OPINION
As delightful as the demise of the media has been, there seems to be a narrative building, especially from those same media people who failed to read the room, that somehow democracy is dying in the dark because media companies are failing.
It is as histrionic as it is false. It’s as if they’ve forgotten that media has always changed, from the time regular pamphleteers organised and started to build modern publications, to the spread of news that came with cheap and available printing methodologies, to the advent of radio and television and finally the internet.
To say democracy is dying in the dark because some legacy media companies failed to adapt is like proclaiming the news will never be the same (yes that was claimed) when the so-called mother of the nation, Judy Bailey, was given the arse card.
Of course, the news didn’t change, really, they just exchanged one face for another.
But let’s look seriously at all the claims about democracy dying in the dark.
The reality is that people have changed their viewing habits. If I’m not watching the six o’clock news, and I am a news junkie, then that says it all. Mostly the “news” they deliver is several days old, I’ve already read it elsewhere from far more reputable sources, and it is heavily slanted to woke or left-wing perspectives which don’t reflect what the viewing public believes.
Then there is the way that the media have behaved pushing extremely small minority views like they actually mean something. Think about how many LGBT+ alphabet people you actually know…it’s a small number right? Yet the media companies are filled with them…and they push the gay agenda. The same goes for the even smaller “trans community”. Yet from what is pushed you’d think that they were a huge part of the population. Most Kiwis think trans folk are FITH. Pushing tiny little agendas just leads people to think that the media aren’t on the same page as you.
What is incredible, however, is media people crying that losing their jobs is a dagger at the heart of democracy. It’s not.
But you know what was a dagger at the heart of democracy? Sucking up to the Labour Government during Covid, attacking people for daring to think for themselves, running the Government’s attack lines, demonising people, othering them and at the same time not questioning what was an effective coup via locking down most of cabinet around the nation and abrogating human rights at the same time. The media, mostly, went along with and cheered and clapped as Jacinda Ardern turned legislation upside down and inside out and bribed the media with an ironically named Public Interest Journalism Fund that had strings attached and penalties for failing to adhere to the promulgated and anti-historic views of her Government. Our democracy died when Ardern took over and then bribed the media into compliance and then silence.
The media stood and cheered when the strong arm of the state forcibly removed people who were at parliament simply to be heard. They sat up in the parliament buildings filming from safety, they attacked and demonised the protestors, and clapped and cheered as Jacinda Ardern’s stormtroopers beat and bludgeoned people into a brutal silence and submission. They said nothing; they did nothing. They became propagandists, not the fourth estate.
If you put all that together, then what you get is a precipitous and sudden collapse of trust in media. Quelle surprise!
The media mostly blame their audience, and social media companies for that collapse in trust. They are in denial. They refuse to acknowledge that they did it to themselves, and seem genuinely perplexed that the general public is cheering at their demise, and not giving them any sympathy whatsoever.
You see when trust goes, it goes forever, and no amount of government subsidies or bailouts will ever get it back. It’s gone.
The legacy media goose is cooked and they walked that goose into the oven themselves. They only have themselves to blame, and as a consequence, they’ll be like buggy whip manufacturers after the advent of the motorcar, or bowyers and fletchers after the invention of gunpowder.
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