Better Public Media Trust

Kia ora

First of all, together with the other Trustees of Better Public Media (Ursula Cheer, Steve Liddle, Ronan Satyanand, Myles Thomas and Peter Thompson) I want to thank you for supporting our work. While BPM is a small organisation it is increasingly recognised as a strong, independent advocate for the vital role public media plays in a free and fair society, a creative economy and an inclusive democracy. We could not do this work without your ongoing support.

I also want to acknowledge that it’s been a while since our last newsletter. Moving forward I’d like our newsletters to be more regular and frequent.

It’s been a busy time for the Trust so there’s a fair bit to catch you up on:

• our upcoming AGM and public meeting
• the new BPM website and part-time Coordinator role
• new relationships for the Trust
• strategic planning
• our recent submission on the government’s Media Reform proposals
• other contributions BPM has made over the past year to the national conversation about media

AGM & PUBLIC MEETING

Our Annual General Meeting this year will be on Sunday 27 April. It will be preceded by a BPM Public Meeting. Both will be via Zoom. We’ll send out the links closer to the time.

Anyone can come to the public meeting, which will be at 4pm.

Only BPM members with active subscriptions are invited to the AGM, which will be at 5.30pm. So if you are not yet a member, please do join here.

The public meeting will focus on current issues of news trust, news media ownership and proposed media reforms. So far we have three confirmed speakers for the panel:

• Merja Myllylahti – Co-Director of the Journalism, Media & Democracy (JMAD) research centre and Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Critical Media Studies at AUT
• Gavin Ellis – Honorary Research Fellow at Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures at the University of Auckland and formerly Editor In Chief of the NZ Herald
• Glen Kyne – Advisory Board Member at The Spinoff and formerly CEO of Three and Senior Vice President & Head of Networks at WBD Australia, New Zealand, Japan

CALL FOR TRUSTEE NOMINATIONS

At the AGM we will appoint our Board for the next year. According to our Deed of Trust, to be a Trustee you need to have been a member of BPM for at least six months prior to the AGM. The Deed also stipulates that Trustee nominations must be received no later than a week before the AGM.

So if you care about robust and independent public media that fosters social inclusion, stimulates innovation and creative enterprise, and strengthens democracy – and if you have been a BPM member for at least six months and you have time to get more involved – please nominate yourself to be a Trustee by email to office@betterpublicmedia.org.nz by Sunday 20 April.

SUSBCRIPTIONS AND DONATIONS

Earlier this year we made three related decisions: to register the Trust for GST; to keep membership fees at their current levels ($40 waged, $20 unwaged); and to encourage both one-off and regular donations from members.

The effect of those decisions is that we lose the GST portion of our current membership income ($5.22 of the waged membership fee, $2.61 of the unwaged fee) because charity membership fees are treated as GST-inclusive. But on the upside donations to charities do not include GST and they are tax deductible for the donor.

So we encourage you to donate as generously as you can – every bit helps – to support BPM to do its work: writing statements and opinion pieces, making submissions to government, commissioning research, hosting events, keeping track of public media developments and resources, and running the annual Student Challenge for secondary school students.

You can set up a regular or a one-off donation via credit card by clicking on the ‘Donate’ button in the top-right corner of the BPM website at www.betterpublicmedia.org.nz.

Or you can donate directly to our bank account:

• Better Public Media Trust
• 38-9015-0189230-00

NEW WEBSITE AND PART-TIME COORDINATOR

At this point one thing your donations will help support is a new BPM website, which is currently being built and will go live soon after the AGM.

We are also hiring a part-time coordinator to help with running BPM, including maintaining the new website. The job description is attached to this newsletter. Please share it with anyone who you think may suit the role.

And of course, via your donations you can help us to grow the role from its very part-time beginnings to something larger.

A YEAR OF RECOGNITION AND RELATIONSHIPS

BPM’s stature has been growing steadily since its origins in the 2010-12 campaigns against RNZ being commercialised and the demise of our ad-free public TV channel TVNZ 7. A key moment for the Trust was the Court of Appeal ruling in November 2023 that BPM should finally be recognised as a charity – backdated to our application almost 9 years earlier. A lot of work went into establishing that legal status for the Trust, including an earlier appeal to the High Court in 2020, and we were fortunate to have generous and brilliant representation by our friends at LeeSalmonLong.

The charitable status helps the Trust to be more sustainable financially – and it enables your donations to be tax deductible – but just as important is the recognition of our work.

The Court of Appeal judgment included this:

“The Trust aims to ensure that our democratic principles and institutions are enhanced through citizens being better informed about significant issues through public media platforms. Importantly, the Trust also aims to enhance social cohesion by promoting the voices of minority communities through public media.”

In 2024 there was further recognition. BPM was recognised as a stakeholder for media policy consultation by Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture & Heritage (MCH). And the Trust became a member of the international Public Media Alliance (PMA), which is the largest global association of public media organisations – with a remit to support and advocate for the role and importance of public media in society and democracy.

PMA’s CEO Kristian Porter came to New Zealand in February this year. BPM’s Vice Chair Peter Thompson and I were able to meet with him when he was in Wellington.

The joint PMA-BPM announcement of our membership is here.

STRATEGIC PLAN

When I stepped into this chairing role following our AGM last year one of my key objectives was for BPM to draw up a strategic plan. And I’m glad to say that last September the six BPM Trustees and our Patron (former Governor-General of New Zealand and Chair of the Commonwealth Foundation, Sir Anand Satyanand) met in Wellington for that purpose. Our thanks are due to Jane McCann for facilitating the day.

First we listened to invited stakeholders: Irene Gardiner, President of SPADA; Brent McAnulty, Chief Operating Officer of TVNZ; David Sutton, Senior Strategist at the ABC; Glenn Usmar, Co-Acting Head of Funding at NZ On Air; and Paul Thompson, Chief Executive of RNZ.

Their combined message to us was this:

• BPM has an important role to play in facilitating a national conversation about media in Aotearoa New Zealand because it is independent and represents citizens rather than any particular part of the media industry.
• There is support for BPM recommended policies, including a broad-based levy to fund public media, and establishing a Media Commissioner to ensure our media maintains public confidence.

We then drafted a strategic plan for 2025-26 with six operational goals and six outreach goals:

Operational Goals:

1. Relaunch the BPM website.
2. Employ a Coordinator, initially on a part-time basis.
3. Establish an Annual Budget and fundraise against it.
4. Establish and implement a Marketing and Fundraising Strategy.
5. Establish and implement a Member Engagement Strategy.
6. Work towards a board that is more representative of Aotearoa New Zealand in terms of gender and ethnicity.

Outreach Goals:

1. Grow and maintain industry stakeholder relationships, working towards a Media Manifesto (MM) agreed upon by industry guilds, unions and associations – and if possible also industry platforms and funding bodies.
2. Grow and maintain relationships with government regarding policy settings, in particular the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, and the Ministers for Media and Communications, and for Arts, Culture and Heritage and also relevant Associate Ministers.
3. Grow and maintain relationships with Opposition spokespeople for Media and Communications and for Arts, Culture and Heritage.
4. Grow the profile and thought leadership on media policy of BPM in Aotearoa, including via events, opinion pieces and interviews.
5. Grow the profile of BPM internationally, including via membership of the Public Media Alliance.
6. Grow the role of BPM in Education, including via the Student Challenge.

Seven months after the strategic planning meeting and 3 months into 2025 I think we’re making reasonable progress towards those goals.

MCH’s MEDIA REFORM PROPOSALS

And then there are things we don’t know are coming our way that we need to incorporate into our work…

Few media stakeholders knew in advance that MCH would announce five Media Reform proposals on 12 February with a 23 March deadline for submissions, but like many others BPM swung into action.

We put out the attached media release welcoming the five proposals, and also expressing our concern about their narrow scope and glaring gaps. It was picked up by media, including by RNZ.

Peter Thompson and I then attended MCH’s online information session about the proposals and the individual workshops about each one. Then we drafted our submission, which is attached.

Also attached is a three-page summary of the submission. Here are a couple of excerpts:

“There is an urgent need for modernised regulatory and organisational frameworks to address the complexities of today’s media landscape and to ensure that the public interest is served throughout the media sector.”

“The issue that would underpin all five proposed reforms is the one that has been bracketed out of consideration in the Media Reform discussion paper, i.e. funding.

Introducing a broad-based levy model would provide sufficient funding to deliver media services consistent with the desired cultural, democratic and economic outcomes, including the provision of public media services, and it would do so through a fiscally neutral mechanism, not the consolidated fund.

Also bracketed out of consideration in the discussion paper is the regulation of online platforms, which play a significant role in content discovery and have captured a huge share of the digital advertising market without commensurate reinvestment. This is a critical factor underpinning the current crisis in the news and local content sector.”

ALSO…

There have been other BPM contributions over the past year to the national conversation about media:

The NZ Herald ran this opinion piece by Myles Thomas in April 2024.

Later in April Stuff reported on our public meeting that preceded last year’s AGM.

In May 2024 RNZ showed video of the public meeting and quoted Peter Thompson.

Peter was interviewed on RNZ’s Morning Report in July 2024 expressing concerns about the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

In December 2024 another opinion piece by Myles was published by The Post, expressing disappointment with government inaction.

In February this year BPM made this submission to Parliament on the Broadcasting (Repeal of Advertising Restrictions) Amendment Bill, and Myles appeared before the select committee.

Well, that’s enough for now. We hope you can join us via Zoom at the AGM on 27 April. We look forward to seeing you there.

Ngā mihi from me and the Trustees of Better Public Media

David Jacobs (BPM Chair)