OPINION
According to Herald Media Insider, Shayne Currie, a number of well-known TVNZ faces, including Miriama Kamo, Jack Tame, Indira Stewart and Anna Burns-Francis feature in an E tu union publicity campaign – all lending support to the importance of news and current affairs. This, to my mind, is a pretty pointless exercise. For a start, who doesn’t know the importance of the aforementioned? That is neither the point nor the problem. A good part of the problem is those talking about the problem.
A number of factors, some are of their own making, have caused the situation now confronting the journalists. It is these factors that the journalists seem either not to recognise or not understand. Their main point is a valid one: news and current affairs are part and parcel of a democracy. From there on, they lose the plot. They fail to take into account that they are working for a business. It might be government-owned but it is to all intents and purposes a commercial enterprise and is expected to operate accordingly, providing a dividend to the shareholders – us.
I have no doubt this is not how the journalists see it. Their emphasis will be on the ‘government owned’ end of the arrangement and they see themselves as government employees providing a much-needed news and current affairs service in the interests of maintaining a democracy. This is where they, the E tu union and indeed TVNZ itself, run into trouble. It is where theory and practice collide.
In theory TVNZ is an entertainment provider on one hand and a producer of news and current affairs programmes on the other. In practice it has never successfully been both.
Now with the explosive growth of other media platforms, it is in even less of a position to be so. It has to choose one or the other, preferably in consultation with government. The outcome of such discussions would also provide an answer as to its ownership. If it is to be primarily a news and current affairs channel then there is an argument for government involvement but, as I pointed out in my last article, I would prefer a Sky News model, privately run with no taxpayer input.
If it is decided it should remain as it is now, mainly an entertainment channel, then there should be no taxpayer funding. If the government is to be taken at its word regarding the dire state of the country’s finances then there is no money for an enterprise of that type. It is bad enough having to cough up for that left-wing mouthpiece Radio New Zealand.
Which brings me back to the journalists’ other problem: news – both the content and how it is presented. As I mentioned in a previous article, they appear to present it in a manner of their own liking rather than how the audience wants. They are presenting a left-wing perspective to a demographic that is predominantly on the right of the political spectrum as is evident from the breakdown of age groups who voted for the various parties at the last election.
The journalists’ most earnest efforts to convince us to vote for their choices in government didn’t work. Post-election it is obvious, whether watching, listening or reading, that the self-important types have yet to learn that lesson. I have no doubt they don’t want to. By their actions they become the authors of their own demise as both audiences and, as a result, advertisers disappear. This is precisely why the commercial enterprise they work for is now having to cut jobs and if TV One remains in its present form, this conflict of interest will remain.
Their PR video is apparently available on YouTube. Against my better judgement, I went to the Union website to find it. It’s about 1 minute 20 seconds long and quite frankly it’s pathetic. They’re trying to say how important they are in bringing us stories that matter and giving a voice to the poor and underprivileged, as if that’s something of which we are unaware. The fact they need to get their head around is this – the way they dispense their product is losing both viewers and advertisers. They also need to realise it is the company (courtesy of taxpayers) that pays their wages.
These people live in a bubble, thinking they’re totally indispensable to everybody in the name of protecting democracy. Well, the time has come for all journalists to listen up. Most of the domestic, particularly political, news they provide sounds like they are based at Fraser House, Labour Party HQ. The majority of potential viewers, listeners or readers voted for a government that is at variance with their political views. Their resultant opinions are at best biased and at worst disgraceful. Until the craft of objective journalism is learned there will be a continuing decline in clientele.
Lastly, they have bought themselves another problem with their union representative, their mate Michael Wood. This man single-handedly lost the safe Labour seat of Mt Roskill. His light rail project ended up as nothing more than an expensive lost train of thought. If they think he’s the answer to their woes I have a bike bridge to sell them. Oh no I don’t. That Michael Wood idea also got derailed and was never built. Peddling good ideas was not his strong suit.