OPINION
Mark Freeman
Legacy news media leaders are in denial as they refuse to accept the New Zealand public’s verdict that they are biased, as shown in a recent report on public trust in news.
The 2024 AUT report found that the proportion of New Zealanders who trust the news “most of the time” fell from 53% in 2020 to 33% in 2024. A whopping 87% of respondents in 2024 agreed that a reason for not trusting the news is that the reporting is “biased and not balanced.”
Former Weekend Herald editor Miriyana Alexander and the editor of the Otago Daily Times (ODT) Paul McIntyre talked to RNZ’s Mediawatch producer Hayden Donnell about the results.
Both print editors acknowledge that news outlets need to do more to rebuild trust and engage more with their readers. Outlets also need to avoid being arrogant and give people a range of views, Ms Alexander says.
But it’s clear from their conversation that the journalists see definite limits to the range of views the media should offer the public – limits based on the media’s narrow perception of “the truth”.
“It’s a very tricky conversation because some people don’t agree with the truth,” says Ms Alexander. Even though the public accuse the media of bias, the media shouldn’t print things that are not true, she says. “I think it’s really important for journalists to be clear on what the truth is, and you’ll never convince me – even though you’re very convincing – that the moon is made of cheese.”
But, following that uncontroversial statement, Mediawatch’s Mr Donnell introduces a subject closer to earth. “There are some things where you can be pretty certain: the science of climate change, for instance. A large constituency doesn’t believe it’s true. Every scientist will tell you it is.”
(Every scientist? Actually, there are many scientists who don’t believe in anthropogenic warming. The science is far from settled!)
Mr McIntyre of the ODT switches to another topic where the public has supposedly been misled: “During the pandemic, vaccinations on the whole saved a lot of people and now we’re getting issues with people that won’t have vaccinations for measles because they’re believing all that. Now, do we not put the science forward on that?”
Ms Alexander cuts in, acknowledging “adverse effects for some people” from the Covid vaccines. “There were a group of people who were very adamantly anti-vaccination and that was their decision to make, but there were also people who got sick from the vaccine. And, yes, we should absolutely report that, but you don’t scaremonger about it. You have to report it honestly with the information that you can glean about that.”
(In a desperate attempt to avoid scaremongering, the so-called fourth estate has been gleaning most of its information from governments and public health authorities and then repeating their “safe and effective” messaging. If they hadn’t been focused on doing that, they might have noticed the many studies indicating vaccine injuries and deaths.)
Continuing to defend the legacy media against claims of bias, Mr McIntyre says the media have not been good at explaining their editorial decisions. People don’t understand what goes on in a newsroom, he says. “There is no bias there at all. We’re just looking at what stories we’re going to cover in the best way possible.”
No bias at all, eh? On the contrary, editorial bias is continually on display in the media’s choices of stories (e.g. ignoring most reports of probable vaccine injuries), their lack of balance (shown in the exclusion of voices promoting “misinformation”) and their editorialising within the article (signalling to the reader that, for example, even though they are allowing a newsworthy far-right extremist to tell his story, his false claims have been thoroughly debunked).
The problem for the ODT, the Herald and other legacy outlets is their denying the existence of editorial bias goes to the heart of the problem of declining public trust in the media. Their paternalistic attitude is a major factor in many New Zealanders distrusting and then deserting the mainstream for alternative sources of information. If the legacy media want their audiences to return, they’ll have to radically review their definitions of bias and truth. Otherwise their downward spiral will continue.