A new member of NZ On Air’s board has sent a ripple of fear through the media. Duncan Greive explains why Philip Crump has them spooked.

In May of 2020, a new Twitter account debuted, under the pseudonym Thomas Cranmer, a prominent figure in 16th century English religious politics. Over the coming years, it attracted a cult following among those who believed that the combination of the post-George Floyd racial reckoning and pandemic-era restrictions had produced an over-correction in New Zealand’s government and media. By late 2022, Cranmer moved to Substack, saying “it’s become increasingly unwieldy to summarise all of the issues in Twitter threads”. 

For a year, still anonymous, Cranmer wrote about hot button topics like the Three Waters co-governance provisions, the decision to approve Covid vaccines or the Posie Parker tour, attracting thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of views. His pieces interrogated topics which were suddenly hard to discuss in many broad media outlets, while also being still of huge interest to many right-leaning New Zealanders. The views were not always predictable, but tended to focus on areas in which he viewed New Zealand’s news media having failed in some way.

Cranmer tapped into the same energy which animated the likes of Sean Plunket’s The Platform, and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters’ 2023 stump speeches, but swapped the bluster for lengthy, intellectual arguments, often interrogating in fine detail proposed legislation or analysing OIA requests. Midway through last year, BusinessDesk outed Cranmer as Philip Crump, a senior lawyer who had recently returned to New Zealand after 20 years in the UK. NZME (owners of BusinessDesk) promptly hired him to edit ZB+, a paid digital offering intended to supplement the powerhouse talk radio brand.

While all this was going on, NZ On Air was on its own journey. The organisation was founded in 1989, dreamed up by Labour minister (and future Act party MP) Richard Prebble as a contestable public broadcaster. For most of its existence it funded popular TV shows which ran on TVNZ or Three, with production companies pitching ideas to networks, who picked their favourites for sign-off by NZ On Air.

The widespread adoption of digital distribution presented a multidimensional challenge to the agency. It had to decide how to serve a splintering audience, and both create content for and engage with the radically changed audience expectations of the emerging era.

It also became an organisation that had a much greater role in picking which projects to fund – largely because it turned down more ideas than it ever had in the past. In recent years it funded dozens of projects, including a web series for the NZ Herald exploring the lives of trans activists, a documentary about Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick for Three and a look into porn by The Spinoff. 

Despite representing only a small portion of its decisions, they were highly scrutinised, and led to a theory that NZ on Air had succumbed to ideological capture by some. Particularly a range of conservative or right wing sources, including the Taxpayer’s Union, Family First and the Act Party. There is also a strain of current right-leaning politics which is sceptical about the whole idea of funding culture. The New Zealand Initiative’s chief economist Eric Crampton is a persistent critic of the Screen Production Rebate, which sends millions in tax back to film and TV makers. Act has recently openly put Creative NZ on notice about its decisions, particularly those pertaining to the poet Tusiata Avia. 

Still, right-leaning organisations were not alone in perceiving an excess of interest in diversity and intersectionality. Screen veterans like Steven O’Meagher and John Barnett were also unusually public in their criticism of the funder’s recent decisions.

Two worlds collide

These forces have always existed in society – one which seeks to move forward to fix perceived faults, the other which asks what might be lost along such a path. They can feel entirely incompatible – yet as of last week, they were set on a collision course. In a Friday press release, media minister Paul Goldsmith announced two new appointees to the board of NZ On Air. One was Brett Banner, an uncontroversial appointee, a veteran of many commercial roles, with a background in finance and accounting. The other was Crump.

My phone lit up immediately. Within production, media, funding and commissioning, there was a broad sense of anxiety. A significant proportion of Crump’s writing could be characterised as media criticism, both news media and the sector more broadly. It diagnosed a combination of overreach, or failure to meaningfully address the complex, controversy-courting questions he was asking. 

There was a widespread perception that Crump’s appointment was part of a broader pattern. The Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman recently revealed that incoming race relations commissioner Melissa Derby and chief human rights commissioner Stephen Rainbow were each appointed without the endorsement of bipartisan appointment committees. That process was overseen by Goldsmith, who is also in charge of filling places on NZ On Air’s board. 

Crucially, the board of NZ On Air is not a typical and narrow governance arrangement. It also is the final arbiter of funding decisions. While funding committees within NZ On Air assess applications and make recommendations, anything over $1m in budget goes to the board for approval, while other projects which are considered in any way controversial can also be elevated for discussion. 

The Spinoff understands he did not seek the appointment. It’s easy to view this as part of a broader right wing plot to either destabilise, radically reform or ultimately dismantle some key institutions that are perceived as having an inbuilt left wing tilt, or have acquired one in recent years. Opponents would suggest that platforms know NZ On Air’s preferences, and bring them what they want – or that it signals its politics through what it funds, and what it doesn’t.

Those within and around NZ On Air would strongly resist such a characterisation of their decisions, and point out that it can only fund what is put in front of it. There is also a key clause in the Broadcasting Act 1989 which actively compels it to consider diverse audiences in its decision making – it believes that all it is doing is attempting to ensure that provision is satisfied.

What will Crump do?

I know Crump. Early last year I saw the heat his Substack was generating, and wanted to see if he would reveal his identity and express his views in an on-record interview. After a brief correspondence, he agreed to meet me for a beer, and ultimately that he would take the pseudonymous mask off in a story for The Spinoff. Ultimately BusinessDesk ended that approach with its scoop, but we stayed in touch, and he appeared on my podcast The Fold earlier this year, talking about his Substack, and his role at ZB+, which has since ended. 

I sought him out for the same reasons I approached the founders of now-mothballed commentary site The Common Room, and the funder of The Platform. It felt important to know what was driving this disaffection. There is now a well-established alternative media ecosystem within New Zealand which has a general theory of New Zealand’s media – that it has succumbed to ideological capture. Gone woke.

Crump’s views were suddenly a pressing, potentially existential question for an already embattled media. I called Crump, and he declined an on-record interview, citing his freshness in the role.

If he has a critique of New Zealand media, it’s that it lacks the ideological breadth and intellectual energy he enjoyed while reading London’s print media. Where some parts of the right wing alt media can feel confrontationally opposed to arts and culture, Crump expresses affection for it. He cites the fact the late Barry Crump was a first cousin, and Joy Cowley is a relation by marriage as evidence of a connection to the arts. If anything, he comes across as someone who wants to understand why media is the way it is, rather than to burn it down. His 90s Bachelor of Arts was in Māori studies, something he believes shows that his persistent critique of co-governance provisions was in their drafting, rather than from a place of anti-Māori sentiment. In conversation, he comes across as quiet and wonkish, rather than a ideological rigid firebrand.

There’s also the question of just how impactful any single board member can be. He is one of six, one lawyer replacing another, and the NZ On Air board has previously survived politicisation scandals in the past. In 2012 board member Stephen McElrea, who was chair of prime minister John Key’s electorate committee at the time, raised concerns over the broadcast of a documentary about child poverty close to election time. Just last year former TVNZ exec Andrew Shaw resigned after describing the incoming government as a “gang of thugs” on LinkedIn. 

NZ On Air’s next board meeting is in November. Its decisions are always closely scrutinised; these next ones will be especially so. It’s only then that the screen community will see if Crump is the thoughtful, slightly pedantic character he comes across as in person, or whether his appointment really does represent the sharp ideological realignment some fear – and others are rooting for.