‘Narrative, Agendas, Click Bait’: NZ Deputy PM Blames Media Outlet for Its Own Demise

Former Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters at Parliament in Wellington, New Zealand, on Oct. 16, 2018. Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

As the New Zealand media sector reels from the news that one of its two main television channels is to completely shutter its news operations while the other—owned by the government, but operated as a commercial enterprise—is losing millions, deputy prime minister and leader of the NZ First party, Winston Peters, has told them they have only themselves to blame.

In an opinion piece, Mr. Peters said the closure of Newshub was “obviously devastating not only for those who will lose their jobs, but it is also seriously concerning for the robustness of our media scene.”

His party has always believed that the “fourth estate” is essential to any successful functioning democracy, he said.

“But it’s not just the existence of the fourth estate that is essential. It is the matter of a fourth estate that is impartial, politically neutral, fair and objective,” he added.

“These are the qualities and attributes that the public expect of an effective media in any free society—but they are lacking in much of the media landscape today.”

No Surprise to Many

As a result, the collapse of major media organisations “has not come as a surprise to many,” Mr. Peters claimed. “The media has been on this downward trajectory for a long time.

“One of those reasons is the increased lack of trust in New Zealand’s media, which has seen much of the public actively avoid engaging with them.”

The NZ First leader has long had a combative relationship with media, which he feels often ignores his party, going back to 1993 when it was first formed.

The media had stepped away from its foundation of impartiality, and instead “has morphed over the past few years to rely on opinion, narrative, agendas, and click bait,” Mr. Peters said.

His belief is supported by independent studies, including a 2019 Ph.D. thesis by Mark Boyd, which analysed election coverage from 1993 to 2017.

He concluded that: “The data appears to show an overall decline in the quality of coverage in several areas when measured against normative standards: shorter sound bites, more concentration on party leaders, less policy coverage, and a greater amount of coverage with a negative tone.

“However, overall quantity of coverage appears to have remained stable, as has the amount of coverage given to governing parties (indicating an advantage of incumbency), and coverage given to smaller parties.”

Shorter Soundbites, More Mentions of Policy

Sound bites had decreased from almost 10 seconds to 7.3 and 5.3 on TVNZ and Newshub, respectively. However, mentions of policy had increased, rising from around 36 percent of total coverage to over 45 percent on both channels.

Further, the Auckland University of Technology research centre for Journalism, Media, and Democracy’s (JMAD) annual “Trust in News” studies have shown a steady decline in people’s trust of mainstream sources over recent years: from 53 percent in 2020 to 42 percent in 2023.

Mr. Peters also placed much of the blame for falling trust in media at the feet of former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the “Public Interest Journalism Fund” (PIJF) she created, and which paid out $55 million to various media outlets.

“It is a plain fact that for media organisations to be eligible for funding they had to sign up to certain criteria and conditions—including forcing certain narratives of the Labour government at the time,” Mr. Peters said.

“Jacinda Ardern said, when addressing the issue of alternative or dissenting views about COVID-19: ‘We had to act so we made it a priority to establish a Public Interest Journalism Fund to help our media continue to produce stories that keep New Zealanders informed,’ i.e. funding media to promote a government narrative—the ’single source of truth.'”

This is a reference to a controversial statement made by Ms. Ardern during a COVID briefing.

‘Sinister Seed’

The conditions by which media had to abide to obtain PIJF funding included one that Mr. Peters described as being “based on a purely political view that is not supported by many New Zealanders or many political parties.”

It states that the media organisation must “actively promote the principles of partnership, participation, and active protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi [Treaty of Waitangi] acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner” and have a “commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner.”

“If they didn’t sign up to this condition, they wouldn’t get the money,” he said.

“How can a politically neutral and independent media organisation give balanced political commentary, analysis and in particular ‘opinions’, when this is the basis for the funds they receive for their very survival?

“This is the sinister incentivised seed that provides the platform for political bias,” he alleged.

Mr. Peters pointed to a statement on public radio by co-editor of online news site Newsroom, Mark Jennings, “where he admitted that some senior heads of the media have discussed whether to report what I say about media bias, because what I’m saying is something they don’t agree with.”

He called this “evidence of the dripping left wing bias of much of our media and the lengths they are willing to go to push their slanted narrative on the public ... [and] demonstrates that a frightening cancer-like mindset is running deep through much of our media—they think they know what’s best for the people of New Zealand, dictate what we all should or should not know, and then spin their narrative through the lens of their bias.”