Just got this email from NZ first:
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, “The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm”.
He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy.
New Zealand First has always held the view that the “fourth estate” is essential to any successful functioning democracy.
But it’s not just the existence of the fourth estate that is essential. It is the matter of a fourth estate that is impartial, politically neutral, fair and objective.
These are the qualities and attributes that the public expect of an effective media in any free society – but they are lacking in much of the media landscape today.
The revelation that Newshub is set to close is obviously devastating not only for those who will lose their jobs, but it is also seriously concerning for the robustness of our media scene.
However sad this situation is, it has not come as a surprise to many. The reasons for Newshub’s closure are obviously many and varied, including increased online and streaming options, but the media has been on this downward trajectory for a long time.
One of those reasons is the increased lack of trust in New Zealand’s media, which has seen much of the public actively avoid engaging with them.
But this dire situation they have found themselves in has not arrived overnight.
My concerns with the state of our media are long held and well documented.
Five years ago, I warned that “Our fourth estate is collapsing” … that the industry was in “dire straits” with advertising revenue falling, local newspapers being closed and reporter numbers falling … our reporters are underpaid and overloaded with the current state creating a focus on “breaking news, not thinking news”.
In 2002, I warned that the media were on a precarious footing where they have moved away from expected principles of a fourth estate - “it is as though the views, opinions and musings of those who have never run for public office are somehow able to divine the public’s mood. There is a risk of the mainstream media becoming a sort of informal club, a coterie, a fraternity whose members find that their political agendas coincide.”
The impartiality of media should be the foundation of reporting, but in the main, it has morphed over the past few years to rely on opinion, narrative, agendas and click bait. This is one more significant reason why the majority of mainstream media are no longer trusted by the majority of New Zealanders.
Over the past four years the sign-up of media outlets to receive $55 million of public funding through the Public Interest Journalism Fund has cemented that mistrust from the public for obvious reasons – most of which, it seems, is lost on the very media outlets that received those funds.
It is a plain fact that for media organisations to be eligible for funding they had to sign up to certain criteria and conditions – including forcing certain narratives of the Labour government at the time.
Jacinda Ardern said when addressing the issue of alternative or dissenting views about Covid-19 – “We had to act so we made it a priority to establish a Public Interest Journalism Fund to help our media continue to produce stories that keep New Zealanders informed” i.e. funding media to promote a government narrative – the “single source of truth”.
One of those conditions is based on a purely political view that is not supported by many New Zealanders or many political parties. It states that the media organisation must “actively promote the principles of partnership, participation and active protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”. And have a “commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.
If they didn’t sign up to this condition, they wouldn’t get the money.
How can a politically neutral and independent media organisation give balanced political commentary, analysis and in particular “opinions”, when this is the basis for the funds they receive for their very survival?
This is the sinister incentivised seed that provides the platform for political bias.
It is a preposterous state of self-denial when they cannot see that the contract they signed is a recipe for bias and corruption.
It has created a media environment where certain leftwing political narratives and agendas have seeped into much of what the media presents to the public – where any opposing views are shutdown, cancelled and labelled as “far right” or “fringe”.
It has been quite candidly demonstrated recently when the co-editor of Newsroom Mark Jennings, hosted a programme on publicly funded RNZ, where he admitted that some senior heads of the media have discussed whether to report what I say about media bias - because what I’m saying is something they don’t agree with.
Our mainstream media should be unbiased, independent and non-political. These words from their own mouth shows the exact opposite. It is this lack of self-reflection that has placed them in this current predicament.
This is also evidence of the dripping left wing bias of much of our media and the lengths they are willing to go to push their slanted narrative on the public.
People like Jennings exhibit breathtaking arrogance to not only freely admit what they are doing, but then have the temerity to double down on it and try to justify it by implying it’s “for the good of the people”.
Worse still, it demonstrates that a frightening cancer-like mindset is running deep through much of our media - they think they know what’s best for the people of New Zealand, dictate what we all should or should not know, and then spin their narrative through the lens of their bias. It is a dangerous day in our democracy when those senior editors in the media couldn’t care less about the principles of a true fourth estate.
They then wonder why public trust in our media is at an all-time low.
The irony is not lost – the very same people in the media who fervently deny and criticise accusations of political bias made against them, then proceed to admit they collude and discuss behind closed doors about “sticking together” to silence a politician they disagree with.
Rt Hon Winston Peters
Leader of New Zealand First
To summarise… Man who promotes distrust in media, decries lack of trust in media.
@Dave the state of Winston Peters brainworm more like…,
Winston Peter’s has made a career out of convincing people of things. This bad first draft he’s published doesn’t even know what he’s trying to convince me of!
I don’t even understand what he’s trying to convince me is the right thing to do. It’s like a rant with no proposed solutions.
He complains about bias in public funded media due to strings, but private funds have the same problem.
Is he arguing for public funding of media with no strings? That doesn’t seem likely.
What is the point of this (excessively long) email?
Seemingly so he could take a dig at Te Tīritī.
He started off OK: the media’s descent into opinion and commentary is its own undoing, but then veers into partisn whining about his right wing persecution complex.
Peters has never been a friend to the press, but he can play them like a fiddle.
Is he arguing for public funding of media with no strings? That doesn’t seem likely.
It seems likely to me that he’s arguing for publicly funded media though. He’s from a generation that grew up with way more public service broadcasting than we see today.
But the gist of this is just “I told you so”.
It does come off as a rant with no proposed solutions to be fair, although nobody else is proposing one either.
It was interesting to see how he views things though.
I honestly don’t feel any clearer on his position. Does he support public funding of journalism (without catches)? I don’t know!
Is he blaming the media for the position they find themselves in? Maybe, but it’s hard to tell with all the other blame happening.
It fells like an unedited first draft.
One of those conditions is based on a purely political view that is not supported by many New Zealanders or many political parties. It states that the media organisation must “actively promote the principles of partnership, participation and active protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”. And have a “commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.
Yeah, this is something I have a big problem with. Both this view, which I don’t entirely agree with, and the fact that media were required to sing their tune in order to get funding.
It’s a good example of why we collectively have so little faith in our media, and our government, to be honest.
The other issue is their reporting just doesn’t stand out, I had a look at their website yesterday, and the standard of their reporting was very surface level. I’d much rather go to Radio NZ.
I get that view. The media should be unbiased. However, a media funded by advertising dollars is anything but biased. I don’t know what the answer is here. Perhaps public funding with no strings. But does this mean one entity, one news source? I don’t see that as viable either. People tend to gravitate to news that slants to their own views. But then that’s a problem in itself.
But what I don’t get is how it relates to the rest, other than being a rant.
I am under the impression that funding was never tied to Te Tiriti etc, just that the news corps were asked to factor that in when making reports. It was an ask, or a suggestion, but in no way tied to any level of funding.
They say it’s only an ask, but do they really mean it?
Dunno mate. You’d have to ask jernos.
I’ll be honest tho, I don’t really have a problem with it anyway. I’m fine with giving Maori culture a bit of a boost in the mainstream - no skin off my nose, I still get everything I had before, and if it helps promote the other major part of New Zealand, all the better!
That I’m fine with, although I don’t have any interest in their culture personally.
That line about treaty partnership though, that’s not promoting Maori culture, it’s promoting a certain political view, and that I have a problem with.
I’m curious about your view on treaty partnership and acknowledging Maori as one of the treaty partners. In my view the treaty is not political at all, but a legal document signed between Iwi and the Crown, which has sadly been ignored for much of New Zealand’s history.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/read-the-Treaty/differences-between-the-texts
I’ve just had a read through this, and I can find nothing that would even remotely justify something like Co Governance of our water assets, for example. This is something built by, and paid for by, ratepayers of the local government.
It’s also pretty clear that the treaty gives the crown government over their land.
It is, unfortunately, a somewhat vauge document, and is used in some of the most tenuous arguments I’ve ever heard.
You’ve got to go by the Te Reo version, though. That was the version produced first, and the version signed my most Iwi. The English version was a translation of the Te Reo, signed by a small fraction of the Iwi, and is considered the secondary version.
It is pretty consistently agreed that the Iwi at the time did not think they were giving up rights to givern their land, treasures and people.
Edit:
also the “some of the most dangerous arguments” comment is pretty silly really. The Maori aren’t coming to steal your stuff, they just want a return to the rights they believe they retained when they signed the treaty. They aren’t even giving governing positions on water boards under the old 3 waters, they were advisory boards. It’s really not bad at all.Sorry, misread your comment.
