Merger Charterchat Part 5

Russian state media’s slavish adherence to the Kremlin’s line that the invasion of Ukraine is simply a “special military operation” may be partly explained by the very real threat that an oppressive tryanny poses to life and liberty of journalists and commentators.

Most Russians, like New Zealanders, get their news from mainstream television channels. Nightly brainwashing by the most powerful mass medium, under a regime in which dissent is punished and critical thought discouraged, will banish all but the official line on any issue to the margins of social media. At a personal level, there are powerful economic, employment and social pressures on people living in dictatorships that keep them toeing the official line.

But there are no similar explanations for the reluctance of New Zealand journalists to voice even the mildest criticism of the Government’s proposed new public media entity and its generous handouts to its Public Interest Journalism Fund, with its potential to compromise their vaunted independence as the Fourth Estate.

Of particular concern is the failure of Radio New Zealand’s journalists to exercise the political independence and critical freedom that their chief executive and editor in chief, Paul Thompson, so proudly claims for the public broadcaster.

A journalist himself back in the day, Thompson congratulated his former colleagues on their coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, Christchurch mosques attack and White Island eruption in his speech to the 2020 Voyager Media Awards.

“Journalists have also filled the critical role of critiquing the official version, asking awkard questions, and probing away,” he said.

“A sovereign democratic nation will not survive, and it certainly will not prosper, without a bedrock of reliable and verified journalism, produced by a range of trusted outlets based within, and reflective of, the communities they report on.

“The alternative will be the ascendancy of spin, officialese, foreign meddling, propaganda and partisan messaging.”

Within two years, Thompson was able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Labour’s Broadcasting and Communications Minister, Kris Faafoi, to welcome the Government’s announcement of a “new public media entity — centred on public media services that inform and connect the nation, celebrate our culture and identity and equip people to participate in our democracy.”

Admitting that it was “a big shift” and “a lot to get your head around” Thompson said “Much is still to be determined, including finding levels . . .”

The lack of any detailed information about the proposed entity’s funding, operation and purpose dominated media commentary following the ministers announcement on Thursday 10 March. But it was matched by the absence of any curiosity about the reason for the vague nature and lengthy delays in the delivery of such a major policy change, claimed to be the biggest shake-up of broadcasting in 30 years. In development for almost as long as it took the Allies to defeat Germany in WWII, the new entity has turned into broadcasting’s Transmission Gully,

The causes of the new entity’s incredibly long policy gestation period was of no concern to RNZ’s Katie Scotcher in her introduction to the weekly Focus on Politics commentary on Friday 25 March. “The RNZ and TVNZ mega-media-merger has been years in the making,” she began, before admitting: “While it has finally been confirmed, much of the detail — including funding — remains unclear.”

Among the many details that remain unclear is the precise nature of what Scotcher called a “mega-media-merger”. Allowing some licence for journalistic hyperbole, there is every reason to doubt whether the mega-merger is even a merger in the generally accepted meaning of the word.

Funding is at the core of any discussion of broadcasting. It is the starting point: does revenue come from advertisers (as with TVNZ), or from taxpayers (as with RNZ) or from subscribers (as with pay-tv operator SKY)? Or — and this is a very real possibility — is the plan to make money from the sale of data supplied by users accessing content from TVNZ and RNZ on their new internet platforms?

Instead of starting by resolving the funding issue, Labour’s Broadcasting and Communications Minister, Kris Faafoi, and his advisers in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, have left it to the end.

The legislation establishing the new entity will be introduced in “late June”, according to the minister’s answer, published on Parliament’s website on Thursday 31 March, to a written question from National’s broadcasting spokeswoman, Melissa Lee. That means the members of the new “Strong Public Media Establishment Board”, yet to be named, have less than three months to settle critical questions left unresolved by their predecessor ministerial groups and boards over nearly four years.

Really? C’mon, surely they’ve already made these decisions but are keeping them secret until the legislation is in Parliament where Labour has an outright majority and can ignore public outcry.

On the same day as RNZ broadcast Katie Scotcher’s Focus on Politics, a lengthy “Explainer” by one of its “digital” journalists, Russell Palmer, was published on its website. “RNZ-TVNZ public media shake-up: What you need to know. RNZ is here to clear it all up.”

Palmer begins his lengthy essay with the assertion that “Public media means public service broadcasting.” It doesn’t and nobody, not even the government, can define the meaning of “public media”. The minister has said the two terms are inter-changeable. But public broadcasting is different in one important respect: it is funded to provide content not otherwise available on from commercial broadcasters.

In the Cabinet paper on “View and perspectives from targeted engagement to inform the development of a charter for a new entity”, the leading question that emerged from workshops of “media ecosystem stakeholders” was “what public media means”.

“Participants raised the need to identify what “public media” means – for instance whether it is a function of ownership, provision or funding.” If any attempt was made to answer this critical question , there is no record of it. Instead, the paper reports “ There was general comfort with a definition encompassing both publicly owned institutions plus publicly funded content/platforms.”

While “stakeholders” may be comfortable with that definition, it is highly unlikely that taxpayers will be pleased about their money going towards creating a website that duplicates content already provided on the news websites of newspaper-based private enterprise publshers, Stuff and NZME (NZ Herald). Nor will they understand the reason for susidising profitable firms such as NZME, the global media giant Discovery or Stuff, which has yet to open its books for scrutiny.

The minister’s response, published on Thursday 31 March, to another question from Lee about the potential for public funding of existing content was:

“The proposed new public media entity will continue to provide the same services audiences enjoy now, with both linear television and radio continuing, and it will continue to deliver a range of content including news and entertainment. However, there will be greater opportunities for people to reach the programmes they want through other platforms, including online, and for the entity to deliver new services in new ways.”

In short, a state-owned, taxpayer-funded website. No wonder they’re being so secretive about it.

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