A Sorry State Of Affairs.

Apology Accepted? “I dropped the ball on Friday, I was too slow to be seen …The communications weren’t fast enough – including mine. I’m sorry for that.”– Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.

HOW OFTEN do politicians apologise? Sincerely apologise? Not offer voters the weasel words: “If my actions have offended anyone, then I apologise.” That’s the apology politicians offer when they don’t believe they’ve done anything to apologise for. The question is: how often does a politician offer voters an apology like this?

I dropped the ball on Friday, I was too slow to be seen …The communications weren’t fast enough – including mine. I’m sorry for that.

The politician speaking those words is Wayne Brown, the Mayor of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. Justifiably criticised for his inadequate initial response to the torrential rainstorms that deluged his city on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 January 2023 (since described by meteorologists as a one-in-200-year weather event) Brown has publicly owned-up to his personal failings and said “I’m sorry.”

Not that Brown will receive the slightest positive acknowledgement from his many media critics for stepping-up and accepting his share of responsibility for the multiple failings of public agencies that occurred on the night of Auckland’s devastating rainstorm. The reasons for this are relatively straightforward: Brown is male. Brown is white. Brown is over the age of 65. Brown is also known to be openly contemptuous of journalists. And, most importantly, Brown defeated Efeso Collins, the mayoral candidate many (most?) Auckland journalists wanted to win.

Before examining Brown’s relationship with the news media in more depth, a word or two is needed concerning the shocking level of ageism to which he has been subjected from the very beginning of his campaign to become Auckland’s mayor.

It is remarkable how adept – and shameless – young and supposedly well-educated New Zealanders have proved to be at discriminating against their fellow citizens on the grounds of age. Journalists who would lavish barrels of ink on any person writing disparagingly about the personal appearance of a female politician, nevertheless feel free to dwell upon the ravages time has wrought upon the features of a “grumpy old man”.

That discrimination on the basis of age is outlawed in New Zealand cuts almost no ice with the sort of journalists who glibly describe Brown as “The Boomer King”. It is almost as if the journalists responsible for such ageist slurs are unable to recognise in themselves the same, deeply-ingrained, discriminatory impulses that they condemn so bitterly when manifested by racists, sexists and homophobes.

One can hardly avoid the conclusion that these ageists’ hatred for older human-beings is every bit as visceral as the racists’ hatred for people of colour, and the misogynists’ hatred of women. That they nevertheless feel free to express their prejudices openly is as worrying as it is shameful. Where is the Human Rights Commission when the “hate speech” it condemns so vigorously – and promptly – when directed at Māori, women, Muslims and the LGBTQI community is aimed, instead, at older New Zealanders?

The oddest thing of all about ageism is that every single person who indulges in it will one day (absent the worst sort of bad luck) grow old. How much racism would there be if every White person slowly became a Black person? How much misogyny, if every man turned gradually into a woman? When old age is humankind’s common destiny, ageism makes no sense at all.

The propensity of old age and guile to defeat youth and idealism, is also a common feature of human experience – especially in the field of politics. That Wayne Brown proved the accuracy of the aphorism, by soundly defeating his younger opponent, Efeso Collins, in the mayoralty race of 2022, did little to improve his already poor relationship with “progressive” Auckland journalists, many of them a whole generation younger than himself.

Jacinda Ardern’s “Politics of Kindness”, and her Government’s strong support for Māori and Pasifika, encouraged the Prime Minister’s generation to look forward to Collins becoming the Auckland super-city’s first Pasifika mayor. If Auckland voters had been willing to elect Labour-endorsed has-beens like Len Brown and Phil Goff, then surely, Efeso would be a shoe-in? That Aucklanders might elect a “grumpy old man” like Wayne Brown struck Ardern’s generation of activists as preposterous. They were confident that their assumptions about the nature of contemporary politics and the shape of Aotearoa’s political future were unassailable.

That Brown won the mayoral race easily – principally by applying basic electoral principles to the structuring of his campaign – threw into sharp relief the organisational deficiencies of a generation encouraged to accord bold declarations and positive intentions the same ontological status as actual achievements. As an engineer, Brown is only interested in what works. So instructed, his advisers told him to target only those Aucklanders with a proven track-record of participating in local government elections. These tended to be older, and considerably less tolerant of political dreams and visions, than the younger, typically non-voting, Aucklander.

As it became increasingly obvious that Brown’s pragmatic, non-ideological, “Mr Fix-It” pitch to the active Auckland electorate was going to overwhelm Collins, the active dislike of “progressives” – most particularly those located in the younger generations – grew. Among the least successful at hiding their animosity towards Brown were the city’s journalists – a failure that convinced the newly-elected Mayor that he would be better off not engaging with them.

Brown was right. The reaction of the New Zealand news media – especially those elements of it based in Auckland – was depressingly similar to the United States’ news media’s reaction to Donald Trump’s “impossible” presidential victory of 2016. Unable to accept that it was the political incompetence of “their” candidate that made a Trump victory possible, the American media instead abandoned completely its cherished principles of fairness and balance. Henceforth Trump was the enemy to whom no quarter should be given. Brown, who had also won on the votes of “deplorables” and, like Trump, held most journalists in contempt, would be treated as a reactionary interloper.

It should not be thought, however, that journalists were alone in their animosity towards Brown. Across the entire Auckland City bureaucracy similar misgivings were growing at the prospect of Mr Fix-It telling the Council’s highly-paid managers and professionals how to do their jobs. It would certainly explain why, when the deluge struck, and many of the Supercity’s bureaucrats failed to respond effectively to the emergency, their first instinct was to make the Mayor the scapegoat for what was clearly a system-wide failure. And why the first instinct of the city’s “progressive” journalists was to help them.

Hence Brown’s all-too-public frustration and anger at his inexplicable early exclusion from a number of crucial informational loops. That exclusion in no way excuses Brown’s failure to be seen and heard by Aucklanders as the floodwaters rose and the crisis deepened, but it most certainly does explain them.

And Brown, at least, has had the decency to say he’s sorry. It would be most unwise, however, to hold one’s breath in anticipation of Auckland’s anti-Brown journalists and bureaucrats doing the same.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 6 February 2023.

Sounds of Silence.

Comforting Generational Voice: The end of one era in New Zealand broadcasting, and the beginning of another, is being met with widespread public indifference.

A SIGN OF THE TIMES every bit as telling as Paula Penfold’s shock at anti-vaxxers’ hatred for the mainstream media. That the folk who once cried “Hands off National Radio!” have greeted the imminent demise of Radio New Zealand with … silence. The folding of Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand into “Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media” (ANZPM) an “autonomous Crown entity”, is supposed to be complete by 1 March 2023. This, the end of one era in New Zealand broadcasting, and the beginning of another, has so far been met with widespread public indifference.

Over the past five years, Radio New Zealand’s hitherto ferociously loyal listeners have lost almost all their passion for public radio. Some, aggrieved by the “Maorification” of National Radio, have simply stopped listening. Others, aware that there is nothing better on offer from the private stations, have continued to tune-in – albeit in a mood of sullen resignation. That the station’s programming is uninterrupted by advertisements offers some small consolation.

These listeners skew decisively towards well-educated members of the Pakeha middle-class, 55 years  and over. Given the average New Zealander’s longevity, these listeners have another twenty years of “loyalty” in them before they, and Radio New Zealand’s core audience, give up the ghost. The key challenge facing ANZPM, therefore, is to formulate a schedule that will attract and hold the ears and eyes of the post-Baby Boomer generations.

This is not going to be easy. Historically-speaking, the whole point of public broadcasting – both here in New Zealand and across the Western World – has been to mold the political consciousness and cultural tastes of the middle-class in such a way that they become the state’s most reliable reservoir of “common sense”. Though values and tastes change, the existence of this group – the prime generators of reliable “public opinion” – has, until relatively recently, constituted public broadcasting’s greatest achievement.

At the heart of their success lies the public broadcasters’ preservation, and occasional renovation, of the nation’s core narrative. Or, to cast them in a slightly more heroic light, they have acted as “nation builders”. Their mission: to promote their country’s diversity without sacrificing its unity. Capturing many reflections, but all within a single mirror. Until recently, New Zealand public broadcasters were doing this pretty well.

Perhaps attributable to our post-modern era’s obsession with deconstruction: its determination to put an end to all “grand narratives” in favour of relativism and subjectivism; the West’s broadcasters’ drive for unity has, of late, appeared to weaken. In New Zealand, the post-modernists’ deconstructivist urges have gone hand-in-hand with the rise of Māori nationalism. The latter’s determination to “decolonise” the Pakeha settler state and “indigenise” New Zealand society, has seized at least some of our public broadcasters’ imaginations as a mission worthy of the new ANZPM.

Certainly, the ANZPM’s Charter will set down “clear expectations” for the new broadcaster’s relationship with tangata whenua. It will be te Tiriti affirming and at least two out of ANZPM’s nine-member board will have to be fully conversant with the language, values and practices of te Ao Māori. In light of the stipulations of New Zealand On Air’s Public Interest Journalism Fund, the new public broadcaster is likely to operate under an exhaustive set of “partnership” protocols.

One can only speculate as to how the initial radio broadcasts of ANZPM will strike the ears of Radio New Zealand’s present audience. If the enthusiasm of the current Broadcasting Minister, Willie Jackson, for enhancing the Māori and Pasifika output of the new public broadcaster and “combatting misinformation” is any indication of its future content, then further defections can be expected. Not all of those switching-off will do so sadly and privately. With ANZPM due to hit the airwaves at the beginning of March in an election year, it is hard to imagine the opposition parties not being invited to weaponise its allegedly “woke” programme schedule.

Regardless of partisan loyalties, there will be those who look at the new structure with a certain measure of apprehension. ANZPM is going to be a mighty big beast, with more than enough muscle to dominate New Zealand’s media space.

Relieved of the obligation to return a dividend to the state, the television arm of ANZPM will be able to sell advertising at cost – to the obvious disadvantage of its private sector competition. In its outreach to the young and the ethnically diverse, the new public media entity will find it hard not to step very heavily on the toes of private radio. While printing presses form no part of its remit, ANZPM will be up there online with NZME and Stuff.

Pledged to “meeting its audience where they are” the ANZPM board might think it wise to equip itself with a truly nationwide news-gathering service. With over $100 million for capital investment, how long will it be before ANZPM ’s newsrooms, video and radio production facilities, and live broadcasts become the “places to be” for every talented journalist in the country?

The problems confronting the private sector media would not be limited to ANZPM’s scale and scope, and the competitive challenges they represent. The long-term risk must surely be that ANZPM’s public status, its editorial independence, and the creative freedoms thus conferred, will eventually eclipse the efforts of all media operations encumbered with less generous shareholders. How long will it be before these profit-driven enterprises cry “foul”?

And they might not be the only ones with a grievance. At least some of the voters might come to look upon ANZPM as a state-owned media behemoth stuffed choc-full with left-wingers of all kinds, and sufficiently resourced to dictate the terms of, and easily dominate, the media’s political coverage.

Inevitably, ANZPM’s need for an audience to replace the dwindling eyes and ears of the Baby Boomers must lead it towards the younger generations of New Zealanders. It is to their values and tastes that the cultural production of the big public broadcaster will inevitably be attuned.

The political consequences of such an orientation are equally inevitable. The material aspirations of younger New Zealanders, their easy-going acceptance of co-governance and other Boomer bogeymen, plus their rock-solid determination to take climate change seriously, make it unlikely that the neoliberal economic and political axioms of their elders will be tolerated for very much longer.

The fear of those same elders is that the material broadcast by the new ANZPM will only hasten the day when their cherished values and tastes are rudely overwhelmed. A hard core of them are already convinced that Radio New Zealand has successfully unleashed its own version of the Cultural Revolution. Hence their unwillingness to get too excited about Radio New Zealand’s imminent demise.

No matter how unkind, it is tempting to further discombobulate these grumpy old-timers by shouting: “Comrades, you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 5 September 2022.

Outdated Views? Andrea Vance On Sean Plunket.

Re-Platforming: In the eyes of senior Stuff journalist, Andrea Vance, Sean Plunket’s “dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.” Dear me! The scorn dripping from those words could fill a large spittoon! Regardless, Plunket’s new media product “The Platform” will soon be going head-to-head with his woke detractors.

IT’S ONE OF THOSE throwaway lines which, precisely because so little conscious thought was given to it, tells us so much. The author, Andrea Vance, is an experienced political journalist working for Stuff. The subject of Vance’s throwaway line, Sean Plunket, is an equally experienced journalist. It was in her recent story about Plunket’s soon-to-be-launched online media product “The Platform”, that Vance wrote: “Plunket’s dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.”

It’s hard to get past those first four words. The picture Vance is painting is of a dilettante: someone who flits from one inconsequential pursuit to another, taking nothing seriously. And, of course, the use of the word “dalliances” only compounds this impression. To “dally” with somebody it to treat them casually, offhandedly – almost as a plaything. Accordingly, a “dalliance” should be seen as the very opposite of a genuine commitment. It smacks of self-indulgence. A cure, perhaps, for boredom?

To dally with controversy, therefore, is to betray a thoroughly feckless character. Controversies are all about passion and commitment. Controversies are taken seriously. Indeed, a controversy is usefully defined as a dispute taken seriously by all sides. And yet, according to Vance, Plunket has only been playing with controversy: trifling with it, as a seducer trifles with the affections of an innocent maid.

In Vance’s eyes, this indifference to matters of genuine and serious concern distinguishes Plunket as a “two-dimensional character”. It reduces him to a cardboard cut-out, a promotional poster, a thing of printer’s ink and pixels – insubstantial. Or, which clearly amounts to the same thing as far as Vance is concerned: “a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.” Dear me! The scorn dripping from those words could fill a large spittoon!

As if the holding of right-wing views somehow renders a person less than three-dimensional. As if conservative thinkers from Aristotle to Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke to Carl Schmidt haven’t contributed enormously to Western political thought. As if Keith Holyoake, Jim Bolger and Bill English aren’t respected by New Zealanders of all political persuasions for their rough-hewn dignity and love of country. To hold right-wing views isn’t a sickness, It doesn’t make you a bad person. It merely denotes a preference for the familiar; a wariness of the new; and a deep-seated fear of sudden and unmandated change.

As for “shock-jocks”: well, that is the sort of broadcasting talent commercial radio producers are constantly searching for. People of energy and enthusiasm, with a way of communicating both qualities to the radio station’s listeners. And if they also have a talent for decoding the zeitgeist on air: for tapping into the audience’s anger and frustration; and giving voice to their hopes and their fears? Well, then they are worth their weight in gold – and usually get it. The more people a “shock-jock” glues to the station’s frequency, the more the advertisers are prepared to pay. That’s the business.

Perhaps Vance should have a word with the people who pay her salary: perhaps they could explain where all that money comes from.

The most important words, however, Vance saves for last. What really confirms Plunket’s lack of three dimensions are his “outdated views on privilege and race”. It is with these six words that Vance betrays both herself and her newspaper.

Who says Plunket’s views on privilege and race are “outdated”? According to whose measure? After all, his views on privilege and race correspond closely with those of Dr Martin Luther King. Is Vance asserting that Dr King’s view that people should not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character, is outdated? Is she suggesting that a poor white man has more in the way of privilege than Oprah Winfrey? Or that the privileges which flow from superior economic power and social status count for less than those attached to race, gender and sexuality?

The answer is Yes. Those who declare such views to be “outdated” are, indeed, making all of the claims listed above. This locates them among a relatively narrow section of the population: highly educated; paid well above the average; more than adequately housed; and enjoying all the “privileges” accruing to those who manage the bodies and shape the minds of their fellow citizens.

Andrea Vance is a member of this truly privileged group, and so, at one time, was Sean Plunket. So, why the sneering condescension? Why the scorn? The answer is to be found in the new priorities of the truly privileged; the people who actually run this society. They have determined that their interests are better served by fostering division and bitterness. Rather than see people promote a view of human-beings that unites them in a common quest for justice and equality, they would rather Blacks assailed Whites, women assailed men, gays assailed straights, trans assailed TERFS – and vice versa. In short, the “One Percent” have decided that their interests are better protected by corporations, universities and the mainstream news media all promoting the ideology of identity politics.

By setting his face against this new “Woke” establishment, Sean Plunket the conservative poses as large a threat to the status quo as Martyn Bradbury the radical. On the one hand stand those who question the necessity and morality of changes now deemed essential by persons no one elected. On the other, those who insist that such divisive policies will produce results diametrically opposed to their promoters’ intentions. Right and Left, joined in an “outdated” search for the common ground that makes rational politics possible. The place where both sides are willing to acknowledge and agree that, in the words of John F. Kennedy:

[I]n the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 21 September 2021.

No Questions Please – We’re Revolutionaries!

The Kids Were All Right: By stripping away all moral and practical grounds for unified struggle, Critical Race Theory can only strengthen the elites’ grip on contemporary society. The abdication of School Strike For Climate Auckland offers a textbook example of this phenomenon. The moral force of the nation’s secondary students in the fight against climate change has been significantly compromised. And through it all the mainstream news media has had nothing to say.

PERHAPS THE MOST ASTONISHING aspect of School Strike For Climate Auckland’s (SSFCA) spectacular self-cancellation was the media’s lack of interest. Oh sure, they picked up the group’s news release, and made its contents known to the public, but that was it. There appeared to be a general reluctance, extending across the whole of the mainstream news media, to investigate the story in any depth. No attempt was made to flesh-out and explain what, to most New Zealanders, was a jarring and baffling item of news. The same media which had welcomed the School Strike For Climate Movement, and praised its achievements, accepted the curious demise of its largest section without serious investigation or comment.

The only explanation for such an egregious dereliction of journalistic duty is that mainstream editors and reporters were fearful of the territory into which any serious investigation of the event was bound to lead them. They would have to explain why a group of young and idealistic secondary-school students, people they had written glowing stories about, had somehow been persuaded that they, and their organisation, were racist. They would have been required to question whether the Maori and Pasifika groups into whose hands SSFCA had vouchsafed the climate fight were capable of maintaining the political momentum generated by Greta Thunberg’s global movement.

Most of all, they would have had to help ordinary New Zealanders understand the extraordinary self-abasement contained in the group’s news release:

We apologise for the hurt, burnout, and trauma. We also apologise for the further trauma caused by our slow action to take responsibility. We recognise that this apology can never be enough to make up for our actions on top of years of systemic and systematic oppression, racism, and the silencing of those who are the most affected by climate change. This apology is just one of our steps in taking accountability for our actions.

What could possibly have made these young people say such extraordinary things about themselves, and about the movement they had worked so hard to build?

Unwilling to go there, a more politically savvy mainstream news media would simply have ignored the news release. Certainly, if your intention is to let a story die, then the last place you should put it is on RNZ’s “Morning Report” or the NZ Herald’s website. That, however, is where the statement ended up – in all its woke glory. Tens-of-thousands of astonished New Zealanders heard it, or read it, and said: “What on Earth?” But, from the editors and reporters who had salved what remained of their journalistic consciences by broadcasting and publishing SSFCA’s words, no answers came – just enthusiastic endorsements of the organisation’s actions from indigenous activists.

Those astonished New Zealanders seeking an explanation for SSFCA’s actions need look no further than the American-born ideology known as “Critical Race Theory” (CRT). According to the University of California, Los Angeles, Luskin School of Public Affairs:

CRT recognises that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalisation of people of colour. CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says that the law is neutral and colour-blind, however, CRT challenges this legal “truth” by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle of self-interest, power and privilege.

Now, while you might need to be a professor to write the above definition of CRT, you most certainly do not need a PhD to grasp how CRT works in practice. In a nutshell, CRT operates according to the principle: “If you’re white, you cannot be right.”

Naturally, in the United States the historical force credited with creating white privilege and white supremacy is Slavery. In New Zealand, however, the place of Slavery has been taken by Colonisation. It is not to white slavers, but white settlers, that the followers of CRT look for the root of all Aotearoa’s evils.

Leftists who object that white workers will always have more in common with brown workers than they will with a white ruling-class that oppresses all workers, get no joy from the followers of CRT. White elites may derive material benefits from their dominant position, but working-class whites derive equally important psychological benefits from their position in the racial hierarchy. According to CRT, the existence of a whole category of human-beings deemed immutably inferior to the white race, makes it easier for white workers to accept their own socio-economic subordination. At a stroke, Marxism is reduced to just another prop for white supremacy!

By stripping away all moral and practical grounds for unified struggle, CRT can only strengthen the elites’ grip on contemporary society. The abdication of SSFCA offers a textbook example of this phenomenon. The moral force of the nation’s secondary students in the fight against climate change has been significantly compromised. Doubts and resentments will spread swiftly through the SSFC Movement, making it a pretty safe bet that the turnout for any future demonstrations will be only a fraction of its former efforts. If the oil companies had set out to sabotage the domestic movement against anthropogenic global warming they could hardly have done a better job than these local adherents of CRT.

Black American progressives have themselves noted the dangerous ironies inherent in CRT. As Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora note in their recent Guardian article “Today, the self is the battlefield of politics. Blame Michel Foucault”:

Despite the ever-growing presence of this politics, its shortcomings are growing clear. “White guilt and black outrage,” as Cedric Johnson, professor of African American studies, has recently pointed out, “have limited political currency, and neither has ever been a sustainable basis for building the kind of popular and legislative majorities needed to actually contest entrenched power in any meaningful way” ….. In fact, he added, this “militant expression of racial liberalism” will “continue to defer the kind of public goods that might actually help” all those who are “routinely surveilled, harassed, arrested, convicted, incarcerated and condemned as failures”. With material stakes of politics growing ever more urgent many in the liberal centre would much prefer us to busy ourselves with loud rituals announcing our inner battles.

It would be unfair, however, to heap too much blame upon the young students at the heart of this story. One can only imagine the emotional intensity of the “struggle sessions” required to induce the activist core of SSFCA’s abject capitulation. During the infamous “Cultural Revolution” of the 1960s, the brutality of similar sessions, at the hands of Mao Zedong’s fanatical “Red Guards”, was sufficient to break Communist Party veterans of the “Long March”. What chance had an well-meaning, idealistic bunch of middle-class Auckland kids against such tactics?

We conclude, therefore, where we began. In its coverage of the SSFCA’s self-immolation, the mainstream news media touched upon none of the issues featured in this post. Why? Because, bluntly, any such investigation would be severely career-limiting for the young (or old) mainstream journalist who undertook it. This is unfortunate, because arising out of this story are a number of important questions.

Does it mean, for example, that in spite of being disadvantaged and under-resourced by colonisation, and only responsible for a small part of the local climate problem (which tends to be correlated with income, as well as population) Maori and Pasifika will also now bear the burden of solving the whole of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s climate change problem? Does it mean that Pakeha climate change activists will no longer accept historical responsibility for persuading the country’s farmers – overwhelmingly Pakeha for obvious colonial reasons – to do their bit to reduce biogenic methane and plant more trees? (Hat-tip to Dr Chris Harris.)

Don’t hold your breath for the answers. Like it or not, the precepts of CRT are now accepted as holy writ in the newsrooms of the nation. Guilty white journalists may cheer-on the Revolution as loudly as they wish, but they must not, under any circumstances, interrogate it.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 18 June 2021.

Getting Out Of Mike Hosking’s Kitchen.

Too Hot: Hearing that the Prime Minister has decided to discontinue her weekly interview with Newstalk-ZB’s breakfast host, Mike Hosking, more than a few New Zealanders may have recalled Harry Truman’s riposte: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

HARRY S. TRUMAN, 33rd President of the United States, and former Missouri haberdasher, had a pithy turn of phrase. When people complained to him about the vicissitudes of politics, his response became, justifiably, famous: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

Hearing that the Prime Minister has decided to discontinue her weekly interview with Newstalk-ZB’s breakfast host, Mike Hosking, more than a few New Zealanders may have recalled Harry Truman’s riposte.

Fronting-up to the news media is just one of the many irksome duties of a modern political leader. If the delights of political accountability are beginning to pall on the Prime Minister, then the Exit to a quieter life is clearly marked.

At least, that used to be the conventional political wisdom.

Clearly, things have changed.

Not the least of these changes has been the transformation of political journalists.

Time was when political journalists thought of themselves as diligent miners for the gold nuggets of truth. They went into their encounters with politicians well prepared, with as many of the relevant facts and figures at their fingertips as possible. Not only did a firm grasp of the issue under examination enable them to put the right questions, it also allowed them to assess the robustness, or otherwise, of the answers.

The whole point of the exercise was to elicit information. A politician who answered questions easily and accurately told the voters one thing. A politician who prevaricated and obfuscated told them another. It was respectful process: the journalist respected the politician; the politician respected the journalist; and both of them respected the intelligence of the electorate.

Ah, but that was back in the Twentieth Century. The priorities of the contemporary political interview are quite different. Encounters between politicians and political broadcasters, especially, are governed by a very different set of rules.

Instead of an examiner, the contemporary political journalist has taken on the role of prosecutor. And not just any old prosecutor – no siree! Rather than humble seekers after truth, radio and television news and current affairs hosts have cast themselves as the ‘people’s prosecutors’.

They are fearless, probing, ferociously well-briefed and determined (like any good lawyer) to ask no questions they cannot themselves answer. The political interview is no longer an exercise in eliciting information, but a trial by combat, in which all the sins and shortcomings of the politician under attack are laid bare.

From the perspective of the politicians on the receiving end of these inquisitions, it is easy to see why accepting the role of the accused might be less-than-appealing. Prosecutors are, by definition, convinced that the person in the dock is guilty, and their questions are framed in accordance with that presumption. For their hapless politician/victims, the people’s prosecutor’s questions must all sound like variations on the unanswerable demand to know whether they are still beating their spouse.

Essentially, the contemporary political interview has devolved into a ridiculous battle of wills. The winner is the participant who emerges from the confrontation without significant injury. For the politician, prevarication, circumlocution, obfuscation and equivocation – far from offering proof of their inadequacy – take on a semi-heroic quality. Like an expert swordsman, who effortlessly parries his opponent’s every thrust, the modern politician wears his ability to evade his persecutor’s questions as a badge of honour – as, sadly, do his followers. (And if, occasionally, one of the politician’s own thrusts draws blood, well, there’s a cause for celebration!)

Jacinda Ardern has drawn blood more than once in these gladiatorial encounters. Who can forget her accusatory finger, jabbing in the general direction of the AM Show’s Mark Richardson, at the very beginning of her reign? Or, for that matter, her devastating “bless” put-down of Mike Hosking himself?

Over the summer, however, the Prime Minister and her media advisers have clearly asked themselves whether these gladiatorial contests serve any better purpose than bear-baiting or cock-fighting? When your interlocutor makes it clear, both beforehand and afterwards, that he neither rates you nor respects you: rushing into every interview like a Retiarius; trident in one hand, whirling net in the other; determined to first entangle you and then pin you to the studio wall; what is there to gain, really, by participating?

In a kitchen as hot as Mr Hosking’s, the PM’s decision to get out seems only wise.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 March 2021.

The Political Economy Of Shock-Jockery.

Silenced: MediaWorks’ decision to take veteran journalist Sean Plunket off the air raises some very disturbing questions about the survival of political diversity in New Zealand.

LAST WEEK, Sean Plunket was awarded the DCM. Mere days after John Banks, standing-in for his fellow right-wing broadcaster, Peter Williams, was driven from Magic Talk Radio’s microphones, Plunket was abruptly advised that his services as the station’s “Magic Afternoons” host were no longer required. Magic Talk’s decision was made amidst the furore created by Banks’ failure to fight on-air racism with sufficient zeal, and the subsequent threats from its major advertisers to withdraw their support. Did the prospect of the right-wing contrarian’s imminent return prompt at least one of those major advertisers to issue Magic Talk’s proprietor, MediaWorks, with an ultimatum? Something along the lines of: “If Plunket stays, we go”?

Plunket’s position at Magic Talk was already somewhat precarious. In December of last year, the Broadcasting Standards Authority found against the veteran broadcaster for what it deemed to be his “offensive and harmful” comments to a spokesperson from Te Whānau ā Apanui – the Maori iwi manning Covid-19 check-points in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Magic Talk was reprimanded and fined $3,000 for Plunket’s breach of broadcasting standards. Already acutely sensitive to accusations of racism, their top shock-jock’s outspokenness was, almost certainly, top-of-mind among the station’s bosses – and advertisers.

MediaWorks’ decision to take Plunket off the air, if it stands, raises some very disturbing questions.

On the face of it, his fate appears to have been determined by the opinions he holds, which, if established, would constitute a clear case of discrimination on the grounds of political belief. If upheld by the Human Rights Commission, such a violation of a New Zealand citizen’s rights and freedoms, as set out in the Bill of Rights Act 1990, could end up costing his employer a great deal more than $3,000.

Presumably, a broadcaster in Plunket’s position, would argue that he was hired because of, not in spite of, his right-wing political beliefs. Having failed to enlarge its listenership by delivering a programme-mix tailored to the prejudices of centrist and left-leaning New Zealanders, MediaWorks (via Magic Talk) would be accused of re-orienting itself towards a much more conservative demographic. In this regard, Plunket’s right-wing contrarian style would have been exactly what they were looking for: a feature, not a bug. To take a person off-air for doing exactly what his employers’ business-plan required of him, seems just a tad unfair.

In its current form, however, it is difficult to imagine the Human Rights Commission wanting anything less than the responsibility for determining whether or not the rights and freedoms of a citizen in Plunket’s situation have been violated. Indeed, it is hard to avoid forming the impression that the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990 has become a source of considerable embarrassment to the Human Rights Commissioners responsible for its enforcement. In the current “woke” climate, the key sections of the Act are inconveniently uncompromising.

Section 13 of the Bill of Rights Act 1990, for example, guarantees to all New Zealanders freedom of thought: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.” Even more inconveniently, Section 14 grants them the freedom to express those opinions: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”

In the past, radio stations and television networks have guarded these rights and freedoms jealously. Indeed, there was a very strong tradition in both public and private broadcasting that “news and current-affairs” and “advertising” – like matter and anti-matter – should never be allowed to meet.

This tradition was about more than the broadcasters’ attachment to liberal-democratic principles. Radio and television, no less than newspapers and magazines, pitch their product at different socio-economic segments of the media market. Among the many factors contributing to the profile of these “demographics” is ideological predisposition. Newstalk-ZB, for example, makes its profits out of an older, whiter, less credentialled, and generally more conservative demographic of listeners. Advertisers buy air-time for products and services tailored to fit this demographic profile. They want Mike Hosking’s audience: and, until very recently, that required them to, at the very least, tolerate Mike Hosking’s listeners’ less-than-woke political views.

It is very hard to believe that MediaWorks’ advertisers were unaware that Magic Talk Radio had pivoted right, away from RNZ National’s demographic and towards Newstalk-ZB’s. It is equally hard to credit that Sean Plunket and Peter Williams were not presented to them as powerful magnets for the folk who were missing Newstalk’s arch-conservative host, Leighton Smith. Surely, they would have understood what sort of political discussions their ad-breaks would be interrupting?

What are we looking at, then, when we see corporations threatening to pull their ads from programmes whose listeners come from the very demographics they are targeting? Are we witnessing an intra-corporate triumph of woke PR mavens over hard-working marketing grunts?

The answer is, almost certainly, “Yes”. Overwhelmingly, the graduates pouring out of this country’s “communications studies” courses and into corporate PR are young women who, for years, have been schooled in the uncompromising dogma of social radicalism – especially feminism and anti-racism. When they learn (via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook) the awful truth about the latest shock-jock’s racist outrage, their first instinct is the get their employers’ brand as far away from the perpetrators’ “toxicity” as possible. Failure to “get ahead of the problem”, their bosses are cautioned, will lead directly to consumer boycotts. The “Roastbusters” precedent will be cited. To date, their bosses have demonstrated little need for further persuasion.

This is politics – albeit of a particularly bizarre kind. Attempting to homogenise ideologically an irreducibly diverse market makes as little sense for capitalists as it does for political parties. Imagine what would happen to the National Party if it produced a policy programme that matched Labour’s in every respect. How would conservative voters respond? Either, they would pressure National MPs to force the abandonment of their party’s new centre-left orientation, or, if that proved impossible, they would begin casting about for a new party to champion their values and beliefs.

At some point in the near future, it will occur to senior corporate executives that what’s sauce for the woke goose might also be sauce for the aggressively right-wing gander. Take too many conservative voices off the air and eventually their fans will band together and announce a boycott of their own. At that point, corporate CEOs are going to have to do what politicians have always done: learn to count: “What is the volume of sales that we are likely to lose if the woke boycott us? Is it larger or smaller than the volume we will lose if conservative Kiwis stop buying our products?”

Similarly, how long will it be before one or more local (or overseas) capitalists grasp the possibilities of establishing a Fox News-type media entity right here in New Zealand, and using it to seize more-or-less the entire conservative demographic? How biddable will corporate leaders be if the size of its right-wing audience turns out to represent a clear plurality of the New Zealand population? Whose threats of boycott will count for more then: the Woke’s or the Right’s?

If the New Zealand news media persists in the folly of “cancelling” all those listeners, viewers and readers who fail to pass ideological muster, then we will see the emergence of our own version of Fox News – with all that entails for the health of our country and its democratic institutions. Who would lead it? Do we have a Hannity, or a Tucker Carlson, waiting out there in the wings? Where to start looking for a talented right-wing contrarian, boasting years of professional broadcasting experience, who is currently between jobs?

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 8 February 2021.

If Only We Had A Minister Of Broadcasting Worthy Of The Title.

Worryingly Uninterested: Given Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi’s evident uninterest in the classic Reithian principles of public broadcasting – i.e. to educate, elevate and entertain the people – any review of his motivations for rolling-up TVNZ and RNZ into a single, state-owned broadcasting entity, leaves one fearing the worst.

MORE OR LESS OFFICIALLY, this government is committed to merging TVNZ and RNZ into a single, monolithic, publicly-owned broadcasting entity. The temptation to support this idea enthusiastically is strong. For a Minister of Broadcasting to even contemplate such a dramatic revision of the public broadcasting status-quo surely implies a deep understanding of how poorly the current entities are performing, while signalling a firm intention to offer TVNZ’s and RNZ’s audiences something better. You would, however, be well advised to curb your enthusiasm. The chances of this policy proving successful are so low they make KiwiBuild look like a safe bet.

Consider the policy’s provenance: the Office of the Minister of Broadcasting, Kris Faafoi. This is the man who, having been briefed on RNZ management’s proposal, endorsed by RNZ’s board, to effectively destroy RNZ Concert – in favour of a “Yoof” channel – failed to identify any significant problems with the idea. That failure, along with the public outcry and political embarrassment it occasioned, should have seen him stripped of the broadcasting portfolio. Unfortunately, so uninterested is the Labour Cabinet in public broadcasting – and the media in general – that Faafoi continues to hold the warrant.

Given the Minister’s evident uninterest in the classic Reithian principles of public broadcasting – i.e. to educate, elevate and entertain the people – any review of Faafoi’s motivations for rolling-up TVNZ and RNZ into a single, state-owned broadcasting entity, leaves one fearing the worst.

The first motivation that springs to mind is straightforward, old-fashioned, cost-cutting. Rather than fund RNZ properly (as Faafoi’s predecessor, Clare Curran, promised to do more than four years ago) the current minister might simply be seeking the approbation of the Finance Minister by freeing-up an extra $15 million for some eye-catching and vote-winning alternative. (Something to do with Rugby, perhaps?)

Another motivation could be a strong desire to get rid of the governance and management personnel who caused him such acute political embarrassment. Any merging of RNZ and TVNZ would, almost certainly, be to the disadvantage of the smaller and weaker radio network. Perhaps Faafoi is anticipating that the big television elephants will make short work of the tiny radio mice? As a former TVNZ journalist, he is likely to identify much more strongly with the populist instincts of his former employers, than he is with what remains of the public service ethos at RNZ. Killing two birds with a single stone always elicits hearty cheers from career politicians.

Then again, it might be some sort of confused, ham-fisted attempt by elements within the Ministry of Heritage and Culture (MHC) to stop the rot in both state broadcasters and drag them, kicking and screaming, into some semblance of awareness of their obligations to New Zealand’s democratic political system, and to the cultural needs of the citizens they are supposed to serve.

Unfortunately, that is the least likely explanation for the proposed merger. After multiple changes at the upper echelons of the MHC there is simply not the critical mass of tough and talented public servants needed to drive through such a visionary (not to mention ideologically suspect) project.

To be reasonably confident of this (or any) government pulling off a successful and progressive merger of TVNZ and RNZ, the public would need to have been properly prepared by means of a full-scale public inquiry into the strengths and weaknesses of both entities. Those leading the inquiry would need to be genuinely independent, as well as fully conversant with the way public broadcasters are funded, managed and protected in other Western countries. Most obviously, it would study the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC, but it would also review the public broadcasting arrangements in Western Europe and North America.

The problem with this “solution” is, of course, that only a government already cognisant of the vital role effective public broadcasters can play in lifting the cultural and political discourse of a nation could contemplate such an inquiry. And, as we have already established, this is not such a government.

If it was, and if it had a Minister of Broadcasting and Communications worthy of his title, then New Zealanders might expect to see, hear and/or read about a minister who was not afraid to raise issues pertinent to the quality of public broadcasting in New Zealand.

Such a minister might ask why the important role of political commentator on RNZ’s Nine to Noon show is apparently now restricted to public relations personnel and pollsters with strong ties to the two major political parties, rather than to individuals demonstrably at arm’s length from these institutions, such as university academics, trade unionists and independent journalists and commentators. This was, after all, the previous practice – why the change?

That same minister might also wonder aloud why so much commentary on economic matters is provided by economists employed by the major trading banks, rather than, once again, by qualified individuals without quite so much skin in the game?

Or, why so many of our leading state broadcasters are more interested in the sound of their own voices, than in the voices of the unfortunate people they invite on air to interrogate and interrupt?

Questions might be raised as to why so much of the prime-time schedule is devoted to reality TV shows? Why there is so little political satire commissioned and broadcast on state television? Why the rural and business sectors are so well-served by our public broadcasters, while the lives of industrial and service sector workers are considered unworthy of such regular and dedicated journalistic scrutiny? Why we have a programme called Country Calendar, but not one called Working Life? Why sport flourishes while the arts struggle to be heard?

A government purporting to be “progressive” would not only ask these questions, it would question why they needed to be asked. Its Cabinet would be filled with people for whom the life of the mind was more important than likes on Facebook and followers on Twitter. Such a government would be filled with politicians who are as interested in reading books as they are in balancing them.

Most of all, it would have a Broadcasting Minister who made it his, or her, business to gather together the brightest, the bravest and the most creative souls this country can offer, and then provide them with the resources needed to broadcast back to New Zealanders their own compelling, revelatory, uplifting and unique reflections.

That is the sort of public broadcasting policy New Zealand needs: exactly the sort of broadcasting policy it is not going to get.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 17 November 2020.

The People vs The Media.

Investigating Journalism: Encouraging the population to view politics and politicians as corrupt, ineffectual, and best left alone, absolves the news media of all responsibility to present political news in a way that reveals its absolute centrality to their readers’, listeners’ and viewers’ well-being.

THE COVID-19 LOCKDOWN has exposed weaknesses in New Zealand journalism that have hurt and surprised many New Zealand journalists. The chief weakness exposed has been the news media’s eagerness to both exploit and amplify anti-political feeling within the New Zealand public. In normal times this is generally a low-risk/high-return strategy. In abnormal times, however – and the times we are living through currently are about as abnormal as you can get! – the anti-political strategy simply does not work.

The reason for the strategy’s failure in times of crisis is simple. When people are frightened they do not want to hear that the leaders whose job it is to look after them are useless cretins. On the contrary, they want to be reassured that their leaders are competent and compassionate in equal measure. They want to feel safe in their hands. They want to trust them, respect them, and – Gawd help us! – love them. Shrewd editors and smart journalists get this. Inept editors and obtuse journalists do not.

Overcoming the anti-political journalistic reflex is, however, an extremely difficult thing for “mainstream media” professionals to do. It is, after all, a strategy that kills so many birds with a single stone.

Encouraging the population to view politics and politicians as corrupt, ineffectual, and best left alone, absolves the news media of all responsibility to present political news in a way that reveals its absolute centrality to their readers’, listeners’ and viewers’ well-being.

In its turn, this “politics is bullshit” approach safeguards the management of media outlets from the negative reaction that would certainly follow any attempt to inform the public comprehensively about current affairs. The owners of newspapers, radio stations and television networks have little interest in fostering a politically aware and politically active population – quite the reverse in fact.

Finally, highlighting the personal failings of politicians plays directly to people’s prurient impulses. Everybody enjoys a good scandal, especially when it involves people who normally wield power over them, people who typically justify their authority by posing as ordinary, decent men and women dedicated to promoting the public good. Exposing political scandals reassures the average citizen that their lack of meaningful political engagement is entirely justified. It’s all lies and they’re all liars. Why would any ordinary, decent person want to get involved in such a seedy business?

All of this carefully nurtured cynicism and disdain disappears in an instant, however, when ordinary, decent people are threatened by an enemy capable of inflicting real harm on them and their loved ones. Overnight, the political process ceases to be a seedy, grubby business full of ambitious sociopaths. Politicians and the systems they control stand revealed for what they have always been: the guarantors and instruments of public welfare and safety. Far from despising them and sneering at them dismissively, the citizenry is willing them to succeed.

It’s enough to set your average political journalist’s head spinning. Suddenly, they’re expected to talk-up the virtues of the politicians they’ve been doing their very best to trip-up. Suddenly, instead of going for “gotcha!”, they’re supposed to be encouraging the punters to say “good on ya”.

It’s a lot to ask.

From the moment they entered journalism school most journalists have been told that it’s their job to “speak truth to power”. “News”, they are told, “is what somebody, somewhere, doesn’t want the public to know.” They soon learn, however, that there are some centres of power it is very unwise to over-burden with the truth.

Their employers, for example, or the shareholders who own their employers’ company, should be considered off-limits. Major advertisers, also, should probably not have too much truth shoved in their faces. Litigious individuals with deep pockets are, similarly, best left unmolested by over-eager investigative reporters. Ditto (with bells on!) for large transnational corporations with phalanxes of sharp-suited lawyers.

Leaving, in the political journalist’s target department, only hapless politicians and humble public servants. Speak “truth” to them, even when unverified and leaked by their political opponents, and everybody from your employer’s shareholders to the largest of large transnational corporations will slap you on the back and give you an award.

The ability of the political journalist to make the transition from critic to cheerleader isn’t assisted by their isolation from the very citizens they purport to speak for. This is not altogether their fault. The Parliamentary Press Gallery takes them as far – maybe even further – from the average citizen as the House of Representatives itself. At least the politicians have their weekly clinics with constituents to keep them grounded. For the ambitious Gallery journalist, however, there is no such respite. Only the endless quest to prove to their colleagues, their bosses, and yes, to the politicians themselves, that they have what it takes to ruin reputations and destroy careers. In the much better remunerated job of Ministerial Press Secretary, to which so many political journalists ascend, the killer instinct is a deal-sealer.

New Zealand’s political journalists’ disconnection from the public was on display as never before during the Prime Minister’s and her Director-General of Health’s daily Covid-19 press briefings. Broadcast live, New Zealanders were able to hear not only the words of Jacinda Ardern and Dr Ashley Bloomfield, but the questions of the assembled journalists. The public reaction was one of disbelief seasoned with rage. The same journalists who castigated Simon Bridges for his tone-deafness clearly had no notion of how painfully their own behaviour was setting Kiwis’ teeth on edge. Who were these people!

The journalists were genuinely hurt. They railed against the public’s utter ignorance of what was expected of them. Did these ingrates not understand how vital an assertive Fourth Estate was to the health of our democracy?

Well, no, they didn’t. At least they failed to grasp how all that carping and whingeing and “gotcha!” questioning could possibly contribute anything positive to their democracy. As far as they were concerned Jacinda and Ashley were making a simply splendid job of looking after them and their loved ones. They were deserving of the news media’s praise – not its blame.

The Press Gallery didn’t – and still doesn’t – get this. The way a crisis instantly clarifies the nature and purposes of state power. How it sweeps away all the petty distractions which under “normal” conditions are the news media’s bread-and-butter. Nor do they appreciate how very unappreciative the public is of those who think that “good journalism” is about picking things apart rather than pulling them together.

Certainly the Covid-19 Lockdown has inflicted enormous damage on an already faltering news media. Slowly, the realisation is dawning in the minds of media owners and editors that New Zealand journalism – and journalists – will only be saved by entering into an entirely new relationship with the state. That, pretty soon, most of the news media’s shareholders will be the ordinary citizens of New Zealand. They will have the power, and they will expect their journalists to tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 29 April 2020.

A Lamentable Failure of Imagination.

Imagination By-Pass: Had the Communications Minister, Kris Faafoi (above) taken a firm stand with Bauer, reminding them of their obligations to both their staff and the wider New Zealand public, then a much more favourable outcome may well have ensued. He should have made it clear to the Bauer board (which was, almost certainly, unaware) that the mastheads in their stable represented much more, culturally, than mere commercial assets. If the Germans had been informed of these publications’ iconic status, then there is every reason to suppose that they would have responded differently.

WHEN MATTHEW HOOTON is able to outflank the “Left” effortlessly on RNZ’s Nine-to-Noon something has gone very seriously wrong. Only this morning (6/4/20) the grey personification of Labour’s dreary political pragmatism, Stephen Mills, seemed poised to dismiss as nonsense the suggestion that Communications Minister, Kris Faafoi, should have accepted Bauer Media’s offer of its entire New Zealand operation for just $1.00, when Hooton executed a cheeky intercept and lambasted Faafoi’s failure to nationalise some of New Zealand’s most iconic mastheads.

This lamentable failure of the Centre-Left’s imagination was also in evidence on The Standard, where the man who goes by the entirely undeserved moniker of “Mickey Savage” opined: “Clearly the Government has more pressing issues to deal with than producing the likes of Woman’s Weekly.”

It really is depressing to be confronted with imaginative failures of this magnitude. As if Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and their colleagues were planning to drop everything and settle themselves into the editor’s chair at the NZ Woman’s Weekly, The Listener, Metro and North & South. As if the current editors could not have been asked to remain at their posts pending a complete re-organisation of Bauer Media’s New Zealand holdings. As if the current ownership and management structures were the only viable options on offer. Has “Mickey Savage” never heard of worker co-operatives? Is his casual dismissal of public ownership really indicative of the best thinking of which Labour’s activist base is capable?

But, if “Mickey Savage’s” imagination by-pass is merely confirmation of the damage done to Labour by more than 30 years of drinking the neoliberal Kool-Aid, how to explain Gordon Campbell’s capitulation to the palpable mendacity of the status-quo? Responding to the destruction of New Zealand’s leading periodicals on his “Werewolf” website, the former Listener employee wrote:

“Weirdly, one news outlet has sought to blame the government for Bauer’s decision to close down its titles, and scarper. According to Newshub, after Bauer had refused the wage subsidy, it then asked the government to buy its magazine titles. The government refused to be held to ransom and in Newshub’s view at least, it was wrong not to do so. Really? One can only imagine the screams of outrage if the government began picking and choosing among the losers, and nationalising them at taxpayer expense. Imagine the jibes if PM Jacinda Ardern had ended up owning the NZ Woman’s Weekly. In reality, this outcome is Bauer’s fault alone.”

Now, it is possible to mitigate “Mickey Savage’s” failure of imagination by pointing to his general unfamiliarity with the New Zealand media landscape. There is no way, however, Campbell can plead ignorance. He is, when all is said and done, one of this country’s best print journalists. He knows that if the Government had taken up Bauer’s offer, it would not have been Jacinda Ardern who “ended up owning the NZ Woman’s Weekly” but the New Zealand people. Has the progressive fire that once burned in Campbell’s journalistic soul been reduced to such a pallid bed of embers that he can no longer see, or summon the energy to care about, the possibilities of public ownership?

Sadly, that was not the worst of it. Since when was a bona fide progressive journalist dissuaded from righting the terrible wrong done to the New Zealand public by the wholesale deregulation of their media industry, by imagining “the screams of outrage” and “jibes” of neoliberal ideologues? Progressive journalism should be made of sterner stuff. It used to be.

The real irony of the Bauer debacle, however, is that in Germany itself (where Bauer Media is based) nothing remotely resembling the events of the past fortnight would have been permitted. As Dr Chris Harris pointed out to The Daily Blog’s readers in the sad aftermath of Bauer’s closure:

“In German commercial law the first duty of management is normally to maintain the enterprise and its workforce as a going concern and try to trade out of difficulties, even if banks and shareholders take a hit.”

In other words, had the Communications Minister taken a firm stand with Bauer, reminding them of their obligations to both their staff and the wider New Zealand public, then a much more favourable outcome may well have ensued. He should have made it clear to the Bauer board (which was, almost certainly, unaware) that the mastheads in their stable represented much more, culturally, than mere commercial assets. If the Germans had been informed of these publications’ iconic status, then there is every reason to suppose that they would have responded differently.

Is it too much to expect the man responsible for New Zealand’s media and communications to know how German politicians would respond to a similar crisis unfolding in their own media industry? Not really. Anyone with a passing interest in international social-democracy, which presumably includes the upper echelons of the NZ Labour Party, would have a working knowledge of Germany’s “social-market” economy.

Acknowledging the reality of Faafoi’s demonstrable political and ideological limitations, however, it should not – at the very least – have been beyond the wit of those advising the Communications Minister to grasp the possibilities inherent in Bauer’s all-too-evident eagerness to quit New Zealand. A well-informed public service, motivated by something more than the avoidance of controversy and ministerial embarrassment, would have made clear to Faafoi the extraordinary opportunity that was opening up in front of him. That those around the Minister proved to be as lacking in boldness and imagination as their boss tells us a great deal about the extent to which the neoliberal tapeworm has hollowed out the New Zealand state.

Beyond the sterling example provided by the Prime Minister and her Finance Minister, New Zealanders could be forgiven for wondering if there is anyone else in the Coalition Cabinet equal to the challenges thrown up by the Covid-19 Pandemic. One has only to consider the curiously disengaged behaviour of Health Minister, David Clark. Yes, there was that ill-advised bike ride, but of even more concern is the fact that, in the midst of a national health emergency, New Zealand’s Health Minister has isolated himself in his Dunedin family home – 600 kilometres south of the capital. Moreover, as citizens’ rights are being necessarily curtailed, why do we hear so little from the Justice Minister and the Attorney-General? With more and more “idiots” flouting the Covid-19 rules, where is the Police Minister?

These are precisely the questions which New Zealand’s magazine editors would have been urging their investigative journalists to answer on behalf of their readers. What a pity, then, that those same editors and journalists no longer have jobs, and that their publications have been shut down.

Especially when all of them could have been saved by the expenditure of just a single dollar.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 7 April 2020.

New Zealand's Government Must Save New Zealand's Media.

No Free Society Without A Free And Functioning News Media: If we are to surrender our civil rights to the broader cause of defeating Covid-19, then foreign corporations must, likewise, surrender their right to inflict immense economic and cultural harm on New Zealanders simply because it improves their bottom line.

I’M NOT SURE, after today, if we’re going to come through this global pandemic in one piece. I just don’t think this government contains enough decisive individuals to guarantee that what emerges on the other side of this crisis will still be recognisably “us”. Where, for example, was the outrage; the cold fury; the swift and ruthless response to the reckless cultural vandalism of the German media conglomerate, Bauer’s, decision to destroy the New Zealand magazine industry?

This government has voted itself almost unlimited emergency powers to protect the people of New Zealand from the worst effects of the Covid-19 virus. That mandate must go beyond simply looking after their physical well-being. If it is to mean anything at all, it must extend to emotional and cultural well-being also. If we are to surrender our civil rights to the broader cause of defeating the virus, then foreign corporations must, likewise, surrender their right to inflict immense economic and cultural harm on New Zealanders simply because it improves their bottom line.

Where were the Prime Minister, the Minister of Heritage and Culture, the Finance Minister, and the Attorney-General when we needed them? Where was the cease and desist instruction to Bauer? Where was the threat of instant nationalisation if it failed to heed the Government’s clear directive? Where was the reassurance to all of Bauer’s New Zealand employees that this nation’s most venerable and beloved periodicals would not be permitted to simply blip-off the nation’s radar screen like so many downed airliners?

The answer, of course, is that none of these responses were in evidence. It impresses me not one whit that Kris Faafoi released a media statement clearly signalling his displeasure at Bauer’s decision. It might have made him feel better, but it did nothing to preserve The Listener, North & South, Metro, and the NZ Woman’s Weekly – or the jobs of the journalists, artists, designers and administrators involved in their publication.

New Zealanders are now entitled to know why the need for a functioning national airline (however shrunken) was accepted by this government, but the need for a functioning media industry (without which no democracy can long survive) was not. If close to a billion dollars could be diverted more-or-less instantly to the preservation of Air New Zealand, then why wasn’t $100 million made available to purchase – at the very least – the mastheads and the archives of Bauer’s New Zealand operation?

The preservation of these iconic magazines’ archives is especially vital. The NZ Woman’s Weekly’s first issue came out in 1932, the New Zealand Listener’s in 1939. The files and back issues of these two, and all the other magazines in Bauer’s possession, contain a priceless and irreplaceable record of this country’s cultural, social and political history. To let a boardroom of foreigners living on the other side of the planet consign these taonga to the skip would be a crime.

A truly New Zealand Government would have grasped these issues immediately and moved decisively to stop Bauer in its tracks. But then, a truly New Zealand Government would never have acquiesced in the almost complete deregulation of their country’s news media in the first place. It may have been a National Party cabinet minister, Maurice Williamson, who oversaw this process in the early 1990s, but in the nine years that the Labour Party was in control of the country’s fortunes not the slightest effort was made to re-regulate the media industry.

Had they done so, New Zealand would never have ended up in the situation where a roomful of German businesspersons could, in one fell stroke, eliminate a swathe of its most iconic publications. Nor would it be in a position where the fate of its second television network rested in the talons of a bunch of vulture capitalists. Or, where the future of all its daily newspapers south of Auckland and north of Dunedin depended on the whim of a cabal of Aussie media moguls who really couldn’t give a rat’s arse whether the Kiwis’ daily press lives or dies.

What sort of country behaves like this? The answer, sadly, is the sort of country which agrees to lend its national carrier $900 million, but then lumbers it with an interest rate roughly twice as high as the current bank rate. Yes, that’s right, Air New Zealand is being charged 9 percent on its majority shareholder’s loan. Why? Because, that way, it will be incentivised to follow only the most cold-blooded and ruthless path to recovery. If the private shareholders in Air New Zealand wish to avoid a complete government takeover of the airline they will demand nothing less.

Nothing could illustrate with more clarity the neoliberal strangle-hold Treasury still has over government decision-making. Even when the market fails; even facing the fallout of a global pandemic; the Treasury boffins are there to ensure that the logic of neoliberalism marches on regardless. Like the American commander in Vietnam, they will not flinch from the necessity of destroying the village in order to save it. Any New Zealand Finance Minister looking to Treasury for support as his cultural heritage goes up in flames – will look in vain.

Over the next few weeks more bad news is almost certain to emerge from New Zealand’s collapsing media organisations. What’s needed is a comprehensive rescue plan: something along the lines of a government takeover of the entire industry pending a more considered re-organisation when the pandemic has passed. Is there no one in the Labour-NZ First-Green Government with the vision and courage to step in and save the single most important guarantee of our democratic political system?

I know there are tens-of-thousands of New Zealand workers who also need help from their government. I know that many of them will forcefully object that there are more important things to save that a handful of magazines with weak balance-sheets and dwindling readerships. My answer to them is simple: “You’re right! And I will be just as loud in my criticism of this government if it fails to protect your jobs. But, I also know how fragile a nation’s culture becomes in moments of crisis. That’s why I am so vehement in my objections to the seeming unwillingness of Jacinda and her colleagues to save New Zealand’s daily newspapers and its very best periodicals.

Our country is on fire. The first priority is to get its people safely away from the flames. The next most important move, however, is to save as much of the people’s house and its contents as possible. To just stand there and watch it burn to the ground, especially when the hoses and water necessary to save it are at hand, would be an unforgiveable dereliction of political duty.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 2 April 2020.

RNZ Must Have No Dogs In The September Fight.

Stand Clear! Winston Peters is encouraging voters to think of RNZ as belonging to “The Media Party”. He wants them to see it as a politically partisan institution with its own, vicious attack-dogs in the electoral fight. If he succeeds, it will be, and probably should be, the end of public radio in New Zealand.

RADIO NEW ZEALAND needs to reflect very carefully about the position in which it now finds itself. If it fails to alter its present course, there is a real possibility it will find itself accused of serious political bias. As a public broadcaster, RNZ simply cannot afford to be seen to have its own dog in the September 19 fight. Fair and balanced reporting is of huge importance when your radio network is funded by the taxpayer. In an election year, moreover, fairness and balance are absolutely critical to the maintenance of public confidence.  

For the moment, nearly all of the accusations of bias are coming from Winston Peters and the NZ First Party. This is only to be expected, given that RNZ’s reporting has inflicted serious damage on Peters and his colleagues. Lending credence to the latter’s accusations, however, is a photograph of Guyon Espiner, one of RNZ’s senior journalists, chatting amiably with Lester Gray, a former president of the NZ First Party. Looking at the photograph, it is very difficult not to identify Gray as the source of Espiner’s damaging revelations about the NZ First Foundation.

The release of this photograph – taken, according to Peters, by a member or supporter of NZ First – to The BFD (successor to the Whaleoil blog) has not only alarmed RNZ, it has put it on the defensive. The idea that a journalist and his source may themselves come under scrutiny is being widely interpreted as a thoroughly sinister development.

The mainstream news media has had much less to say about the failure of a supposedly experienced political journalist to protect his source. Tauranga is pretty much “ground zero” when it comes to NZ First’s historical support base. Why, then, would a former television journalist, with a very familiar face, choose to wander about in full public view with a former NZ First president and candidate? Why not meet privately, indoors, safe from prying eyes – and cellphones?

As for casting the whole episode as sinister, well, that particular charge is simply without merit. It is well-established in law that the taking of a person’s photograph in a public place, with or without their knowledge and/or consent, is not a criminal offence. If you are foolish enough to parade your connections in a Tauranga shopping centre’s carpark, then you should not act all hurt and surprised when that fact is recorded.

Nor should the mainstream news media be at all surprised that the photograph ended up on The BFD blog. Cameron Slater, of Dirty Politics fame, has publicly acknowledged his legal and personal connections with the lawyer Brian Henry. One of Winston Peters oldest and most trusted legal advisers, Henry also stood by Slater. Is this the explanation for what appears to be a decisive shift in the political allegiances of Slater and his colleagues from the National Party (which couldn’t distance itself fast enough from its favoured blogger following the publication of Nicky Hager’s book) to NZ First?

Such a shift would go a long way to explaining the rumours that NZ First is being assisted by one of Slater’s closest political allies from the Whaleoil years, Simon Lusk. A hard-bitten political operator, Lusk would have needed no instruction when it came to gathering intelligence on the two journalists responsible for revealing the closely-guarded secrets of the NZ First Foundation. The involvement of somebody like Lusk would certainly explain The BFD’s photograph of Stuff Reporter, Matt Shand. Recognising Espiner and Gray would not have been difficult. In that location, however, Shand was unlikely to be recognised by anyone not closely associated with the NZ First Foundation story.

That Tauranga shopping centre appears to have had more shooters in it than Dallas’s Dealey Plaza!

The demonisation of The BFD is yet another problematic aspect of RNZ’s coverage. Conservative blogs have every bit as much right to present their ideas to voters as liberal and left-wing blogs. In my time as a political commentator, I have contributed material to daily newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, and a weekly business publication edited by a devotee of Ayn Rand. So, when Cameron Slater invited me – along with a clutch of other non-right commentators – to contribute to a new pay-walled section of Whaleoil, I did not refuse. Similarly, when The BFD was launched, I agreed to contribute to its pay-walled “Insight” section. Nothing builds up one’s understanding of the Right like writing for their publications! And, although I have always been scrupulous to submit material I would happily see posted on The Daily Blog, or my own Bowalley Road, I’ve never once been censored.

In an environment where the idea that there might be two sides to every story, and that even those with whom you profoundly disagree have a story to tell, is dismissed as giving fascists a free-pass, it is not easy to make a stand for fairness and balance in journalism. It is vital, however, that RNZ tries.

On its “Mediawatch” programme, broadcast last Sunday morning (16/2/20) RNZ featured an interview with Ollie Wards from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Triple-J” youth-oriented radio station. Among many other observations, Wards ventured the opinion that “holding the government to account” was a vital aspect of the public broadcaster’s remit. There would appear to be a great many RNZ journalists who agree wholeheartedly with Wards’ characterisation of their role. That does not, however, make it right.

In a parliamentary democracy, it is not the news media which is entrusted with the role of holding the government to account, but the Opposition. They are the people elected to scrutinize the executive and ensure that government ministers are doing their jobs. They do this on behalf of the voters – the people charged, every three years, with the ultimate responsibility for holding governments to account. Nobody elected Guyon Espiner or Matt Shand to hold their government to account. Indeed, those gentlemen are not accountable in any meaningful political sense for the potentially decisive influence they are so well-positioned to exert on the electoral process.

The role of the news media (especially the publicly owned news media) is to assist the voters in the critical task of holding their representatives to account – not to do the job for them. That means doing everything within its power to give voters the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It means unearthing the facts, as many as possible, and then contextualising them in a fair and balanced way. It does not mean extracting only those facts that serve an individual journalist’s purposes, and using them to manipulate the voters’ understanding of what a party has, or hasn’t, done.

Winston Peters is encouraging voters to think of RNZ as belonging to “The Media Party”. He wants them to see it as a politically partisan institution with its own, vicious attack-dogs in the electoral fight. If he succeeds, it will be, and probably should be, the end of public radio in New Zealand.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 20 February 2020.