The NZ Elites and The Democracy Project are terrified about the falling trust in them as experts, politicians, the Media and shock horror even Business People…
An Age of growing discontent in New Zealand
The Establishment in New Zealand is becoming deeply unpopular. A range of new survey data shows that public discontent with politicians, the media, business and NGOs continues to grow.
…these NZ Elites + Democracy Project are reading this falling trust as a threat to their power rather than a symptom of a bigger societal issue.
Let’s acknowledge first the effect of capitalism on the Fourth Estate.
Capitalism’s Effects on Journalism:
- Market censorship and informational redlining
- content decisions driven by profit encouraging ‘low-quality information’.
- encourages oligarchy.
- high quality public information is being cut.
Trump rates while the climate kills ratings.
Capitalism has such total control over journalism it warps media into being a supply and demand equation.
Institutional collapse is ‘beyond our control’. Remember how Melissa Lee just shrugged and left the collapse to the market?
Rather than losing an essential part of our infrastructure, Newshubs collapse is simply sold as the market working. We have allowed capitalism and its values to supersede our belief in the collective good and power of the commons.
Journalism has been bastardised into just a product.
A capitalist media can never solve the problems of market failure because it’s an inbuilt feature of capitalist media to fail.
The Early hyper-commercialisation of US Journalism saw less than 50% revenue from advertising revenue because the early media in America was highly subsidised.
When capitalist hyper-commercialisation culture kicked in, they stopped seeing their audience as citizens needing informing and saw them as consumers and the advertising percentage of revenue soars.
This has resulted in a structural crisis for Journalism.
- US Newspapers are still major source of local journalism
- ad-dependnent business model is broken because the monopoly of news has been broken.
- Local journalism is no longer profitable.
- Newspapers are closing and taken over by vulture capitalists.
- the model is broken
This has created news deserts where there is no local news.
Social Costs of the Journalism Crisis
- less informed about politics
- less civically engaged
- less likely to vote
- higher levels of corruption
- increased polarisation
The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free
No wonder people are losing trust in media, politicians and shock horror business people!
We need to think of the media not as another commodity, but as ‘the commons’ and a de-commercialised structure demands we see journalism as a common good.
I love how it’s always a great time to buy a house according to the NZ Herald because the Herald’s advertising is so dependent on real estate. There is NEVER a genuine attempt to challenge what a class of Landlords forever fucking over renters will actually create in this country, because, according to the NZ Herald, it’s never been a better time to buy a house!
Trust in news has dropped to 33% in 2024 from 53% in 2020.
From the social contract theory, trust has fallen because people don’t believe the media are upholding their end of that contract.
Part of this is driven by the politicians themselves. Winston’s attack on the media is unhinged madness which works because he is so reliant on low news engaged voters who get their news off Facebook.
This ocean of criticism against the media goes beyond fair criticism to open hostility and abuse.
There is a correlation between distrust and unfair criticism but I also want to see the correlation between loneliness and believing bat shit crazy stuff you’ve read on Facebook.
The Social Contract of the fourth estate has been sold off in favour of a consumer media network.
They examine the way the Public Journalism Fund has been twisted into State propaganda by Winston’s lies.
Our drop in trust has been more extreme than many other countries.
It’s an interesting argument but my sense is that the reason this attack on the media has been so successful is because the mainstream corporate media had been rat fucking the interests of working people for many years. The first editorial the NZ Herald ever ran was begging white New Zealander’s to go to war against Māori. Trump’s use of ‘fake news’ was popular because the mainstream media had been selling capitalist values, not fourth estate journalism to American’s for decades.
Social media allowed the legacy media gatekeepers to be overthrown and the resulting anarchy has led to a world of fractured realities.
Winston’s big lie that the entire mainstream media were bought off because of the Public Journalism Fund appeals to the conspiracy electorate NZF need to stay over 5% now.
I wrote many bogs critical of the funding notes that NZ on Air put forward that stipulated that if you wanted public funding for Māori media that you couldn’t breach basic tenants of Treaty value because it created the impression of an editorial direction that wasn’t there, but to conflate what were funding notes to mean the entire media had been bribed is Winstonian in its deceitful manipulation.
What Winston chooses to miss is that there was a follow up response by NZ on Air on those funding notes stating that ultimately editorial control was with the content producer.
So yes, there were stupidly woke Wellington guidelines but those notes were superseded by the reminder of editorial independence.
What he also failed to acknowledge is that a large chunk of that Public Journalism money was for positions and training.
By claiming that amounts to the entire media being bribed is not disingenuous or just false, it is malicious.
Winston is channeling Trump with his ‘Big Lie’.
The ‘Big Lie’ by Winston is that the entire media were bribed.
This has caused enormous damage which he has benefited from.
But again, I think it’s deeper than just Winston AND the righteous cynicism many have towards mainstream media.
Covid was a universal experience, we all sacrificed equally in an unequal world, it has had enormous impacts on us and one of those enormous impacts has been crippling loneliness.
More and more of us are lonely and it was kicked off by being forced to stay home during the pandemic.
That loneliness is desperately corrosive to the spirit and to the person, and the dichotomy of intense loneliness combined with mass 24/7 social media connectivity has made many of us insane with a level of anger and feral hate that is the call signs of a terribly tortured individual.
We have been brainwashed by hate algorithms for the profit margins of vast Tech Gods.
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
The NZ Elites + Democracy Project are reading falling trust as a threat to their power rather than a symptom of a bigger societal issue.
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Winston is a “big lie”. How anyone takes this old conman seriously is one of life’s greatest mysteries
Watching 1 News this morning and first story was apartheid Israel bombing civilians in Lebanon. Firstly Netanyahu has been issued by the ICC a warrant for his arrest but the BBC clip chosen by 1 News shows a confident almost smiling Netanyahu praising the bombing of civilians with the reporter give an almost exciting commentary about his enthusiasm sickening fucks.
NZ version of Trump. He virtually lost it during the Winebox Inquiry where he was unable to prove his assertions – although one suspects there was something to the dozens of assertions made.
His party is all about him and those subservient to him.
Meh. They’d have lied for free and papers made better profits 50-100 years ago when they were real muck rakers so the capitalism argument doesn’t fly. The truth is that in both money and reporting the Web beats them now.
“MEDIAWATCH: The NZ Elites + Democracy Project are reading falling trust as a threat to their power rather than a symptom of a bigger societal issue. ”
Yes. And likely because of The Daily Blog and the ferocious sword swingers who come here to hack them new arse holes. Dirt likes darkness so more light shone on please.
White hate toward non Whites has been deeply ingrained in the White psyche for 3,000 years.
Invoking White hate of non Whites is very easily achieved especially by the right wing.
The media always promotes majority right wing White prejudice and ignorance because it sells.
Peters learned by 1970 that licking White arse is a guarantee of popularity and is very profitable.
Whites need a brown to justify their prejudice and Peters, Jones and Stealmore fill that role.
Peters and Co know that Maori hate is the lowest hanging fruit and will keep them in Parliament.
The 2023 election was won by the right wing with one policy
Blame Maori for all the worlds problems to Invoke centuries old White hatred of non Whites.
and elect a hard right wing Maori bashing Government.
Its what Muldoon did in 1975, what Bolger did in 1990 and what this lot did in 2023.
And the White voter always takes the Maori hating bait like piranha fish on methamphetamine.
For many right wing Whites their Maori hate has become their lifes purpose their reason for living
Get a grip. What racist bullshit.
tesseract do some homework and take your hand off it, you are the racist….
https://humanrights.ca/story/doctrine-discovery#:~:text=The%20Doctrine%20of%20Discovery%20is,were%20superior%20to%20all%20others.
Distrust in politicians is not new. Nor is distrust in Big … whatever. Back in the day, the system, man, was always working against your interests, and always looking out for theirs. No disrespect to politicians who did care about people and the community. No disrespect to the captains of industry who really did get a warm feeling from producing something of use and from providing employment opportunities for the community, often intergenerational. Most folk didn’t question too much back then. After all, the two big World Wars passed pretty much under a media blackout and any critical voice was shut out. But as Noam Chomsky was later to expose in his book Manufacturing Consent, legacy media were in fact complicit in misleading the public, or in simply not reporting what was really happening. Many of my generation at the time were not very aware of what was happening in Indonesia, right on our doorstep – although I believe the Australian and NZ Press were a lot more forthcoming than in North America, But the lies of was happening in Vietnam were being exposed. How could anyone in their right mind who have lived through the 60s and 70s believe in Big Politics? Or in Big Business, Big Tabacco, Big Oil … Big Technology? You just can’t trust that shit. Not unless you’re batting for the dark side. Or simply willing to turn a blind eye. Who was it that said, the truth is of no consequence when your salary depends on ignoring it, or words to that effect?
Nothing has changed. Except now we’re living through both neoliberalism and massive changes in communication technology. No wonder the number crunchers in the Democracy Project are finding ordinary folk, once so naïve, so trusting, are shifting sides.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350423709/we-dont-feel-safe-here-new-zealand-call-urgent-inquiry-foreign-interference
Under this corrupt government and with people like Winston all citizens of NZ don’t feel safe.
How many murders lately?
A baby every 5 weeks
Thankyou the 2023 Government.
Martyn – The main -stream news media was on borrowed time once camera’s were added to mobile devices, then everyone could see what was going on in society.