If not journalists, then who?

Journalists are very good at telling other people’s stories, but they fall well short when writing about their own profession. Perhaps that is why it is so undervalued.

Every successive poll on the public’s attitude toward journalism is more alarming than the last. In the last month we have seen that as many as two-thirds of New Zealanders do not trust the news available to them and three-quarters of us sometimes actively avoid the news.

At the same time, the industry that supports journalists – and I use the term somewhat wryly, given the number that are about to lose their jobs in television news – is fighting for its continued existence.

News media are locked in a military strategist’s worst nightmare. They are fighting a war on multiple fronts. They are under attack from a constellation of commercial, technological, legal, cultural, political and social elements that, in combination, have put them in defensive positions or contemplating retreat.

If journalists were doctors and nurses, the public would be registering acute alarm. Yet, in spite of their vital role in the health of democracy, members of the news media aren’t perceived by the community as essential workers. Their industry is not deemed worthy of protection.

We were left in little doubt of that when one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in recent New Zealand history persuaded some who should know better that this country’s journalists were collectively open to bribery.

It was this pervasive sense that New Zealand news media were undervalued that led to the title of the position paper released today by Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures. The paper, of which I was lead author, is headed If not journalists, then who?

The question I’m asking is rhetorical because there is no acceptable alternative answer.

If we do not have journalists, we have no acceptable means of holding to account the elements that collectively make up our democratic nation. Those elements range from our constitutional head of state and elected representatives to the commercial interests that affect our lives and the individuals that have their own impacts on our communities.

I know of no other institution that can speak truth to power in the way that journalists, and the organisations that give them aggregated influence, are able to do.

One of the recommendations in the Koi Tū paper is for media themselves to start the uphill process of persuading the public of the role they play in a democracy. The paper, drawing on the analogy that some financial institutions are too big to fail, suggests the institution of journalism is too vital to fail.

However, New Zealand’s media are in no fit state to battle on unaided. There are too many factors ranged against them and, to use the military analogy again, too much of their equipment is obsolete.

That does not refer to their printing presses or transmission towers – although both are starting to look like biplanes in the age of supersonic aircraft – but to the financial and regulatory environments that have been allowed to ossify.

The Koi Tū paper describes a complex matrix of inter-related issues that will require a coordinated effort to resolve. It recommends the conversion of the Broadcasting Commission – best known to the public as NZ on Air – into a multi-purpose commission. One of its roles would be to house autonomous independent regulatory bodies that would replace existing regulators such as the Broadcasting Standards Authority and Media Council. It would also be tasked with coordinating the review of no fewer than 17 Acts of Parliament affecting media and which, to one degree or another, are no longer fully fit for purpose.

Another of the commission’s roles would be media literacy, the lack of which is one of the reasons journalism is so devalued. Too few know enough about the democratically significant roles of journalism, how they have evolved, and how those duties are discharged by journalists employed in both the public and private sectors.

If not journalists, then who? does not spare the media themselves. I have criticised them in the paper for being overly negative, and conflating reportage and commentary to the point where consumers may be unable to distinguish one from the other. They are also accused of often placing too much emphasis on the third of BBC founder Lord Reith’s mantra – “to inform, educate, and entertain” – than on the first. These are issues for the media to resolve.

However, the single most significant assault they face is one they cannot resolve without the help of Government and, one hopes, support from both sides of the House. The lifeblood of the industry is being siphoned off by foreign digital platforms that make no material contribution to the news from which they benefit financially. Tokenism seems an inadequate word for the grants they make to media, relative to their income from New Zealand.

In the past decade total advertising revenue in New Zealand has increased by more than 50 percent, reaching $3.36 billion in 2023. The digital platforms’ revenue over that period has increased more than 400 percent while the share going to our print and broadcast media and their digital derivatives has dropped by close to a quarter. Last year, the international platforms accrued well over $1.5 billion in advertising revenue from this country.

The paper suggests an amendment to a Bill before Parliament – the Digital Services Tax Bill – to levy the platforms to compensate our news media for the past, present and future use of content (direct, or indirect through the flow-on provocation of online discussion). The money would then be equitably distributed to help fund the journalism that is now at risk.

Journalism costs money to produce; the more challenging the assignment the higher the cost. Without changes to the business model – and the paper also suggests a range of changes including charitable and low-profit models – journalism will fall below a credible minimum and lose its ability to give democracy some of its real meaning.