What role should public funding play in the future of NZ news?
Alastair Thompson
Public
Seen by 152
Taken from Five Starting Points For A Public Conversation On The Future of News In NZ
What role should public broadcasting - and publicly funded news services - play in the future of news service provision?
Commentary:
In NZ at present Public broadcasting is increasingly picking up the pieces of a broken news puzzle. The importance of Radio New Zealand in particular as a source of professionally produced high quality public interest news has grown significantly over the past six years - a period during which its budget has been frozen and it has had to resort to selling assets like its grand piano to fund important projects.
NZ on Air also funds public news services on Television principally, but recently also broke its self-imposed ban on funding online news content by contributed some money towards Radio New Zealand's TheWireless.co.nz.
While public funding of news services will doubtless be an important part of the solution to the problems faced by the news media. It is not a panacea. In truth public broadcasters are not truly free - they are an arm of Government and are therefore limited in what doors they can open and what sort of stories they can pursue. Also single, large news edifices are not what news needs. Rather it needs competing bold, free and challenging voices. One can easily imagine a situation in which, as the rest of the media becomes increasingly incapacitated, taxpayer funded news services will become increasingly vulnerable to government interference. Already in NZ and Australia the National Party and the Liberal Party have targeted public broadcasters for cost cutting, presumably because of a perception of liberal bias.
- Alastair Thompson, Scoop Editor & Publisher
Lois Griffiths Sun 1 Feb 2015 7:14PM
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) showed a brilliant Four Corners documentary, Stone Cold Justice, about the scandalous abuses of Palestinian children under Israel's 'two-tiered justice system' in the West Bank. We should be able to see that sort of quality journalism here too. I hope Abbott doesn't succeed in his plans to emasculate ABC and SBS.
Greg Brier Sun 8 Feb 2015 4:10PM
Public funding is the only answer .... separated from govts in a similar way as the Justice system is. We the public need to regain control of information , the integrity of our sources of information . Corporate is demonstrably flawed, we live in an age where corporations are more powerful than govts worldwide. These are dangerous times for democracy , the power is (or maybe has) shifting from govts to corporations as our elected parliaments become openly subjected to the corporate will . Corporatocracy is a term people are starting to understand now
Ben Parsons Sun 8 Feb 2015 9:59PM
The justice system is not politically impartial, so how would a public-funded broadcaster be? I recommend, let it go. True power comes from within, from conscious intention. So, if the intent is to communicate 'history as it happens', and WE ARE that happening, then the story is here and the question is: who cares?
Bill Bennett Sun 8 Feb 2015 10:05PM
In a sense there already is government and local council funding of newspapers. The biggest advertiser in my local free paper The North Shore Times is Auckland Council. The government pays for a hell of a lot of ads in the big newspapers.
David West Sun 8 Feb 2015 10:18PM
Ben & Bill: You're both right on the mark. My own local newsletter is advertising based, and I know many of the advertisers don't agree with my stance on social justice, poverty, indigenous rights, the welfare system and a host of other topics/issues. None of them has ever tried to influence what we publish, or cancelled their ads for "political" reasons. This may be because it's a small community and we all have to get along with each other, respect our differences as well as our "sameness".
I suspect that any new news service based on minimising the influence of funders has to start from the ground up, be grass-roots ventures aimed at informing their own local communities, building relationships with each other, and sharing/cooperating. I don't believe it's possible to reform the MSM, or that Governments/Corporations will keep their hands off the news, or that other groups will ever stop trying to influence the news media. The PR machines are too big, too well organised and too effective at setting agendas and shaping opinions and behaviour. This includes many NGOs.
Greg Brier Mon 9 Feb 2015 7:59AM
Some of the variance of opinion is influenced by what we see as the dangers of no real press. My personal view is our most pressing problem us the hijacking and bullying of our govts by international corporates who are more powerful than most govts. We need an independent media with a good product and the skills and protections necessary to do in depth investigative reporting. We need an info source we can trust rather than the hundreds of sources mostly with an agenda. Everyday people such as myself do not have the time nor skill to try to decipher the spin. Get away from press opinion to factual reporting. Trust of the source is paramount...otherwise yes...let it die....it's not worth the paper it's written on
Jason Brown Sat 14 Feb 2015 7:59PM
Hmmmm ....
#housekeeping -
Did a bunch of replies in email but they do not seem to be showing up here. Will go through my sent folder and copy and paste manually.
Anyone else seeing this problem?
pilotfever Tue 24 Feb 2015 2:28AM
Just jumping in here to say that Parliamentary TV, InTheHouse, etc has completely failed us.
"Since beginning its work with the Clerk of the House of Representatives in 2009, Tandem Studios has created more than 22,000 videos for InTheHouse resulting in more than 3 million views."
3 million views in the past 5 years? I would have thought a nation of over 4 million people might make that in an afternoon.
Personally I think Parliament should be recorded 24/7 and the results indexed for all to see. The technology is there and the will of the people but for the MP's. Very little of what goes on in Parliament should need to be kept from the voting public. It's a disgrace.
We should be able to engage interactively with our parliamentarians in the 21st century, and they should be better informed. Maybe that is the problem; I watch parliamentary television and just want to throw a brick through the screen, but I can't. Who are these people that supposedly represent us?
My 2 cents
@AbbottMaverick (Twitter)
theoccupyparty.wordpress.com
James Sun 1 Mar 2015 10:07AM
RNZ's role should not be underestimated , although this government has done its best to kill it off ..and finish the work of the Bolger government who destroyed Broadcasting House on a whim precisely to make life hard for the company.
Remember Bolger's press sec is now the chairman of the RNZ board. The "old" board has largely been replaced, along with the CEO , the CFO and the head of News.
Right now RNZ is going through yet another audit of its spending , and this time they are down to cutting the numbers of newspapers supplied to the newsrooms, and similar nonsense.
Concert FM is currently being "reviewed" by an individual who has spent almost his entire career in commercial pop music radio ..
But RNZ rolls on as it always has .. albeit with a belt so tight it can hardly breath.
Thats the point i suppose.
David West · Sun 1 Feb 2015 1:11AM
Agree absolutely. But I still watch TVOne 6pm news most nights, so that I have some idea what people are seeing/hearing. Also usually watch Campbell Live, because he's sometimes off on a crusade, and that can be quite entertaining. But I've pretty much given up on 1 & 3's so-called current affairs programmes .... mostly one-off cases of individual trauma which, though concerning and heart-rending, don't usually represent a widespread community or social issue. [I've just put my hard-hat on waiting for the rocks to start flying, because there is still some good stuff out there!]