Not Understood: Why New Zealand’s Current-Affairs Television Is So Bad.

Absurdist Performance Art: The television reviewer, Diana Wichtel, attempting to make sense of the "surely ironically titled" Newsworthy, found only absurdity in the spectacle of the show's co-host, David Farrier, slowly stripping in front of Conservative Party leader, Colin Craig, in a sauna. It's not that New Zealand can't produce top-quality news and current affairs, it's more a matter of a growing number of viewers preferring that it didn't.

 

 

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it! – Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)  Muckraking American journalist and author.

 

 

TELEVISION CRITIC, Diana Wichtel, advises her readers to look upon the latest free-to-air current affairs offerings as “a sort of absurdist performance art”. It’s an arresting notion: the idea that television journalists, in attempting to make sense of contemporary New Zealand, can produce only nonsense. Either, the current affairs programmes on free-to-air television are accurate journalistic depictions of an increasingly absurd society, or, depicting New Zealand society accurately has become too troublesome for mainstream TV journalism.

 

This is a grim pair of options. They raise the question of whether or not the demise of serious current affairs journalism is peculiar to New Zealand television, or, whether it ours is merely the local reflection of a worldwide decline in the genre?

 

Sadly, the answer is that the decline is a peculiarly New Zealand phenomenon.

 

Just last week, an hour-long episode of the BBC documentary series, Panorama, exposed the most shocking misdeeds of the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s Special Branch, MI5 and the UK Defence Force. Laid bare was the protection afforded to murderers and terrorists by agents of the British state. It was television journalism at its best: fearless, thorough and absolutely gripping. The powerful were held to account; the voices of the powerless rang out loud and clear; and the interests of democratic accountability were well and truly served.

 

Genuine television current-affairs journalism is, quite clearly, still possible in other parts of the world – so why not here? Has our society truly reached a level of absurdity such that it makes more sense to turn out a product in which the “surely ironically titled” Newsworthy show’s co-host, David Farrier, “slowly stripped in front of [Conservative Party leader] Colin Craig in a sauna.” The answer, I’m afraid, is: “Yes, that is the level of absurdity that we have reached.”

 

Thirty years of neoliberal extremism has produced a society in which, for nearly half the population, life has become a bitter struggle for survival. What’s more, the reality of that struggle is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Tragedies, like the little girl who died of an illness that was complicated and intensified by the shocking quality of her family’s state-provided accommodation, cry out for action – but no serious governmental response is forthcoming.

 

It is the function of the news media in a properly functioning democracy to rouse public opinion against such political and bureaucratic delinquency. An aggrieved public, it is assumed, being all that is required to secure a redress of wrongs. This is what the BBC’s Panorama programme sets out to do, and it is what the now discontinued Campbell Live show more often than not achieved. (What John Campbell and his team would have made of the little girl’s tragic death is easily imagined!)

 

And yet, even when it was still being broadcast, Campbell Live always came across as representing the exception, rather than the rule, when it came to free-to-air current affairs in prime time. Indeed, I strongly suspect that every time the show’s producers and journalists broadcast another item critical of the status quo, they were all acutely aware of the massive viewer resistance through which it had to pass. They knew that out there – even among the show’s habitual viewers – there was a vast number of people who simply did not want to know.

 

Who are these people? They are the New Zealanders for whom neoliberalism is working. The citizens who own their own home, who are holding down a well-paying job, whose children attend a high-decile school, and who would rather not have their noses rubbed in the grim realities experienced by those who have none of these things.

 

Programmes like Newsworthy and Seven Sharp are what results when the network bosses decide that it is both more profitable and less troublesome to produce programmes for the men and women whose salaries depend on not understanding too much about the sort of society that makes them rich and others poor.

 

In a land of plenty – like New Zealand – such a situation is not only very wrong, it is also utterly absurd. But, when exposing the former is considered too troublesome, then “a sort of absurdist performance art” is all that remains.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 12 June 2015.

Without Prejudice

Staunch: What the players who high-tackled Maori Television’s bid for Rugby World Cup broadcasting rights failed to factor-in, was John Key’s determination to keep his promises to Pita Sharples.

"WHAT’S LEFT?" Having dismissed every one of the Government’s excuses for stymieing the Maori Television Service’s (MTS) bid to broadcast the Rugby World Cup, that was the question Derek Fox threw back at Nine-to-Noon host, Kathryn Ryan, on the morning of Wednesday, 14 October.

"What are we left with?"

It was the very best kind of public broadcasting: immediate, critical and crackling with powerful emotion.

As a veteran broadcaster, Fox must have known – even as he put the question – that Ryan couldn’t answer. That she could not speak the word that hung in the air between them. The only word equal to the extraordinary spectacle of two state-owned broadcasters frantically out-bidding one another with the taxpayers’ money.

Racism.

Finally, the godfather of Maori broadcasting ended the silence by answering his own question. "What are we left with?" he repeated softly. "We’re left with prejudice."

　
A FEW HOURS BEFORE he spoke to Ryan, Fox was the Maori Party’s chief media spokesman.

Not any more.

It’s easy to join the dots. A man of passionate conviction, Fox wasn’t the sort to take what was happening to the Maori Party and the MTS lying down. Every instinct would have told him to take the offensive. But to do that he had to resign.

Fox’s departure, and Pita Sharples’ tight-lipped assurances that he and his colleagues were not about to "throw the toys out of the cot" told a grim story. It revealed just how strained the relationship between National and the Maori Party had become.

After all, if the Maori party co-leaders, Tariana Turia and Sharples, were willing to put up with racism on this scale, it’s difficult to conceive of the insult they couldn’t put up with.

And the insults which the Minister for the Rugby World Cup, Murray McCully, and the Broadcasting Minister, Jonathan Coleman (in collusion with TVNZ and TV3) were already delivering to the Maori Party – and Maoridom – went way beyond a simple breach of "etiquette".

On full display in the ministers’ attempts to sabotage the MTS bid for the World Cup free-to-air broadcasting rights was National’s ugly underbelly: social attitudes more usually associated with McCully’s and Coleman’s ex-pat South African constituents.

The words "patronising" and "condescending" don’t do justice to such attitudes. A better description might be "sly".

Think of the expression people wear when they’re participating in a practical joke. When everyone else in the room, except the victim, knows what’s afoot. It’s never pleasant.

In this case "the joke" was that dear, silly old Pita really did believe that the National Party had abandoned the ruthless racial stereotyping that fueled Orewa I, and that Key would keep his promises.

How had National’s right wing been able to conceal their bad faith from the Maori Party? The answer lies in the strong affinities between Maori political culture and the noblesse oblige traditions of Western conservatism.

Both are founded on a careful recognition of hierarchy and prestige. Both are governed by an elaborate and highly nuanced code of etiquette. And both rely upon the other side’s ability to read between the lines of the obligatory courtesies.

Essentially, it’s an aristocratic style. When John Key, as Leader of the Opposition, ran into Maori Party MPs in the Koru Club, he always greeted them warmly, sat down, and had a friendly chat.

Labour’s style, reflecting its trade union origins, is very different. Relationships are based squarely on what the parties bring to the table. If Labour doesn’t like, or can’t use, what’s on offer, then the deficient party is automatically relegated to "last cab off the rank" – and its members will seldom merit a friendly nod in the Koru Club.

　
WHEN NATIONAL negotiated its agreement with the Maori Party following the 2008 election, it is clear that a number of its senior figures fully expected Turia and Sharples to "read between the lines" that Key’s promises ought to be taken with a very large grain of salt.

In return for the lustre of political preferment, and a handful of largely symbolic policy concessions (a mea culpa from the Crown over the foreshore and seabed, recognition of the tino rangatiratanga flag) National’s new-found friends were supposed to keep their mouths shut and stay out of the Government’s way.

Sharples refused. Though the number of obfuscations, deferrals and outright rejections of Maori party initiatives steadily mounted, Sharples’ faith National’s leader never faltered. Hadn’t Key acknowledged the mana of the Maori people? And hadn’t he given the Maori Affairs Minister the power and resources to act independently on their behalf?

Yes, he had. So, when Sharples saw an opportunity to introduce Maori culture to the Rugby World Cup’s vast international audience he acted - independently.

　
INSTANTLY, the genial masks of the National Party’s conservative political grandees were cast aside, and their true faces revealed. Harmless ethnic tokenism was one thing, assertive ethnic commerce was something else altogether.

Not only was the Minister of Maori Affairs threatening to put a Maori face to the Pakeha nation’s pre-eminent cultural icon – Rugby – but the MTS bid was turning an unwelcome spotlight on the full extent of TVNZ’s political sycophancy and cultural bankruptcy.

Twenty years of relentless commercialisation have produced a public broadcaster perfectly adapted to National’s needs; an institution uniquely positioned to transform the Rugby World Cup into a cultural support-vehicle for the Governments in an election year. Rather than see TVNZ’s "national town hall" functions usurped by the MTS, McCully and Coleman were willing to let National’s new relationship with Maori fall apart.

As documentary film-maker, and Chair of the Screen Directors Guild, George Andrews, archly observed to Kathryn Ryan a few minutes after her interview with Fox: "When the chips are down the rules [forbidding political interference] go out the window."

　
BUT, BY TWO O’CLOCK on 14 October, Key had shut McCully and Coleman down. In a remarkable display of moral leadership, the Prime Minister over-ruled his over-mighty colleagues and restored the initiative to the MTS. In negotiations with the IRB, TVNZ and TV3 would work with Maori Television – and follow their lead.

Just as he had over the anti-smacking legislation, Key refused to shift his party to the Right. National’s outreach to Maoridom will continue.

Fox had correctly diagnosed the nature of National’s disease – racial prejudice. What he’d failed to identify was the cure – Key’s decency.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 22 October 2009.　

Not A Priority

Prime communicator of the modern age: The coming of television raised two critical questions: "Who owns the airwaves, and who (if anyone) should regulate what they carry to the citizen?"

"No one comes and talks to me in my electorate office about broadcasting regulations. It’s not a priority for the public."

Well, no, probably not. And our new Broadcasting Minister, Dr Jonathan Coleman, is undoubtedly correct when he says the only people getting exercised about the issue are "people in the industry and politicians". But even on Auckland’s intellectually arid North Shore, I’d be surprised to learn that every single one of Dr Coleman’s Northcote constituents is relaxed and happy about the current state of New Zealand television.

Democratic to a fault, free-to-air television has successfully adapted to a broadcasting environment in which every viewer has the right to vote with their remote. Over-riding every other consideration for our television schedulers, therefore, is the need to keep the viewers’ fingers off the channel-changer, and their eyeballs firmly fixed on the advertisements that pay the network’s bills. Anything which challenges, offends, or even contributes to a vague feeling of discomfort and/or unease in the collective mind of the viewing audience must be ruthlessly expunged from the schedule.

Now, it’s important to understand that, when 90-100 percent of your revenue is derived from advertising, catering to the lowest common denominator in this way isn’t a reflection of the programme scheduler’s incompetence – it’s an absolute economic necessity. Reality TV shows about fat people competing to lose the most weight, or wannabe super-models trying to be the bitchiest bimbo on the set, may not compare aesthetically with BBC adaptations of Charles Dickens’ novels, but they keep people watching – and that’s all that matters.

One wonders, however, whether the ratings for reality TV would be so high if Sky Television wasn’t there to cater for those who fail to find anything remotely entertaining in "Survivor- Gabon" or "The Biggest Loser". If the more culturally sophisticated elements of the population were suddenly prevented from paying $100 per month to watch UKTV, the History Channel, National Geographic, and the Arts Channel – along with Sky movies and the global news networks, and were instead restricted to watching only free-to-air television, I’m pretty sure Dr Coleman would find his electorate office besieged by people wanting to talk about broadcasting regulations.

And herein lies the injustice of New Zealand’s current broadcasting regime. If you are well-educated and wealthy, and can afford the subscription, Sky Television offers you a generous choice of interesting, high-quality programmes. But if your household is unable to afford anything more than Sky movies and sport, or is entirely restricted to free-to-air TV, your chances of consuming anything more than the televisual equivalent of junk-food are not very high.

It was to bring some measure of cultural equity back to broadcasting that the last Labour Government introduced the TVNZ Charter. On the publicly-owned network, at least, New Zealanders were to be provided with a high-quality, intellectually challenging, culturally diverse, and – above all else – uniquely New Zealand programme schedule. Work was also started on developing a regulatory framework capable of delivering Charter-based programming in the brave new world of digital transmission.

What doomed the Charter from its very inception was the Labour Government’s point-blank refusal to provide TVNZ with the funding necessary to make a Charter-based schedule even remotely financially viable. To give all New Zealanders the same viewing opportunities as Sky subscribers – but with a distinctive Kiwi flavour – the state would need to spend approximately $300 million (funded by a broadcasting licence-fee).

Rightly believing that the Charter was nothing more than a confused collection of bureaucratic good intentions, and equally unwilling to spend the money to make it work, the National Party promised to ditch the Charter and halt Labour’s Sky-threatening regulatory review. TVNZ would revert to being an honest commercial broadcaster.

So, those who are unable to afford a Sky subscription will continue, like the Roman masses, to be distracted by the bread and circuses of lowest common denominator television, while the cultured classes will go on enjoying UKTV and the Rialto Channel. Nowhere in this mix, however, will anyone find the local cultural production, or the critical and democratically indispensable news and current affairs programmes of a truly independent public broadcaster.

New Zealand will be poorer for this lack, but Dr Coleman’s constituents are unlikely to complain. Which network’s going to risk its ratings by informing its viewers that, this time, they’re the biggest losers?

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 20 February 2009.