Memo to Jenna Lynch, Amelia Wade, Jessica Mutch McKay, Tova O’Brien, Maiki Sherman, Simon Wilson, Luke Malpass et al:
If the election result told us one thing it is that you are irrelevant. The vast majority of the country took no notice of what you had to say. Your left-wing bias counted for nothing. Your desperate attempts to have your friends in Labour elected failed miserably. Your advertising for the Labour Party in news bulletins and in print dressed up as news fell on deaf ears. It was seen for the garbage it was. Giving the leaders’ debates to Hipkins, when it was glaringly obvious Luxon had won, was laughable. In short, you lot are no longer credible.
Finding good journalism in this country is like looking for a proverbial needle in a haystack. It is extremely difficult, and I’m talking mainly about the mainstream media. There is some very good writing in papers like the Farmers Weekly and other similarly focused news publications. It is informative, on-topic and without bias. In the Farmers Weekly, there is a lot of anti-government sentiment. Is that bias? No, it is simply articles written expressing facts and views of the rural sector. The journalist is writing on a specific subject matter of interest to farmers and their communities.
This is different to a journalist working for a mainstream newspaper, a television channel or a radio outlet. These journalists are working to satisfy a more diverse audience on a wide range of opinions and subjects. Some of the more specific topics are easier to write about than the more general ones. Writing on more general news stories there are two ‘B’ words to keep in mind: balance and bias. If you adhere to the first you normally avoid the second.
There is a distinction to be made before going further, and that is between privately owned and government news operations. This distinction is most apparent in a political sense. Television channels and newspapers nowadays tend to take either a left or a right political stance. This is more often than not decided by who owns them. The right-leaning channels tend to have larger audiences than the left. The answer as to why that is can be found in the reporting.
The right tends to stick to the facts more so than the left. The left, because their narrative tends not to stack up with the facts presented, go ‘looking for fairies at the bottom of the garden’, so to speak. They need to seek or impose fantastical explanations to try and give credence to their narrative. A more accurate description is that it’s to help explain their bias. This particular modus operandi is what irritates and angers so many of us, and justifiably so. It came to the fore in the election. I exclude Newstalk ZB presenters as their job is to express (their) opinions.
We are a small country with a limited number of news outlets. This is the nub of the problem which I, unlike many journalists, will try and address in a BALANCED way. It is not for any one of us to tell a privately owned media company how they should behave politically. Having said that, in a country our size there should be some attempt at balanced reporting. A government-owned media outlet such as RNZ should have it written in stone that balanced reporting is non-negotiable. Sadly, this is not the case.
It is a problem with government-owned media around the democratic world. Some of the most notable examples are the ABC in Australia, the BBC in the UK and our own RNZ. The difference is that both Australia and the UK have right-leaning alternatives. In Australia, it’s Sky News and in the UK it’s GB News. GB News, in comparison to the longevity of the BBC, is still in nappies but it is already scoring audience wins over dear old Aunty.
A segment of the population listens to these channels precisely because they’re government-owned. These misguided folk think that’s where you get intelligent news and current affairs. Take the current Israeli situation where the BBC has been hauled over the coals for refusing to label Hamas a terrorist organisation.
Journalism and politics today have become a toxic mix, as has been more than evident in the election campaign. The blatant campaigning by journalists to get Labour re-elected has been nothing short of shameful. During my time in the media it would not have been tolerated. The culprits would have been dragged before the Station Manager and given a ‘do your job properly or leave’ ultimatum. That rarely if ever happened because journalists took pride in their work and their profession back then.
Jenna Lynch and Amelia Wade on Newshub are two such people unlikely to have lasted in their jobs back in the day. Last week I heard two loads of totally biased codswallop from Jenna. A good friend of the Labour Party she most certainly is, a good journalist she most certainly isn’t.
The same applies to Amelia, and what makes it worse are the facial expressions. The smiles and the lighting up of the eyes, the utter delight in being able to have a platform on which to spout their diatribe against the right is nauseating and completely amateurish. This irrepressible behaviour needs to be reined in. The problem for them is that all their irrational carry-on has not prevented a change of government. Far from it. They are not the movers and shakers they think they are.
Speaking of Newshub, an article on Kiwiblog written by Rob MacCulloch refers to that channel spinning IMF GDP figures in Labour’s favour and grossly misleading the public a day before the election. This is a good example of the gutter journalism and bias to which we are subjected nightly. How those two auto-cue readers can sit there every night reading the domestic piffle they are given is beyond me. I’m not surprised the company has reportedly dropped $110 million in value.
Overall, the standard of journalism in the campaign was appalling. These big fish in what is the equivalent of a paddling pool need to understand that they are there to report the news, not make it. This country desperately needs a channel along the lines of Sky News Australia where you can hear intelligent news and current affairs presented by competent people. It is in sharp contrast to the banal rubbish we are served up.
Someone in this country with the financial wherewithal needs to fund a decent news and current affairs channel. Whoever it is will be deserving of an award for services to the intelligentsia of the country.
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