Pro-Palestinian protesters dressed in blue “press” vests tonight staged a vigil calling on New Zealand journalists to show solidarity with the media of Gaza who have suffered the highest death toll in any war.
They staged the vigil at the Viaduct venue of NZ’s annual Voyager Media Awards.
Organised by Palestinian Youth Aotearoa (PYA) and People for Palestine (P4P), supporters were making a stand for the journalists of Gaza, who were awarded the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize earlier this month.
Fathi Hassneiah of PYA condemned the systematic killing, targeting and silencing of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) throughout the war on Gaza that is now in its eighth month.
Often the families of journalists have been martyred alongside them, Hassneiah said.
A media spokesperson, Leondra Roberts, said PYA and P4P were calling on “all journalists in Aotearoa to stand in solidarity with the courageous journalists of the Gaza Strip who continue to report on what the International Court of Justice has called a plausible genocide”.
Maori journalists commended
She commended Kawea Te Rongo (Māori Journalists Association) for their support for their Palestinian colleagues in November 2023 with co-chair Mani Dunlop saying: “Journalists and the media are integral to ensuring the world and its leaders are accurately informed during this conflict …
“Daily we are seeing stories of journalists who face extreme brutality . . . including the unconscionable worry of their families’ safety while they themselves risk their lives.
“It is a deadly trade-off, every day they put on their press vest and helmet to do their job selflessly for their people and the rest of the world.”
PYA spokesperson and musician Rose Freeborn appealed to journalists reporting from Aotearoa to critically examine Israel’s treatment of their peers in Gaza and called on “storytellers of all mediums to engage with Palestinian voices”.
“We unequivocally condemn the mass murder of 105 journalists in Gaza by the IDF since October 7, as well as Israel’s longstanding history of targeting journalists across the region — from Shireen Abu Akleh to Issam Abdallah — in an attempt to smother the truth and dictate history,” she said.
She criticised the “substandard conduct” of some journalists in New Zealand.
Media industry ‘failed’
Broadcaster, singer and journalist Moana Maniapoto . . . speaking to the Palestinian protesters tonight. Image: PYA/P4P
“At times, the media industry in this country has failed not only the Palestinian community but New Zealand society at large by reporting factual inaccuracies and displaying a clear bias for the Israeli narrative.
“This has led to people no longer trusting mainstream media outlets to give them the full story, so they have turned to each other and the journalists on the ground in Gaza via social media.
“The storytellers of Gaza, with their resilience and extraordinary courage, have provided a blueprint for journalists across the globe to stand in defence of truth, accuracy and objectivity.”
A Palestinian New Zealander and P4P spokesperson, Yasmine Serhan, said: “While it is my people being subjected to mass murder and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, it is the peers of New Zealand journalists who are being systematically targeted and murdered by Israel in an attempt to stop the truth being reported.”
RNZ News reports that RNZ won two major honours tonight at the annual Voyager Media Awards, which recognise New Zealand’s best journalism, with categories for reporting, photography, digital and video.
RNZ was awarded the Best Innovation in Digital Storytelling for their series The Interview and longform journalist te ao Māori Ella Stewart took out the prize for Best Up and Coming Journalist.
Le Mana Pacific award went to Indira Stewart of 1News, and Mihingarangi Forbes (Aotearoa Media Collective) and Moana Maniapoto (Whakaata Māori) were joint winners of the Te Tohu Kairangi Award.
Some of the Palestine protesters taking part in the vigil in support of Gazan journalists at NZ’s Voyager Media Awards tonight. Image: ER
The Albanese government will establish a new joint committee to examine growing issues with social media like online scams, illicit content, black box algorithms and the Meta’s decision to “abandon” news content deals with publishers. These and other issues will be examined by a Joint Parliamentary Select Committee into the influence and impacts of social…
New York, May 8, 2024 – The Committee to Protect Journalists on Wednesday urged Israeli authorities to release Palestinian freelance journalist Rula Hassanein on humanitarian grounds as her health and that of her infant daughter had deteriorated since Hassanein’s March arrest over her social media posts.
On March 19, Israeli military forces arrested Hassanein, who is also an editor for the Ramallah-based Watan News Agency, without explanation, at her home in the Al-Ma’asra neighborhood in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, handcuffed and blindfolded her, confiscated her laptop and cell phone, and took her to Damon Prison, near the northern Israeli city of Haifa, according to newsreports, the Palestinian press freedom group MADA, and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes.
Hassanein was brought before Judea military court, which is located in Ofer Prison, northwest of Jerusalem, on March 25 and charged with incitement on social media and supporting a hostile organization banned under Israeli law, according to MADA and court documents, which CPJ reviewed.
The health of Hassanein’s prematurely born daughter Elia, who suffers from a weak immune system and ulcers on her palms, feet, and mouth, has declined since her mother’s arrest as she was exclusively breastfed, according to those sources and medical reports, reviewed by CPJ. Hassanein gave birth last year to twins, Elia and Youssef, two months early due to health complications, and lost Youssef three hours after birth, those sources said.
“We call on Israeli authorities to release Rula Hassanein on humanitarian grounds so that she can look after her ailing nine-month-old daughter,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “Israel should allow Hassanein to respond to the charges against her in a civilian court, rather than a military one, which is not an appropriate avenue for addressing concerns over a journalist’s social media posts.”
On April 3, Judea military court postponed the hearing for the third time, refused to grant bail to Hassanein, and rejected her lawyer’s request that she be released to look after her baby, according to newsreports and MADA.
The court documents accused Hassanein of incitement over her posts, including retweets, on X, formerly Twitter, and Facebook between August 2022 and December 2023, in which she commented on the Israel-Gazawar, that included her frustration over the suffering of Palestinians. Hassanein also commented on events in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including the shooting of two Israelis in the northern town of Hawara in August 2023 and the killing of an Israelisoldier at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem in October 2022.
On October 10, 2023, Hassanein retweeted a post on X showing a photograph of her in a sniper’s crosshairs with Hebrew text describing her as a Hamas Nazi journalist living in Ramallah, which she said Israeli setters circulated on social media groups calling for her arrest as part of an incitement campaign against her.
Hassanein’s family are campaigning for her release, saying that her health has deteriorated as a result of poor prison conditions, according to the Palestinian outlet Mada News and MADA.
Hassanein has contributed to several media outlets, including the Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera, the feminist online outlet Banfsj, the Palestinian women’s station Radio Nisaa, and the think tank Al-Quds Center for Political Studies. Momar Orabi, manager for Watan News Agency, told CPJ that Hassanein had been working as an editor for the outlet in the months prior to her arrest.
The Israeli Prison Service did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.
As US lawmakers’ agitation over TikTok culminates in a law that threatens a nationwide ban if the social media platform isn’t sold to a US buyer within nine months, an emergent media narrative finds a silver lining. Every legislative move targeting TikTok, the story goes, has the potential to inspire much-needed regulation of tech behemoths like Meta, Amazon, Google and Apple.
But by conflating the US’s legal treatment of TikTok—a subsidiary of the Beijing-basedByteDance—with that of its own tech industry, media obscure the real reasons for the law’s passage.
False comparisons
Did the TikTok law really break the “tech law logjam,” as the headline (New York Times, 4/25/24) asserts? Probably not, the story acknowledges.
This was apparent in a New York Times piece (4/25/24) headlined “TikTok Broke the Tech Law Logjam. Can That Success Be Repeated?” Author Cecilia Kang described the recently instated divest-or-ban law—passed as part of a package with aid to Israel and Ukraine—as an instance of “reining in the tech giants.” The article suggested that the ban might be a harbinger of broader regulation of the tech industry in the public interest, such as antitrust legislation or mental-health guardrails.
Kang cited multiple sources who doubted that the ultimatum would spur regulation of US tech companies, arguing that lawmakers influenced by industry lobbying and 2024 campaign strategies would balk at the notion of curtailing US corporate power.
It’s fair to note that the TikTok law was unlikely to have this effect. But lobbying and campaigning aren’t the only, or even the primary, explanations for this. A simple review of the legislation shows that it’s not a form of good-faith regulation meant to protect the populace, but an effort to either seize or severely weaken TikTok in the name of US interests.
Kang’s thesis was premised on years’ worth of media and policymaker fearmongering that TikTok user data was susceptible to surveillance by the Chinese government (BuzzFeed News, 6/17/22; Forbes, 10/20/22; Guardian, 11/7/22). According to Kang’s colleagues, the law’s enactment was prompted by “concerns that the Chinese government could access sensitive user data” (New York Times, 4/26/24). In 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte sought to prohibit TikTok throughout his state on the grounds that “the Chinese Communist Party” was “collecting US users’ personal, private and sensitive information” (Montana Free Press, 5/17/23). (Gianforte’s attempt was later thwarted by a federal judge.)
If such fears were officials’ genuine motivation, one could hope that broader data-privacy regulation might follow. Yet, as the Times neglected to mention, the spying accusations are tenuous—and deeply cynical. As even US intelligence officials concede, apprehensions about China’s access to TikTok user data are strictly hypothetical (Intercept, 3/16/24). And, despite its bombshell headline “Analysis: There Is Now Some Public Evidence That China Viewed TikTok Data,” CNN (6/8/23) cautioned that said evidence—a sworn statement from a former ByteDance employee—“remains rather thin.”
Pretext for censorship
Mitt Romney on Gaza (Common Dreams, 5/6/24): “The way this has played out on social media…has a very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
Given their dubious nature, it’s hard to see these data-privacy claims as anything other than a pretext for the US to throttle TikTok. By forcing either divestment or a ban, the US, at least in theory, wins: It transfers a tremendously lucrative and influential company into its own hands, or it prevents that company from serving as a platform—albeit one with plenty of problems—on which people can engage in and learn from discourses that are critical of US empire.
The censorial intentions of the legislation have been thrown into sharp relief by congressional Republicans. In an address on April 24, the day President Joe Biden made the ultimatum law, Sen. Pete Ricketts (R–Neb.) fretted that “nearly a third” of users between the ages of 18 and 29 used TikTok as a regular news source. (Results from a November 2023 Pew survey confirm this.) This was cause for alarm, according to the senator, because the platform featured a heightened concentration of “pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas” videos as part of a dastardly plot by the Chinese government.
Senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R–Utah) reinforced Ricketts’ fearmongering in early May, asserting at a forum with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that “the number of mentions of Palestinians” on TikTok generated “overwhelming support to shut [TikTok] down” (Common Dreams, 5/6/24). Romney’s source for this wasn’t clear, but his message was: TikTok simply wouldn’t be tolerated as a source of information that contradicted official narratives.
Likewise, Rep. Mike Lawler (R–NY) (Intercept, 5/4/24) told the centrist advocacy group No Labels that the Gaza protests are
exactly why we included the TikTok bill in the foreign supplemental aid package, because you’re seeing how these kids are being manipulated by certain groups or entities or countries to foment hate on their behalf and really create a hostile environment here in the US.
With “a big bipartisan push in both chambers to crack down on TikTok,” NBC (4/16/23) sees “a window of opportunity to pass new regulations in…the tech industry.”
The right-wing lawmakers were far from the first to harbor this sentiment; criticisms like this had been simmering for months (FAIR.org, 11/13/23, 3/14/24). (These admissions that Congress went after TikTok based on its content will likely help the lawsuit ByteDance filed arguing that the law mandating either a sale or a ban is unconstitutional—Hollywood Reporter, 5/7/24).
Ignoring this context, Associated Press (3/24/24) presented the same inaccurate characterizations as the New York Times. Paraphrasing Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), AP reported that the TikTok law—which, at the time, was merely a bill the House had passed—“is the best chance to get something done after years of inaction” on tech regulation. The moral content of what, exactly, was being done didn’t seem to matter to the news agency. Instead, AP opted to uncritically publish Warner’s insinuation that young TikTok users urging their congressional representatives to vote against the ban were “manipulated” by the “Communist Party of China.”
AP’s report echoed an equally faulty NBC News summary (4/16/23) of congressional approaches to the tech industry. Though the story was published prior to any TikTok legislation, it remarked on a “big bipartisan push” to “crack down” on the company. The piece went on to group what was then a more abstract—but thoroughly jingoistic—movement against TikTok with regulation regarding such unrelated user-protection concerns as “deep fakes, voice phishing scams and powerful chatbots like Chat GPT.”
Domestic rewards
Facebook parent Meta paid a consulting firm to get out the message that “TikTok is the real threat especially as a foreign owned app that is #1 in sharing data that young teens are using” (Washington Post, 3/30/22).
Absent from these reports is yet another reason a ban or forced sale of TikTok won’t necessarily lead to domestic regulation: US tech giants stand to benefit from the law. As the New York Times itself (4/24/24) reports, “Meta could draw up to 60% of TikTok’s American ad revenue, while YouTube could take another 25% or so.” Not coincidentally, at least one US tech firm was involved in manufacturing public antipathy toward TikTok: According to the Washington Post (3/30/22), Meta, a directTikTok competitor, paid a Republican consulting firm to orchestrate a smear campaign against TikTok. The effort included planted op-eds and letters to the editor in “major regional news outlets” nationwide.
Coupling this information with the US’s historical refusal to regulate its own tech industry, why, one might wonder, would the US suddenly change course? And wouldn’t this mean that a US-owned TikTok would operate effectively unchecked, just like current US tech corporations?
But such questions aren’t meant to be asked in a narrative that launders reactionary policymaking as a potential regulatory boon. The TikTok ultimatum, we’re told, isn’t a drastic measure to stifle statements of support for Palestine or any other political speech to the left of the State Department line; it’s, to borrow from the New York Times (4/25/24), a “success.”
Featured image: Detail from BreakThrough News video on TikTok (10/28/23) about a pro-Palestine march in Dallas—the kind of content a new law is aimed at suppressing.
A discussion between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sen. Mitt Romney over the weekend included what one critic called an “incredible mask-off moment,” with the two officials speaking openly about the U.S. government’s long-term attempts to provide public relations work for Israel in defense of its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories — and its push to ban TikTok in order to…
Internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Brennan Center and Data for Black Lives reveal that for years, Washington, DC, police have used online surveillance tools to monitor people’s social media activity, collect data on individual users and their friend networks, and keep tabs on public protests. The documents provide a window into a secret world of…
CIVICUS is looking for a consultant to help further one of CIVICUS flagship campaigns – Stand As My Witness. The short-term consultancy will involve evaluating the current campaign, devising future strategy, and designing and delivering the short-term (3-month) campaign outcomes.
CIVICUS is a growing global alliance of more than 15,000 members in 175 countries. In July 2020, CIVICUS along with 190 civil society organisations (CSOs) launched the #StandAsMyWitness (SAMW) campaign to raise awareness about human rights defenders (HRDs) who were and still are facing judicial persecution and unlawful detention, and to advocate for their release.
Currently there are 13 cases profiled by the campaign and for the last three years, we have been part of successful global calls for the conditional and unconditional release of 9 HRDs as part of the SAMW campaign. The campaign also builds on a global map that features HRDs facing prosecutions, and highlights further systems built to crack down on critical voices.
Entering its fourth cycle, CIVICUS and campaign allies are keen to build upon the successes achieved so far and further the outreach and impact of the campaign.
Analyse the status of the campaign, its tactics, outreach, and propose plans, calendars and tactic for the short-term (3-month leading up to/following the anniversary (18 July).
Engage with CIVICUS Advocacy and Communications teams, regional leads, partners, families and lawyers of the HRDs, and relevant member networks to clarify the context, current status of the actions and propose plans, tactics, and outputs.
Deliver the short-term campaign plans during the first 3-month period.
– Managing and monitoring the campaign’s calendar – Creating or facilitating the creation of campaign materials such as social media messages, graphics, media, and other assets including a global campaign map – Updating and improving the campaign pages on the website – Convene on/offline events as appropriate to strengthen the campaign. This includes both public events and events targeted at CIVICUS members and partners. – Strongly link SAMW profiles and actions with other CIVICUS research, advocacy, and networking efforts.
Design a longer-term (next two years) campaign and content strategy with a cohesive engagement journey. The strategy is to capture:
– Key moments, approaches, and current and potential partners. – Explore how to better leverage the campaign actions promoted by Global Citizen. – Points for campaign improvement and expansion based on learnings to date and during the first three-month phase. – Best practices in advocating for HRDs in difficult contexts.
The consultant
The consultant will have proven experience (at least five years) at the international level designing and delivering campaigns. Experience in social change work with civil society, human rights, or development sectors is a pre-requisite.
They will bring in lived creative and innovative communications experience in terms of content ideation, creation, dissemination, etc. We welcome those with experience in creative direction, media production, systems and design thinking, and diverse public and multi-sector engagement.
The consultant will apply via sending us a:
Brief resume
Two-page brief of their approach to the consultancy
Links of creative communications and engagement campaigns/content created
Cost proposal.
Timeline
We anticipate the contract to be signed by 10th May 2024, and all deliverables must be complete by 10th August. They may apply according to the above guidelines and forward their CV, approach document and creative examples to <a href="mailto:communications<small> [AT] </small>civicus<small> [DOT] communications@civicus.org by 7th May 2024.
In this episode of New Politics, we explore Australia’s remarkable economic ascent, now ranking second among G20 nations, a significant leap from its previous positions. We explore the factors behind this growth and the impact of government policies on this turnaround and while this might be good for the economy, it’s not so good for the community if people can’t see or feel the benefits yet. For the government, this is an important factor: the economy doesn’t vote but the people in the economy do.
We also discuss the Future Made in Australia initiative announced by the Prime Minister, focusing on renewable energy projects and advanced manufacturing, aiming to boost local job creation. Despite the lack of detailed plans, the initiative has garnered substantial community and industry support, although it faces criticism from conservative figures and media. No surprises there.
There’s a controversial debate around free speech and whether Twitter (‘X’ or whatever people wish to call it) should remove a video of a violent stabbing incident in Sydney’s west and the subsequent social media uproar involving global platforms and Australian government responses. It’s a vexed issue: perhaps there should be restrictions on this kind of violence on social media but if is restricted, does that mean we would never find out what’s really happening in Gaza and Ukraine? It might be a case of being careful for what you wish for.
Lastly, we look at the pressing issues in education, from potential relief for graduates burdened by HECS debts to the contentious funding of private schools, which highlights a significant disparity in government support compared to public schools.
Join us as we unpack these complex topics, providing insights into Australia’s current economic strategies, the media, and educational policies.
Song listing:
‘The King Is Dead’, The Herd.
‘Freedom!’, George Michael (Marc Martel cover).
‘Field Of Glass’, The Triffids.
‘La Femme d’Argent’, Air.
‘Praise You’, Fat Boy Slim.
Music interludes:
Support independent journalism
We don’t plead, beseech, beg, guilt-trip, or gaslight you and claim the end of the world of journalism is coming soon. We keep it simple: If you like our work and would like to support it, send a donation, from as little as $5. Or purchase one of our books! It helps to keep our commitment to independent journalism ticking over! Go to our supporter page to see the many ways you can support New Politics.
On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued with authoritarian glee legal notices to X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to remove material within 24 hours depicting what her office declared to be “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail”. The relevant material featured a livestreamed video of a stabbing attack by a 16-year-old youth at Sydney’s Assyrian Orthodox Christ the Good Shepherd Church the previous day. Two churchmen, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and Rev. Isaac Royel, were injured.
Those at X, and its executive, Elon Musk, begged to differ, choosing to restrict general access to the graphic details of the video in Australia alone. Those outside Australia, and those with a virtual private network (VPN), would be able to access the video unimpeded. Ruffled and irritated by this, Grant rushed to the Australian Federal Court to secure an interim injunction requiring X to hide the posts from global users with a hygiene notice of warning pending final determination of the issue. While his feet and mind are rarely grounded, Musk was far from insensible in calling Grant a “censorship commissar” in “demanding *global* content bans”. In court, the company will argue that Grant’s office has no authority to dictate what the online platform posts for global users.
This war of grinding, nannying censorship – which is what it is – was the prelude for other agents of information control and paranoia to join the fray. The Labour Albanese government, for instance, with support from the conservative opposition, have rounded on Musk, blurring issues of expression with matters of personality. “This is an egotist,” fumed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, “someone who’s totally out of touch with the values that Australian families have, and this is causing great distress.”
The values game, always suspicious and meretricious, is also being played by law enforcement authorities. It is precisely their newfound presence in this debate that should get members of the general public worried. You are to be lectured to, deemed immature and incapable of exercising your rights or abide by your obligations as citizens of Australian society.
We have the spluttering worries of Australian Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw in claiming that children (always handy to throw them in) and vulnerable groups (again, a convenient reference) are “being bewitched online by a cauldron of extremist poison on the open and dark web”. These muddled words in his address to the National Press Club in Canberra are shots across the bow. “The very nature of social media allows that extremist poison to spray across the globe almost instantaneously.”
Importantly, Kershaw’s April 24 address has all the worrying signs of a heavy assault, not just on the content to be consumed on the internet, but on the way communications are shared. And what better way to do so by using children as a policy crutch? “We used to warn our children about stranger danger, but now we need to teach our kids about the digital-world deceivers.” A matronly, slightly unhinged tone is unmistakable. “We need to constantly reinforce that people are not always who they claim to be online; and that also applies to images and information.” True, but the same goes for government officials and front-line politicians who make mendacity their stock and trade.
Another sign of gathering storm clouds against the free sharing of information on technology platforms is the appearance of Australia’s domestic espionage agency, ASIO. Alongside Kershaw at the National Press Club, the agency’s chief, Mike Burgess, is also full of grave words about the dangerous imperium of encrypted chatter. There are a number of Australians, warns Burgess, who are using chat platforms “to communicate with offshore extremists, sharing vile propaganda, posting tips about homemade weapons and discussing how to provoke a race war”.
The inevitable lament about obstacles and restrictions – the sorts of things to guard the general citizenry against encroachments of the police state – follows. “ASIO’s ability to investigate is seriously compromised. Obviously, we and our partners will do everything we can to prevent terrorism and sabotage, so we are expending significant resources to monitor the Australians involved.” You may count yourselves amongst them, dear reader.
Kershaw is likewise not a fan of the encrypted platform. In the timeless language of paternal policing, anything that enables messages to be communicated in a public sense must first receive the state’s approval. “We recognise the role that technologies like end-to-end encryption play in protecting personal data, privacy and cyber-security, but there is no absolute right to privacy.”
To make that very point, Burgess declares that “having lawful and targeted access to extremist communications” would make matters so much easier for the intelligence and security community. Naturally, it will be up to the government to designate what it deems to be extremist and appropriate, a task it is often ill-suited for. Once the encryption key is broken, all communications will be fair game.
When it comes to governments, authoritarian regimes do not have a monopoly on suspicion and the fixation on keeping populations in check. In an idyll of ignorance, peace can reign among the docile, the unquestioning, the cerebrally inactive. The Australian approach to censorship and control, stemming from its origins as a tortured penal outpost of the British Empire, is drearily lengthy. Its attitude to the Internet has been one of suspicion, concern, and complexes.
Government ministers in the antipodes see a world, not of mature participants searching for information, but inspired terrorists, active paedophiles and noisy extremists carousing in shadows and catching the unsuspecting. Such officialdom is represented by such figures as former Labor Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who thankfully failed to introduce a mandatory internet filter when in office, or such nasty products of regulatory intrusion as the Commonwealth Online Safety Act of 2021, zealously overseen by Commissar Grant and the subject of Musk’s ire.
The age of the internet and the world wide web is something to admire and loathe. Surveillance capitalism is very much of the loathsome, sinister variety. But ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, and the Australian government and other agencies do not give a fig about that. The tech giants have actually corroded privacy in commodifying data but many still retain stubborn residual reminders of liberty in the form of encrypted communications and platforms for discussion. To have access to these means of public endeavour remains the holy grail of law enforcement officers, government bureaucrats and fearful politicians the world over.
Melissa Lee has been ousted from New Zealand’s coalition cabinet and stripped of the Media portfolio, and Penny Simmonds has lost the Disability Issues portfolio in a reshuffle.
Climate Change and Revenue Minister Simon Watts will take Lee’s spot in cabinet.
The changes came today five months to the day after Luxon first announced the ministerial roles and responsibilities.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced the changes in a statement this afternoon.
He said Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith — currently overseas — would take over the Media and Broadcasting role, while Social Development Minister Louise Upston would pick up Disability Issues.
Repeated questions
She faced repeated questions about what the government would do about the closure of Newshub, with Labour saying she had “more than enough time” to find solutions.
She admitted the handling of the disability funding changes — which included restricting the way equipment and support services were funded — was bungled, and later apologised for it.
‘Changing circumstances’ Speaking to reporters, Luxon said the changes were about making sure the government had “the right people on the right assignment at the right time”.
“In both these cases of both these portfolios there have been significant changes and complexities added to them over the course since the ministers were allocated these responsibilities . . . there’s a lot more complexity added to these portfolios.”
He avoided saying whether either of the ministers had done anything wrong, despite multiple questions about why they deserved the demotions — particularly Lee, who had been an MP for 16 years and held the media portfolio for the National Party since 2017.
Lee’s removal from cabinet was a “recognition that there is a lower workload” and did not mean she would not return to cabinet at a later date, he said, but changes in the media industry had “moved quicker, faster, sooner and as a result I want to make sure that there is a good senior cabinet minister responsibility around the issues”.
On disability issues, he said there had been “a habit now” of cost overruns and poor financial management, but there was “innately more complexity” in both portfolios.
He was questioned over whether the ministers had requested the portfolios’ removal, and said “ultimately this was my decision”.
When asked if it was a warning shot to his caucus, he said he was just a person who “will adapt very quickly and dynamically to changing circumstances and situations”.
‘How I roll, lead’
“This is how I roll, this is how I lead . . . I appreciate this may not be the way things have been done in the past here, but expect this to happen going forward as well.”
He had spoken to the relevant ministers about the decision earlier in the morning, and it had been a “tough day” for them, he said.
“It’s understandable . . . it is disappointing if you’re the individual, but the reality is they know that they are really valued by our team, we have full confidence in them, they’re doing a good job on their other portfolios and they have important contributions to make.”
Penny Simmonds . . . “major financial issues with programmes run by the Ministry of Disabled People.” Image: RNZ/Angus Dreaver
Luxon said he had informed both his coalition partners. Asked if he would have the authority to use the same approach with them, he said “I’m the prime minister and I determine ultimately the performance of my cabinet ministers”.
He said they had a “very strong cadre” of women at the heart of the government doing good jobs.
In his earlier statement, Luxon said it had “become clear in recent months that there are significant challenges in the media sector. Similarly, we have discovered major financial issues with programmes run by the Ministry of Disabled People”.
“I have come to the view it is important to have senior cabinet ministers considering these issues.”
‘Significant synergies’
He said there were “significant synergies” between Goldsmith’s Arts, Culture and Heritage portfolio and the Media role he would be taking up.
He said he had asked Upston to pick up the disability role because Whaikaha, the Ministry of Disabled People, was a departmental agency within the Ministry of Social Development.
“This will free Penny Simmonds up to focus on the Environment portfolio and the major changes she is progressing to improve tertiary education,” he said.
Lee retains her Economic Development, Ethnic Communities and Associate ACC roles as a minister outside cabinet.
Simmonds, who remains outside cabinet, retains Environment, Tertiary Education and Skills, and Associate Social Development and Employment.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The attitudes down under towards social media have turned barmy. While there is much to take Elon Musk to task for his wrecking ball antics at the platform formerly known as Twitter, not to mention his highly developed sense of sociopathy, the hysteria regarding the refusal to remove images of a man in holy orders being attacked by his assailant in Sydney suggests a lengthy couch session is in order. But more than that, it suggests that the censoring types are trying, more than ever, to tell users what to see and under what conditions for fear that we will all reach for a weapon and go on the rampage.
It all stems from the April 15 incident that took place at an Assyrian Orthodox service conducted by Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and the Rev. Isaac Royel at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, Sydney. A 16-year-old youth, captured on the livestream of the surface, is shown heading to the bishop before feverishly stabbing him, speaking Arabic about insults to the Prophet Muhammed as he does so. Rev. Royel also received injuries.
Up to 600 people subsequently gathered around the church. A number demanded that police surrender the boy. In the hours of rioting that followed, 51 police officers were injured. Various Sydney mosques received death threats.
The matter – dramatic, violent, raging – rattled the authorities. For the sake of appearance, the heavies, including counter-terrorism personnel, New South Wales police and members of the Australian domestic spy agency, ASIO, were brought in. The pudding was ready for a severe overegging. On April 16, the NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb deemed the stabbing a “terrorist incident”. NSW Premier Chris Minns stated that the incident was being investigated as a “terrorist incident” given the “religiously motivated” language used during the alleged attack.
After conducting interviews with the boy while still in his hospital bed on April 18, the decision was made to charge him with the commission of an alleged act of terrorism. This, despite a behavioural history consistent with, as The Guardianreports, “mental illness or intellectual disability.” For their part, the boy’s family noted “anger management and behavioural issues” along with his “short fuse”, none of which lent themselves to a conclusion that he had been radicalised. He did, however, have a past with knife crime.
Assuming the general public to be a hive of incipient terrorism easily stimulated by images of violence, networks and media outlets across the country chose to crop the video stream. The youth is merely shown approaching the bishop, at which point he raises his hand and is editorially frozen in suspended time.
Taking this approach implied a certain mystification that arises from tampering and redacting material in the name of decency and inoffensiveness; to refuse to reveal such details and edit others, the authorities and information guardians were making their moralistic mark. They were also, ironically enough, lending themselves to accusations of the very problems they seek to combat: misinformation and its more sinister sibling, disinformation.
Another telling point was the broader omission in most press reporting to detail the general background of the bishop in question. Emmanuel is an almost comically conservative churchman, a figure excommunicated for his theological differences with orthodoxy. He has also adopted fire and brimstone views against homosexuality, seeing it as a “crime in the eyes of God”, attacked other religions of the book, including Judaism and Islam, and sees global conspiracies behind the transmission of COVID-19. Hardly, it would seem, the paragon of mild tolerance and calm acceptance in a cosmopolitan society.
On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, got busy, announcing that X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, had been issued with legal notices to remove material within 24 hours depicting “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail”. The material in question featured the attack at the Good Shepherd Church.
Under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth), the commissioner is granted various powers to make sure the sheep do not stray. Internet service providers can be requested or required to block access to material that promotes abhorrent violent conduct, incites such conduct, instructs in abhorrent violent conduct or depicts abhorrent violent conduct. Removal of material promoting, instructing, or depicting such “abhorrent violent conduct”, including “terrorist acts” can be ordered for removal if it risks going “viral” and causing “significant harm to the Australian community”.
X took a different route, preferring to “geoblock” the content. Those in Australia, in other words, would not be able to access the content except via such alternative means as a virtual private network (VPN). The measure was regarded as insufficient by the commissioner. In response, a shirty Musk dubbed Grant Australia’s “censorship commissar” who was “demanding *global* content bans”. On April 21, a spokesperson for X stated that the commissioner lacked “the authority to dictate what content X’s users can see globally. We will robustly challenge this unlawful and dangerous approach in court.”
In court, the commissioner argued that X’s interim measure not to delete the material but “geoblock” it failed to comply with the Online Safety Act. Siding with her at first instance, the court’s interim injunction requires X to hide the posts in question from all users globally. A warning notice is to cover them. The two-day injunction gives X the opportunity to respond.
There is something risible in all of this. From the side of the authorities, Grant berates and intrudes, treating the common citizenry as malleable, immature and easily led. Spare them the graphic images – she and members of her office decide what is “abhorrent” and “offensive” to general sensibilities.
Platforms such as Meta and X engage in their own forms of censorship and information curation, their agenda algorithmically driven towards noise, shock and indignation. All the time, they continue to indulge in surveillance capitalism, a corporate phenomenon the Australian government shows little interest in battling. On both sides of this coin, from the bratty, petulant Musk, to the teacherly manners of the eSafety Commissioner, the great public is being mocked and infantilised.
This week the two biggest TV broadcasters in Aotearoa New Zealand confirmed plans to cut news programmes by midyear – and the jobs of a significant proportion of this country’s journalists.
Many observers said this had been coming but few seemed to have a plan for it, including the government.
Mediawatch looks at what viewers will lose, efforts to resist the cuts and talks to the news chief at Newshub which is set to close completely.
By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter
On the AM show last Wednesday, newsreader Nicky Styris suffered a frog in the throat at the wrong time.
Host Melissa Chan Green took over her bulletin while Styris quickly recovered. Minutes later Styris had to take the place of no-show panel guest Paula Bennett.
Just before that, viewers saw co-host Lloyd Burr on his knees fixing the studio flat-pack furniture with a drill.
Three hours later they were at an all-staff meeting at which executives from offshore owner Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) confirmed the complete closure of Newshub by midyear.
On TVNZ’s Midday news soon after, reporter Kim Baker-Wilson was live from the scene of the announcement of Newshub’s demise.
The previous day the roles were reversed, with Newshub’s Simon Shepherd outside TVNZ’s building reporting TVNZ’s Midday had been scrapped, along with the late news Tonight and Fair Go.
On Wednesday TVNZ also confirmed flagship current affairs show Sunday will cease next month.
So as things stand, it’s the end of the line for all news bulletins on TVNZ other than 1 News at 6, though the news-like shows Breakfast and Seven Sharp survive because they accommodate lucrative sponsored content (“activations” in the ad business) as well as ads.
And TV channel Three will be entirely news-free for the first time in its 35-year history.
Senior journalists led by investigations editor Michael Morrah presented a proposal for a stripped-back and shortened news bulletin to keep the Newshub name alive (and some jobs) but while WBD took it seriously, it eventually turned the idea down.
Another media player to fill the Newshub void? There have been rumours and reports that other media companies were talking to WBD about filling the Newshub at 6 news void.
Initially light-on-detail reports of lifelines suggested a possible sale of Newshub to another media company. Then there were reports of other media companies pitching to make news for WBD on a much-reduced budget.
Among the names mentioned in media despatches was NZME, which has radio and video studios and journalists around the country, though most of them are north of Taupo.
NZME told Stuff “it was not currently part of the process”.
However when Stuff itself reported on Wednesday that Stuff was “understood to be a likely contender,” a spokesperson for Stuff declined to comment to Stuff’s reporter on whether Stuff had been in talks with WBD — or not.
RNZ said it wasn’t in the frame for this. (It recently killed off the video version of its only daily news show with pictures, Checkpoint).
Sky TV has production facilities galore and its free-to-air TV channel Sky Open currently runs a Newshub-made news bulletin at 5:30 each weekday. Sky has only said it was an “interesting idea” — or words to that effect.
“At this point there is no deal,” WBD local boss Glen Kyne told reporters after confirming the closure of Newshub on Wednesday.
Kyne also said the company’s “door has been open to all internal and external feedback and ideas, and we will continue to be”.
But anyone opening that door clearly isn’t willing to do it in daylight — or tell the rest of the media about it.
Lifelines likely?
Senior journalists led by investigations editor Michael Morrah presented a proposal for a stripped-back and shortened news bulletin to keep the Newshub name alive. Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
If there is to be any kind of “Newshub-lite” lifeline, a key question is: what is WBD prepared to pay for the programme?
Presumably not much, given that they said they had no choice but to carve the cost of Newshub — amounting to tens of millions a year — from its bottom line in line with its reducing revenue.
So is it worth any major media company’s while to commit to making news in video for another outlet? And it would have to be done in a hurry because the last Newshub bulletins screen on July 5.
When Newshub’s owners first announced they wanted to get rid of it in late February, its former chief editor Hal Crawford told Mediawatch the problem with finding a buyer was that minimum viable cost for a credible TV news operation was greater than anyone here was prepared to spend.
Longtime TV3 news boss Mark Jennings (now co-editor of Newsroom) said any substitute service on the fraction of the current budget would have another problem — TVNZ’s 1 News.
“You’re up against a sophisticated TVNZ product so viewers will have an immediate comparison. Probably that won’t be favorable for Warner Brothers,” he told RNZ.
TVNZ has its own news production problems after the cuts they confirmed this week.
“We’re proposing to establish a new long-form team within our news operation, which would continue to bring important current affairs and consumer affairs stories to Aotearoa in a different way on our digital platforms.”
TVNZ declined Mediawatch‘s request to speak to TVNZ’s news chief Phil O’Sullivan about that at this time.
Newshub’s news boss responds
Newshub news boss Richard Sutherland . . . “The so-called legacy news operations have almost done too good a job of keeping the lights on and papering over the cracks.” Image: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
One who did though is Newshub news boss Richard Sutherland — appointed as interim senior director of news at Newshub in January.
It was his second spell at Newshub, during a career in broadcast news spanning four decades at almost every significant national news outlet in the country, including RNZ, where he stepped down as head of news a year ago.
In that time he’s experienced many a financial crisis in the business — but did he see this one coming?
“The last couple of weeks has been coming for quite some time. I think that the so-called legacy news operations have almost done too good a job of keeping the lights on and papering over the cracks. And we just got to a point [the industry] couldn’t paper over the cracks any longer.
“But when you look at audience behaviour and the fall off and revenue, particularly in the advertising market, then that doesn’t surprise me that we’ve got to where we’ve got to.”
But if the audience was big, the ad revenue would be too?
“It’s certainly by no means as big as it once was simply because people have other options available to them. The cliche is that you’re not in a war with the other media, but in a war for people’s attention.”
“It’s not so much the audience has changed so much as the dynamics of the advertising market that has really changed over the last sort of 10 to 15 years. The digital advertising — and the big two main players in that space, Facebook and Google — are eating everybody’s lunch.”
TV ad income on the slide Annual advertising stats that came out this very week show media in 2023 attracted $3.36 billion across the whole of the media industry — about the same as in 2022.
But TV advertising revenue of $517 million in 2022 slumped to $443 million last year.
“That’s why what the TV industry has found is that can’t cut its costs fast enough to meet the falloff in the advertising income,” Sutherland told Mediawatch.
Digital-only ad revenue rose by $88 million in 2023 — but it’s Google and Facebook which secures the vast bulk of that.
But if this has been coming for a number of years, as Sutherland says, has there been enough planning for it?
After the closure of Newshub was mooted by its owner last month, seven of Sutherland’s colleagues led by investigations editor Michael Morrah put together a transition plan to keep Newshub on air in a few days.
Shouldn’t this sort of transition planning have been done at high levels over recent years right across the television business?
“Every media company that I’ve worked for or have observed over the last few years has been trying to innovate and get to a more sustainable level. The revenue was just collapsing far faster than anyone ever anticipated.”
“It annoys me when I hear people say older media haven’t innovated enough. We’ve done a lot of innovation. That’s pretty lazy politics to just say: ‘You need to innovate.’
“It’s also lazy politics to say, the government should just come in and bail everyone out. New Zealand Incorporated needs to have a big conversation about what it wants to do with the media and how it wants to fund it.
“For the past few years the industry has been like so many rats in a sack, fighting with each chasing a smaller and smaller amount of ad dollars. We need to get together and work out how we get ourselves collectively out of the sack,” Sutherland told Mediawatch.
Shortly before TVNZ and Newshub announced their cuts, there was a meeting of chief executives including Newshub’s owners Warner Bros Discovery to discuss a shared new service. TVNZ rejected the idea.
“But a lot has changed in the last couple of months. And I would like to think that eventually we’ll get to a point where we can actually have honest and productive conversations about what we can do to help each other as well as maintaining a degree of competition, but also realising that if we just keep fighting with each other, we’re not going to have a sustainable industry,” Sutherland said.
Would Sutherland want to work for a low-budget alternative to Newshub stave off the complete closure? And would Kiwis want such a service?
“There is a segment of the audience that appreciates a very highly produced, well-curated news bulletin every night. And there’s large numbers of people who no longer see that as part of their media diet.
“The trick is to provide options so that people can get what they want when they want it.
“It’s not really for me to say what a possible replacement for Newshub might look like. I’m well away from those negotiations.
“If we reach a stage where the media scene here withers away to nothing, there’ll be no-one to tell the stories. The media uncovers a lot of shady stuff in this country.
“And the fear of media coverage prevents people in positions of power and authority at all levels doing a lot of shady stuff. So it is important to document the ructions of the New Zealand media scene just like we do in other parts of the country.”
Minister in a corner
Broadcasting and Media Minister Melissa Lee . . . “If only I was a magician, if I could actually just snap up a solution, that would be fantastic.” Image: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
The day the axe fell at Newshub and at TVNZ, New Zealand’s screen producers’ guild Spada said “while the newsroom cuts have dominated media coverage to date, it is actually the whole production sector being impacted”.
“While TVNZ and Three aren’t giving definitive numbers at this time, Spada has calculated that we are looking at around $50 million coming out of our sector,” said president Irene Gardiner.
Spada is also asking the government to exempt screen funding agencies from the percent public spending cuts and to force the international streaming platform to support local production.
Spada called for” swift and decisive action” from the government on this.
Should they be holding their breath?
When confronted by reporters for a response to the current TV news crisis, Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee said: “If only I was a magician, if I could actually just snap up a solution, that would be fantastic.
“But I’m not a magician, and I’m trying to find a solution to modernise the industry . . . there is a process happening.”
But the media are not expecting magic — just a plan rather than assertions of a process with no timeline.
She has repeatedly said she’s preparing policy in a paper to take to cabinet, but refused to give any details.
On RNZ’s Checkpoint, persistent and pointed questions from Lisa Owen yielded few further clues.
Newstalk ZB Drive host Heather du Plessis-Allan told Melissa Lee she was being “weird and shady” and the next morning ZB’s Mike Hosking told her she was using “buzzwords that don’t mean anything” and was doomed to fail.
Stuff’s Tova O’Brien reported that the need to consult coalition allies on policy means it can’t be progressed until after Winston Peters returns from overseas at the end of the month.
The under-wraps media policy is also not in the government’s recently-released quarterly action plan.
Meanwhile this week, our two biggest TV news broadcasters ran out of time.
Ex-minister leading resistance to cuts
E tū union negotiator Michael Wood . . . “There is a bit of a delicate dance which has to happen when media companies themselves are making these decisions. And media need to report on that.” Image: RNZ
After his unenlightening on-air interview with minister Melissa Lee on Thursday morning, Mike Hosking’s ZB listeners told him she reminded them of ministers in the last government.
Coincidentally, one of them was also one of few people who did speak out about the crisis while it was unfolding.
Michael Wood represented TVNZ journalists from the E tū union as its negotiations specialist.
E tū is now taking legal action against TVNZ, claiming it failed to abide by the conditions of their employment agreement.
Could that reverse or wind back any of the cuts TVNZ has announced?
“That does remain to be seen. The collective agreement has very clear processes around what should happen if TVNZ wants to move forward and make changes. It requires [staff members] to be involved throughout the process, and for the company to try and reach agreement with them. Our very strong view is that that hasn’t happened.”
“Staff have said: ‘Look, five years ago, we came to you and said we want to do these things with our shows to make sure they have a sustainable future to make sure that they have a strong online platform.’ And [TVNZ] frankly has not demonstrated strategy and leadership around those things.”
“These are still shows that are very, very popular. Canceling them will reduce costs, but based on TVNZ’s own information that they’ve provided, it will reduce revenue by more.”
It’s been difficult to get any media company executives or even journalists at the two companies affected by these cuts to talk about them, even off-the-record.
Wood is one of the few people who has spoken frankly to broadcasters’ executives, albeit confidentially behind closed doors.
“There is a bit of a delicate dance which has to happen when media companies themselves are making these decisions. And media need to report on that.
“So I have some sympathy, but these aren’t just individual employment issues. This is a public policy issue . . . about whether we have a functioning and vibrant Fourth Estate.”
Wood was until last year a minister in the Labour government which could have averted the TVNZ cuts.
It spent more than $16 million planning a new public media entity to replace TVNZ and RNZ with a not-for-profit public media entity — but then scrapped it weeks before it was due to begin.
“You’ve just identified one of the core things that we’ve got to deal with. TVNZ, in terms of its statutory form, is neither one thing nor the other. It has a commercial imperative and it also has some other obligations in terms of public good.
“News and current affairs should be at the heart of that — and that is something that we should be much clearer about.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The future of New Zealand’s media landscape is becoming clearer by the day, with confirmation that it will no longer feature one of the country’s big two TV news networks.
Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed that all of Newshub’s operations will be shut down, effective July 5. That includes the flagship 6pm bulletin, The AM Show, and the Newshub website.
294 staff are set to lose their jobs.
It’s also been confirmed that TVNZ’s programme Sunday will be cancelled, following yesterday’s announcement that Fair Go, as well as both 1News at Midday and 1News Tonight, are being canned in their current format.
“The day the news axe fell” – a huge blow to New Zealand’s democracy. Image: Stuff screenshot APR
New Zealand’s media industry has been rocked by the bleeding obvious which is that their failed ratings system for legacy media was always more art than science.
The NZ radio ratings system is a diary that you fill in every 15 minutes — which no one ever fills in properly.
The NZ newspaper ratings are opinion polls and the NZ TV ratings system is a magical 180 boxes that limits choice to whoever had the TV remote.
When the sales rep told the advertiser that 300,000 people would read, see, hear their advert, it was based on ratings systems that were flattering but not real.
With the ruthlessness of online audience measurement, advertisers could see exactly how many people were actually seeing their adverts, and the legacy media never adapted to this new reality.
What we see now is hollowed out journalism competing against social media hate algorithms designed to generate emotional responses rather than Fourth Estate accountability.
New Zealand has NEVER had the audience size to make advertising based broadcasting feasible, that’s why it’s always required a state broadcaster — with no Fourth Estate who will hold this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing government to account?
Minister missing in action
Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee has refused to support the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill that Labour’s former minister Willie Jackson put forward that would at least force Google and Facebook to pay for the journalism they take for free.
Lee has been utterly hopeless and missing in action here — if “Democracy dies in darkness”, National are pulling the plug.
This government doesn’t want accountability, does it?
Instagram this year switched on a new filter to smother political debate and we know actual journalism has been smothered by the social media algorithms.
I don’t think that most people who get their information from their social media feeds understand they aren’t seeing the most important journalism but are in fact seeing the most inflammatory rhetoric to keep people outraged and addicted to doom scrolling.
When Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters does his big lie that the entire mainstream media were bribed because of a funding note by NZ on Air in regards to coverage of Māori issues for the Public Interest Journalism fund — which by the way was quickly clarified by NZ on Air as not an editorial demand — he conflates and maliciously spins and NZ’s democracy suffers.
Muddled TVNZ
Television New Zealand has always come across like a muddle. It aspires to be BBC public broadcasting yet has the commercial imperatives of any Crown Owned Enterprise. If Labour had merged TVNZ and RNZ and made TVNZ 1 commercial free so that the advertising revenue could cross over to Newshub, it would have rebuilt the importance of public broadcasting while actually regulating the broken free market.
When will we get a Labour Party that actually gives a damn about public broadcasting rather than pay lip service to it?
Ultimately Newshub’s demise is a story of ruthless transnational interests and geopolitical cultural hegemony.
Corporate Hollywood soft power wants to continue its cultural dominance as the South Pacific friction continues between the United States and China.
New Zealand is an important plank for American hegemony in the South Pacific and as China and American competition heats up, Warners Bros Discovery suddenly buying a large stake in our media was always a geopolitical calculation over a commercial one.
Cultural dominance doesn’t require nor want an active journalism, so they will keep the channel open purely as a means of dominating domestic culture without any of the Fourth Estate obligations.
That bitter angry feeling you have watching Warner Bros Discovery destroy our Fourth Estate is righteous.
Social licence trashed
They bought a media outlet that has had a 35-year history of being a structural part of our media environment and dumping it trashes their social licence in this country.
That feeling of rage you have watching a multibillion transnational vandalise our environment is going to be repeated the millisecond you see the American mining interests lining up to mine conservation land with all their promises to repair anything they break.
Remember — the transnational ain’t your friend regardless of its pronouns.
That person they rolled in with the soft-glazed CEO face to do the sad, sad crying is disingenuous and condescending.
Now Warner Bros has killed Newshub off, we have no option as Kiwis but to boycott whatever is left of TV3 and water down Warner Bros remaining interests altogether.
They’ve burnt their bridges with us in New Zealand by walking away from their social contract, we should have no troubles returning the favour!
The only winners here are rightwing politicians who don’t want their counterproductive and corrupt decisions to be scrutinised.
We are a poorer and weaker democracy after these news cuts.
Why bother having a Minister of Broadcasting if all they do is fiddle while the industry burns?
Welcome to your new media future in Aotearoa New Zealand . . .
On March 13, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act by an overwhelming 352 to 65 margin. If legislated, it would ban the hugely popular TikTok social media app in the U.S., where it has 150 million users — unless its owner, the Chinese tech company ByteDance, sells off TikTok within six months to a buyer not…
Cancer is a stomping bugger of a disease. It seeks the worm-ridden end, a thief finding its way into your body unasked and willingly helping itself. This cellular mass army will, in a most tribal way, make off with your remains chance permitting. So, it’s understandable that people speak about it. Blog, discuss, worry, grieve and gather in the digital house square. But not all grief and its content are ever the same.
The recent obsession with Catherine, the Princess of Wales, who many still see as Kate Middleton, is a fitful reminder that no one’s business is seemingly everybody’s, especially when it comes to the royals. When she had abdominal surgery in mid-January, her absence from public life prompted a feverish, fitful obsession, something described with a certain deliciousness by Helen Lewis as “QAnon for White Moms”.
Social media wags and fanatics, evidently finding this royal retreat into silence infuriating, brainstormed their way to the most drearily absurd notions. If true, virtually none would have made the slightest difference in the war ravaged, climate distempered world. Had Catherine received a Brazilian butt lift? Had Prince William made a dash from his marital vows to shack up with the Marchioness of Cholmondeley?
Some of this was aided by an overly keen interest in the release of a photo on March 11 by Kensington Palace for Mother’s Day. Featuring the princess and her three children, the photo seemed to show signs of tampering, evidenced by blurring and misalignment. News outlets and wire services, including the Associated Press, retracted the image. “At closer inspection, it appears that the source has manipulated the image,” came the grave advisory from AP. “No replacement photo will be sent.”
All this fuss, despite tech behemoths openly encouraging the mendacious sprucing up of family shots. With a keen, digitally tampering eye, a child’s scowl and scorn can be airbrushed, leaving portraits of family bliss. The manipulation became yet another opportunity for the fanning of online flames. As for the princess, she conceded that, “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.”
At the Spectator, Brendan O’Neill stated the obvious point that both plot and proportion had been lost in the entire Kate Middleton saga. “There’s a war in Europe and the Middle East, an energy crisis, a lame-duck government waddling to defeat and people waiting five days in A&E to see a nurse, and you’re still yapping about a princess slightly misaligning her daughter’s sleeve while editing a family photo?”
With a purplish spike in conspiracy theories about what the princess was up to, British academics and wonks detected signs of foreign interference, with customary finger pointing at Russian groups. Here was something everyone could earn their crust from, and Martin Inness of Cardiff University was not going to let it pass, claiming he and his team had identified no fewer than 45 accounts posting about the princess linked to a Russian disinformation operation called Doppelgänger. “It’s about destabilisation. It’s about undermining trust in institutions: government, monarchy, media – everything.”
With “Kategate” now a raging social media fire, feeding much lazy journalism and the attention-seeking blogosphere, it fell upon Catherine to seize the day and reorient the interest. The silence, she revealed on March 22, had been occasioned not merely by convalescence but her cancer diagnosis and pursuing a course of “preventative chemotherapy”: “As you can imagine, it has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment. But most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them.”
The compass rapidly turned. Naming, shaming and excessive contrition became the order of the day. The Palace was blamed for its fumbles. The princess was defended for having suffered silently while being forced into revealing her diagnosis. “As someone who speculated on this without considering it could be a serious health condition,” political pundit and author Owen Jones effused, “I’m very ashamed to be honest, and all the very best to her.”
There was precedent for such an attitudinal shift. It resembled, at least in echo, the Diana phenomenon. The death of the Princess of Wales in August 1997 in a car crash turned her into saintly untouchability, all prior blemishes erased. Only a few days prior to her demise in Paris with the tawdry playboy Dodi, son of Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, she had been mocked for her fickleness and shallowness. With her death, the lachrymose glands were heavily exercised. Competitive grieving was the order of the day, and those not partaking were tarred and feathered.
The difference now is that Catherine had been canny in democratising her condition – a mother, and a young one at that, suffering cancer. Despite having access to medical care and resources the common citizenry could only dream of, many could relate. She became the topic of serious, sometimes ludicrous discussion on such light end television programs as Channel 4’s The Last Leg, with all three hosts seeking to milk the tear ducts. The anchor, Australian comedian Adam Hills, spoke of the day as having been “strange … for all of us” before reflecting on the dying days of his father.
It would have been particularly strange for Hills, as only one week prior, he had begun the show sitting beside a book titled Photoshop for Dummies. “I’ve never seen our office WhatsApp group get as excited this week by this story.” He proceeded to bore his audience for a good quarter hour with the usual inanities about “the case of the missing princess”.
In the wash up, Catherine, if not her advisors, should have recounted the words of the late novelist Hilary Mantel, whose “Royal Bodies” (2013) in the London Review of Books said with brutal honesty what royals, especially of a certain type, are good for. From “a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore,” Kate Middleton had become “a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions.” In time, she would be deemed radiant, the press finding “that this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth.” To that can now be added another limb: a contrition extractor, farmer of sympathy and tears.
It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers.
This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. One clip shows the man’s head being beaten with a rod, while another has his back slashed by a blade that looks like a combat knife.
After initially denying the assailants in the footage were military personnel, the TNI issued on Monday a rare apology and said that 13 soldiers had been arrested following the viral video.
“I apologise to all Papuans, and we will work to ensure this is never repeated,” said Cenderawasih Military Commander in Papua Major General Izak Pangemanan.
That rare apology is a positive sign, but it is not enough. We have had enough pledges from the military about not inflicting more violence on Papuans, but time and again blood is spilled in the name of the military and police campaign against armed separatist [pro-independence] groups.
The resource-rich Papua region has seen escalating violence since 2018, when the military increased its presence there in response to deadlier and more frequent attacks, allegedly committed by armed rebels.
Throughout 2023 alone, there were 49 acts of violence by security forces against civilians recorded by the rights group Commission for Missing Person and Victims of Violence (Kontras) in the form of, among others, forceful arrest, torture and shooting. At least 67 people were injured and 41 others lost their lives in the violence.
Also according to Kontras, some of the arrested civilians could not be proven to have ties to the armed rebel groups, particularly the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).
In regard to this week’s viral videos, the TNI claimed that the man beaten in the video was identified as Defianus Kogoya, a separatist [pro-independence activist] who planned to burn down a health center in Central Papua.
Whether Defianus was a rebel or civilian, what the soldiers did to him is unjustified, because no national or international law allows the torture of members of hostile forces.
The Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols have at least seven articles banning torture. There are also other sets of regulations banning cruel or inhuman treatment of captured enemies.
National regulations also prohibit security forces personnel from committing unnecessary violent acts. Article 351 of the Criminal Code mandates two years and eight months’ imprisonment for any individuals committing torture, a provision that also applies to military personnel.
For soldiers, the punishment can be heavier as they face the possibility of getting an additional one third of the punishment if they are found guilty of torture by a military court.
The TNI also announced on Monday that it had arrested 13 soldiers allegedly involved in the incidents in the video. The investigations are still ongoing, but the military promised to name them as suspects soon.
These might be good first steps, but they may mean nothing if their superiors are not prosecuted alongside the foot soldiers. At the very least, the TNI must ensure that the 13 suspects are prosecuted thoroughly in a military court of justice.
The TNI should also work harder to prevent systemic issues that allow such violence to occur. A TNI spokesperson acknowledged on Monday that the military was far from perfect. That is good, but it would be better if the TNI actually worked in a transparent manner on how it addresses that imperfection.
Overall, the government and especially the incoming administration of President-elect Prabowo Subianto must make more serious efforts at achieving a long-lasting peace in Papua.
Sending more troops has proven to merely lead to escalation. The incoming government should consider the possibility that fighting fire with fire, only leads to a bigger fire.
This editorial in The Jakarta Post was published yesterday, 27 March 2024, under the title “Stop fighting fire with fire”.
Amnesty International Indonesia is calling for an evaluation of the placement of TNI (Indonesian military) in Papua after a video of a Papuan man being tortured by several soldiers at the Gome Post in Puncak regency, Central Papua, went viral on social media.
“This incident was a [case of] cruel and inhuman torture that really damages our sense of justice,” said Amnesty International executive director Usman Hamid in a statement.
“It tramples over humanitarian values that are just and civilised. To the families of the victim, we expressed our deep sorrow.”
“Sadists!” . . . An Indonesian newspaper graphic of the torture video that went viral. Image: IndoLeft News
Hamid said that no one in this world, including in Papua, should be treated inhumanely and their dignity demeaned — let alone to the point of causing the loss of life.
“The statements by senior TNI officials and other government officials about a humanitarian approach and prosperity [in Papua] are totally meaningless.
“It is ignored by the [military] on the ground,” he said.
Hamid said that such incidents were able to be repeated because until now there had been no punishment for TNI members proven to have committed crimes of kidnapping, torture and the loss of life.
Call for fact-finding team
Hamid said Amnesty International was calling for a joint fact-finding team to be formed to investigate the abuse, including urging that an evaluation be carried on to the deployment of TNI soldiers in the land of Papua.
“There must be a sharp reflection on the placement of security forces in the land of Papua which has given rise to people falling victim, both indigenous Papuans, non-Papuans, including the security forces themselves”, he said.
Earlier, a short video containing an act of torture by TNI members went viral on social media. It shows a civilian who has been placed in an oil drum filled with water being tortured by members of the TNI.
TNI Information Centre director (kapuspen) Major-General Nugraha Gumilar has revealed the identity of the person being tortured by the soldiers as allegedly being a member of a pro-independence resistance group — described by Indonesia as an “armed criminal group (KKB)” — named Definus Kogoya.
“The rogue TNI soldiers committed acts of violence against a prisoner, a KKB member by the name of Definus Kogoya at the Gome Post in Puncak Regency, Papua,” he said when sought for confirmation on Saturday.
Despite this, General Gumilar has still has not revealed any further information about the identity of the TNI members who committed the torture. He confirmed only that more than one member was involved in the abuse.
He said an “intensive examination” was still being conducted and he pledged it would be transparent and act firmly against all of the accused torturers.
“Later I will convey [more information] after the investigation is finished, what is clear is that it was more than one person if you see from the video”, he said.
Note: The video (warning: contains graphic, violent content and viewer discretion is advised) of the Papuan man being tortured by TNI soldiers can be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJgAHYdLgVo (requires registration)
Editorial staff at Australia’s public broadcaster ABC have again registered a vote of no confidence in managing director David Anderson and senior managers over the handling of complaints by Israeli lobbyists.
At a national meeting of members of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance this week, staff passed a resolution of no confidence in Anderson and all ABC managers involved in the decision to unfairly dismiss freelance broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf, MEAA said in a statement.
The meeting was held in response to the Fair Work Commission hearings to determine Lattouf’s unfair dismissal claim after she had been sacked from her temporary job as host of ABC Sydney radio’s morning show in December.
Staff have also called for ABC’s head of content, Chris Oliver-Taylor, to step down immediately for his role as the ultimate decisionmaker in the dismissal of Lattouf.
“The mishandling of Antoinette Lattouf’s employment has done enormous damage to the integrity and reputation of the ABC,” said MEAA media director Cassie Derrick.
“Evidence provided in the Fair Work Commission hearing about the involvement of David Anderson and Chris Oliver-Taylor in her dismissal has further undermined the confidence of staff in the managing director and his senior managers to be able to protect the independence of the ABC.
ABC union staff call for the resignation of content chief Chris Oliver-Taylor over the dismissal of journalist Antoinette Lattouf. Image: Middle East Eye screenshot APR
“The Lattouf case continues a pattern of ABC journalists, particularly those from culturally diverse backgrounds, lacking support from management when they face criticism from lobby groups, business organisations and politicians.
“For these reasons, Chris Oliver-Taylor should be stood down immediately, while Mr Anderson must demonstrate he is taking the concerns of staff seriously to begin to restore confidence in his leadership.”
Lattouf co-founded Media Diversity Australia (MDA) in 2017, a nonprofit agency which seeks to increase cultural and linguistic diversity in Australia’s news media.
Her parents arrived in Australia as refugees from Lebanon in the 1970s.
Lattouf was born in 1983 in Auburn, New South Wales. She attended various public schools in Western Sydney and studied communications (social inquiry) at the University of Technology Sydney.
Union-led ABC staff call for the resignation of the Australian @ABCNews chief content officer after court documents revealed his role in journalist Antoinette Lattouf’s dismissal for an accurate social media post about Israel’s starvation strategy.https://t.co/eQ8fLBiQL6
The full motion passed by ABC MEAA members on Wednesday:
“We, MEAA members at the ABC, are outraged by the revelations of how ABC executives have disregarded the independence of the ABC, damaged the public’s trust in our capacity to report without fear or favour, and mistreated our colleague Antoinette Lattouf.
“Staff reaffirm our lack of confidence in managing director David Anderson, and in all ABC managers involved in the decision to unfairly dismiss Antoinette Lattouf.
“Chris Oliver-Taylor has undermined the integrity of the entire ABC through his mismanagement, and should step down from his role as Head of the Content Division immediately.
“We call on ABC management to stop wasting public funds on defending the unfair dismissal case against Antoinette Lattouf, provide her and the public a full apology and reinstate her to ABC airwaves.
“We demand that ABC management implement staff calls for a fair and clear social media policy, robust and transparent complaints process and an audit to address the gender and race pay gap.”
An earlier statement expressing loss of confidence in the ABC managing director David Anderson for “failing to defend the integrity” of the broadcaster and its staff over attacks related to the War on Gaza on 22 January 2024. Image: MEAA screenshot APR
Sexual harassment of women journalists continues to be a major problem in Fiji journalism and “issues of power lie at the heart of this”, new research has revealed.
The study, published in Journalism Practice by researchers from the University of Vienna and the University of the South Pacific, highlights there is a serious need to address the problem which is fundamental to press freedom and quality journalism.
“We find that sexual harassment is concerningly widespread in Fiji and has worrying consequences,” the study said.
“More than 80 percent of our respondents said they were sexually harassed, which is an extremely worryingly high number.”
The researchers conducted a standardised survey of more than 40 former and current women journalists in Fiji, as well as in-depth interviews with 23 of them.
One responded saying: “I had accepted it as the norm . . . lighthearted moments to share laughter given the Fijian style of joking and spoiling each other.
“At times it does get physical. They would not do it jokingly. I would get hugs from the back and when I resisted, he told me to ‘just relax, it’s just a hug’.”
‘Sexual relationship proposal’
Another, speaking about a time she was sent to interview a senior government member, said: “I was taken into his office where the blinds were down and where I sat through an hour of questions about who I was sleeping with, whether I had a boyfriend . . . and it followed with a proposal of a long-term sexual relationship.”
The researchers said that while more than half of the journalistic workforce was made up of women “violence against them is normalised by men”.
They said the findings of the study showed sexual harassment had a range of negative impacts which affects the woman’s personal freedom to work but also the way in which news in produced.
“Women journalist may decide to self-censor their reporting for fear of reprisals, not cover certain topics anymore, or even leave the profession altogether.
“The negative impacts that our respondents experienced clearly have wider repercussions on the ways in which wider society is informed about news and current affairs.”
The research was carried out by Professor Folker Hanusch and Birte Leonhardt of the University of Vienna, and Associate Professor Shailendra Singh and Geraldine Panapasa of the University of the South Pacific.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
New Zealand’s media and communications minister is defending pulling out of pre-booked interviews about her portfolio, saying they would have been “boring” for the interviewers.
Lee is set to take a paper to cabinet soon, setting out her plans for the portfolio. She has been consulting with coalition partners before she takes the paper to cabinet committee.
Yesterday, she said that given the confidentiality of the process, there was nothing more she could say in the one-on-one interviews.
“I have actually talked about what my plans are, but not in detail. And I think talking about the same thing over and over, just seemed, like, you know . . . ”
Lee said she received advice from the prime minister’s office, but the decision to pull out was ultimately hers.
‘A lot of interviews’
“I’ve been doing quite a lot of interviews, and I couldn’t sort of elaborate more on the paper and the work that I’m actually doing until a decision has actually been made, and I felt that it would be boring for him to sit there for me to tell him, ‘No, no, I can’t really elaborate, you’re going to have to wait until the decision’s made’,” she said.
It is believed Lee was referring to either the NZ Herald’s Shayne Currie or RNZ’s Colin Peacock.
Asked whether it was up to her to decide what was boring or not, Lee repeated she had done a lot of interviews.
“I didn’t think it was fair for me to sit down with someone on a one-to-one to say the same thing over to them,” she said.
Lee said her diary had been fairly full, due to commitments with her other portfolios.
The prime minister said his office’s advice to Lee was that she may want to wait until she got feedback from the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill process, which was still going through select committee.
‘The logical time’
“Our advice from my office, as I understand it, was, ‘Look, you’re gonna have more to say after we get through the digital bargaining bill, and that’s the logical time to sit down for a long-format interview,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said.
Labour broadcasting spokesperson Willie Jackson said he believed the prime minister’s office was trying to protect Lee from scrutiny.
“There’s absolutely no doubt she’s struggling. If you look at her first response when she fronted media, she had quite a cold response,” he said.
“That’s changed, of course now she’s giving all her aroha to everyone. So they’ve been working on her, and so they should, because the media deserve better and the public deserve better.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The future of Aotearoa New Zealand television news and current affairs is in the balance at the two biggest TV broadcasters — both desperate to cut costs as their revenue falls.
The government says it is now preparing policy to modernise the media, but they do not want to talk about what that might be — or when it might happen.
On Monday, TVNZ’s 1News was reporting — again — on the crisis of cuts to news and current affairs in its own newsroom.
In fact, it rocked the entire media industry because only one week earlier the US-based owners of Newshub had announced a plan to close that completely by mid year.
No-one was completely shocked by either development given the financial strife the local industry is known to be in.
But it seems no-one had foreseen that within weeks only Television New Zealand and Whakaata Māori would be offering national news to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who still tune in at 6pm or later on demand.
Likewise the prospect of no TV current affairs shows (save for those on Whakaata Māori) and no consumer affairs watchdog programme Fair Go, three years shy of a half century as one of NZ most popular local TV shows of all time.
Yvonne Tahana’s report for 1News on Monday pointed out Fair Go staff were actually working on the next episode when that staff meeting was held on Monday.
All this raised the question — what is a “fair go” according to the government, given TVNZ is state-owned?
Media-shy media minister? After the shock announcements last week and the week before, Minister of Media and Communications Melissa Lee seemed not keen to talk to the media about it.
The minister did give some brief comments to political reporters confronting her in the corridors in Parliament after the Newshub news broke. But a week went by before she spoke to RNZ’s Checkpoint about it — and revealed that in spite of a 24-hour heads-up from Newhub’s offshore owner — Warner Bros Discovery — Lee did not know they were planning to shut the whole thing.
By the time the media minister was on NewstalkZB’s Drive show just one hour later that same day, the news was out that TVNZ news staff had been told to “watch their inboxes” the next morning.
In spite of the ‘no surprises’ convention, the minister said she was out of the loop on that too.
After that, it was TV and radio silence again from the minister in the days that followed.
“National didn’t have a broadcasting policy. We’re still not sure what they’re looking at. She needs to basically scrub up on what she’s going to be saying on any given day and get her head around her own portfolio, because at the moment she’s not looking that great,” The New Zealand Herald’s political editor Claire Trevett told RNZ’s Morning Report at the end of the week.
By then the minister’s office had told Mediawatch she would speak with us on Thursday. Good news — at the time.
Lee has long been the National Party’s spokesperson on media and broadcasting and Mediawatch has been asking for a chat since last December.
Last Sunday, TVNZ’s Q+A show told viewers Lee had declined to be interviewed for three weeks running.
Frustration on social media
At Newshub — where staff have the threat of closure hanging over them — The AM Show host Lloyd Burr took to social media with his frustration.
“There’s a broadcasting industry crisis and the broadcasting minister is MIA. We’ve tried for 10 days to get her on the show to talk about the state of it, and she’s either refused or not responded. She doesn’t even have a press secretary. What a shambles . . . ”
A switch of acting press secretaries mid-crisis did seem to be a part of the problem.
But one was in place by last Monday, who got in touch in the morning to arrange Mediawatch’s interview later in the week.
But by 6pm that day, they had changed their minds, because “the minister will soon be taking a paper to cabinet on her plan for the media portfolio”.
“We feel it would better serve your listeners if the minister came on at a time when she could discuss in depth about the details of her plan for the future of media, as opposed to the limited information she will be able to provide this Thursday,” the statement said.
“When the cabinet process has been completed, the minister is able to say more. That time is not now.”
The minister’s office also pointed out Lee had done TV and broadcast interviews over the past week in which she had “essentially traversed as much ground as possible right now”.
What clues can we glean from those?
Hints of policy plans Even though this government is breaking records for changes made under urgency, it seems nothing will happen in a hurry for the media.
“I have been working with my officials to understand and bring the concerns from the sector forward, to have a discussion with my officials to work with me to understand what the levers are that the government can pull to help the sector,” Lee told TVNZ Breakfast last Monday.
Communication and Media Minister Melissa Lee on plans for the ailing industry. Video: 1News
A slump in commercial revenue is a big part of broadcasters’ problems. TVNZ’s Anna Burns Francis asked the minister if the government might make TVNZ — or some of its channels — commercial-free.
“I think we are working through many options as to what could potentially help the sector rather than specifically TVNZ,” Lee replied.
One detail Lee did reveal was that the Broadcasting Act 1989 was in play — something the previous government also said was on its to do list but did not get around to between 2017 and 2023.
It is a pretty broad piece of legislation which sets out the broadcasting standards regime and complaints processes, electoral broadcasting and the remit of the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air.
But it is not obvious what reform of that Act could really do for news media sustainability.
Longstanding prohibitions
The minister also referred to longstanding prohibitions on TV advertising on Sunday mornings and two public holidays. Commercial broadcasters have long called for these to be dumped.
But a few more slots for whiteware and road safety ads is not going to save news and current affairs, especially in this economy.
That issue also came up in a 22-minute-long chat with The Platform, which the minister did have time for on Wednesday.
In it, host Sean Plunket urged the minister not to do much to ease the financial pain of the mainstream media, which he said were acting out of self-interest.
He was alarmed when Lee told him the playing field needed to be leveled by extending regulation applied to TV and radio to online streamers as well — possibly through Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.
“Are you seriously considering the government imposing tax on certain large companies and paying that money directly to your chosen media companies that are asking for it?” Plunket asked.
“I have actually said that I oppose the bill but what you have to do as the minister is listen to the sector. They might have some good ideas.”
When Plunket suggested Lee should let the market forces play out, Lee said that was not desirable.
Some of The Platform’s listeners were not keen on that, getting in touch to say they feared Lee would bail the media out because she had “gone woke”.
That made the minister laugh out loud.
“I’m so far from woke,” she assured Sean Plunket.
A free-to-air and free-to-all future? At the moment, TVNZ is obliged to provide easily accessible services for free to New Zealanders.
TVNZ’s Breakfast show asked if that could change to allow TVNZ to charge for its most popular or premium stuff?
The response was confusing:
“Well ready accessibility would actually mean that it is free, right? Or it could be behind a paywall — but it could still be available because they have connectivity,” Lee replied.
“A paywall would imply that you have to pay for it — so that wouldn’t be accessible to all New Zealanders, would it?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked.
“For a majority, yes — but free to air is something I support.”
When Lee fronted up on The AM Show for 10 minutes she said she was unaware they had been chasing a chat with her for 10 days.
Host Melissa Chan-Green bridled when the minister referred to the long-term decline of linear real time TV broadcast as a reason for the cuts now being proposed.
“To think that Newshub is a linear TV business is to misunderstand what Newshub is, because we have a website, we have an app, we have streaming services, we’ve done radio, we’ve done podcasts — so how much more multimedia do you think businesses need to be to survive?
“I’m not just talking about that but there are elements of the Broadcasting Act which are not a fair playing field for everyone. For example, there are advertising restrictions on broadcasters where there are none on streamers,” she said.
Where will the public’s money go? On both Breakfast and The AM Show, Lee repeated the point that the effectiveness of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money for broadcasting is at stake — and at risk if the broadcasters that carry the content are cut back to just a commercial core.
“The government actually puts in close to I think $300 million a year,” Lee said.
“Should that funding be extended to include the client of current affairs programs are getting cut?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked her.
“I have my own views as to what could be done but even NZ on Air operates at arm’s length from me as Minister of Media and Communications,” she replied.
It is only in recent years that NZ On Air has been in the business of allocating public money to news and journalism on a contestable basis.
When the system was set up in 35 years ago that was out of bounds for the organisation, because broadcasters becoming dependent on the public purse was thought to be something to avoid — because of the potential for political interference through either editorial meddling or turning off the tap.
That began to break down when TV broadcasters stopped funding programs about politics which did not pull a commercial crowd — and NZ started picking up the tab from a fund for so-called special interest shows which would not be made or screened in a wholly-commercial environment.
Online projects with a public interest purpose have also been funded by in recent years in addition to programmes for established broadcasters — as NZ on Air declared itself “platform agnostic”.
Public Interest Journalism Fund
In 2020, NZ on Air was given the job of handing out $55 million over three years right across the media from the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
That was done at arm’s length from government, but in opposition National aggressively opposed the fund set up by the previous Labour government.
Senior MPs — including Lee — claimed the money might make the media compliant — and even silent — on anything that might make the then-Labour government look bad.
It would be a big surprise if Lee’s policy plan for cabinet includes direct funding for the news and current affairs programmes which could vanish from our TV screens and on-demand apps within weeks.
This week, NZ on Air chief executive Cameron Harland responded to the crisis with a statement.
“We are in active discussions with the broadcasters and the wider sector to understand what the implications of their cost cutting might be.
“This is a complex and developing situation and whilst we acknowledge the uncertainty, we will be doing what we can to ensure our funding is utilised in the best possible ways to serve local audiences.“
They too are in a holding pattern waiting for the government to reveal its plans.
But as the minister herself said this week, the annual public funding for media was substantial — and getting bigger all the time as the revenues of commercial media companies shrivelled.
And whatever levers the minister and her officials are thinking of pulling, they need to do decisively — and soon.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The purported threat of TikTok to U.S. national security has inflated into a hysteria of Chinese spy balloon proportions, but the official record tells a different story: U.S. intelligence has produced no evidence that the popular social media site has ever coordinated with Beijing. That fact hasn’t stopped many in Congress and even President Joe Biden from touting legislation that would force the sale of the app, as the TikTok frenzy fills the news pages with empty conjecture and innuendo.
In interviews and testimony to Congress about TikTok, leaders of the FBI, CIA, and the director of national intelligence have in fact been careful to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical. With access to much of the government’s most sensitive intelligence, they are well placed to know.
The basic charge is that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese company, could be compelled by the government in Beijing to use their app in targeted operations to manipulate public opinion, collect mass data on Americans, and even spy on individual users. (TikTok says it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked. This week, TikTok CEO Shou Chew said that “there’s no CCP ownership” of ByteDance, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.)
Though top national security officials seem happy to echo these allegations of Chinese control of TikTok, they stop short of saying that China has ever actually coordinated with the company.
Typical is an interview CIA Director William Burns gave to CNN in 2022, where he said it was “troubling to see what the Chinese government could do to manipulate TikTok.” Not what the Chinese government has done, but what it could do.
What China could do turns out to be a recurring theme in the statements of the top national security officials.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a 2022 talk at the University of Michigan that TikTok’s “parent company is controlled by the Chinese government, and it gives them the potential [emphasis added] to leverage the app in ways that I think should concern us.” Wray went on to cite TikTok’s ability to control its recommendation algorithm, which he said “allows them to manipulate content and if they want to [emphasis added], to use it for influence operations.”
In the same talk, Wray three times referred to the Chinese government’s “ability” to spy on TikTok users but once again stopped short of saying that they do so.
“They also have the ability to collect data through it on users which can be used for traditional espionage operations, for example,” Wray said. “They also have the ability on it to get access, they have essential access to software devices. So you’re talking about millions of devices and that gives them the ability to engage in different kinds of malicious cyber activity through that.”
Wray is referring to the potential ability, according to U.S. intelligence, to commandeer phones and computers connecting to TikTok through apps and the website.
In testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in November 2022, Wray was even more circumspect, stressing that the Chinese government could use TikTok for foreign influence operations but only “if they so chose.” When asked by Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., if the Chinese government has used TikTok to collect information about Americans for purposes other than targeted ads and content, Wray only could acknowledge that it was a “possibility.”
“I would say we do have national security concerns, at least from the FBI’s end, about TikTok,” Wray said. “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm which could be used for foreign influence operations if they so chose.”
The lack of evidence is not for lack of trying, as Wray alluded to during the same hearing. When asked by Harshbarger what is being done to investigate the Chinese government’s involvement in TikTok, Wray replied that he would see whether “any specific investigative work … could be incorporated into the classified briefing I referred to.”
The FBI, when asked by The Intercept if it has any evidence that TikTok has coordinated with the Chinese government, referred to Wray’s prior statements — many of which are quoted in this article. “We have nothing to add to the Director’s comments,” an FBI spokesperson said.
The fiscal year 2025 FBI budget request to Congress, which outlines its resource priorities in the coming year, was unveiled this week but makes no mention of TikTok in its 94 pages. In fact, it makes no mention of China whatsoever.
Since at least 2020, the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has investigated the implications of ByteDance’s acquisition of TikTok. The investigation followed an executive order by former President Donald Trump that sought to force TikTok to divest from its parent company. When that investigation failed to force a sale, a frustrated Congress decided to get involved, with the House passing legislation on Wednesday that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok.
In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the highest-ranking intelligence official in the U.S. government, was asked about the possibility that China might use TikTok to influence the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. Haines said only that it could not be discounted.
“We cannot rule out that the CCP could use it,” Haines said.
The relatively measured tone adopted by top intelligence officials contrasts sharply with the alarmism emanating from Congress. In 2022, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., deemed TikTok “digital fentanyl,” going on to co-author a column in the Washington Post with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., calling for TikTok to be banned. Gallagher and Rubio later introduced legislation to do so, and 39 states have, as of this writing, banned the use of TikTok on government devices.
None of this is to say that China hasn’t used TikTok to influence public opinion and even, it turns out, to try to interfere in American elections. “TikTok accounts run by a [People’s Republic of China] propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022,” says the annual Intelligence Community threat assessment released on Monday. But the assessment provides no evidence that TikTok coordinated with the Chinese government. In fact, governments — including the United States — are known to use social media to influence public opinion abroad.
“The problem with TikTok isn’t related to their ownership; it’s a problem of surveillance capitalism and it’s true of all social media companies,” computer security expert Bruce Schneier told The Intercept. “In 2016 Russia did this with Facebook and they didn’t have to own Facebook — they just bought ads like everybody else.”
This week, Reuters reported that as president, Trump signed a covert action order authorizing the CIA to use social media to influence and manipulate domestic Chinese public opinion and views on China. Other covert American cyber influence programs are known to exist with regard to Russia, Iran, terrorist groups, and other foreign actors.
The Opposition will next week introduce a private member’s bill that would criminalise the use of social media to promote or publicise criminal activity. Offenders would face up to two years imprisonment and a two-year ban from social media. The online regulator would also be given new powers to compel digital platforms to remove the…
A bipartisan effort to effectively ban the social media network TikTok in the United States has taken a great leap forward. The House of Representatives voted 352–65 that the network’s parent company ByteDance must divest itself from Chinese ownership.
Lawmakers contend that “TikTok’s Chinese ownership poses a national security risk because Beijing could use the app to gain access to Americans’ data or run a disinformation campaign” (New York Times, 3/13/24). While proponents of the legislation say this is only a restriction on Chinese government control, critics of the bill say this constitutes an effective ban.
The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate. That doesn’t make its passage in the House any less chilling, especially when President Joe Biden has said he will sign it into law if it reaches his desk (Boston Herald, 3/13/24).
‘Profound implications’
Below the scary headline, Politico (3/11/24) acknowledges that “there have been no concrete examples publicly provided showing how TikTok poses a national security threat.”
I have written for almost four years (FAIR.org, 8/5/20, 5/25/23, 11/13/23) about how the US government campaign against TikTok has very little to do with user privacy, and everything to do with McCarthyism and neo–Cold War fervor. Before the vote, a US government report (Politico, 3/11/24) said that the “Chinese government is using TikTok to expand its global influence operations to promote pro-China narratives and undermine US democracy.”
Sounds scary, but fears about TikTok‘s user surveillance, or platforming pernicious content or disinformation, apply to all forms of social media—including US-based Twitter (now known as X) and Facebook, which let political misinformation flow about the US elections (Time, 3/23/21; New York Times, 1/25/24). And the Chinese government point of view flows freely on Twitter: Chinese state media outlets CGTN and Xinhua have respectively 12.9 and 11.9 million followers on the network owned by Elon Musk.
The Global Times (3/8/24), owned by China’s Communist Party, predictably called the legislation a “hysterical move” against Chinese companies. But the American Civil Liberties Union (3/5/24) was also alarmed:
The ACLU has repeatedly explained that banning TikTok would have profound implications for our constitutional right to free speech and free expression, because millions of Americans rely on the app every day for information, communication, advocacy and entertainment. And the courts have agreed. In November 2023, a federal district court in Montana ruled that the state’s attempted ban would violate Montanans’ free speech rights and blocked it from going into effect.
Bipartisan support
“There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a US company own something like this in China,” Seth Mnuchin told CNBC (3/14/24)—as though the Marxist-Leninist state should be the model for US media regulation.
We can’t write this off as MAGA extremist paranoia. In fact, 155 Democrats voted for the bill (AP, 3/13/24), joining 197 Republicans. Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres (Twitter, 3/12/24) said TikTok “poses significant threats to our national security,” and that the “entire intelligence community agrees.” While the bill may not pass the Senate, it does enjoy some bipartisan support in the upper house (NBC, 3/13/24).
Former President Donald Trump reversed course, and now opposes new restrictions on TikTok (Washington Post, 3/12/24), in part because of his hostility toward TikTok competitor Facebook, which would benefit from a TikTok ban. Trump might have been hyperbolic in calling Facebook “the enemy of the people,” but it is true that Facebook owner Meta is behind the political push against its competitor (Washington Post, 3/30/22).
Former Trump Treasury Secretary Seth Mnuchin is enthusiastic about the bill, however—because he hopes to be TikTok‘s new owner. “I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin told CNBC’s Squawk Box (3/14/24). “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”
Mainstream conservative outlets like the Economist (3/12/24) and Wall Street Journal, at least, have united signed on to the crusade. The Journal editorial board (3/11/24) wrote:
Xi Jinping has eviscerated any distinction between the government and private companies. ByteDance employs hundreds of employees who previously worked at state-owned media outlets. A former head of engineering in ByteDance’s US offices has alleged that the Communist Party “had a special office or unit” in the company “sometimes referred to as the ‘Committee.’”
The Journal’s editors (3/14/24) followed up to celebrate the House bill’s passage. “Beijing treats TikTok algorithms as tantamount to a state secret,” it wrote. This is another way that TikTok resembles US-based social media platforms, of course—but for the Journal, it’s “another reason not to believe TikTok’s denials that its algorithms promote anti-American and politically divisive content.”
The Wall Street Journal (3/11/24) complains that on TikTok, “pro-Hamas videos trend more than pro-Israel ones”–which is also true of Facebook and Instagram (Washington Post, 11/13/23). (By “pro-Hamas,” of course, the Journal means pro-Palestinian.)
In other words, while the US government can’t legally block content it deems politically questionable on Facebook and Twitter, it can use TikTok’s foreign ownership as means to attack “anti-American” content. The paper ignored the issue of censorship and anti-Chinese fearmongering, and denounced “no” votes as either fringe Republicans swayed by Trump, or left-wingers whose political base is younger people who simply love fun apps.
The National Review‘s Jim Geraghty (3/3/23) earlier scoffed at Democratic lawmakers who continue to engage with TikTok:
Way to go, members of Congress. This thing is too dangerous to carry into the Pentagon, but you’re keeping it on your personal phone because you’re afraid you might miss the latest dance craze that’s going viral. And if the last three years of our lives have taught us anything, hasn’t it been that anything that comes to us from China and “goes viral” probably isn’t good for us?
Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, a major backer of the legislation, took to Fox News (3/12/24) to say that Chinese ownership of TikTok was a “cancer” that could be removed, that the problem wasn’t the app itself but “foreign adversary control.”
Vehicle for anti-Chinese fervor
It’s important to remember that people use TikTok to educate and organize, not just amuse—boosting efforts to unionize workers at Amazon and Starbucks, for example (Wired, 4/20/22).
This anger toward TikTok—which, just like other social media networks, is full of brain-numbing content, but has also been used as a platform for social and economic justice (NPR, 6/7/20; Wired, 4/20/22; TechCrunch, 7/19/23)—is not about TikTok, but is rather a vehicle for the anti-Chinese fervor that infects the US government.
Think, for example, how Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) embarrassed himself by repeatedly asking TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in a Senate hearing if he had ties to China’s Communist Party—despite repeated reminders that Chew is Singaporean, not Chinese (NBC, 2/1/24). Is Cotton ignorant enough to think Singapore is a part of China? Or was the lawmaker using his national platform to make race-based political insinuations, in hopes of bolstering the fear that Chinese government agents are simply everywhere (and all look alike)?
That fear is already potent enough to bring together a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to line up against the First Amendment. are doing just that, using a social media app to ramp up a Cold War with China. The targeting TikTok is an attack on free speech and the free flow of information, as the ACLU has argued, but it’s also part of a drumbeat for a dangerous confrontation between nuclear powers.
In a rare bipartisan effort, the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed a bill Wednesday requiring TikTok to be sold by its China-based owner, ByteDance, or face a ban throughout the United States. Backers claim the popular social media app could give the Chinese government access to U.S. residents’ personal data and potentially affect the 2024 elections. The fight over TikTok comes at a time of rising…
Pro-Israel lobbyist director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a leaked phone call “We really have a TikTok problem” in the US.
The Anti Defamation League (ADL) CEO was speaking about the difficulty the colonialists face in controlling the narrative for young people. Greenblatt suggested that the warmongers had been wrongly focusing on left-wingers who sympathise with Palestine:
Cause again like we’ve been chasing this left/ right divide. It’s the wrong game. The real game is the next generation.
Polling shows US youth are particularly dissatisfied with the nation’s approach to Israel.
TikTok: see the “raw news”
Some US lawmakers have been pushing anti-TikTok sentiment for awhile. But the recent bill potentially banning TikTok in the US, which passed the House, seems to be a pressing issue because of Israel and Palestine.
President Joe Biden is under increasing pressure over covering for the genocide of Palestinians, where Israel has killed over 11,000 children. The difficulty in pretending children are terrorists has put the US in a tricky spot.
This is especially so when the US provides Israel with $3.3 billion in annual funds and continues to sell the state weapons. That’s while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has found it’s “plausible” Israel is committing genocide.
In November, 25 Republicans signed a letter denouncing what they called a “deluge of pro-Hamas content” on TikTok. Republican senator Josh Hawley, meanwhile, said there’s “ubiquity of anti-Israel content on TikTok”.
Another Republican representative complained about the “raw news” young people were getting on the platform. Republicans control the house with a slim majority. And Biden has said he will sign the bill if it reaches him.
Under the bill, TikTok can only remain legal in the US if the app’s Chinese owner ByteDance sells it. The legislation will now face the senate.
ADL’s long-term silencing of critics of Israel
The ADL has long attempted to shutdown critics of Israel. Professor Noam Chomsky wrote in 1983 that the ADL:
specializes in trying to prevent critical discussion of policies of Israel by such techniques as maligning critics, including Israelis who do not pass its test of loyalty, distributing alleged ‘information’ that is often circulated in unsigned pamphlets, and so on.
In Israel, the ADL is casually described as ‘one of the main pillars’ of Israeli propaganda in the United States.
Meta’s “systemic censorship” of pro-Palestine content
A reason the pro-Israel lobby has called out TikTok could be the attitude of its competitors. Human Rights Watch has documented Facebook and Instagram censoring Palestinians and their supporters.
The organisation captured a snapshot of the pro-Israel censorship on these sites when it asked people to report their experience. It found 1049 cases of Facebook and Instagram taking down or suppressing peaceful pro-Palestinian content.
Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has also banned anti-colonial accounts with up to and over 5 million followers.
TikTok, meanwhile, stands accused of pro-Palestine content. But the app insists it’s not the algorithm, pointing to data that shows young people have long sympathised with Palestine.
It seems the US and Israel are finding it difficult to control the narrative. So the US is simply planning to ban TikTok. That’s an assault on people’s freedom of speech and expression, as well as an attack on a multipolar internet.
Last year, former President Donald Trump reportedly attempted to sell his social media website, Truth Social, to Elon Musk, the world’s second-richest person and the current owner of X, the site formerly known as Twitter. Trump made the proposal to Musk in the summer of 2023, according to a report from The Washington Post, which cited two sources with knowledge of their meeting.
Jana Fayyad, a Palestinian activist, had some sharp words about “the silence of Western feminists” at International Women’s Day, asking in her address to the Palestine rally in Sydney last Saturday: “Are you only progressive until Palestine?”
No Palestinian speaker had been asked to address the annual protest the previous day and Fayyad did not mince her words.
“Save your corporate high teas, your bullshit speeches, your ridiculous and laughable social media posts on this International Women’s Day!” she said.
“We don’t think of Margaret Thatcher or Ursula Von der Leyen or Hillary Clinton.
“We think of Besan [Helasa], we think of Dr Amira al Assori, we think of Hind Khoudary — we think Plestia [Alaqad], we think of Lama Jamous.
“We think of the women that we honour — the women in Gaza.
“And beyond the women of Gaza, we think of Leila Khaled and Hanan Ashrawi and Fadua Tuqan and Amira Hass and Dr Mona el Farrah — the women at the forefront of Palestinian liberation.”
She said considering that 9000 women had been “slaughtered by the terrorist state of Israel”, the silence of Western feminists had been deafening.
“The silence has been deafening — the silence on the 15,000 children slaughtered; the silence on the sexual assault and the rape that woman in Gaza have been subjected to; the silence on the horrific conditions that 50,000 pregnant women face having to do C-sections without anesthesia; and the silence on the mothers having to pick up their children in pieces,” Fayyad said.
“The silence is deafening!”
“Where is your feminism?” she asked.
“I don’t see it anywhere! I don’t hear of it! Where are your voices? Or are you only progressive until Palestine?”
Television New Zealand’s chief executive has been challenged by the public broadcaster’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver at a fiery staff meeting over job cuts and axing of high profile programmes, reports The New Zealand Herald.
Writing in his Media Insider column today, editor-at-large Shayne Currie reported that Dreaver, one of TVNZ’s most respected and senior journalists, had made the challenge over the planned layoffs and axing of shows such as the current affairs Sunday and consumer affairs Fair Go.
Dreaver reportedly asked chief executive Jodi O’Donnell if she would apologise to staff — “apparently for referring to her watch during an earlier staff meeting on Friday”.
“TVNZ would not confirm specific details last night, but it is understood O’Donnell pushed back during yesterday’s meeting, along the lines that perhaps she might also be owed an apology,” wrote Currie, a former Herald managing editor.
“One source said she talked at one stage about the response she had been receiving.”
Media Insider quoted a TVNZ spokeswoman as saying: “We expect sessions like this to be robust, but to give all TVNZers the opportunity to be free and frank in their participation, we don’t comment on the details of these internal meetings to the media.”
Dreaver told 1News last night: “We need really strong leadership and we expect to get it. And I’m quite happy to call out and challenge it [and] my own bosses when we don’t get that, just as I would a politician or any other person who deserves it.”
A ‘legend, icon, queen’
Media Insider reported that in a social media post today, Sunday journalist Kristin Hall had described Kiribati-born Dreaver as a “legend, icon, queen” for her Pacific reporting.
In November 2022, Dreaver was named Reporter of the Year at the New Zealand Television Awards and in 2019 she won two awards at the Voyager Media Awards for her coverage of the Samoa measles outbreak.
Yesterday’s TVNZ meeting came amid a strained relationship between the TVNZ newsroom and management over the way the company has handled the announcement of up to 68 job cuts, as least two-thirds of them journalists.
The shock news followed a week after the US-based Warner Bros Discovery announced that it would be closing its entire Newshub newsroom at the end of June.
