OPINION
Dear Editor
I have been intrigued by claims, in the alternative media to which I subscribe, that there is a left-wing bias among our mainstream media which is strongly antithetic towards the newly elected coalition Government.
This was reinforced by Peter Williams’s article recently in the BFD, so I thought I would do my own bit of research by looking at the past five issues of the NZ Herald.
Described recently by Sir Bob Jones as “NZ’s de-facto newspaper of record” I took the Herald as a proper indicator of the MSM as a whole.
My findings are, summing specific headlines, so-called “cartoons” and the general tenor of each political article together, there were nineteen items ranging from mildly negative to positively antagonistic towards individuals in the new Government and/or its policies, a couple were neutral, with just two that one could call positive.
These latter two, written in praise of Winston Peters, were clearly intended to reinforce a narrative that he is really the ringmaster in the coalition with “poor old Christopher Luxon, overshadowed and dancing to Winston’s tune”, a more subtle form of MSM bias in its own right.
Taking one specific article as indicative of the spin that prevails, NZH Dec 14 ran a piece on the new Government’s repeal of Labour’s FPA and Smokefree legislation. Forty lines of this were given over to reasons why repeal was required, but eighty-two lines were dedicated to histrionic opposition claims that such moves were “disgraceful”, “disgusting”, “sticking the boot into workers” and “a sad indictment on the new Government”.
With such clear evidence available to the most casual of observers, there has to be a great opportunity for a doctoral thesis or two examining the increase in left-wing bias and the MSM’s transition from providing news ‘of record’ to news ‘of opinion’. Provided of course that any of our universities would ever sanction such research, which, given the current progressive woke climate on campus, they probably would not.
Disgruntled of Eskdale