Chapter 1: What is the current state of New Zealand's media?
Hi, I'm Amanda Gillies and today on The Detail, the wobbly state of the country's media. In the first week of May alone, a lot went down.
One week, Mikey Sherman's lost her job for poor behaviour in a minister's office. David Seymour, the ACT party leader, has taken an enormous crack at RNZ for hiring John Campbell, who's well known for voting left because he said so himself. And has even gone so far, this is Seymour, he's even gone so far as suggesting that the boss of RNZ should lose his job over this.
And then the BSA, which is the equivalent of the head girl telling everybody off for bad jokes at the party, is being abolished.
And we are still six months out from the election. So, with the politicians coming for the media, today I talk to two long-time media bosses about what we can expect and if there is any trust left on either side. I sit down with Mark Jennings, who is the co-founder of Newsroom, the former news boss at TV3, and also my boss now at The Detail.
The media's under huge scrutiny and pressure at the moment and the events of the last couple of weeks have not gone well for us.
Also joining me today is Richard Harmon, a long-time political correspondent, a former TVNZ political editor and founder of Politic.
What we've seen to be a social media lynch mob and Mikey Sherman is a casualty of that.
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Chapter 2: How did Mikey Sherman's resignation impact the media landscape?
The question now is to what extent media as a whole are a casualty of this.
The big story leading this podcast today, the resignation of TVNZ's political editor, Mikey Sherman, on Friday afternoon.
The decision comes after it was reported recently that she had used a slur to a fellow journalist at an evening event in a Beehive office last May. In a statement on X, Sherman said there was no excuse for the language and she'd apologise the next day. She added for context that her comment was in response to inappropriate remarks made to her.
She called the level of scrutiny on her recently unprecedented.
Yeah, I find Mikey's resignation puzzling. Puzzling in a number of respects. That this incident that we're talking about, which seems to have ultimately led to her resignation, was a year old. It was seemingly resolved successfully. The morning after, when Mikey apologised to Lloyd Burr and the Minister, and then we have a year later, it arises again, and after a week or so, Mikey resigns.
It doesn't really add up. Now, you can say, OK, there was more to Mikey and her role as political editor, but the big thing most journalists are asking, I think, is... Why hasn't Lloyd come out and said what it was that led to this homophobic slur, if you like? He could resolve this pretty quickly. I think it's disappointing from most journalists' point of view that he hasn't come out.
And she certainly alluded to that in her resignation note, didn't she?
She did allude to it, and obviously he said something that was highly upsetting to her and led to this whole debacle. So he could easily come out and resolve it. And the fact that Stuff is kind of supporting him in this silence, if you like, doesn't sit that well with me, and I don't think it sits that well with a lot of journalists. So... There's that.
But then, of course, there is what I would call perhaps a lack of support from TVNZ. If you look at it, Mikey said that she told her manager the day after. So her manager would be the head of news. So the political reporter reports to the head of news at TVNZ. They were informed the day after. then nothing happens for a year. So that seems very strange as well.
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Chapter 3: What role does social media play in media scrutiny?
So they're no shrinking violets, are they? We know that. But they relied on the head of news and the producers to... to be a sounding board for them, to help them keep a sense of perspective, because it's hard at Parliament. You're in a constantly combative, confrontational environment. So you need this outside set of eyes.
And I just don't think Mikey, from what I can see, was really getting that support. And an incident that's a year old suddenly surfaces, and then she's gone. Yeah, it doesn't make sense, really.
Longtime political journalist Richard Harmon agrees.
My reaction at a personal level is that Maiki, who I know well and who I have respect for, I think it's a personal tragedy for her. She's lost her job. And to do that in the face of what appears to be really a social media lynch mob must be very, very difficult for her. As to how the whole thing has played out, I've never seen anything like this.
This has become a total obsession, not just of social media. I think the New Zealand Herald last week ran a huge amount on this, more than it ran on virtually any other political story.
Why do you think? What has driven this, Richard?
I think there's two sort of unfortunate coinciding forces. There is a case to be made against the media at the moment. There's no doubt about that. We see that in the trust surveys and we know that the media is not really serving its audiences all that well across the board. The other thing that we've got now is social media, which enables people anonymously to carry out witch hunts.
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Chapter 4: Why is trust in media declining in New Zealand?
And that's what's happened here. This has gone way beyond any reasonable discussion about the failings of the media and has turned into a personal witch hunt.
I mean, you've been in the game a long time, more than five decades. You used to be the chief political reporter for TVNZ. I mean, did you and other polyeditors, I mean, I'm sure you got up to a lot of shenanigans, but did you get this sort of scrutiny?
It was different because there was no social media when I was political editor. But that doesn't mean to say that we weren't the subject of continual and ongoing criticism and challenges from politicians. Jim Bolger was notorious for doing it. And of course, I spent one year when Muldoon was prime minister And he had to go left, right and centre. What has changed is not the politicians.
The politicians are always going to let you know when they're unhappy. And they've got every right to do that. And we've got to expect that. What has changed is the social media aspect of this. And there is this sort of... extra-parliamentary lynch mob that sits outside the politicians.
And I know a lot of MPs who are just as concerned about that as I am, because the mob is quite capable of turning on them just as quickly as it turned on Mikey Sherman.
So just six months before the next election, the country's highest profile editor is gone. I asked Mark Jennings, what impact will this have on Media Trust?
I think this is a very good question. We've seen the last trust media survey improve. Everybody in the media welcomed that. I'm sure Paul Goldsmith, the Minister of Broadcasting, because he's been going on and on about trust. And you're trying to use it as a bit of a blowtorch on R&Z. So that improvement in the survey was welcomed. What's happened now is three major events to erode that trust.
The resignation of Mikey, the BSA being chopped. and I guess the government and Seymour's attacks on the media. All these three things have led to an undoing of that survey, in my view. It's really disappointing.
I want to talk about the BSA.
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