Summarised by Centrist
Veteran media commentator Karl du Fresne says he stopped listening to RNZ’s Mediawatch after becoming “disenchanted”.
He says the traditional model of journalism built on balance and neutrality has been “trashed” in favour of one that is “blatantly politicised and sees journalism as a moral crusade”.
He says the host’s use of a “privileged, taxpayer-funded position as a platform for petulant attacks on a rival” amounted to “an abuse of power”.
The final straw, du Fresne writes, was Mediawatch’s recent item on a Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) conference panel on “Journalism and the Far Right”.
He notes the discussion treated conservative outlets as a looming threat while ignoring what he calls the “all-pervasive” influence of the far left in mainstream media. Journalism tutors, he argues, “are the far left and regard their ideologically based concept of journalism as the norm”.
Du Fresne concludes that journalism educators’ refusal to reflect on their own role amounts to a form of institutional self-harm, suggesting “Death Wish 2025 would have been an appropriate alternative name” for the conference.
Du Fresne references Centrist, The Platform and Reality Check Radio,, writing that “no one should be in the least surprised” such platforms emerged as “a natural and inevitable backlash against the overwhelming preponderance of the far left”. He argues they exist because mainstream media abandoned its former role as a “broad church” that made room for dissent.
