After accepting then rejecting to run a follow-up ad from Hobson’s Pledge after outcry over last week’s controversial front pager, the NZ Herald has been left with mud on its face and less money in its coffers.

A second ad from rightwing lobby group Hobson’s Pledge was scheduled to run in the NZ Herald yesterday. Much like the first controversial promotion – which called for the foreshore and seabed to be “returned to public ownership” and graced the front page and inside front of last Wednesday’s edition – it would have cost a pretty penny to place. Unfortunately for NZ Herald publisher NZME and Hobson’s Pledge, the ad was pulled due to the significant backlash the company has faced since publishing the first ad.

“After careful consideration and in light of feedback we’ve received from our subscribers and our team, NZME has decided not to proceed with running the advertisement,” the publisher said in a statement sent on Monday to Don Brash, Hobson’s Pledge spokesperson and former leader of National and Act, which he shared with supporters.

The decision came as a surprise to Brash, who said Hobson’s Pledge had run several ads in the past with the publisher. “They [NZ Herald] haven’t been terribly enthusiastic about taking our ads in the past, but we have run ads [with them] previously,” Brash told The Spinoff. While the Herald hasn’t ruled out publishing another ad from Hobson’s Pledge in the future, in a statement the company said it was now reviewing its policies and processes around advocacy advertising. Brash said he was unsure if they’d be advertising with the publication again.

Last week’s ad is far from the first example of advocacy advertising in the Herald. During last year’s election campaign, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions (NZCTU) paid for a full wraparound front page ad criticising National leader Christopher Luxon, and in May this year, as Israel ramped up its military offensive in Rafah, the Herald ran a full page ad from a Zionist organisation wishing Israel a happy birthday.

Alongside Brash, rightwing commentators such as Sean Plunket and Michael Laws have labelled the decision to not run the ad an attack on free speech and criticised the Herald for succumbing to public pressure. “This sort of weakness is entirely part of why public trust in the media continues to plummet, and political discourse is more and more polarised,” said a release from the Free Speech Union.

Brash said the second ad was in response to feedback received about the first one, which drew criticism from several academics and organisations who said it was inaccurate and designed to create fear about claims for customary marine title under the Marine and Coastal Areas Act. Kawea Te Rongo, the Māori Journalists Association, condemned the ad and demanded a review of NZME’s advertising standards, while more than 170 legal professionals signed an open letter that criticised it as misleading and potentially fuelling racism. In response to the ad, Waatea News cut ties with NZ Herald, and Te Pāti Māori announced a boycott of the publication until a formal apology was issued.

The follow-up ad, which was shared with Hobson’s Pledge members, featured images of Rawiri Waititi, co-leader of Te Pāti Māori and Labour MP Willie Jackson. The words “fact check” and arrows pointing to QR codes were also in the ad. Those codes led to two different pages on the website for Te Arawhiti – the Office for Māori Crown Relations.

“It simply was highlighting that the information we put on the previous ad last Wednesday was, in fact, sourced from the Māori-Crown Relations Office website in terms of what customary marine title gives people and the fact that claims now circle the entire coast. I mean, that’s from the official government website,” said Brash.

As much as it pains me to write this, in all fairness to Hobson’s Pledge, their claims aren’t too far from the truth. There are currently applications from Māori authorities, including iwi, hapū and whānau groupings for customary marine title in relation to almost all of the country’s coastline. There is an ability for these groups to seek to have areas recognised as wāhi tapu and prohibit access to or fishing in these specific areas. If granted customary marine title, they would have rights over all non-nationalised minerals (anything except petroleum, gold, silver and uranium), and new resource consent applications would need the written permission of the customary marine title holder.

While the basis of the claims are factually correct, the manner in which they were presented clearly intended to create fear among the wider public that access to the country’s coastline would be taken away and no one except Māori would be able to fish any more, which just isn’t true. The whole Hobson’s Pledge campaign, Save our Shores, is a vehicle for opposing indigenous rights, a fact that Brash doesn’t shy away from.

“Our sole objective is to ensure that all New Zealanders have equal constitutional rights… It’s not an anti-Māori thing at all,” Brash said.

It’s not anti-Māori, it’s just anti-indigenous rights. As Māori are the indigenous people of Aotearoa, they just happen to be the group of people affected by Hobson’s Pledge’s crusade for constitutional equality.

“If you are convinced that the Treaty of Waitangi provided constitutional preference for those with a Māori ancestor, then of course you would disagree with my position, but I don’t interpret the Treaty of Waitangi in that way. And in fact, I don’t think there’s any future for New Zealand if any citizens have a constitutional preference,” said Brash.

The battle against customary marine title is just one of the plethora of anti-Māori – I mean pro-constitutional equality – campaigns being run by Hobson’s Pledge. Other campaigns currently include a call for the abolishment of the Waitangi Tribunal, keeping New Zealand as the country’s only official name, and supporting Janet Dickinson, the real estate agent who refused to partake in an online cultural training programme. Next on the agenda? Māori wards and electorates.

“All the seven Māori in the cabinet got there without being in a Māori electorate. Ironically, not one of them is in a Māori electorate, so the logic for having them has disappeared,” Brash said.

As for the NZ Herald, a number of subscribers have cancelled their subscriptions in the wake of the Hobson’s Pledge ad, and a loss of subscribers and advertising revenue certainly doesn’t help a business in an industry struggling to stay afloat.

While it is easy to criticise the Herald for choosing to take money for an ad clearly intended to create fear and cause division, the real problem is Hobson’s Pledge. It is an organisation intent on erasing indigenous rights by any means necessary. Healthy debate is key to a successful democracy and we should encourage it wherever possible. However, fear mongering and creating racial division through exaggerations and selective use of information leads only to a society that is fractured and distrustful.

The NZ Herald’s decision to pull the second ad, while financially damaging, was ultimately the right move to avoid amplifying a campaign rooted in misinformation and division. However, the fact that the initial ad was published at all reveals the broader challenge facing media outlets: balancing free speech with social responsibility. In this instance, the Herald’s initial choice to publish the ad reflects a failure to properly scrutinise the content they were promoting, which resulted in backlash and financial loss.

The larger issue remains around the existence of groups like Hobson’s Pledge that exploit fears and misunderstandings about indigenous rights to push their own agenda. As New Zealand continues to grapple with its colonial past and the rights of its indigenous people, it is crucial that discussions are based on facts and a genuine desire for equity, not fear and division. The NZ Herald’s missteps in handling this situation serve as a reminder of the power and responsibility that media holds in shaping public discourse. Hopefully this incident leads to more thoughtful decisions in the future, ensuring that the platform is not used to undermine the rights of any group within society.