OPINION

Even as we took in the devastating news that up to 300 people were to lose their jobs with the closure of the Newshub operation owned by media giant Warner Bros. Discovery,
our Deputy Prime Minister somehow managed to turn this into a story about — well — about himself.

After the obligatory reference to the importance of an independent fourth estate being a critical part of any democracy, Winston Peters responded to a question regarding his ongoing argument that this independent fourth estate can’t be trusted because it is “woke”, in typical Winston fashion.

“You know it’s woke and all the evidence is there for that …” he said, before turning the focus to himself with, “If you want to turn this into some sort of argument blaming me then you’ve got to be joking, given that in my campaign they boycotted me.”

Now, just the day before this announcement I had been on The AM Show to discuss my views on where I felt mātauranga sat within the science curriculum for our primary and intermediate tamariki.

There was not the faintest indication of what was to be announced the next day. An announcement that would change forever the lives of this dedicated team of people and their families.

If that news hit hard, listening to our Deputy Prime Minister’s unashamed effort to make himself the victim was simply mind-boggling.

This is the same person who had no problems whatsoever getting media to share his baseless claim that the previous Government had bribed the “left-wing media” with the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF).

What he conveniently ignored at the time was that in order to access that fund, media organisations had to first gain approval from New Zealand On Air, an independent body made up of people from a broad spectrum of political views.

When I was a member of NZ On Air I had no idea where anyone’s politics lay — it was irrelevant. We were there to ensure good New Zealand content that media companies found difficult to fund was making it to air.

In making the claim he made, our Deputy Prime Minister was singling out this very specific group of professionals and essentially — in my view — accusing them of being involved in bribery.

A claim he could not justify in any way, shape or form, but one he has not withdrawn or apologised for either.

In August, NZ On Air released its interim report on the fund. In summary it says: “The investment of $55m of taxpayer funding has resulted in an injection of journalists and journalism and a move towards greater diversity across the sector. Audience engagement has surpassed expectations, reviving areas like court and local democracy reporting that had been dwindling in many regions. While the complete outcomes and impacts of the fund will only be fully known after PIJF content concludes in 2026, the data available suggests that, overall, the PIJF has successfully achieved its objectives.”

They included examples such as the Open Justice court reporting scheme set up by NZME that added 12 new specialist reporters to its news teams from Whangārei to Christchurch (with another three added at the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin).

Then there was the Te Rito journalism cadet scheme ― an unprecedented collaboration between NZME, Newshub, Pacific Media Network and Whakaata Māori to address the lack of Māori, Pacific and diverse journalists in the industry. The first year alone had 23 graduates from this course adding their voices to our media landscape.

The project went on to win the International News Media Association award in New York for Best Innovation in Newsroom Transformation.

Being Teen, a project from NZ Geographic, was a year-long investigation into being a teenager in New Zealand — coping with Covid, climate change and life in the digital age. It followed the lives of a diverse group of teenagers around the country documenting what life is like for them and the future they see.

And from BusinessDesk came a series of in-depth investigations into the quality of our public service.

On average, content funded through the PIJF received 2 million views a week.

Putting all of that aside, Labour lost the election, so if it was some devious plan hatched to bribe the media, it didn’t work overly well.

Since the news of the closure of Newshub, there has been a lot of commentary about this being an inevitable consequence of the changing viewership of media in general.

This is a landscape I think I have gathered some expertise in over the 34 years our company has been involved in international media.

Over that time I have watched our politicians, of all ilk, stand on the sideline while social media giants from overseas have pillaged the news stories researched and written by talented Kiwi journalists.

Off the back of this content, a new business model has devastated traditional media around the world.

A model where users are happy to give away their personal data for free to read stories these social media giants take for free, before selling that user data to advertisers, resulting in enormous profits, which our politicians then allow them to take offshore without paying tax.

It’s time our politicians “woke” to the reality that their failure to react to this changing landscape has allowed that change to happen, with no consequences at all.

That’s if you don’t count the devastating news that those 300 Newshub staff and their families faced last week.

In a final irony, a few weeks ago I posted a picture of a rat in the deli of the Countdown supermarket in Dunedin.

The almost immediate response on social media was that this was quite clearly photoshopped and fake news.

This despite the fact I had stated clearly that the source was the front page of the ODT, a newspaper regularly voted as one of the most trusted news sources in the country.

After weeks of failing to take up the warnings of its staff, Woolworths finally closed the Dunedin supermarket to try to rid itself of those “fake” rats.

It took them two weeks.

It reopened the store on the same day that staff at Warner Bros. Discovery were told Newshub was to close — forever.

If we are to trust social media commentary over our regular news sources because someone as powerful as our Deputy Prime Minister continues to claim our media is “woke” and dishonest, then we must ask what next for our democracy and the role the fourth estate plays in it.