The Politics Of Public Service Broadcasting.

Jamming The Public's Voice: If they could have got away with it, John Key and his National Party colleagues would have commercialised (literally) Radio NZ in exactly the same way as the fourth Labour government (in the person of Richard Prebble) made TVNZ dependent on the advertisers’ dollars. Prevented from doing so by the many thousands of middle-class Kiwis who rely upon RNZ for intelligent and informed journalism and programmes of genuine cultural merit, Key’s government did the next best thing – it attempted to starve the publicly-owned radio network to death.

COLIN SCRIMGEOUR was the John Campbell of his day. A fearless radio broadcaster whose influence over the victims of the Great Depression was so great that the United-Reform coalition government jammed his election-eve broadcast. Remember that the next time the National Party presents itself as the champion of media freedom!

Michael Joseph Savage, the prime minister elect, was interviewed by Scrimgeour on the night of Labour’s historic 1935 victory. Scrimgeour later recalled: “When we were off air he told me Jack Lee would be the Minister of Broadcasting, and the next time he unveiled a transmitter he wouldn’t be tearing scrim off it.”

That last comment was a direct reference to the fact that the transmitter used to jam Scrimgeour’s broadcast had been hidden behind a thin wall of scrim. “Scrim”, or “Uncle Scrim” was also the name given to Scrimgeour by his tens-of-thousands of avid listeners. Savage message was crystal clear: Labour had a plan for broadcasting, and the country’s most influential left-wing broadcaster was an integral part of it.

That was how Labour rolled back in the 1930s. Its socialist leaders understood what today’s Labour politicians do not. That the media – be it print, electronic and/or digital – is crucial to the success or failure of any government; and that without the support of at least a very substantial fraction of that media, the government’s ability to implement its policies will be severely compromised.

Savage was well aware that his right-wing opponents could rely upon the unwavering support of the daily newspapers. That is why he was so keen for the new Labour Government to take control of the airwaves and appoint someone he could trust to run them. The Left needed to even-up the odds.

It still does.

Since the more-market reforms of the 1980s and 90s, and especially since the transformation of Television NZ into a state-owned enterprise (i.e. a publicly-owned institution legally obliged to conduct itself in the manner a privately-owned company) there has been a pronounced ideological shift in the news media’s political orientation. Increasingly reliant upon advertising and, therefore, upon ratings, the operational culture of TVNZ has grown less-and-less receptive to the public service broadcasters’ contention that it has a duty to elevate and educate – as well as to entertain.

Efforts to reinstate the public service broadcasting imperatives under Helen Clark’s fifth Labour government were unsuccessful. Not only were they resisted from within TVNZ (many of whose personnel now considered the whole concept of public service broadcasting to be elitist and condescending) but from within the Labour-led government itself.

Almost before she had got her feet under the Minister of Broadcasting’s desk, Marian Hobbs found herself fiscally hog-tied by the Finance Minister, Michael Cullen. It was the latter’s refusal to put up the money necessary to carry through a root-and-branch reform of TVNZ that left Radio NZ as the country’s sole purveyor of genuine public service broadcasting.

If they could have got away with it, John Key and his National Party colleagues would have commercialised (literally) Radio NZ in exactly the same way as the fourth Labour government (in the person of Richard Prebble) made TVNZ dependent on the advertisers’ dollars. Prevented from doing so by the many thousands of middle-class Kiwis who rely upon RNZ for intelligent and informed journalism and programmes of genuine cultural merit, Key’s government did the next best thing – it attempted to starve the publicly-owned radio network to death.

Only in the ninth year of Key’s Government was RNZ’s funding increased. By then, of course, National had stocked the RNZ Board with the sort of people who regarded the Right’s tendentious epithet “Red Radio” as a political critique which RNZ had to be seen to be taking seriously. With this sort of board overseeing RNZ, its employees’ operational options were strictly limited. ‘Do more with less’, and ‘Don’t upset the Board’ (i.e. the National-led government) became RNZ’s watchwords.

Enter Clare Curran. Labour’s broadcasting spokesperson came to her job already convinced that TVNZ was a lost cause and that if public service broadcasting was to be resurrected, then RNZ was the only state-owned institution remotely capable of doing the job. Hence “RNZ-Plus” – Curran’s plan for using public service radio to rebuild public service television.

Except that Curran, like Marian Hobbs before her, not only had to contend with the intense opposition of private broadcasters (many of whom found sympathetic ears on the RNZ Board) but also with the unhelpful interference of her own cabinet colleagues.

Was that the reason she was so keen to meet with RNZ’s Head of Content, Carol Hirschfeld? To learn from a person she clearly believed to be sympathetic to her cause, the precise location and identity of the forces resisting her plans for RNZ? Beleaguered by National’s “stay-behind” resistance-fighters, and foot-tripped by the reservations of her own overly cautious colleagues, did the Minister stumble with naïve enthusiasm (desperation?) beyond the mere pleasantries and personal networking which Hirschfeld had mistakenly assumed to be the purpose of their tête-à-tête over coffee at the Astoria café?

And once appraised of Curran’s hopes and fears, and quite possibly, of her intentions vis-à-vis the reappointment – or not – of RNZ Board Chairperson, Richard Griffin, did Hirschfeld suddenly find herself in possession of information as sensitive and compromising as it was potentially career-destroying? Did the Right and its media allies, informed of Curran’s meeting with Hirschfeld, simply seize an opportunity to kill two potentially very dangerous birds with a single stone?

It remains to be seen whether Curran’s opponents prefer to keep her in place – disgraced and powerless – or, by replacing her with someone considerably less committed to RNZ’s cause, allow the Right’s jamming of public service broadcasting to continue?

And this time, alas, there is no Jack Lee to track down the jammers’ transmitter in the Newmarket railway yards, and no Michael Joseph Savage to even-up the democratic odds by making sure that the voices of those who cannot afford to own shares in radio and television stations continue to be heard.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 29 March 2018.

Full Disclosure

Let Justice Be Done - Though The Heavens Fall: In Chris Mullin's political thriller, A Very British Coup, the left-wing Labour Prime Minister, Harry Perkins, attempts to subvert the Establishment by adopting a policy of full disclosure of official information. Founded on secrecy and the manipulation of information, the Establishment (especially the Tory press) organises Perkin's removal. New Zealand's own Harry Perkins, Michael Joseph Savage, attempted something similar by mandating the live broadcasting of Parliament in 1936.

HARRY PERKINS, the hero of Chris Mullin’s brilliant political thriller, A Very British Coup, rides to office on a promise of open government.

To help him demystify the business of day-to-day politics, the newly-elected left-wing Labour prime minister recruits Fred Thompson, a top-flight investigative reporter. Together, the Prime Minister and his Press Secretary pursue a radical policy of full-disclosure.

Daily press conferences provide the news media with unprecedented access to Harry and his ministers. Cabinet papers are released automatically. The machinations of senior civil servants are no longer shielded from public scrutiny. What the government sees, the voters see too.

Pure fiction, of course, but Mullin (editor of the left-wing British weekly The Tribune when he wrote the novel in 1982) makes a very interesting point. What would happen to the news media’s power to shape public perceptions in an environment where rumour, speculation and tendentious political analysis loses all currency?

In circumstances of full disclosure, where there were no official secrets or confidential reports, the dark arts of the spin-doctor would no longer be required. Journalists who only told half the story would be laughed out of the Press Gallery. Speculation about ministerial motives, when the minister was ready and willing to answer all the journalists’ questions and make available the official advice upon which his or her decisions were based, would be pointless.

In such an open, information-rich, political environment, the analysis of the average political journalist would very soon be no more insightful or compelling than the ordinary citizen’s.

FOR A BRIEF PERIOD in the 1930s, New Zealand had a prime minister whose media instincts were remarkably similar to those of the fictional Harry Perkins.

In the two years he spent as Leader of the Opposition (1933-1935) Michael Joseph Savage gave considerable thought to Labour’s fraught relationship with the New Zealand news media.

With the exception of the union-supported Grey River Argus, the daily press was unrelentingly hostile to Labour’s political ambitions. The new medium of radio, however, offered a means of circumventing this near universal editorial hostility towards the Left.

In the United States, President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” to the American people had proved extraordinarily effective at “cutting out the middle man”. And even in New Zealand, Colin Scrimgeour’s (Uncle Scrim’s) “Friendly Road” broadcasts on 1ZB offered ordinary citizens access to a much less jaundiced view of Labour and its ideas. (So much so that in the run-up to the 1935 general election the conservative National government jammed Uncle Scrim’s Sunday evening broadcast.)

More than ever, Mickey Savage was convinced that radio held the key to curbing the private presses’ power to shape political perceptions.

Prime Minister Savage’s first and most enduring media reform was to arrange for the live broadcasting of Parliament. The daily press had been highly selective in its reporting of parliamentary debates, but now ordinary citizens could tune into Parliament and hear their representatives explaining the new Labour Government’s policies directly to them.

Overnight, the highly partisan filters of conservative journalism became redundant. With the people able to hear for themselves what the Labour government was doing – and why – the daily newspapers had no option but to report the business of the House of Representatives honestly and impartially.

CHRIS MULLIN’S hero goes much further than Mickey Savage ever dared in opening up the business of government to public scrutiny – and pays a heavy personal price for his radical democratisation of official information.

But in having the British Establishment overthrow Harry Perkins’ government, Mullin is being no more than honest. Secrecy is indispensible to the sort of power that British – and New Zealand – politicians are accustomed to exercising. Just as the strict rationing of information is fundamental to the modern news media’s relationship with the wielders of political authority.

If knowledge is power, then the widest possible dissemination of knowledge must be the surest means of setting us free.

First and foremost, Mullin’s “very British coup” is a blow against the truth.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 May 2011.