The TV3 Poll: Journalism or Propaganda?

Predictable “News”: Expecting the mainstream media to acknowledge its own deficiencies as the supposed protector and facilitator of democratic discussion and debate has become unrealistic. It no longer sees its role in such terms. Its responsibility, now, is to impart the truth – as officially defined – to the population, while doing everything within its power to ensure that this official version of reality is not effectively challenged by anyone – up to and including the Leader of the Opposition.

TV3’s PRESENTATION of the poll results delivered to them by Reid Research Ltd tells us a lot. The most important message to draw from the way it handled this “news” is how rapidly propaganda is replacing journalism in the mainstream news media. The data supplied by the pollsters confirms that there has been no major shift in political opinion since the general election of 17 October 2020. Given the decisiveness of the 2020 result, and the want of any developments of sufficient magnitude to cause Labour voters to change their minds, this stand-steady result should have come as no surprise. “Voters still happy with Jacinda” is not, however, a headline likely to stop viewers in their tracks. “Support for Judith Collins plummets”, on the other hand, just might.

Had TV3 been polling regularly since the election, with five or six sets of results accurately tracking the public’s feelings about the Leader of the Opposition; and had the latest results confirmed or confounded a rising or falling trendline; then such a headline might have been justified. But, TV3 has not been polling regularly. Indeed, the last poll it conducted was back in October 2020. Yes, that’s right, in the middle of last year’s election campaign. Naturally, the Leader of the Opposition was then polling around 18 percent. More than six months after losing the election by an historic margin, she is polling around 6 percent as New Zealand’s preferred prime minister. Well, gosh! What a surprise! Clearly, Collins’ days are numbered.

But wait, there’s more. Tova O’Brien, TV3’s political editor, would have known that Collins’ numbers were bound to drop back over a period of six months. The temptation would have been strong, therefore, to attach her predictably “plummeting” numbers to her recent campaign to elicit a coherent government response to the He Puapua Report, and whether or not it is guiding government policy.

Any failure to reproduce the extraordinary 17 percentage point surge in National’s numbers generated by Collins’ predecessor’s, Don Brash’s, in/famous “Orewa Speech”, would allow O’Brien and her colleagues to paint Collins’ He Puapua campaign as a flop. Even better, it would allow them to present the poll data as proof that New Zealanders have grown up and grown out of racial politics.

Just to be sure, however, O’Brien inserted a couple of questions to drive that message home. Were the Government’s policies separatist? she had Reid Research ask. And: Were the Opposition’s criticisms divisive? Entirely unsurprisingly, between 40 percent and half of respondents thought the government wasn’t being separatist, and that the Opposition was being divisive. For good measure, the viewers were further informed that roughly a quarter of National voters thought their party was being divisive and about the same number of Labour voters saw their party as separatist. All of which added up to? Almost nothing at all that was helpful.

Of much more use to TV3’s viewers would have been a carefully worded series of questions aimed at discovering just how much people knew about the He Puapua Report, and seeking their reaction to some of its recommendations. Ah, yes, but that would have cost TV3 an arm and a leg. It would also, almost certainly, have shown that most Kiwis know next-to-nothing about He Puapua, or its recommendations; and that, when appraised of some of the report’s more radical proposals, their responses tend to be less than favourable.

Of course, the responsibility for the public’s general ignorance about He Puapua, and the general direction of travel favoured by its authors, rests squarely with the likes of Ms O’Brien. Realistically-speaking, however, expecting the mainstream media to acknowledge its own deficiencies as the supposed protector and facilitator of democratic discussion and debate would be foolish. The mainstream media no longer sees its role in such terms. Its responsibility, now, is to impart the truth – as officially defined – to the population, while doing everything within its power to ensure that this official version of reality is not effectively challenged by anyone – up to and including the Leader of the Opposition.

This is how it works now. If a potentially damaging report like He Puapua makes it into the public arena, do not under any circumstances attempt to inform the public accurately and dispassionately about its contents. Instead, brand any publicly voiced misgivings about the report’s recommendations as “racist”. Give maximum coverage to accusations and recriminations arising from politicians’ responses to the report, and highlight the alleged divisiveness of their attempts to question or challenge its findings. Then, commission a poll, the entirely predictable results of which can be used to discredit the report’s critics: most particularly the leader of the political party most heavily invested in challenging its officially sanctioned version of reality.

It’s a game played out every day in Moscow and Beijing. The only serious distinction between the players there, and the players here, being that ‘there’ they know that the name of the game is “Propaganda”; while ‘here’ they still think it’s called “Journalism”.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 18 May 2021.

“Something Very, Very Different”: Why Rumours Of Labour’s Internal Poll Numbers Are Giving The Nats The Heebie-Jeebies.

Reasons To Smile: For some in Labour’s Caucus, the experience of taking fire (especially from people they considered friends and allies) has been a painful one. But the fact that they have remained at their posts, and returned fire, has not been lost on Labour’s traditional constituency. There have been no leaks, no private briefings, no wayward press releases. The Labour Caucus has – touch wood – rediscovered the power of collective commitment and responsibility. In the process, it has reclaimed a good measure of much-needed credibility.

 

CAMERON SLATER is appealing directly to members of Labour’s caucus on his Whaleoil blog. Why? Because he’s just got wind of Labour’s internal poll numbers. According to Cameron: “Their internal polls show something very, very different from the publicly available polls. Apparently the gap between Labour & National is about 6 or 7 percent when the public polls have it at 15%.”

 

This can only mean that, in the usually highly accurate UMR poll, Labour is positioned somewhere between 34-36 percent and the National Party somewhere between 40 and 42 percent. At that level of support, it’s ‘Game Over!’ for John Key’s government. No wonder Cameron is doing everything he can to sow doubt in the minds of Andrew Little’s colleagues.

 

Clearly, these results have brought on an attack of the heebie-jeebies in National’s ranks. How else to explain the usually very crafty Mr Slater’s tactical lapse? Calling people’s attention to what he’s heard about Labour’s internal polling – when it’s this good – has given a major boost to the Left’s morale. It’s also boosted the credibility of the other big rumour doing the rounds about UMR’s polling: the one that puts the combined Labour-Green vote at 49 percent.

 

Cameron’s post may also serve to confirm the rumours about National’s own internal polling. According to these, Labour’s much criticised ‘China Play’ almost immediately began shaking erstwhile Labour voters loose from National’s tree in large numbers.

 

That would certainly explain the way National suddenly went dark on the whole issue. As Matthew Hooton explained in his NBR column of 17/7/15: “Wedge politics are straightforward: You find a genuine problem, associate it with an unpopular minority, raise it with inflammatory language, or in a provocative context, and wait for your opponents to defend the minority. Then you stand with the majority against them.” With advisers as skilled in the dark arts of wedge politics as Mark Textor and Lynton Crosby, the Prime Minister was almost certainly warned against expressing too much solidarity with the targets of Labour’s campaign.

 

That job was left to TV3’s Patrick Gower, who has been waging a virtual one-man-war against what he insists are Labour’s “cooked-up” statistics. How disappointed poor Paddy must have been when his week-long assault upon Labour for “playing the race card” was rewarded with a marginal increase in Labour’s support (from 30.4 to 31.1 percent) in the TV3/Reid Research Poll. To rub salt in his wounds, the poll also showed the ‘Opposition Bloc’ of parties (Labour, Greens, NZ First) registering 50.9 percent to the ‘Government Bloc’s’ (National, Act, Maori Party, United Future) 48.2 percent. Completing Mr Gower’s discombobulation must have been Reid Research’s finding that 61 percent of New Zealanders support a ban on foreign investors buying-up residential property.

 

So, let us assume, purely for the sake of argument, that all the rumours are true and all the numbers are correct. It would mean that National has shed 6-7 percentage points directly to Labour. Interestingly, this is exactly what the Roy Morgan Poll of 17 July indicated. It had National down 6.5 points to 43 percent, Labour up 6 points to 32 percent, and the combined Labour-Green vote on 45 percent. Admittedly, the Roy Morgan survey only caught the first day of Labour’s China Play, but, by the same token, it escaped the effects of ‘Paddy’s Play’ entirely.

 

From the beginning of the year, Labour’s clear objective, and Andrew Little’s laser-like focus, has been to re-capture the roughly 10 percent of former Labour voters who have, ever since Helen Clark’s departure, taken to voting National with their Party Vote. Crucial to recovering that lost support are the two “Cs” – Connection and Credibility.

 

Labour's Caucus - Sticking To Their Guns.

 

Labour and Little must first connect with, and then remain at the side of, their electoral base. They must whistle their tune – and keep on whistling it – until their supporters start whistling it back to them. In lifting Labour’s vote towards that magical 40 percent mark, nothing is more important than saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and sticking to your guns.

 

For some in Labour’s Caucus, the experience of taking fire (especially from people they considered friends and allies) has been a painful one. But the fact that they have remained at their posts, and returned fire, has not been lost on Labour’s traditional constituency. There have been no leaks, no private briefings, no wayward press releases. The Labour Caucus has – touch wood – rediscovered the power of collective commitment and responsibility. In the process, it has reclaimed a good measure of much-needed credibility.

 

And if Cameron Slater’s right about the results of the latest UMR poll, they now have their reward.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 27 July 2015.

Going Up!

THERE WILL BE MASSIVE SIGHS OF RELIEF all around New Zealand tonight as Labour Party supporters receive the latest TV3-Reid Research poll results. Worries that the disastrous Fairfax-Ipsos poll results would be confirmed by other polling agencies have proved groundless. In the poll released tonight by TV3 Labour's numbers have improved by more than 2 percentage points to 29.0 percent, placing the largest of the progressive parties just short of the crucial 30 percent mark.

The Greens, on 13 percent, will also be thrilled. Launching their campaign this afternoon on the AUT campus in Auckland with an announcement of a $1 billion dollar programme to eliminate child poverty, the country's third largest party proclaimed an election night target of 15 percent of the Party Vote. With only two percentage points to go at a distance of 34 days from the election, their campaign manager's expressed hopes of exceeding that target may not be misplaced.

The party with most reason to worry tonight is, of course, National. On 47.5 percent, it will be alarmed to be dropping support so far out from election day. Most of the public polls (including TVNZ's Colmar Brunton) over-estimate National's support by 4 to 6 percentage points, so National's strategists will wondering just how much further they are likely to drop before the only poll that matters rolls around.

Deepening the furrows on National's brow will be the fact that the TV3-Reid Research poll was conducted before the release of Nicky Hager's book, Dirty Politics, and that in the One News-Colmar Brunton poll the Internet-Mana Party has doubled its support to 4 percent.

With Labour proclaiming it's invitation to "Vote Positive" and the Greens' asking the electorate to "Love New Zealand" by giving them its Party Vote, National may discover that, rhetorically speaking, "Working for New Zealand" is not enough - especially if the voters mentally alter John Key's strapline to read "Working with Whale Oil".

The full details of the latest TV3-Reid Research Poll are here.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.