Mark Freeman, May 2024

Legacy news media leaders are in denial as they refuse to accept the New Zealand public’s verdict that they are biased, as shown in a recent report on public trust in news.

The 2024 AUT report found that the proportion of New Zealanders who trust the news “most of the time” fell from 53% in 2020 to 33% in 2024. A whopping 87% of respondents in 2024 agreed that a reason for not trusting the news is that the reporting is “biased and not balanced.”

Former Weekend Herald editor Miriyana Alexander and the editor of the Otago Daily Times (ODT) Paul McIntyre talked to RNZ’s Mediawatch producer Hayden Donnell about the results.

Both editors acknowledged the news outlets need to do more to rebuild trust and engage more with their readers. Outlets also need to avoid being arrogant and need to give people a range of views, Ms Alexander said.

But it’s clear from their conversation that the journalists see definite limits to the range of views they should offer the public—limits that are based on the media’s narrow perception of truth.

“It’s a very tricky conversation because some people don’t agree with the truth,” said Ms Alexander. Even though the public accuse the media of bias, the media shouldn’t print things that are not true, she said. “I think it’s really important for journalists to be clear on what the truth is, and you’ll never convince me–even though you’re very convincing–that the moon is made of cheese.”

Okay…So far so good. But the rubber starts to hit the road when Mediawatch’s Mr Donnell introduces a subject closer to earth: “There are some things where you can be pretty certain: the science of climate change, for instance. A large constituency doesn’t believe it’s true. Every scientist will tell you it is.”

(Maybe climate change isn’t the best topic area to choose as an example. The science in this area is far from settled. Many scientists don’t, in fact, believe in anthropogenic warming.)

Mr McIntyre of the ODT switched to another topic where the public have supposedly been swallowing misinformation: “During the pandemic, vaccinations on the whole saved a lot of people and now we’re getting issues with people that won’t have vaccinations for measles because they’re believing all that. Now, do we not put the science forward on that?”

Ms Alexander then cut in, acknowledging “adverse effects for some people” from the Covid vaccines. “There were a group of people who were very adamantly anti-vaccination and that was their decision to make, but there were also people who got sick from the vaccine. And, yes, we should absolutely report that, but you don’t scaremonger about it. You have to report it honestly with the information that you can glean about that.”

(In fact, there are many studies indicating vaccine injuries and deaths. But because governments and health authorities continue to hold to the doctrine of “safe and effective,” the so-called fourth estate blindly follows.)

Still defending the legacy media against claims of bias, Mr McIntyre said the media has not been good at explaining their editorial decisions. People don’t understand what goes on in a newsroom, he said. “There is no bias there at all. We’re just looking at what stories we’re going to cover in the best way possible.”

On the contrary, editorial bias can be seen in the news media’s choices of stories, their lack of balance (shown in the exclusion of the voices of people promoting “misinformation”) and their editorialising within the article (signalling to the reader that, even though this far-right extremist is telling their story, they don’t know “the truth” and their claims have been thoroughly debunked).

The problem for the ODT and other legacy outlets is that their denial of the existence of editorial bias goes to the heart of the problem of declining public trust in the media. That paternalistic attitude has no doubt prompted many New Zealanders to distrust and then desert the mainstream for alternative sources of information on the internet. If the legacy media want their audiences to return, they’ll have to undergo a paradigm shift—radically reviewing their assessment of bias and truth—or otherwise continue on their downward spiral.