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Mediawatch looks critically at the New Zealand media - television, radio, newspapers and magazines as well as the 'new' electronic media.
The big blaze on TVNZ's doorstep:
The big blaze in Auckland broke out right on TVNZ's doorstep and it pulled out all the stops to get compelling coverage on the air - even after evacuating its own newsroom on Wednesday. But news shows were scaled back or scrapped later in the day. Can the national TV broadcaster broadcast from anywhere other than Auckland in an emergency?
TV sell-off prompts political response:
MediaWorks' move to cut off its TV arm has swung the spotlight onto the government's plans for broadcasting. Politicians sent out distinctly mixed messages this past week ranging from staged schadenfreude to promises of help - and 'wait and see'.
Winston Peters tells The Project: "We will help you". Photo: screenshot / 3 Now
Last week broadcasting company MediaWorks put its loss-making TV channels Three, Three Life and Bravo up for sale.
New Zealand media companies all have their own problems at the moment and none have so far signalled firm interest. The offer was just a footnote in Australian media news stories about the buyouts and deals being done between big media players over there, like broadcaster and publisher Seven West Media.
And if there’s no new owner found soon enough?
Two days before the move was announced, host Jesse Mulligan had already said on Three’s show The Project that MediaWorks' next move could be to close the channel down.
The end of Three would have a heavy impact on the local TV production - especially in Auckland. The death or diminution of MediaWorks' Newshub would mean the end of a news service of national significance.
Both would be bad for our national cultural and public life.
Most politicians expressed concern about this and sympathy for the hundreds of people employed there - but one seemed to have utu on his mind last weekend.
Winston Peters was all smiles at last weekend’s NZ First party conference when he said he had “a message for our friends in the media” and “good riddance” to some of those at MediaWorks.
The party faithful - for whom the schadenfreude was stage-managed - had no sympathy either judging by the applause in response.
Winston Peters kicking MediaWorks when it was down had the same antagonistic effect on media people as his NZ First colleague Shane Jones had on gun control advocates with his recent vacation visit to a Thai rifle range.
So when the PM fronted up for her post-cabinet press conference on Monday, the first question came from Newshub’s Tova O’Brien. She asked if the potential loss of jobs at a factory would be a laughing matter for a Labour-led government.
Jacinda Ardern said she didn't share her deputy’s opinion but she didn’t condemn it.
One name at MediaWorks loomed largest in Winston Peters’ grudge: former cricketer turned TV host Mark Richardson who has been a vocal supporter of the National Party and critic of Winston Peters on air.
In 2017 Mr Peters threatened to sue Richardson for defamation when the MediaWorks man said Mr Peters was a “political predator” who seeks out injuries like a “political white blood cell” - or a form of political pus.
After the election that year Mr Peters also took legal action against nine people - including Newshub political reporter Lloyd Burr - over the leak of his superannuation overpayment which emerged in the media during the campaign.
It’s not only MediaWorks that has rubbed Winston Peters up the wrong way over the years but his hostility now worries many in the media because he’s a key member of a government whose media policy which is under review and due to be revealed in December.
But therein lies a big irony.
TVNZ1 being made non-commercial has been a longstanding policy of NZ First - and it’s also a demand cash-strapped MediaWorks has been making for years with no sign of success.
Surprise switch
Last Monday Winston Peters appeared on the Project to walk back his “good riddance” remark - and surprisingly he pledged to help MediaWorks.
“We’re going to look after you,” he told host Kanoa Lloyd.
“We won’t leave the scene,” he said.
On the same programme last week, Jesse Mulligan accused the government of fiddling as MediaWorks burned. Four days later one of the most influential and senior members of the government was offering help.
But even though Winston Peters repeated the claim a third time, Jesse Mulligan called time on the interview with critical questions unanswered such as: who is ‘we’? And what help was on the table?
The following morning the question of what Winston Peters said was probed when PM Jacinda Ardern fronted up for her regular round of Tuesday morning media interviews.
On Three’s AM show she said MediaWorks had made a commercial decision to bail out of TV and she pointed out that the company already gets money from the public purse for content via NZ On Air.
The PM was even able to cite the precise percentage of the NZOA funds that go towards the cost of MediaWorks’ content.
Forty-five minutes later on TVNZ’s Breakfast Jacinda Ardern also made the point that MediaWorks radio networks were turning a profit and had in the past backstopped the loss-making TV channels.
Clearly this is now an issue that’s being actively aired at the top table.
"We've been very clear . . . what we need to do is to make sure New Zealanders can still see their stories and access their news and that we have strong journalism. So that's why we're focused on public broadcasting and making sure we really boost that," she said.
"That's what we been working on; we'll have more to say about that down the track," she added.
For Mediaworks - and other under pressure and up for sale news media outfits such as Stuff - the length of that track is critical.
Time is running out for them, along with money and owners’ patience.
They really need to know what’s coming from a government that has so far kicked the can down the road as far as its plan for the media is concerned.
History behind a paywall - and on screen for free:
You paid for a TV programme about how modern New Zealand was built - and you have to pay again to see the earlier episodes behind a paywall. Meanwhile, Parliament TV is screening stuff from the archives nationwide at next-to-no cost to the public purse.
Over four weeks each Sunday night, Prime TV recently screened Making New Zealand - a documentary series which told “the stories of the men and women who built our nation from the ground up”.
This was funded by you - via the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air - to the tune of just under $750,000.
The final episode was a fascinating look at the history of broadcasting in New Zealand, rich with archival footage from the distant and recent past alike.
It also included technical experts who explained why putting TV programmes out nationwide was no easy thing back in the day. Shows were broadcast regionally and some far flung places couldn’t get the signal at all.
Such scarcity seems strange to us now, with so much access to programmes on so many platforms via so many different types of devices other than the old-fashioned TV set these days.
Former NZOA chief executive Dr Ruth Harley - who’s currently the agency’s chair - had this final word in the programme.
“TV is increasingly on the internet. We in New Zealand have to have our content everywhere because that’s the only way we’re going to ensure our children - and everybody - has access to their stories, their world, their reality and their imagination.”
If you missed the lastest Making New Zealand shows you can watch them online on the catch-up section of Prime TV’s website.
But because of the way we fund our public broadcasting, you’ll have to pay again to see earlier episodes.
Series one and two of Making New Zealand - publicly funded from NZOA’s Platinum Fund - are only on the on-demand service Neon which is a subscription-based service of Prime’s owner Sky TV.
Why are publicly funded programmes about the making of our nation now behind the paywall of the country’s biggest pay-TV company?
“With all funded material the content belongs to the producer - and the producer negotiates rights with the platform and those (Making New Zealand) shows would have been on the (free) on-demand service for a while,” NZOA chief executive Jane Wrightson told Mediawatch.
“However we became increasingly concerned about this. Producers want short windows so they can sell them to other people,” she said.
“We said we want one year’s window for all our content. Increasingly, producers have understood our point of view. Making New Zealand series three will be on the Prime on-demand site for a year,” she said.
Jane Wrightson said there are only a few shows made during the 30 years of NZ On Air which are entirely available online for free. That was one reason New Zealand On Screen was created - to host some episodes of old shows as “a record of what’s been made”.
Meanwhile, old TV shows from our past are now being aired for free on the country’s least-watched free-to-air national channel: Parliament TV.
"Looking Back: Snapshots from New Zealand’s Past comprises 20 one-hour episodes, diving deep into New Zealand’s past via archived footage from TVNZ. The series delivers a range of stories from New Zealand’s political history, alongside snippets showcasing the country’s culture from over the years," says Parliament's website.
Looking Back screens each sitting day at 11:30am and 12:30pm. At a total cost of $37,850.50 - or $1892.52 per hour - it must be some of the cheapest national television ever aired in New Zealand. (And that’s not the commercial hour of 44 minutes or so - you get the full 60 minutes each hour on ad-free Parliament TV).
How has the Office of the Clerk managed to produce such bargain basement television?
Looking Back lets the footage breathe. There are only minimal explanatory voiceovers preceding them.
Episode one included full party political election broadcasts from 1966 back-to-back followed by an episode of TVNZ’s Dateline Monday from the 1978 election campaign.
This week Looking Back screened an Eyewitness News show about how the media covered the 1981 election campaign on the road. Among familiar and not-so familiar faces from days gone by was a young Barry Soper, who is still in the game today as political editor of Newstalk ZB.
On Thursday, Looking Back screened in full a famous TV encounter from 1981 in which presenter Ian Fraser - later to become TVNZ’s chief executive - grilled minister of police Ben Couch at considerable length about what appeared to be his support for separate development in South Africa.
It isn’t the first time Parliament TV has featured something other than actual Parliamentary proceedings.
A spokesperson for the Office of the Clerk told Mediawatch it plans to develop more content to play on Parliament TV in non-sitting hours as part of its parliament engagement strategy.
The uninterrupted stuff from the archives might be an acquired taste - but it's more compelling than the elevator music and slates setting out when the next sitting day of committee hearing is due to take place
Parliament TV is available on Freeview channel 31 and Sky and Vodafone channel 86 and live streams on its website parliament.nz
Oiling the wheels of questionable science:
One of the most listened to items on the RNZ website this week was titled: "Is omega-6 fat making us sick?" But anyone wanting to know the answer to that question would be best advised to do more than simply listen to the interview with David Gillespie the author of The Good Fat Guide How to Add Healthy Fat to Your Diet.
The book is an updated version of David Gillespie’s 2013 Toxic Oil. A book described by Peter Clifton, a professor of health nutrition, and Bill Shrapnel of the Sydney University Nutrition Foundation like this: "The message is so over-the-top that it’s hard to believe that anyone would take it seriously. Still, messiahs develop followers…."
The pair quoted Gillespie’s conclusion to illustrate just how radical his claims are: "If you do what I suggest, you will be doing all the wrong things, according to our health authorities. You’ll be eating butter, drinking full-fat milk, chomping through bacon and eggs for breakfast and enjoying a meat pie for lunch."
Clifton and Shrapnel – writing on the Conversation website – said Gillespie quoted scientific research selectively while ignoring studies that contradicted his conclusions altogether.
They pointed out that Gillespie’s work wasn’t peer reviewed and was poorly referenced – making it difficult to check many of the book’s claims.
The Good Fat Guide has barely featured in the Australian media since it was published earlier this year and that could be because the earlier edition was so roundly criticised by experts in the field.
That’s not to say that authors of popular books offering health advice shouldn’t be interviewed in the media – but if their claims completely contradict the advice of health professionals then a responsible approach would be to provide some real balance by including an interview with an acknowledged expert.
When the ABC interviewed Gillespie about Toxic Oil back in 2013 it invited not one but three health academics to comment on his findings.
The week before David Gillespie's RNZ interview, Jesse Mulligan spoke to Hassan Vally, an associate professor in Public Health at Melbourne's La Trobe university, about how to identify reliable medical research.
Vally authored an article for Sci-Blogs identifying five key steps to take. The first was to ask whether it was peer reviewed and the last was to check whether the study was corroborated by other studies.
Taking either of those steps should have raised questions about the claims being made in The Good Fat Guide.
Jesse Mulligan asked Hassan Vally whether the media was partly responsible for the confusion around the claims and counter-claims around what's good for you and what's not.
And Professor Vally responded that he thought in part they were. "The attraction for the media is to present the most emotional and most scary aspects of a story because that is what gets people interested. And at the end of the day the people in the media want to write interesting stories that get people to click on links."
The interview with David Gillespie definitely had people clicking – it was one of most listened to interviews on the RNZ website this week.
And that’s a worry because people listening to it – or reading it - really have no way of knowing how robust or otherwise the science being quoted is.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch?page=2