Veteran journalist Ian Wishart is crowdfunding legal action against TVNZ, RNZ, TV3 and the Broadcasting Standards Authority, accusing them of “churnalism” – copying climate press releases without their own fact-checking.
Wishart, editor of Investigate Magazine, has set up a Givealittle page to raise $35,000 for two High Court challenges. He said trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low, and regulators like the BSA – which is now being disbanded – have contributed to a lack of standards in reporting. A recent Curia poll taken by RCR, showed 51 per cent of people now trust the independent media more.
The Givealittle page explains the cases in question “concern reports describing a Dunedin rainfall event as the city’s ‘wettest day in over a century’, and Hamilton experiencing its ‘hottest days’ during a heatwave”. Wishart argued historical records do not support those claims. His own investigations show that Dunedin’s wettest day was actually when 229mm fell in 1923, while Hamilton’s hottest day was in the summer of 1934–35, a heatwave that dwarfed the “shattered records” headline that RNZ was forced to correct.
The case comes as major international outlets over the weekend framed routine summer temperatures as a crisis. The BBC reported UK “heat deaths”, while US publications called it a “dangerous heatwave”, both failed to acknowledge that heatwaves have always claimed lives, or that the science tying these specific events to climate change is modelled, not observed.
Wishart said the fight is not about climate change: it’s about making the media prove what they print: “If we win, the public will have created a media law precedent that big bold headline claims need to stack up,” he said. Since its weekend launch the fundraiser is over halfway to its target with just over $21,000 donated.
Watch RCR’s interview with Ian Wishart and this interview from March, or read more at the Centrist, Ian Wishart on Facebook and Givealittle.
This article was originally published by RCR Bites and republished by the Daily Telegraph New Zealand.
