The Government offensive against New Zealand media

The Government is waging a war on New Zealand media. In a week where Reporters sans Frontieres announced that New Zealand media freedom had dropped 17 places in 12 months on its global scale, two very disturbing events nearer to home, should be cause for alarm.

The decision to abolish the Broadcasting Standards Authority is a deliberate attempt to do two things:

• Undermine the accountability standards of New Zealand media that made ours one of the freest in the world within reason
• Leave no one who has been attacked through broadcasting any recourse in getting redress

I have made complaints on a few occasions to the Broadcasting Standards Authority. One was about Newstalk Z.B. host Mike Hosking when he delivered a xenophobic dialogue in his weekly “Mike’s Minute” segment. It was a dialogue that was questionable in terms of its take on migration and was laced a seemingly anti-Arab/anti-Muslim sentiment. The complaint that myself and another then Amnesty International member in Wellington jointly lodged was dismissed, but the comprehensive rebuttal of the complaint we laid was something of an eye opener about how to write a response in that context.

I considered making another in February 2023 when Cyclone Gabrielle was approaching the North Island. It came after hearing Mr Hosking and his wife Kate Hawkesby, who is another Newstalk Z.B. host, openly questioning the need for Civil Defence to declare an emergency. This was despite knowing that a potentially catastrophic situation was developing in Northland, Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and Hawkes Bay. A few weeks prior, a significant flooding event brought on by severe thunderstorms had caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage on Anniversary Day and led to widespread evacuations. The suggestion that schools should close again so soon appeared to rile Mr Hosking and Ms Hawkesby.

Despite these experiences, the B.S.A. performs an absolutely essential task by being a regulatory body for New Zealand media. It is true that greater investment in the means to regulate internet media is needed, but that forms part of a greater picture of an organization trying to do its best whilst hamstrung by a lack of appropriate funding, and now being attacked for failing because of it.

A fairly typical rightwing response to something that is deemed a nuisance.

This decision came a couple days after a T.V.N.Z. reporter, Maiki Sherman was made to resign following a media hit job. Whilst the allegation that she allegedly used a homophobic slur is a bad look and she should have known better is definitely true, the timing of it is appallingly bad. It comes at a time when the media are waking up to just spectacularly incompetent this Government is. One so terrible that journalists who normally sing the National Party song book are starting to call them out. It is one so terribly awful that there is a very realistic chance that Christopher Luxon will be the first ever one term Prime Minister.

I myself am no fan of Maiki Sherman. I have long thought that she and several other now departed political editors were National Party choir girls. In parties in Beehive offices, there is a clear slant because the Minister/s hosting have put a very exclusive office at their disposal for the event. Despite being a party, a certain degree of decorum should still be expected, and bringing ones sexual orientation into the conversation, however innocently it might have been intended, is not the wisest idea.

But on this day, I do feel somewhat sorry for Ms Sherman. All political editors need to have the confidence of their employer, or as a former editor, Paddy Gower says, they might as well quit and leave. Who fills her shoes with a bit less than six months until the end of the political cycle might well wonder if they have been handed some kind of poisoned chalice.

And to cap a grim week for the media off, A.C.T. leader David Seymours continued offensive against Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand is causing alarm among media commentators.

If the Government wants to win the election, maybe it should end this war on New Zealand media.