A Koi Tū discussion paper released today proposes sweeping changes to New Zealand’s media industry. The principal’s key author, Gavin Ellis, explains how journalists have a key role to play in making others value their role in society.

This is an abridged version of a piece first published on knightlyviews.com

News media are good at telling us about other people but not so good at explaining the importance of their own existence. That has to change.

Successive governments have failed to keep pace with the impact of technology on a multitude of media-related laws and legal structures. That has to change.

The New Zealand public either do not know or wilfully choose to ignore the fundamental reason why journalists are a vital part of a democratic society. That, too, has to change.

Unless the general public starts to value the role of professional journalism and demand its survival (and improvement) they are in danger of waking up one morning to find it gone or, if not gone, then reduced to the point where it can no longer hold power to account.

Today Koi Tū: The centre for Informed Futures has published a position paper on the media titled “If not journalists, then who?” It is a rhetorical question because there is no viable substitute for the role of the journalist in a free society.

I am an honorary research fellow at Koi Tū and I am the principal author of the paper. Today’s commentary, however, is written in my private capacity and should not be seen as necessarily reflecting the views of Koi Tū.

I don’t intend to use this commentary to set out its contents. You can read the paper here. Rather, I want to discuss how I hope it will be used in essential development of public dialogue, the formation of government policy, and actions by the media themselves.

It suggests a wide range of initiatives from a concerted campaign to persuade the public of the value of democratically significant journalism, through levying transnational platforms to help pay for it, to coordinated reform of up to 17 acts of parliament affecting media that are no longer fit for purpose.

No one should delude themselves that there are simple answers to the issues confronting the industry. The problems and solutions are interwoven matrices that test legal/political/social boundaries and include essential questions of sovereignty. They occur in an environment with unprecedented low levels of institutional trust – in both media and government.

We need a concerted effort by both media and government to ensure not only the survival but the enhancement of a type and scale of journalism that New Zealand’s pluralistic society needs for its political and social wellbeing.

That will require some serious soul-searching on the part of media organisations and the journalists within them. How can they imagine they are doing their jobs as they should be done when two-thirds of the country don’t trust them and many actively avoid engaging with the news? And don’t tell me it’s all the fault of social media. It certainly hasn’t helped, but our news media must look closer to home for cause and effect.

They do not need to redefine what they do so much as re-examine and rededicate themselves to the values and norms that evolved over time to reflect and reinforce the purpose for which they were given a privileged place in society. I don’t use the word “privileged” in the sense that journalists have been showered with worldly goods. If anything, employers have undervalued them in a monetary sense. Their privileges acknowledge their right to be in certain places as the eyes and ears of the public, and to be protected against reprisals when fulfilling that role. 

Equally importantly, they need to take the public along with them on that journey and ensure that the worth of their calling is impressed upon the people who are the real beneficiaries of the work they do.

In the paper, and after seeking input from various media organisations, I wrote a statement of principles that I believe encapsulates the role of journalists in this country and, indeed, in any country that values itself as a democracy: “Support for democracy sits within the DNA of New Zealand media, which have shared goals of reporting news, current affairs, and information across the broad spectrum of interests in which the people of this country collectively have a stake. Trained news media professionals, working within recognised standards and ethics, are the only group capable of carrying out the functions and responsibilities that have been carved out for them by a heritage stretching back 300 years. They must be capable of holding the powerful to account, articulating many different voices in the community, providing meeting grounds for debate, and reflecting New Zealanders to themselves in ways that contribute to social cohesion. They have a duty to freedom of expression, independence from influence, fairness and balance, and the pursuit of truth.”

The New Zealand public need to be persuaded of (a) the value of that proposition and (b) the ability of our news media to meet its challenges.

The media themselves have the primary role to play in that process but they will not be able to do so if they are weakened to the point of insignificance or disappear altogether. And there, whether they like it or not, politicians have an indispensable role to play. Just as I asked the question “if not journalists, then who?”, I pose a similar question to our elected representatives. If politicians cannot provide the right regulatory and legal environment to sustain our journalism, then who will do it?

We are beyond the point where that talisman of neoliberalism – the market – can provide the environment in which a public good like journalism can flourish. Indeed, the unregulated market that allowed social media and search engines to plunder the nation’s advertising revenue has been a wrecking machine. Successive governments have failed to deal with the impact of the digital age. And that has been across multiple fronts. That must change, and quickly.

The present government surely must see the wisdom of a broad-spectrum coordinated approach to policy-making and reform. There is hope on that particular horizon with Paul Goldsmith taking on the media and communication portfolio. He already has responsibility for related areas that come under the Ministry for Culture & Heritage and, crucially, he is also minister of justice. He is ideally placed to play that vital coordinating role in legislative reform. 

Is the fringe radio station really in a financial crisis, or is it just running a hyped-up donation drive?

Fringe internet radio station Reality Check Radio was launched by the anti-vaccine mandates group Voices for Freedom in March 2023. For the next year, it undertook probably the most aggressive promotional campaign ever seen from a media startup in New Zealand. In every corner of the country, its posters and billboards were inescapable – including this one from Wellington, which spent about two weeks frozen halfway between host Peter Williams and a strip club. 

Then, on April 8, the station went “off air”. Listeners who tried to tune in on the app were greeted with the distorted sound of a dial-up modem, and told the station desperately needed their donations to keep it going. The announcement couldn’t have been timed better for maximum attention – that week, cuts at Newshub and TVNZ were dominating headlines.

Reality Check Radio’s decision to go off-air was covered by the NZ Herald, BusinessDesk, TVNZ and others. At the time, those sites would have believed they were covering the potential closure of media business. But as the weeks have passed it’s starting to look more and more like Reality Check Radio was running an orchestrated donations drive, and using mainstream news outlets to push their message.

When other radio stations shut down, there was outrage and defiance from on-air talent. In Today FM’s final minutes last year, Tova O’Brien turned to the mic and declared, “They’ve fucked us”. Fellow host Duncan Garner said “This is betrayal”.

Reality Check Radio was a little different. It announced its “closure” with a 14-minute, highly-produced short film by Alistair Harding (director of We Came Here for Freedom, a documentary about the parliament protests). The video starts with several loyal RCR listeners going about their days, driving around or making a cup of tea. Then, their news cuts off. They look confused, lost, abandoned. 

Cut to dramatic, sweeping shots of The Remarkables. Peter Williams is driving through the tussocked plains of Central Otago. He asks viewers to consider what New Zealand would be like without Reality Check Radio. “That’s not a New Zealand I want to contemplate,” he says, about a business that has existed for 13 months. Then, a montage of the vaccine mandate protests, and vox pops of RCR listeners talking about what they love most about the station. “We all know something is wrong. But without Reality Check Radio, there will be no one to do anything about it. Then, all you’ll have is compliance and silence,” Williams warns his listeners. “We need to act now before the fires of tyranny turn into a blaze.”

The video ends with RCR hosts and super-fans pleading for donations. “Hopefully, it’s just a temporary closure,” Williams says. It never specifies why RCR is financially struggling. In fact, it boasts about listener and donor numbers. Rodney Hide claims they have 4,500 donors on their Foundation Members Club. “The truth is, we need a lot more support than that to keep going,” he says. 

It’s not the sort of thing you typically see from a media outlet that is struggling to keep the lights on. It seemed more like a tightly coordinated effort to drum up donations. Sean Plunket, the founder of rival fringe radio station The Platform, certainly thought something was fishy. “I find it weird that an organisation would put so much effort into telling people they’d failed,” he told TVNZ’s Q+A. “I’m not sure if it isn’t some sort of misguided marketing ploy.”

RCR co-founder Alia Bland insisted the station really was in trouble. “The situation was dire,” she told reporter Whena Owen. But even then, she seemed to acknowledge the move to go off-air was a stunt. “Everything wants your attention right now, you have to find a way to get your point across to the people.”

Broadcasting on AM or FM airwaves is a major expense for radio stations, but that’s not a cost RCR has to bear. The station broadcasts entirely online, an extremely cheap distribution method. RCR’s most significant ongoing cost would be staff salaries. But going “off-air” didn’t seem to mean RCR staff stopped working. Hosts continued to post videos and interviews on the station’s social media channels. At first, it was mostly discussions between hosts about the state of the fundraiser. But before long, hosts pivoted to podcast-style versions of their shows. Alistair Harding interviewed lawyer Sue Grey about water flouridisation in Hastings. Paul Brennan and Cam Slater analysed the cabinet reshuffle. Maree Buscke hosted special coverage of the UK’s Cass Report on gender identity services, alongside Bob McCoskrie from Family First.

Roving reporter Tane Webster was in Titirangi asking supermarket customers about facial recognition technology, in Devonport interviewing ACT MP Cameron Luxton, and in Remuera with NZ First MPs Shane Jones and Tanya Unkovich. Reality Check Radio was operating as usual, just without radio aspect (which, again, is not a major cost).

On April 17, RCR released “The Plan”, which included graphs showing how it wanted to pivot its business model from being mostly donor-funded to…. still being mostly donor-funded, but with way more donations. It set a goal of growing from 3,500 to 10,000 paying members. But “The Plan” was not just a path to sustainability, it promised rapid expansion, with new features like talkback functionality, documentaries and a press gallery presence.

In a short video update to her fans, Natalie Cutler-Welsh, host of the wellness show Up Your Brave, said she had received several messages from business owners offering to help RCR with its business plan. “We have no shortage of a plan, we just need dollars,” she said. 

In a video on April 26, Buscke gave another update on the station’s return. “We’re not quite out of the woods, but we’re so close.. I can almost touch it.” Two days later, the station announced it needed $480,000 in donations before it would return to air, and some “gracious supporters” had offered to match every donation dollar-for-dollar. The RCR website homepage now shows a loading bar, slowly filling up as donations creep towards its $480,000 goal. Above the bar, a confident headline: The Return Is Near. 

Reality Check Radio understands its audience intimately. Like most fringe media, it thrives on paranoia and fear. It repeatedly ingrains its listeners with the idea that powerful forces are trying to control them, and that government and mainstream media can’t be trusted. Its fundraising page says this explicitly: “Censorship will control what you can say…15 minute cities will control where you can live…. Mass migration will devalue your place in society.” Then, it asks: Are you prepared to face those challenges alone?

Two weeks after the announcement, an unbylined article ran on NZ Herald outlining how much money RCR was asking for, quoting heavily from a press release. You’d be hard pressed to find another instance of a media company promoting (inadvertently or not) another media outlet’s donation drive.

It now seems almost certain Reality Check Radio will be back on-air within weeks, if not days, with its coffers fattened by donations from fans who were genuinely afraid their favourite media outlet was at risk of collapse, and thanks to a helping hand from the mainstream outlets they so heavily criticise. Has Reality Check Radio really served its listeners, or just taken advantage of them?