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 First Leaders' Debate: Cunliffe Shows His Quality.

Epic Struggle: Tonight New Zealanders were privileged to witness a truly outstanding encounter between two highly effective politicians. Leaving aside its ridiculous "poll", TVNZ is to be congratulated for screening one of the best leaders' debates in decades.

WHAT A BLOODY SHAME. For 59 minutes TVNZ had hosted one of the best leaders' debates in decades. In spite of many Labour supporters reservations, Mike Hosking chaired the encounter with consummate professionalism. He made sure the debate was free-flowing, allowing both leaders ample opportunity to demonstrate both their command of the relevant facts and their skill at turning those facts to their own and their party's advantage.

But then, in the final minute of the show, TVNZ broadcast the results of a meaningless "poll" of self-selecting respondents purporting to show that John Key had "won" the debate by a margin of 69 percent to 31 percent. Rather than simply allowing New Zealanders to argue among themselves in the best democratic tradition about which man had been the more impressive, the state broadcaster could not forebear from settling the question for them. Immensely satisfying if you were a National Party supporter, utterly infuriating if you were backing Labour.

Because there is absolutely no disputing the fact that David Cunliffe acquitted himself superbly in tonight's debate. He was disarmingly courteous and generous in his interactions with the Prime Minister, but frankly, he could afford to be. Of the two politicians he was easily the more fluent and the more persuasive. Where the Prime Minister aggressively asserted, David Cunliffe calmly and good-humouredly presented the evidence. And, when the moment came for a knockout blow, the Leader of the Opposition was not found wanting.

The "killer punch" came in the discussion about selling New Zealand farmland to foreigners. Responding to Hosking's challenge about no New Zealanders being willing to pay the $70 million Shanghai Pengxin was willing to offer for Lochinver Station, David Cunliffe simply invited the Chairman to "roll the logic forward" and in a bravura demonstration of his economic skills set forth the blunt facts about how such a market would inevitably and permanently bar New Zealanders from ever being able to afford to purchase their own land. Even John Key felt obliged to congratulate his opponent on his spectacular rhetorical performance.

For those not blinded by tribal political loyalties, this was the moment when Cunliffe "won" the debate. Economics and business have always been the Prime Minister's preferred battle-ground. But, even here, in the area of John Key's greatest expertise, David Cunliffe bettered him. For all those New Zealanders who have yet to make up their minds, that extraordinary exchange should be their "Aha!" moment. John Key is a highly accomplished politician and a fine debater, but tonight he met his match. Tonight, for the first time since he became National's leader, John Key lost.

If I were to score the debate out of 100 I would give 60 points to David Cunliffe and 40 points to John Key.

Will that be the judgement of punditry in general? We shall have to wait and see. TVNZ, however, with its meaningless "poll", clearly intends to tell New Zealand that John Key was the victor. As citizens with minds of our own, and as viewers who had just witnessed a truly outstanding encounter between two highly effective politicians, we deserved better than to see the public broadcaster needlessly undermine an otherwise splendid event.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Should Journalists Have To Declare Their Ideological Predispositions?

Helpful Hint: Nobody reading my own newspaper columns has ever had to waste any time working out from which side of the political divide I draw my inspiration. Would we be better or worse off if all journalists' work was so clearly identified?

 

IF YOU’RE READING this column you know already that it’s coming to you “From the Left”. You are, therefore, free to absorb its contents with a rare foreknowledge of its author’s ideological predispositions.
 

But how often can you say as much? How many of the stories, columns and feature articles published every day carry such a useful consumer warning? And how easy is it, Dear Reader, in the absence of such a warning, to discern how those stories, columns and feature articles have been put together and why?
 

Because, make no mistake, everything you read, watch and listen to, every newspaper article, television programme and radio broadcast, has been carefully constructed by an individual, or individuals, working consciously, or unconsciously, from well-established ideological predispositions.
 

The information a journalist decides to include in a story is very often less important than the information he or she decides to leave out. Indeed, this is almost always the case. Because in any “newsworthy” event there will always be many more details and contributory causes than a journalist’s employers could ever possess either the time or the space to relate.
 

A few mornings ago, for example, I listened to a correspondent reporting on the referenda on regional autonomy that had just taken place in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. His report concentrated on irregularities in the way the referenda were conducted. He then linked these irregularities to statements from European Union and United States officials in which the “Russian-backed separatists’” referenda were angrily condemned as “illegal”.
 

Another journalist, reporting from the same country, might just as easily have started her report by reiterating the illegal status of the government in Kiev. She could have pointed to the presence of the overtly fascist political formations within the Western-backed regime and linked this to the determination of ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers to protect themselves by voting in hastily organised referenda for regional autonomy. After all, these so-called “separatists” are living in territory which had, up until 1922, been part of Russia-proper.

Hero Or Villain? It depends on which facts journalists choose to put into their stories about the crisis in Ukraine, and which they decide to leave out.

 

What made the media outlet I was listening to choose the first report over the second? Both are constructed out of facts which, thanks to Google and Wikipedia, are readily checkable. And yet, the Ukraine which emerges from the way these facts are either included or excluded differs wildly. In the first report the referenda symbolise illegal Russian-backed separatism. In the second, the referenda represent East Ukraine’s determination to protect itself from Western-backed fascists in Kiev. In the end, it probably came down to the news editor’s ideological predispositions.
 

Or, alternatively, the news editor made a rational assessment of the way his bosses would react to his broadcasting the second report, and opted for the first. Such self-censorship is extremely common, reflecting the fact that individuals are not the only things with ideological predispositions – institutions have them too. And if you would discover the political direction of an institution’s bias, just find out who pays the bills.
 

In the light of the recent report on political bias released by Television New Zealand, the question of a journalist’s ideological predispositions has acquired an unusual moral salience.

Shane Taurima: Conflict of interest?

 

Mr Shane Taurima was forced to resign from his job at TVNZ because he allegedly failed to adequately separate his political ambitions from his statutory obligations, as a public broadcaster, to be politically neutral and only broadcast news and current affairs that is fair and balanced. TVNZ plans to avoid any future suggestion of political partiality by requiring its news and current affairs staff to declare and relinquish any existing ties and/or affiliations to political parties.
 

But, surely, this can only be regarded as a mixed blessing? At least an open declaration by all TVNZ journalists of their ideological predispositions would allow viewers to judge their output with a greater understanding of what kinds of facts they are more likely to put into, and leave out of, their stories. Just like the readers of this column, TVNZ’s viewers would then be able to calculate an appropriate political discount.
 

The Law may require our public broadcaster to be fair and balanced, but the Law can’t be there to witness what goes into or gets left out of everything we see.
 

Would we not be better served if all journalists were required to identify themselves as coming “From the Left’ or “From the Right”?
 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 May 2014.

A Labour Cell In TVNZ's Vast Castle

Stairway To Hell: Like the decrepit dynasty at the heart of Mervyn Peake's grotesque fantasy novel, Gormenghast, the "Heads" at TVNZ's Auckland sprawling headquarters lost track of what was going on within their immense domain.

GORMENGHAST is one novel of a hell. Imagine J.R.R. Tolkien on acid, C.S. Lewis on speed, and you’ll hardly have made a mental dent in Mervyn Peake’s grotesque trilogy. I won’t spoil the books by giving away the plot in detail. Suffice to say that Gormenghast is an immense castle. So immense that the decrepit dynasty of Groan, to whom it ostensibly belongs, cannot possibly keep track of everything that goes on within its walls.

 

Watching Patrick Gower unfold (with ever increasing glee) the activities of Shane Taurima and his colleagues at TVNZ headquarters in Auckland, I couldn’t help being reminded of Peake’s gothic fantasy.

 

Like Gormenghast Castle, the sprawling TVNZ site had somehow spawned a secret cell of resistance. How was that possible? Because, like the Groans, TVNZ’s bosses appear to have become preoccupied with “the obscure and esoteric tenets” of their governance functions.

 

For the most part this involves large numbers of middle managers running up and down the great staircase that dominates TVNZ’s Auckland headquarters, ducking into tiny offices, and exchanging information with other middle managers who undertake to pass it on to yet more middle managers. Only very occasionally (or by accident) does this information ever trickle down to the people who actually make the television programmes we see on air.

 

Only very rarely do all the various functionaries of TVNZ gather together. And when they do it is almost always to pay homage to something called “The Ratings”. These are collections of viewing data gathered according to specifications laid down at some point in the far distant past but which are now almost completely irrelevant to the way people use their television sets, Sky decoders, PCs and iPhones.

 

The grand interpreters of The Ratings are the “Heads” (Head of Programming, Head of Marketing, Head of Sport, Head of News and Current Affairs). Their job is to advise the CEO who, in his turn, advises “The Board”.

 

TVNZ HQ - The higher you climb the less you know.

 

It is widely acknowledged within the sprawling edifice of TVNZ that the higher you climb in the organisation, the less you know about television. At the level of the Board, for example, virtually nothing is known about the rights and duties of a state broadcaster.

 

The similarities between TVNZ’s top brass, the Groans of Gormenghast, and the peculiar determination of both elites to cling to the “obscure and esoteric tenets” of their respective institutions are quite uncanny.

 

Certainly, it is very difficult to fathom how else Shane Taurima and his colleagues could run what amounted to a Labour Party branch out of the Maori and Pacific Television Unit – practically under the noses of TVNZ’s senior executives – without employing something like the Gormenghast metaphor.

 

And, really, can you blame them? It has been years since TVNZ management demonstrated the slightest respect for the news and current affairs obligations of what is still, officially, the people’s television network. They are required to operate in a culture of contempt for the principles of public service television – an attitude epitomised by the TVNZ CEO who claimed Police Ten-Seven as an example of Maori programming by pointing to the large number of young Maori men and women arrested on the show!

 

The atmosphere broadcasters are required to inhale at TVNZ may not be party political, but it is unquestionably ideological. Since 1989, when Labour removed all references to the public good from the Broadcasting Act, TVNZ has understood that its real (albeit unwritten) charter mandates the relentless promotion to New Zealanders of the virtues of neoliberalism, while rigorously eliminating all those programming options capable of constructing an alternative worldview.

 

Mr Taurima’s and his Maori and Pacific Television Unit colleagues’ biggest mistake – apart from believing that they could ever get away with behaving in such a nakedly party political fashion – was to hang their hats on securing the election of a Labour-led Government.

 

In the nine years that Helen Clark’s Labour Party governed New Zealand no serious effort was made to root-out the pernicious operational culture at TVNZ or, indeed, to address the manifold defects of this country’s recklessly deregulated media industry.

 

Even had TV3’s Patrick Gower not exposed Shane “Steerpike” Taurima’s cell of resistance in the bowels of the TVNZ Gormenghast, a change of government would only have confirmed for him The Who’s immortal line:

 

“Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.”

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 February 2014.

"Seven Sharp" Needs A Point (Of View)

Perfecting The Sales Pitch: Seven Sharp's young target audience was raised in a culture completely saturated in commercial values. The measure of the show's success will be in how successfully it subverts those values; how viciously its presenters bite the hands that feed them. Seven Sharp's producers should look for inspiration not to the late, NZ Establishment-loving, Paul Holmes, but to the bitingly satirical US broadcaster, Jon Stewart.

 

BY THE TIME you read this Seven Sharp will be four shows old. Some of the nervousness evident in the first outing of TVNZ’s new prime-time product will be gone – replaced, one hopes, by the easy rhythms and rapport so essential to this kind of television. On the basis of that first outing, however, Seven Sharp does have a future. Traditionalists may balk at the judgement, but to my eyes, at least, the show has positioned itself squarely in the zeitgeist’s postal-code.

 

Seven Sharp’s critics will object that the show lacks seriousness: that the multiple economic and social challenges currently assailing New Zealand deserve something more from prime-time free-to-air television than the hip flippancy of Ali Mau, Greg Boyed and Jesse Mulligan.

 

Those critics will certainly get no argument from me concerning the seriousness of the problems facing New Zealand. Where we may part company, however, is over the tone in which a commercially-driven television network might best address its target audience.

 

Just consider the 18-34 year-olds at whom Seven Sharp is directed. At the top of the band we’re looking at people born in 1979;  at the bottom, at kids born in 1995. All of these young New Zealanders grew up during or after the Rogernomics “revolution”. None of them have any personal memories of what “public service television” looks like. Most of them grew up with a TV remote in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. The doctrine enunciated by Lord Reith, the first Director-General of the BBC, that broadcasting should “elevate, educate and entertain” the ignorant masses (and in that order) would be laughed out of court by Generations X and Y.

 

Many older New Zealanders like to dismiss these generations as narcissistic know-nothings. But Generations X and Y aren’t so much selfish as sceptical. The grand transformational “narratives” of the Twentieth Century were all busted flushes by the time they were old enough to even notice capitalised nouns like Socialism and Fascism. And their relationship to the last grand narrative left standing – Capitalism – is analogous to the relationship of a fish to the sea. They live in it, they live with it, and they can’t live without it.

 

These are the generations who regard just about every attempt at communication – including their own – as a sales-pitch. Only a sap takes words and images at face value. Maturity is defined in terms of how completely one is able to see through and decode the World’s deceptions: by how finely-tuned one’s ears have become to its “spin”.

 

Jon Stewart: Exposing the absurd realities behind the Establishment's ever more elaborate lies.

 

The name we give to those who guide us through the world’s deceptions, exposing as they go the absurd reality behind the lies - and who then reward our attention with the gift of laughter - is “comedian”. It’s why, to so many members of Generations X and Y the journalists sound like clowns, and the clowns sound like journalists. President Barack Obama owes more to comedian Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show than he does to the New York Times or Washington Post. It’s why YouTube has more to say to Generations X and Y than TVNZ or TV3.

 

Seven Sharp’s producers, Raewyn Rasch and Tim Wilson get this – sort of. It’s why they’ve set the ambient mood of the show to “Sceptically Humorous”. Mr Mulligan understands – sort of. And Ms Mau and Mr Boyed will pick it up soon enough. But they’ll only “nail” that flibbertigibbet zeitgeist when they summon up the courage to ride their comedic horses off the reservation.

 

On Monday-night’s show it was Heather du Plessis-Allan who came closest to escaping TVNZ’s leaden conservatism. Revealing a PM who eats Wattie’s Baked Beans from the can at the end of a long day. Somehow – please don’t ask me how – that mattered.

 

But why-oh-why did Jesse Mulligan think it was funny to follow the lead of TV3’s Patrick Gower and put horns on David Cunliffe? Since when do we laugh at comedians who kick the victims of political duplicity? And why didn’t Seven Sharp ask their army veteran what lay behind his PTSD-induced nightmares? What had he and the NZ Army done to those Afghan civilians?

 

The young people whose eyes Seven Sharp is so determined to capture will not stay focused on humour that butters-up the Establishment, or watch pre-recorded items that gloss over its crimes.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 8 February 2013.

Sir Paul Holmes 1950 - 2013: The Passing Of A Conservative Champion

Conservative Champion: Over four decades of broadcasting to suburban and provincial New Zealand, Sir Paul Holmes never tired of presenting his inherited prejudices as the very essence of common sense. With his death the forces of conservatism have lost a powerful spokesman.

 

THE DEATH of Sir Paul Holmes has been received with genuine dismay and grief by conservative New Zealanders. Like the many progressive Kiwis who mourned the death of left-wing writer, Bruce Jesson, in 1999, the forces of conservatism understand that they have lost a formidable champion. At Sir Paul’s funeral, as they did at Bruce’s, mourners will hear the tributes of many illustrious New Zealanders and murmur: “We will not see his like again.”

 

To read that Sir Paul was a champion of the Right may startle many of his admirers. The man, himself, would have bridled with characteristic theatricality at such a description. Throughout his long career Sir Paul had worked tirelessly to perfect his public persona as the Kiwi “Everyman”. Inspired by that other gargantuan egotist, Charles De Gaulle, Sir Paul would likely have insisted that “Holmes is not of the Left; Holmes is not of the Right: Holmes is above!”

 

But it was precisely in his “Man of the People” costume that Sir Paul’s usefulness to the forces of conservatism inhered. Over four decades of broadcasting to suburban New Zealand, Sir Paul never tired of presenting his inherited provincial prejudices as the very essence of common sense.

 

In London and Vienna, the precociously clever boy from Hastings may have rubbed shoulders with all kinds of sophisticated cosmopolitans, but he was careful to avoid the contagion of their critical intellectualism. His hatred of intellectual “elites” was life-long and visceral. Sir Paul’s voracious appetite for information was almost entirely dedicated to defending his listeners’ and viewers’ right to be wrong.

 

The contrast with Bruce Jesson, one of New Zealand’s rare public intellectuals, could hardly be starker. Bruce devoted his life to dissecting and exposing the hollowness of New Zealand society. He investigated the cosy networks smothering its business community; attacked the Labour Party’s and the trade unions’ narrowness of vision; and castigated the universities for their failure to act as New Zealand’s critic and conscience. Bruce was the implacable foe of New Zealand’s provincial mediocrity – most particularly of its ingrained anti-intellectualism and its spineless deference to the contrived hierarchies of monarchy. Even had a Labour Government been brave enough to offer him a knighthood – Bruce would never have accepted it. He died a convinced and proud republican.

 

Progressive Champion: The contrast between the left-wing public intellectual, Bruce Jesson, and Sir Paul Holmes could hardly have been starker.

 

Sir Paul has been hailed as a broadcasting wunderkind and identified as the leader of a revolution in radio and television current affairs. Had he been the inventor of talk radio and personality-centred current-affairs television such titles might have been justified. More accurately, Sir Paul should be remembered as the broadcaster temperamentally best suited to providing the “infotainment” product that the new, commercially-driven radio and television networks were demanding. In this endeavour his ability to stroke the prejudices and inflame the grievances of suburban and provincial New Zealanders is justly celebrated.

 

As his audiences grew and his unique broadcasting talents propelled him into the extremely influential 7:00pm time-slot, Sir Paul and TVNZ’s Holmes Show found themselves in an extraordinarily powerful political position. Inevitably, the forces of conservatism lost little time in exploiting that power.

 

In October 2000, for example, Sir Paul and the Holmes Show lent the weight of its influence to a campaign supposedly organised by young and talented Kiwis driven offshore by the policies of the Labour-Alliance Government. In reality, the “Generation Lost” campaign was the work of the Business Roundtable and its public relations firm. As I wrote in The Independent Business Weekly of 11 October 2000:

 

“Mr Holmes has declared that he did not know of the Business Roundtable’s involvement when his show went to air last Wednesday evening. If this is correct, then Mr Holmes should immediately resign his position as the nation’s premier broadcaster. No one with the years of journalistic experience that Mr Holmes boasts should have accepted [the campaign’s] advertisement at its face value. The blatantly anti-government message at the heart of [the] campaign would normally have sent alarm bells ringing throughout Television New Zealand. To put [it] on air without checking the bona fides of [its] claims to political neutrality was an unforgivable lapse of professionalism.”

 

I continue to wonder how many of the other politically-charged causes championed by Sir Paul over the past two decades were of similar unacknowledged and highly-dubious provenance.

 

It would be remiss of me, however, to close without recalling Sir Paul’s extraordinary response to the 2004 hikoi opposing Labour’s Foreshore & Seabed Bill.

 

A lesser man (and a more convinced right-winger) might have used the day’s tumultuous events to further inflame New Zealand’s already tender race-relations. Instead, Sir Paul ended the programme’s coverage with these words:

 

“No New Zealander, frankly, could have watched proceedings today without a sense of pride, without being gripped by the heart, could have watched it – without love.”

 

Requiescat In Pace, Sir Paul Holmes.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 5 February 2013.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Mainstream Media Polling.

Petrifying Effect: The constant overstatement of National's electoral support in mainstream media polls risks sending the Government's opponents into a "spiral of silence". Like the legendary Medusa, just looking at them may be enough to paralyse our will to resist the Right's on-going domination of the political discourse.

HERE WE GO AGAIN, the One News/Colmar-Brunton poll is out and, already, the network’s “journalists” are treating it as holy writ. Absolutely undeterred by the extraordinary discrepancy between the mainstream media’s poll-driven predictions and the actual election result, TVNZ and its partners in “churnalism” are once again assuming these polls provide a deadly accurate snap-shot of the public mood.

And just in case you think I’m being unfair, let me quote from one of the mainstream pollsters prime defenders, the US-based political scientist, Rob Salmond, who, on the eve of the 2011 election, alerted his Pundit readers to the fact that: “There have been 57 polls released this year by the five firms we follow, and all 57 of them estimated National would win the seats to govern alone. Fifty of those also estimated that National had an absolute majority of the votes, too.” Mr Salmond’s own prediction – based on his “Poll-of-Polls” – was that the National Party would receive 52 percent of the Party Vote.

The actual election result was very different from that predicted by Mr Salmond and the five firms he followed. Far from winning enough seats to govern alone, the National Party was forced to rely upon the support and/or co-operation of the Act, United Future and Maori parties. Far from securing the predicted absolute electoral majority, National received 47.3 percent of the Party Vote.

Even in the final fortnight of the campaign, when public interest in politics was presumably at its peak, the most influential of the mainstream media polls, Colmar-Brunton, still gave National 50 percent of the Party Vote – a result only just inside the agency’s margin of error. Curiously, Colmar-Brunton’s and the other mainstream pollsters’ predictions for the remaining political parties were much closer to the actual result – although none of them accurately predicted the electoral success of NZ First.

Those of us who’d hoped the Horizon Poll (whose results diverged wildly from the “five firms”’ polls) had discovered a more reliable methodology for sampling public opinion in New Zealand were similarly disappointed. Horizon correctly predicted NZ First’s return to parliament but was well astray of reality in most of its other predictions.

Which leaves those of us with an interest in New Zealand politics facing a big problem. How to get a fix on the true level of National Party support? If practically all of the “reputable” polling firms are consistently at least 3 percentage points north of National’s actual numbers, how can the electorate avoid being sucked into what political scientists call “the spiral of silence”? How do we prevent the media-driven perception of overwhelming support for one political party, or bloc, from silencing the existing and potential supporters of the “losing” side, and thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The historically very low voter turnout for the 2011 election may be a reflection of this “spiral of silence”. Is it realistic to suggest that a whole year of the “five firms” telling voters – in 57 separate polls no less! – that not only was National going to win, but win well enough to govern alone, had absolutely no effect on the final outcome? Isn’t it more likely that that tens-of-thousands of demoralised Labour voters, convinced that their party had already lost, simply could not see the point of visiting a polling-booth?

Let’s consider the counterfactual: that the mainstream pollsters, in 57 separate polls, showed National attracting between 46-49 percent of the Party Vote, and NZ First consistently cresting the 5 percent MMP threshold. Wouldn’t this have energised the electorate? Wouldn’t it have persuaded Labour supporters that, on election day, every vote was going to count? Wouldn’t that have lifted the turnout – and quite possibly produced a National Party defeat?

I think it might.

Which brings us back to the latest One News/Colmar-Brunton poll showing National on 51 percent. In the wake of at least a fortnight’s worth of bad political news, shouldn’t the producer of TVNZ’s Q+A programme, Tim Watkin, have used his blog to express just one or two tiny reservations about the poll? Don’t be silly! Mr Watkin (who is living proof of Upton Sinclair’s famous quip that “it is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”) responded to the poll’s results as if they had been handed down to him on stone tablets from Mt Sinai.

“The latest One News-Colmar Brunton poll is a kick in the pants for Labour. After a ministerial resignation and a fortnight where the whiff of cronyism was never far from National, the governing party can still command more than 50 percent in the polls. That's astounding.”

Yes, that’s right, Mr Watkin, it is “astounding” – as in “so surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm”. But not, apparently, so surprising as to cause you to look back at Colmar-Brunton’s results, note their past failures, and raise even the slightest doubt as to their reliability. Instead, and so very predictably, you used the results to put the boot into Labour; describing them as “a kick in the pants”; and adding, just in case your readers missed the point, that: “even a damaged National Party that looks as wounded as it ever has still looks more attractive to most voters than [Labour] does.”

So, there it is, all you Labour supporters. There’s nothing you can do to dent the National Party juggernaut. Change your leader, change your policies, change your lucky underpants if you feel the need – nobody gives a damn. Because none of it will do you a blind bit of good. John Key is God’s anointed. He’s invincible. You don’t believe me? Then gaze upon this: Colmar-Brunton’s poll-generated Gorgon; TVNZ’s statistical Medusa.

And be turned to stone.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Perfect Information?

If Only It Was That Easy: Free-market theory only works if individuals have access to the kind of "perfect information" which allows them to rationally maximise their self-interest. Without perfect information individual decisions will be, at best, sub-optimal, and, at worst, self-destructive. That's why, in a society genuinely dedicated to the idea of the free-market, every effort would be devoted to ensuring that the citizen has easy access to the best information available. An economic and/or political system in which information is deliberately suppressed, distorted and/or falsified cannot lay claim to being a free-market society. 

THE IDEA that individuals base their decisions on “perfect information” may seem a little odd, but without it the theory of “individual choice” is rendered absurd. Choices made in ignorance, from prejudice, or on the basis of insufficient and false information, will lack the rationality so crucial to the whole notion of free individuals making free choices in a free marketplace of commodities and ideas.

One of the reasons we prize an open and independent judiciary is because a justice system which regularly supressed information critical to the calculation of rational self-interest would soon become dangerously compromised. How is the personal and financial security of the citizen to be protected if the courts make informed decision-making impossible?

If, for example, a businessman was able to rely upon the courts to suppress all evidence of his poor financial judgement, how could potential investors in his enterprises be expected to make informed and rational choices about where to put their money? How could they be protected from the influence of cleverly constructed television advertisements, fronted by one of the most trusted men in the country, informing them that their money would be professionally and prudently managed?

Had the courts allowed them to know that the businessman in question had recently lost hundreds of thousands of his own dollars to obvious fraudsters would they have entrusted him with their life’s savings? Probably not.

And what of the news media: the institutions we rely upon to collect, collate and convey the facts and figures we need to make informed and rational economic and political decisions? Are they doing their job? Or, are they – like the judiciary – occasionally guilty of not giving us the whole story?

On economic matters, for instance, where do they turn for advice?

More often than they should, the privately owned news media turns for advice and analysis to economists employed by the major trading banks.

Is this the best way of acquiring “perfect information”? Wouldn’t an economist employed by a bank have a very powerful personal and institutional interest in only supplying information likely to contribute to the profits of his or her employers? How plausible is it to suppose that a bank economist would deliver to the general public a dispassionate account of the deficiencies of modern banking, or the central role they played in the global economic crisis from which the world is only slowly recovering?

And isn’t it equally improbable to expect a television news bulletin “brought to you by the ABC Bank” to broadcast a highly critical analysis of the behaviour of the global finance industry? Isn’t such a bulletin more likely to feature a brief daily exchange with some grinning currency-trader brim-full of optimism and shop-worn economic platitudes?

Isn’t that what we’ve got?

Perhaps, but haven’t we also got publicly-owned television and radio networks? Isn’t it their job to provide the dispassionate and critical information so essential to a healthy democracy and properly functioning free market?

Well, yes, it is their job – but are they doing it?

Certainly not in the case of Television New Zealand. The transformation of TVNZ into a State Owned Enterprise in the late-1980s effectively extinguished the powerful public service culture of its earlier incarnation. Very rapidly TVNZ developed a new and aggressive commercial culture hostile to the very notion of public service broadcasting.

Helen Clark’s Labour Government made a number of half-hearted attempts to revitalise the public service ethic in TVNZ – but to no avail. By forcing the network to return a profit to the state and by denying it the indispensible protection of substantial taxpayer funding Labour succeeded only in strengthening TVNZ’s commercial ethos.

Radio NZ fared slightly better under Labour, but, once again, insufficient funding did little to encourage the adventurous and staunchly independent journalistic culture public broadcasting needs if it’s to do its duty by the public. (For example, Radio NZ, to its shame, also relies on bank economists for economic advice and analysis.)

But if Labour was half-hearted in its facilitation of “perfect information”, the present National Government appears to have rejected the entire concept.

This is puzzling. As a party dedicated to the free market, one might have expected the National Party to spend unstintingly to ensure New Zealanders’ information is as “perfect” as possible.

Far from denying funding to that last vestige of public service television – TVNZ7 – a government genuinely supportive of the free market would have boosted its resources. Far from stacking the Radio NZ Board with political cronies hell-bent on commercialising its operations, the National Government would have given them the resources to place itself and its business backers under even closer scrutiny.

That this is about the last thing our masters would do suggests that “perfect information”, “individual choice” and “free markets” have no existence outside the world of right-wing theory.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 19 April 2011.

A New News?

A New Kind of News?: The sheer scale of the Christchurch tragedy, and the myriad calls upon officials' time and energy, leaves little or no room for the public relations specialists to present their client's version of reality. The resulting, searingly honest, coverage is what real (i.e. unmediated) journalism looks like.

A NEW NEWS? Tim Watkin, over at Pundit, is trumpeting the free-to-air networks’ continuous, advertising-free coverage of the Christchurch Earthquake as a "game-changing" journalistic adventure.

"Rather than a journalist doing the thinking for the viewers and the carefully condensed report presented," says Tim, "the thinking (and feeling) is done live in front of you, and sometimes is exposed as shallow or headline-driven. It's real, for better or worse."

To say this was overstating the case would be an understatement.

New Zealanders are quite used to journalists reporting live from the scenes of natural and man-made tragedies. And when there is actually something to report – as there undoubtedly is in the devastated city of Christchurch – New Zealand’s television journalists generally do a very good job.

What the earthquake coverage has revealed, however, is how spurious and trivialising most of TVNZ’s and TV3’s "live crosses" really are. The sequence usually involves an embarrassed journalist, positioned well away from any action, telling us what the presenter has already told us (if we’re lucky, in slightly more detail).

What is truly unusual about the free-to-air networks earthquake coverage is the extreme fluidity of the events their journalists are being asked to report. The sheer scale of the tragedy, and the myriad calls upon officials’ time and energy, leaves little or no room for the public relations specialists to present their client’s version of reality.

For what may be the first time in their brief careers (so many of these journalists are barely out of journalism school) young reporters are free to present us with information and images that have not been carefully prepared, edited and slanted – either by the "official sources" on the spot, or back in their own newsrooms.

This is what real journalism looks like and sounds like. Trained observers and communicators, unencumbered by all the usual editorial and political shackles, giving their audience accurate, up-to-date information to the very best of their professional ability.

Tim’s effusive posting is also quite likely a reflection of the sheer novelty of being able to work outside the rigid constraints of a fixed advertising schedule. As he rather breathlessly explains: "The news crashes on through 6pm, Close Up doesn't wait for 7pm for a Mike Hosking interview, Breakfast starts at 5.30am and runs until noon; even Coronation St is sacrificed."

If he but knew it, what Tim is actually celebrating is not some sort of quantum-leap into CNN-land, but the enormous flexibility and freedom which flows from broadcasting undertaken not for profit, but for the public good.

The camaraderie and un-self-conscious display of professional expertise, which Tim describes in the TVNZ control-room, is what happens in any workplace where the workers themselves, rather than their bosses, are given responsibility for production.

It will, of course, all come to an end in a few days time. TVNZ and TV3 cannot afford to keep their broadcasts advertising-free indefinitely. All-too-soon the economic realities of for-profit broadcasting will assert themselves and Tim and his colleagues will go back to their usual job of delivering eyeballs to advertisers.

Still, I’m glad the young producer of Q+A drew our attention to the quality of the work the networks’ staff are currently delivering to their fellow citizens. The tragedy, of course, is that it requires a national crisis of these proportions to shatter the normal templates of broadcasting practice.

Just for a moment we are being given a glimpse of an alternative broadcasting universe. One in which the workers in the control room, the workers operating the cameras, and the journalists delivering the story, are free to communicate with their fellow citizens about things that really matter.

By showing us human-beings helping one another, comforting one another, risking their lives for one another, they have given the lie to the twisted version of human nature transmitted to viewers during "normal" programming.

In this awful – but genuine – "reality show", the survivors of the Christchurch earthquake do not lie or back-stab, manoeuvre or compete. Instead, they tell each other the truth, they put their arms around perfect strangers, and they co-operate heroically for the common good.

What we’ve been given, Tim, isn’t just a rare opportunity to see what real journalism looks like, but a chance to learn how very, very far from the vicious depiction of humanity, typically delivered by commercial television, our fellow New Zealanders truly are.

Talkin' About Waitangi & Hone Harawira

Time to Talk: The hour-long, news-driven format of TVNZ7's News at 8 - in sharp contrast to the One News shock/horror-entertainment and weather-driven bulletin at 6:00pm - allows for considerably more in-depth discussion on the important issues of the day. It's coverage of Waitangi Day 2011 and the growing rift between Hone Harawira and the Maori Party leadership shows what genuine public-service broadcasting could (and should) look like.

A FRANK DISCUSSION on the subjects of Waitangi Day and the future of Hone Harawira took place between myself and Miriama Kamo on yesterday’s (Sunday, 6 February) bulletin of TVNZ 7’s News at 8.

I don’t know how long this will stay up at TVNZ-On-Demand, but at the moment the item can be accessed here http://tvnz.co.nz/tvnz-news-at-8/video (the interview begins two-thirds of the way through "Chapter 1"). [Sadly, the link no longer takes you to the items in question.]

The earlier interview between Miriama and TVNZ’s political reporter, Jessica Mutch, is fascinating. The young journalist clearly cannot conceive of any style of politics that isn’t bound up with the institutional norms of parliamentary representation. Nor is she willing to explore the more likely consequences of her own (or should that be Pita Sharple's?) predictions.

Is Ms Mutch really so lacking in political and historical imagination as to suppose that if Hone Harawira is forced out of the Maori Party he will depart alone? That thousands (especially in Te Tai Tokerau) will not resign from the Maori Party in solidarity with their MP? That the party will not be riven with angry recriminations?

More importantly, can she not see that any splitting of the Maori Party could only have the most serious electoral repercussions for the governing coalition come November?

Dangerous Falsehoods

Who Governs? Every three years New Zealanders elect a new House of Representatives which, in turn, decides which party, or combination of parties, gets to form a government. All governments serve at Parliament's pleasure - and Parliament is regularly re-constituted by the people. That's how our representative democracy works - and don't let any politician, journalist or lawyer tell you otherwise!

I DON’T KNOW about you, but I tend to get quite annoyed when people accuse me of saying things I didn’t say. What makes me even more annoyed is when these accusations come from people who really should know better.

Since he goes under the sobriquet of "Legal Beagle", one has to assume that Graeme Edgeler is a qualified lawyer. As such, he should know how dangerous it can be – when commenting on controversial subjects – to put words in other people’s mouths. And yet, that is precisely what he has done in a posting on the Public Address website – and the mouth he put the word "treasonous" into is mine.

The context in which this misquotation occurs: a discussion about who has the right to govern; is of no small significance.

On Sunday, 26 October 2008, TVNZ ran a story (you can read it here) in which the network’s Political Editor, Guyon Espiner, reported the findings of a poll he’d commissioned from Colmar Brunton. The question asked was: "Should the party that wins the most votes get to lead the government?"

Having secured the entirely predictable response (77 percent said "Yes.") Mr Espiner took the opportunity of indulging in a little editorial speculation: "The latest ONE News Colmar Brunton poll suggests there will be a backlash if Labour comes a distant second to National but still forms a multi-party coalition."

It is important to bear in mind that this "news" item was broadcast less than a fortnight before the 2008 General Election – when it was still by no means certain that Winston Peters would fail to secure the 5 percent of the Party Vote required to win seats in Parliament. What was clear, however, was that if NZ First was returned there was a good chance Helen Clark and Labour would be able to secure enough support in the House of Representatives to go on governing.

By commissioning this poll, and then raising the possibility of a "backlash", Mr Espiner had effectively added his own – and TVNZ’s – support to the National Party Opposition’s campaign to delegitimize in advance any coalition government that did not include the party which commanded a simple plurality of the Party Votes cast. Outraged by this extraordinary display of overt partisanship, I penned "An Open Letter to TVNZ" which was published in The Dominion Post on Friday, 31 October.

Mr Edgeler states in his blog posting "Coalition of Losers" that: "At the time, Chris Trotter had called TVNZ 'treasonous' for running that poll." Well, Mr Edgeler, I have a copy of the open letter sitting in front of me on my desk, and nowhere does the word "treasonous" appear.

What I did say was: "For TVNZ to place the enormous power of the television medium behind this naked attempt to rule the governing party out of contention as a competitor for executive office is not only an egregious abrogation of its Charter, but also an open and extremely dangerous attack on democracy itself ….. I will not be part of any right-wing, media-driven attempt to have every Labour, Green, Maori Party, NZ First, and Progressive vote discounted."

I stand by every word.

The most depressing aspect of Mr Edgeler’s post, however, is not his failure to accurately report what I wrote, but his apparent endorsement of the position which the National Party (aided and abetted by Mr Espiner) adopted on the vital constitutional question: Who has the right to govern?

"There will be those", writes Mr Edgeler, "who will find any objection to a coalition of runners-up to be constitutionally offensive: We don’t elect a government, we elect a parliament, and whoever can command a majority of the House is properly the Prime Minister – whether from the largest party, or merely the largest group of parties. However, this ignores one of the salient points of the concern: the objection itself can be grounded in democracy."

No, Mr Edgeler, it can’t. If representative democracy means anything at all, it means government according to law: law enacted by a legislature which has been elected by the people.

Any attempt to lay aside that law: by claiming, for example, that the voters don’t really understand that what they’re doing in the polling booth every three years is electing a parliament (not a government); is a quite extraordinary stance for a lawyer to take. Ignorance of the law – as any responsible lawyer will tell his or her clients – is no defence.

It’s why I was so angered by Mr Espiner’s item back in 2008. By failing to use the resources of the public broadcaster to educate the electorate, and refusing to criticise the Opposition’s attempt to delegitimize in advance any coalition which did not include the party which had won more votes than any other single party, he allowed the National Party’s constitutional misrepresentations to pass unchallenged.

It makes me wonder what editorial stance Mr Espiner and TVNZ would have taken had National’s worst fears been realised. Would New Zealanders have been treated to the spectacle of the publicly-owned television network openly suggesting that a Labour-led coalition government lacked legitimacy?

If National and Act supporters – buoyed by TVNZ’s (and no doubt many other right-wing media outlets’) support – had taken to the streets, how would Mr Espiner and his colleagues have responded? Would Simon Dallow (as Wendy Petrie nodded in wide-eyed approval) have jutted out his noble chin on ONE News and spoken movingly of "people power" challenging "this coalition of losers"? Would the majority (i.e. 50 percent + 1) of New Zealanders who had voted for parties other than National and Act (parties now commanding a majority of the seats in Parliament) have had their political judgement over-ruled? Would the Constitution of New Zealand have been set aside?

And would Mr Edgeler have hailed such an outcome as "democracy" – or "treason"?

Driving In Illiberal Circles

However did he win? Rob Muldoon addresses a National Party-organised campaign rally in the Upper Hutt Mall, 1981. Our eyes are drawn immediately to the placards carried by the Labour-supporting rubber workers, but it was the voting strength of all those undemonstrative electors listening attentively to "Mr Muldoon" which counted on election day. Disgraced Breakfast host, Paul Henry, may have many more supporters out there than Liberal New Zealand likes to think.

LIBERAL KIWIS said it so often that conservative comedians turned it into a joke: "I don’t know how Rob Muldoon got elected – nobody I know voted for him!"

You’d be surprised how many liberals struggled to see the humour in that sentence. Conservatives, on the other hand, got the joke straight-away.

They, at least, understood that liberal New Zealand constituted a small, self-referential elite that was ideologically, culturally and socially cut off from the overwhelming majority of the population.

And that, of course, was the whole point of the joke.

In the isolated liberal communities of academia, the artistic community, the news media and whatever passed for bohemia in the 1970s hardly anyone ever voted for the National Party.

Hence liberal New Zealand’s profound sense of shock and dislocation when the rest of the population turned away from Bill Rowling’s Labour Government in 1975.

I well recall the day, a few weeks before the 1975 General Election, when I found myself in a room chock-full of the Wellington cultural elite. In one corner sat the acting head of the Arts Council, a couple of nationally renowned poets occupied the sofa, and the rest of the space was filled up with writers, film-makers, academics and art students.

I had not long returned from a hitch-hiking tour of the South Island, during which I’d exchanged ideas with all sorts of New Zealanders. Mile after mile of these conversations had left me harbouring serious doubts about the longevity of Bill Rowling’s Labour Government.

Norman Kirk, it seemed, had been a man like themselves. But Bill Rowling? (Not to mention all those "intellectuals" surrounding him!) Well, he was a different matter.

Though they struggled to put it into words, many of the motorists who picked me up clearly believed the country was slowly slipping from their grasp. There were too many people like me, they said. Too many footloose, restless and unanchored youngsters. Too many long-haired hippies willing to challenge the ideas and institutions upon which they had built their lives.

"Rob Muldoon will sort your lot out", they would say, grinning widely. But I couldn’t help noticing that in their eyes there wasn’t the slightest trace of mirth.

Among the gaggle of liberal worthies I’d joined that day was the headmaster of my old secondary school – a wise, tolerant and generous man I greatly admired. I told him what I’d heard on my travels and asked for his thoughts on the imminent election.

"Don’t worry, Chris," he reassured me, "New Zealand will never vote for a man as far to the right as Muldoon."

Certainly, no one in that room did.

Thirty-five years later, with Breakfast host, Paul Henry, offering-up yet another gobbet of reactionary tripe to his television audience, I couldn’t help recalling those 1975 conversations.

They helped me resist the temptation to add yet another liberal voice to the cacophony of outraged protest.

That the redoubtable Joris de Bres, acting on behalf of left-thinking liberals everywhere, would bring to bear the full weight of the Race Relations Conciliator’s office, I hadn’t the slightest doubt. Just as I was certain that every left-wing blogger capable of spelling "bigot" and "redneck" would be reaching for the nearest keyboard.

Recalling those thirty-five-year-old conversations, I was equally certain that there wouldn’t be a single liberal commentator who didn’t consider Mr Henry’s comments regarding the identity of Governor-General Anand Satyanand to be both adolescent and unforgivable.

There’d be no votes for Mr Henry in liberal circles.

But what about out on the road?

What would New Zealanders living outside the charmed circles of Kiwi liberalism have to say about Mr Henry’s outburst?

"For crying out loud, mate, he was only saying what right-wing buggers like me are thinking. That Governor-Generals are supposed to be like everybody’s grand-dad – stuffed shirts with heads of white hair and plums in their mouths. At least they were when I was a kid.

"This guy we’ve got now, Satyanand or-whatever-his-name-is. Wasn’t he one of Aunty Helen’s appointments? Someone who ticked all the politically-correct boxes?

"That’s all Henry was trying to say for God’s sake. That Satyanand only got the job because the Labour Government needed to shore up its vote in the immigrant community. It’s hardly bloody rocket science – is it?"

To which I’d have to reply: "No, mate, it isn’t."

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 8 October 2010.

TVNZ to be bled white

National is sucking the life-blood out of public broadcasting.

THERE can be little doubt, now, that the National-led government intends to bleed Television New Zealand white. By refusing to relieve the Crown-Owned Company of its obligation to hand over 70 percent of its profits to the Consolidated Fund, the Broadcasting Minister, Jonathan Coleman, is, in effect, condemning scores of TVNZ’s employees to the ranks of the unemployed. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he is making it even more difficult (some would say next-to-impossible) for the network to produce the sort of public service broadcasting viewers in other countries take for granted.

Coleman’s justification for refusing to suspend TVNZ’s dividend payments to the State: that it would set a dangerous precedent, and encourage other businesses to come running to the Government in search of similar assistance; is entirely specious.

For a start, TVNZ is no longer a State Owned Enterprise, which means that it is no longer legally obliged to be run as if it were a private sector business. The last Labour Government quite deliberately ditched the network’s SOE status and reconstituted it as a Crown Owned Company, so that the requirement to subordinate everything to the profit motive would no longer prevent it from fulfilling its proper, public service, obligations under the TVNZ Charter.

TVNZ’s legal status has not changed simply because there has been an election, nor have its legal obligations under the Charter. So, there is simply no way that Coleman can argue that he would be establishing some sort of dangerous commercial precedent by allowing TVNZ to use the tens of millions of dollars earmarked for the dividend to offset the dramatic fall in its advertising revenue. All he would really be doing by granting this relief is his job as Minister of Broadcasting: upholding TVNZ’s status as a chartered public broadcaster.

Of course, had Labour done what it should have done, when it should have done it, TVNZ would be far better protected from the depredations of a political party whose primary loyalty has always been to the private sector – in this case to the Sky Television network.

When Labour came to office in 1999 one of its first priorities should have been to reduce dramatically TVNZ’s financial dependence on advertising revenue. A commitment to waive the dividend, and to fund even a third of the network’s running costs out of general taxation, would have struck a deadly blow to the commercial culture which had been slowly corrupting TVNZ ever since the publicly-owned corporation became an SOE back in 1989. In particular, it would have permitted the restoration of a properly directed and adequately resourced news and current affairs division of the network. Not only would this have improved the overall coverage of political, economic and social affairs on the state broadcaster, but it would also have established bench-marks for journalistic quality across the entire news media. Instead of leading the charge in dumbing us all down, TVNZ could have made sure the rest of the media joined it in smartening us up.

Tragically, Labour never understood the key role a well-funded and independent public broadcasting service plays in the life of a fully-functioning democracy. On the contrary, when it came to broadcasting, the Finance Minister Michael Cullen allowed himself to be (mis)guided by Treasury. Not only was the normal (by OECD standards) level of subsidisation ruled out completely, but the network was also denied the right to plough its profits back into making non-commercial programmes. Like Coleman, Cullen was adamant that TVNZ must continue to pay a dividend to the State.

This refusal to properly fund TVNZ meant that the culture of commercialism, and the right-wing ideology which underpinned it, became ever more deeply entrenched in the public broadcaster. Marian Hobbs and Steve Maharey might waffle-on about public service broadcasting values, and devise a fine charter for it to live by, but so long as TVNZ remained dependent on the private sector for 90 percent of its revenue, so long would its worship of Mammon continue to deepen and grow.

And that’s how it is now.

A TVNZ management genuinely committed to public broadcasting would have tendered their resignations rather than allow Coleman to force a decimation of the network’s workforce. But that’s not the way TVNZ’s bosses think. In their minds they are businessmen – pure and simple. If the shareholders want a dividend then a dividend they shall get, and if that means firing 50-100 staff, then that’s what they’ll do. If it means slashing back on news and current affairs, drama and documentary production – then they will slash away. If it means turning out programmes that are all dumbed-down pieces of trash, pitched at the level of the lowest common denominator, then get ready for endless variations on "Dancing with the Stars".

Neo-liberalism cannot thrive in a cultural environment which honours intelligence and rewards critical thinking. Social Democracy, on the other hand, can only develop where those qualities are prized and nurtured. Norman Kirk understood that, and acted accordingly. Helen Clark didn’t, and we are all paying the price.

TVNZ has become the cultural equivalent of China’s coal-fired factories, pumping out tonne-upon-tonne of climate-changing ideological gas, polluting New Zealand’s political environment to the point where the maladapted Left is slowly, but unmistakably, being suffocated to death.

Adios Agenda

AND the beat goes on. One by one the last vestiges of intelligent, democratically-engaged public broadcasting are driven off the air.

The latest casualty, Richard Harman’s excellent current affairs programme, Agenda, was the last long-format political interview show on New Zealand television. Even more importantly, it was the last current affairs show dedicated to the democratic objective of holding our political leaders to account, and to exploring in depth the major issues confronting the electorate.

Harman’s company Front Page Limited, which produced Agenda, also acted as a training-ground where young journalists could learn the essence of current affairs broadcasting from one of its acknowledged masters.

It was David Lange who memorably quipped that to carry any idea in the New Zealand of the 1980s you first had to carry the "Three Dicks" – Richard Harman (TVNZ’s political editor) Richard Griffin (Radio NZ’s political editor) and Richard Long (editor of The Dominion).

These were men who revelled in unravelling the intricacies of our daily politics, and who understood that the political journalist plays a role in the democratic process which is absolutely essential to the preservation of an informed and engaged citizenry.

TVNZ is reported as saying it wants to take the production of Agenda’s ultimate replacement in-house. We can only imagine what this might mean.

My money is on a half-hour format, once-over-lightly, personality- (rather than policy-) focused programme, with an emphasis on the "human aspects" of our political life, and where the mood is light-hearted, "ironic", and aimed (like everything else produced at TVNZ) at entertaining 20-30 year-olds.

It means that Agenda’s replacement will end up being Generation X’s revenge upon the ageing Baby-Boom generation. Where the Harmans and the Griffins and the Longs strove to reflect the importance of political decisions to the daily lives of their fellow New Zealanders, their more youthful successors will paint a picture of New Zealand politics that entertainingly confirms all the worst prejudices of a cynical and increasingly dumbed-down electorate. Where Agenda sought to engage, expose and explain, its Gen-X-produced replacement will seek to decode, deflate and deconstruct.

From the modernist imperative, which sought to subject the world to the critical analysis of a teleologically-driven everyman, we will be required to endure the ironic detachment and ideological disengagement of post-modern political dilettantism.

Old New Zealanders will at least have a memory of what real current affairs journalism looks and sounds like (think Brian Edwards, Ian Fraser, Lindsay Perigo, Kim Hill). In a very few years New New Zealanders won’t even be able to explain the concept.

Because, when all is said and done, you don’t know what you don’t know – and that’s obviously the way TVNZ intends to keep it.