both for advertisers and readers. That decision was subsequently upheld by the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

NZME said in this morning’s market announcement the acquisition of Stuff would lower the costs of producing news, and ensure a committed local news media outlet into the future.

NZME believed the New Zealand media sector was too small for the current number of quality participants, the statement said.

“Consolidation is urgent in the face of dramatically declining advertising revenue and current general economic conditions.

NZME thinks it is ‘best owner’
“NZME continues to believe that it is the best owner for Stuff as it is best placed to preserve mastheads, newsrooms and jobs. NZME considers that in the current New Zealand media landscape, NZME’s acquisition of Stuff will not substantially lessen competition in any market.”

Last month NZME, which owns The New Zealand Herald, regional papers and radio stations including Newstalk ZB, announced 200 jobs would go due to sliding advertising revenue amid the covid-19 downturn. It also asked the remaining staff to take a 15 percent pay cut for the next three months.

Stuff also asked its employees to take a pay cut. Stuff staff earning more than $50,000 were asked to take a 15 percent reduction, the executive team 25 percent, and chief executive Sinead Boucher cut her salary by 40 percent.

Stuff was bought by Australian-listed media group Nine Entertainment in late 2018 but has been on the sale block for months.

In November last year NZME confirmed it had been in talks with Nine about a possible purchase and had put a proposal to the government regarding a possible transaction including a “ringfence” agreement for Stuff’s editorial operations.

Between them, NZME and Stuff own most of New Zealand’s newspapers.

• Other NZME and Stuff merger reports

After something of a love/hate relationship with The New Zealand Herald since I joined as a cadet reporter in 1957, I have decided to show some love by taking up this week a one-year $199 subscription to the paper’s new premium digital content offer.

This is in the context of a keen newshound who had made the Herald site for more than 15 years his alternative to a paid sub, with just the occasional purchase of a Saturday print Herald.

Good sign in terms of efficiency: the nzherald.co.nz website immediately (within seconds) enabled me to read the full David Fisher piece on the French beacon built on the Chathams which I had already open on my laptop.

READ MORE: NZ Herald launches premium paywall – how will it impact on other media?

When minutes later I spotted David’s piece spruiked on his FB page I thought I might have found a workaround for those unprepared to pay, but the same conditions (roughly only first 100 words free) still applied.

Earlier I confirmed that the new syndication agreements Granny has signed with the New York Times, Financial Times, The Times (UK) and the Harvard Business Review are not (as I suspected) in the too-good-to-be-true category of offering full digital access to their websites.

The Herald will just select some content to publish as it has done for years with existing agreements with the Daily Telegraph (UK), Washington Post and South China Morning Post (SCMP). Fair enough.

Put in context
Just to put the Herald’s Premium payment in context, you can get

Much of the Financial Times digitally for $NZ6.45 p.w. (or $11.25 for the lot),

Full Tele for GBP2 after a month free

The Harvard Business Review $NZ23 per month

The Washington Post US$45 per year (some free articles) but a separate payment for the archive

NY Times a few free articles, then US$1 p.w. (special offer, normally $3).

For Anglophiles the availability of 200 years of news archives of The Times makes its GBP5 per month (after a month free trial) look pretty inviting.

And the SCMP (now apparently owned by the Alibaba online sales empire) seems to offer full free access, including 20 years of archives.

I’ll be interested to see if the Herald experience persuades me to renew in a year’s time. As renewals roll over automatically I’ll need to be vigilant to cancel in good time.

Adrian Blackburn is lifelong journalist and writer. Staff writer on many publications, including The NZ Herald, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC World Service, Beaverbrook Newspapers, NZ Listener and NZ Woman’s Weekly. Author of The Shoestring Pirates (Hodder and Stoughton, 1974) a history of pirate Radio Hauraki. This brief commentary was originally a Facebook posting on Kiwi Journalists Association and is republished here with permission.

• Auckland Library’s newspaper digital collections

Crusading newspaperman Pat Booth was driven by the belief that the world needs more giraffes – people prepared to stick their necks out.

“That’s what he said in a speech to the Northern Club and I love that,” his step-daughter Victoria Carter told the Herald. “We need to create a Giraffe Club because the world needs more giraffes, more people who stick their necks out.”

Booth, one of the country’s most respected investigative reporters, died on Wednesday, aged 88, at Kumeu Village Rest Home in West Auckland.

Booth spent nearly 40 years at the now defunct Auckland Star, becoming editor, and is most renowned for his tireless work on the Arthur Allan Thomas miscarriage of justice case and the Mr Asia Crime syndicate.

The stories were scandalous and horrifying and were reported by Booth and a team of his reporters in a depth rarely achieved.

As part of the campaign for a pardon for Thomas, Booth wrote a book, Trial by Ambush.

This was followed by another campaigning book, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, by British investigative author David Yallop.

Royal pardon
Booth’s eight-year crusade resulted in Thomas, wrongly jailed for double murder, receiving a royal pardon.

A Royal Commission report stated that detectives had used ammunition and a rifle taken from Thomas’ farm to fabricate false evidence against him.

Booth also helped reveal an international drug ring during the notorious Mr Asia investigations. He wrote a book on the international drug smuggling ring, The Mr Asia File: The Life and Death of Marty Johnstone.

Journalism lecturer James Hollings described Booth as this country’s greatest journalist, someone driven by the desire to right injustice, in his book, A Moral Truth: 150 years of investigative journalism in New Zealand.

“He had such a range of abilities,” Hollings told the Herald. “He was a great writer and had a great gift with people, for the underdog. He was an absolutely tenacious and tireless researcher and investigator and he could inspire other people.

“He lived and breathed journalism till his last and had a passionate belief in why it is important.”

Hollings, who is head of the journalism school at Massey University, Wellington, said Booth’s work still inspired. “I tell my undergraduate students in the investigative journalism course about Pat Booth and what he did on the Arthur Allan Thomas case and they are riveted. It is a story which is timeless.”

Right angle
Donna Chisholm, editor-at-large of North & South and a senior staff writer for the Listener, described Booth’s editing style as “muscular”. He stamped himself on it. But you knew that if there was a story there Pat would get the right angle and treat it how it should be treated.”

As a young court reporter on the Star in the 1970s, Chisholm returned to the office with a story about a 17-year-old Niuean boy who had been stopped by police for no reason other than his ethnicity and charged with stealing two plastic combs from the plastics company he worked for.

“I told Pat and he cleared out the front page. It created a huge scandal. The following day an Auckland University lecturer walked into the police station and gave himself up for stealing a university pen.” The police declined to charge the lecturer and eventually withdrew the charges against the boy.

It transpired that the combs were discarded rejects.

“Pat was very quick at seeing the nub of a story and wringing it out for all it was worth. He campaigned on this story. It was front page lead for days and days. He was a journalist’s journalist.”

‘Off Pat’
Booth began his career as a reporter at the Hawera Star and kept his hand in, writing “Off Pat”, a column for the Eastern Courier, until hanging up his pen at the age of 85.

He served on the Howick Community Board in the former Manukau City Council on the Northland District Council and Waitemata District Health Board.

He wrote more than a dozen books, including a biography of Sir Edmund Hillary, Edmund Hillary: The Life of a Legend, his memoirs, Deadline, books on sport, crime, vintage cars and social history.

He is survived by six children from two marriages.

Phil Taylor is a senior journalist with The New Zealand Herald and Weekend Herald. Read more of his articles.