Opinion: New Zealand’s media have sold their souls for silver | Michael Laws

OPINION: Michael Laws

My last year at school was 1974. I was a gawky 16 year old, living in a provincial backwater, and spectacularly ill equipped for any social interactions. In addition, I was a hostel boy so between my studies and sport there wasn’t a hell of a lot going on. (I would have to wait for a ‘gap’ year in the Hawkes Bay to be introduced to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. In reverse order, as it transpired).?

Perhaps that’s why I actually read the assigned texts for 7th form English that year – Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’, CK Stead’s ‘Smith’s Dream’, the mandatory ‘Hamlet’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984’. Most of my colleagues had discovered ‘Cole’s Notes’ by then – abbreviated study guides that meant you didn’t actually have to read the texts. Clever them.?

To make matters worse, I had misheard the English teacher’s instructions – you could choose either Dickens or Orwell. My classmates enjoyed my angst at being informed that I had voluntarily travelled to social perdition.?

But it was Orwell’s bleak vision of Britain’s future that most resonated. When I read that his publisher had required him to revise the title from ‘1948’ to ‘1984’, I rather thought that it proved Orwell as a pessimist.?

As we all know now, I was wrong. Orwell was the ultimate futurist. He perfectly predicted the state of the future. The numbing conformity, the ceaseless media propaganda, the disdain for independence and anything that attempts to challenge the orthodoxy. Even the bizarre sexlessness of these times – porn without joy.?

But what really gave ‘Big Brother’ control of the masses was his control of the media. The unremitting propaganda that a paternalistic State was the citizen’s only true nurturer and protector. And that those who queried such benign control were dangerous traitors to the common cause.?

It's impossible not to look at New Zealand’s mainstream media and not regard them today as simply organs of a similarly controlling State.

From Day One of the great moral panic that is now known as ‘the Covid Crisis’, New Zealand’s media suspended its critical faculty in favour of promoting this government’s crusade against the virus.?

There are a number of possible reasons for this ranging from the patriotic to the corrupt. I suggest that assessment depends upon your vantage.

But the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund is a direct government subsidy of mainstream media in New Zealand. Something like 110 reporters have paid jobs, wholly reliant upon this Fund. In essence, they are contracted government employees.

It's easier to list the mainstream media organisations that are not receiving direct government funding, than those that are not. One might argue that it’s no surprise to learn that the greatest number of new government reporter jobs are located at Stuff (formerly Stuff Fairfax) and Radio New Zealand. Both media organisations actively espouse their left/liberal/woke leanings. They are the Ardern administration’s leading cheerleaders.?

But other Left/liberal outlets have also done well, especially Maori radio and TV. Radio Waatea, for example, has 6.5 fully funded journos. Minor left leaning outlets like Crux, the Spinoff and regional equivalents are similarly generously rewarded.?

Now I’m going to ask you a question?

If a foreign country or corporation provided $55 million to political parties in this country … what would be the reaction of these same mainstream media outlets? What would that funding smell like, even to a disinterested observer?

You’re right. It would reek of corruption. The purchasing of influence.?

And that’s because it is. The intent of the public journalism fund isn’t just to prop up ailing media organisations. It’s to actively promote particular philosophies, cultures and outlooks. This isn’t “public interest”. This is propaganda.?

The truth is that New Zealand’s mainstream media are fatally compromised. Very simply, you can’t believe them when they claim to be independent. Because they’re not. Sizeable parts of their journalistic operation are utterly dependent upon the Labour/Greens coalition funding for their actual being.?

I’ve always regarded the media as hypocrites. I used to opine such – long and often – on my Radio Live show last decade and in the newspaper columns published by Stuff’s predecessor. Honest editors knew, even then, how often their so-called independence was compromised by their commercial imperatives.?

Well, in 2022 – it’s not better. It’s worse. And the lack of self-honesty within the mainstream New Zealand media is a sin all of its own. The Public Interest Journalism Fund is tainted money and the media took it, knowing that it was tainted.?

They should call the fund what it is. The Political Propaganda Journalism Fund. And those media organisations – scrambling for their credibility in a complex world – need to disassociate themselves from the Fund if they ever want us to trust them again.?

As any politician will tell you: you only have one reputation. If it’s bought, it’s no longer yours.