Introduction
As I write the articles which comprise this arc, Mainstream Media (MSM) and especially the news arm of television is in a state of chaos. In the week of 26 February it was announced that Newshub – the news arm of the TV station Three owned by Warner Discovery – was to close by June 2024. Barring any financial miracles or a White Knight riding to the rescue, the only TV News available will be via TVNZ or Maori TV although some radio stations stream visual content with their news broadcasts.
To add to the chaos, TVNZ, following a disastrous $16.7 loss laid off 68 staff and has proposed to cancel four of its flagship programmes including two news bulletins.
These events are not unexpected. TV in New Zealand has always been a pretty febrile medium. People come and go, are hot or not. But there is more to the current crisis than who is “in” and who is “out”.
Sitting in the background are a number of concerns for MSM.
Audience numbers are down and trust in MSM is declining.
The AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) in its fourth Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report, authored by Dr Merja Myllylahti and Dr Greg Treadwell. The 2023 report finds that general trust in the news and news brands is continuing to erode.
In 2023, general trust in news declined from 45% to 42%, continuing a downward trend that was already evident in 2020 when the survey was first conducted. However, in 2023, the trust in news people consume themselves increased from 52% to 53%.
For the first time, the survey asked about news avoidance and found news avoidance in New Zealand is at a high level, when compared internationally. While New Zealanders are interested in news, approximately 69% of us avoid news often, sometimes or occasionally.
“People are avoiding the news because they find it depressing, negative, and it is increasing their anxiety. Many people also find news repetitive, boring and overly dramatic,” says Dr Merja Myllylahti, JMAD Co-Director and co-author of the report.
In 2023, all the major New Zealand news brands suffered a considerable decline in trust. Trust in RNZ fell 14.5%, Whakaata Māori 14.3% and Newstalk ZB 14%. Smaller brands such as interest.co.nz, BusinessDesk and Crux were less impacted.
RNZ, the Otago Daily Times and TVNZ were equally regarded as the most trusted news brands. In 2022, RNZ was the most trusted news brand followed by the other two. In 2023, the top three were followed by interest.co.nz, NBR, Newshub and Newsroom.
‘Newsrooms must put regaining trust among their audiences at the top of their agenda for the sake of our democracy,’ says Dr Greg Treadwell, a co-author of the report.
In 2023, 23% of New Zealanders have paid for online news content or for access to online news. This is higher than an international average of 17% identified by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
This has a flow on effect for advertising revenue. Funding from advertising has plummeted. Between 2011 and 2020 newspaper advertising revenue in New Zealand fell from $533 million to $210 million. In contrast, all digital advertising revenue tripled to $1.06 billion. Since 2003, New Zealand newspapers have generated $1 in digital advertising for every $4 that they have lost in print advertising. Advertisers aren’t going to buy advertising slots if the eyeball numbers are falling.
From 2020 the $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) was made available by the government in 2020 to support news media through the COVID-19-induced downturn. Funding was provided to NZ On Air to administer until 30 June 2023. The PIJF was a specific ring-fenced fund that was designed to provide targeted, short to medium-term support for roles, projects and industry development.
The PIJF provided seven rounds of funding, with funding for 73 projects, 219 roles and 22 industry development projects in total, and supporting journalism across the length of the motu. As at April 2023, it saw more than 60,000 pieces of news content created that have had more than 134 million total views.
The PIJF was laudable but for two issues. The first was that the funding was not available to those who could simply put forward a financial case. The funding was tied to the acceptance of nine conditions. This was perceived as an attempt by the Government – indirectly – to influence the nature of the content available from those funded.
The second was that the PIJF – a subsidy – meant that recipients depended upon it for continued activity. It created an artificial means of support for news media. As this means of support fades other means of support need to be found.
The former Government proposed this with the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill which has the following objectives:
- support news media entities to maximise the benefits they receive from the content they create that is aggregated and displayed on digital platforms
- ensure that implementation of its provisions will impose a minimal financial cost and compliance burden on the affected parties and government
- create equitable treatment and support for New Zealand’s diverse news media industry, including smaller, rural, regional, and ethnic news media entities, and, specifically, Māori news media entities
- support a free and independent news media industry by enabling media companies to be viable in a digital marketplace.
The Bill sets out to ensure “fair revenue sharing” between digital platforms like Facebook, Google and Microsoft and news media organisations by
- creating a fair bargaining environment through a bargaining code that will be established by the independent regulator and operate as secondary legislation
- requiring bargaining parties to comply with the bargaining code and to bargain in good faith, as well as requiring parties registered under the legislation to participate in the bargaining process
- promoting voluntary commercial agreements between operators of digital platforms and news media entities, with minimal government intervention
- where agreement cannot be reached, creating a stepped bargaining process to facilitate fair and equitable outcomes
- providing for collective bargaining by news media entities
- establishing civil penalties for non-compliance with the legislation.
An independent regulator will be appointed and the Bill proposes that this be the Broadcasting Standards Authority. It is interesting to note that the appointment of an independent regulator is an integral part of the DIA proposals for Safer Online Platforms, although that Discussion Paper envisages a reduced role for the BSA, given that MSM disseminates news via online platforms.
This is no more and no less than a subsidization programme which, although it appears to be neutral as far as the State is concerned is in fact a State compelled system for continued funding of MSM.
Perhaps the market should decide?
Under normal circumstances, absent State subsidization MSM would have to adapt or die. Rather like the recording and movie industries when faced with digital music and film piracy and which adapted new business models like Spotify and Netflix and streamed content, MSM should develop a new business model.
But the State steps in to provide a subsidy so that MSM will continue to provide a convenient outlet for State messaging. This may not be the reality but the optics are terrible. It looks as if MSM has been brought and sold and sadly the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill does little to redress that problem.
Rather than the State subsidizing MSM, the aggregating platforms will do so, compelled to go to the bargaining table by the State.
The State is too invested in MSM and is in fact dependent upon it for messaging. Although there are comfortable words such as the media “speaking truth to power” or its importance in democracy as the Fourth Estate, current trends suggest that there is a lack of public confidence in the media and the behaviour of MSM over the course of the pandemic and afterwards conveys a strong suggestion of partiality.
There is no problem with a MSM outlet taking a position but it should be transparent in doing so. MSM potentially carries a lot of informative power and must be careful to use that power judiciously. Fact based stories should report the facts without underlying subjective analysis. Opinion pieces should be clearly labelled as such to distinguish them from news. Opinions are a subjective analysis of facts, rather than objective reporting.
But despite these obvious shortcomings, and the difficulty in getting any firm direction from the NZ Media Council or the Broadcasting Standards Authority, the State has a vested interest in the preservation of MSM in the current – albeit unsustainable – model. And it is going to require the platforms to prop the edifice up.
One of the interesting developments over the last few weeks was the advice that was given to the incoming Minister for Media and Communications Melissa Lee by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. That advice warned the government it may face requests to bailout media companies if it failed to progress a law forcing digital platforms to pay local media for using their content. The advice suggested that
"The government may come under pressure from news media entities to consider other more interventionist and costly options for supporting the news media industry, such as bailouts."
This advice suggested that the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill might be the best mechanism to support a free and independent news media that is not reliant on government funding.
Clearly the advice suggests that government funding had propped up the media in the past and the most obvious means (although there are others) was the PIJF. The advice also emphasizes the vested interest that the State has in MSM.
And this is where the paradox arises. There is a perception – right or wrong – that MSM have been influenced by State support such as the PIJF to the point that media partiality has arisen. A more extreme suggestion is that MSM or some of its constituents are biased. The media, of course, pushes back against such a suggestion. The Fourth Estate must be free and independent and in theory so it should be. But then, how does that square with the fact that the State is too invested in MSM and is dependent upon it for its messaging?
Perhaps this may provide a reason for the migration to other platforms and to other news sources for news and information. There are people I know who prefer to get their news from Al-Jazeera, the BBC or CNN rather than TVNZ or RNZ. Others prefer the New York Times, the Guardian and The Times to the Herald or the Post. Certainly anyone watching SkyNow at 5:30 pm gets a preview of TVNZ’s News at Six. Even the order of the stories is often identical. And the depth of information and reporting is abysmal with reporters interviewing reporters rather than reporters reporting on the facts.
But these problems only go part of the way in explaining some of the problems that MSM face. Recent steps by TVNZ to pare down its costs by letting staff go is no more than shifting deck chairs on the Titanic.
Rather the problems that MSM face arise because of a failure to recognize that there has been a paradigm shift brought on by Digital technologies. I refer to the current paradigm as the Digital Paradigm.
This Paradigm has a particular impact upon information and communications technologies. And it seems to me that MSM have lost sight of the real meaning and impact of the Digital Paradigm. MSM has adopted “digital” simply as a means of distributing content and incidentally gathering metrics of program performance. There seems to me to be a lack of appreciation for the fact that digital communication technologies operate at a much more fundamental level and impact upon our use, understanding and expectations of information.
To understand this requires something of a deep dive into what I call information technology theory. I shall explain this in this arc of three articles which develop the background of the theory and apply it to the present situation.
The first article looks at the first information technology – the printing press – and examines why it was that this technology brought about a paradigm shift in the way Early-Modern audiences dealt with information. It introduces what I call the properties of the new technology which only incidentally deal with content but more importantly have an impact upon the use of and responses to information.
The first article is derived from my research materials and writings on the printing press for my7 PhD. I have decided to include the footnotes that accompanied the materials that I developed. Any reader who is keen enough can follow the threads that the footnotes provide to navigate the labyrinth behind some of the ideas discussed.
The second article takes the properties of the print paradigm and explains how these are modified and enhanced (and in some cases replaced) or are added to by further properties that characterize the digital paradigm.
The third article brings the threads together within the context of the present dilemma facing MSM and its survival. It is my argument that subsidization will not solve its problems. What is needed is an entirely redeveloped business model – one that recognizes the properties of characteristics of the digital paradigm.
This goes way beyond the provision of content. That, in the scheme of things, is the end result of the remaking of MSM. The changes that need to take place are not just in the MSM engine room but in the heads, minds and culture of everyone involved.
The final outcome will see the end of monolithic MSM organisations. In the way that digital information communications systems are distributed that will be a starting point for MSM. Indeed it may well be that what is now mainstream may, in the future, be, like a braided South Island river, one of a number of streams running to an audience sea.
Elizabeth Eisenstein and the Qualities of Print
My doctoral thesis was about the impact of the printing press – a new information technology – on law and legal culture in the England of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
The study had its foundation in two books by American historian Elizabeth Eisenstein entitled “The Printing Press as an Agent of Change” and an abridged version entitled “The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe.”
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