SUMMARY OF SUBMISSIONS into The People’s Commission on Public Broadcasting and Media

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Action Station and the Better Public Media Trust are pleased to release the Summary of Submissions into the People’s Commission on Public Broadcasting and Media.

This Summary is a preliminary report from the People’s Commission. It brings together views and aspirations of the hundreds of people who made submissions, attended public meetings, filled out the online survey and made speeches to our Panel.

The Panel are Bill Ralston, Lance Wiggs, Kay Ellmers, Lizzie Marvelly, Shamubeel Eaqub and Mark Jennings. They held seven public meetings in Wellington, Dunedin, Christchurch, Nelson, Tauranga and two in Auckland, asking for people’s views on public media – including drama, comedy, factual, children’s, media for minorities, and news media.

The many potential technologies and the future shape of platforms were also a big part of the discussions, as were methods of funding, and whether it should be publicly funded at all.

Thousands of documents and days’ worth of recordings were collected. All of that information, much of it detailed and carefully explained, has been brought together into the Summary document by Dr Sylvia Nissen and Dr Michael Schraa.

The key take-outs from the Summary are:

  • INVESTMENT – Sufficient and sustainable public funding that is not vulnerable to political or commercial demands.
  • INDEPENDENCE – Robust and autonomous broadcasting and media that effectively holds power to account and supports healthy democratic debate.
  • INCLUSIVENESS – Diverse content, perspectives and ideas connected to communities in a range of accessible formats and platforms.

Investment was always the big issue at public meetings. The public overwhelmingly want better funding of public media in New Zealand. That includes a national television platform like ABC in Australia, radio at RNZ and online media.

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“Current ‘public service broadcasting’ on TV is a shining, glowing example of what happens when services are driven only by dollars: uneducated guesswork as to what we want and what we shall have at the cheapest possible cost.”

Richard, Whakatane

Independence from government and from commercial imperatives is seen as very important by those who submitted.

“Journalism should be well-researched and questioning comment, not for entertainment – the public is being short changed otherwise, in ways which damage democracy.”

Janet, Auckland

Inclusiveness is the third pillar of public aspirations for public media. Perhaps it’s an idea not frequently considered but inclusiveness is vital because diversity of people and ideas on public media promotes social cohesion and progress.

“I want to see people who reflect the demographics of NZ, I am NOT seeing that now in any way and it’s embarrassingly obvious.”

Pikiora, Marton

 

The release of the Summary of Submissions into the People’s Commission on Public Broadcasting and Media is especially timely.

“The new government has an opportunity to easily address many of the concerns raised in these submissions,” says ActionStation spokesperson Marianne Elliott. “Given both NZ First and Labour media and broadcasting policies are to strengthen public media, with broad agreement from the Greens, these submissions serve as a reminder of the importance of broadcasting and media.”

The NZME/Stuff merger, currently being appealed in court, was addressed many times in submissions to the People’s Commission. Submitters were resoundingly against the merger because it would limit news and current affairs options for audiences, lead to job cuts for journalists, and weaken the fourth estate role of newsmedia in New Zealand through less journalists, commentators and ‘voices’.

None of the submitters accepted the argument put forward by NZME and Stuff that the merger would solve problems with the commercial news business model. It was often noted that these problems reinforced the argument that New Zealand urgently needs better public media, free from the need for sensational headlines and clickbait.

The rest of the Summary can be found here.

This release is a preliminary summary and the actual Report and Recommendations of the Panel will be released in November.

The Summary is available to download here and can be received by emailing here.

We’d like to thank all the contributors and Drs Nissen and Schraa for their great work compiling and summarising the submissions.

1 COMMENT

  1. “INCLUSIVENESS – Diverse content, perspectives and ideas connected to communities in a range of accessible formats and platforms.”

    “Perspectives and ideas connected to communities in a range of accessible formats and platforms.” we have none of this in HB/Gisborne today.

    Our long serving 17yr community advocate group have failed to get press coerage iof our current affairs issues our communities come to our Centre for advocacy for support.

    it is embassising when they say why cant your group get some press cover about our issues, so we need real change here.

    Even Radio NZ CEO sent us a letter last week admitting they have no regional journalist to cover our issues!!!!

    So I post the CEO’s office reply below to our question to Radio NZ about no coverage for evidence for you to forward for us as support for a new community media support network.

    In HB/Gisborne recently we recieved a letter from radio NZ that we now had no regional reporter so Labour must restore regional reporting now please as we are being disrimated against.
    Here is the letter we got back from George Bignell OIA “co-ordinator.”.

    October 13, 2017

    Radio NZ.
    21st October 2017.
    Dear ………….
    I write in response to your request “how the regional reporting structure of the Radio NZ broadcasting services now are different to the way the operations serviced the regions formerly.”

    I can advise that RNZ does not hold any specific information in this regard that we can supply to you. To answer your question, apart from the relocation of one reporting position from our Queenstown office to our Dunedin office, there has been no recent changes to our regional reporting structure.

    The Hawkes Bay regional reporting position is currently vacant and Radio New Zealand will look to fill that position in the near future.

    We trust this of assistance to you.

    Yours sincerely
    George Bignell
    OIA Inquiries Coordinator
    Radio NZ.

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