Mediawatch: Trust in news survey slump stalls after five years in freefall
The annual Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report is awaited with trepidation in our media.
The first survey from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (CJMAD) in 2020 found 53 percent of 1000 adult New Zealanders trusted most of the news most of the time – roughly in line with the global average.
But it then went downhill fast, plunging 20 percent in five years.
The last AUT survey showed overall trust fell 9 percent in one year, meaning just one in three said they trusted most of the news most of the time in 2024.
The slump has become a stick used by foes to beat the media.
Billboards for the alternative platform Reality Check Radio proclaim “only a third of Kiwis trust the media.”
But the survey offers validation for others.
The Otago Daily Times has a banner on the front page every day telling readers it’s “New Zealand’s Most trusted News Brand”
Fourth Estate Journalism has been bastardised into just another 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 and it’s 32% now.
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.
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.
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.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
Telle all good f the ways to stay awake and I will show you the revolution.
Tell me all of the good ways to stay awake and I will show you the revolution.
Easy to see there isn’t any “real news” coming to us now. Even if you dig you often only get vague snippets from our unfair media. Time for a huge upheaval and for good folk to say enough is enough, either do your job properly or b…er off.
So just asking – where we are at with:
– Ferry deal – Winston acted like it was a fait accompli – where’s the detail, cost?
– Third supermarket option – Willis was so excited recently, promising much!
– Trade with India – that Luxon audaciously pledged in 2023 to strike within his first term of power – still time?
– How many of the global investment summit attendees look like investing – will we ever be told?
So much BS and bananas! And yet the “stupid” out there still gormlessly vote for Luxon and the CoC in the polls! Luxon sticks his snout in everything and anything that he thinks will enhance his personal image irrespective of whose toes he is trampling on. He just doesn’t get it; the only mage he has is as an arrogant, smug egocentric.
Just to end…..sadly I have a lovely, and yes intelligent, friend I have known for over 60 years. Her media source is Facebook! I can’t comprehend anyone getting their news from such a source, but she truly believes all the posts that favour Trump, Winston etc. and feeds off the “likes” for reassurance. While it beats the hell out of me, I still love and respect her as a person.
It is a catch 22 if the government funds radio and tv programming they can fund who they want and what they want, they can also tell them what to do and not to do (be controlling and authoritative). But if the private companies own them, they can also do the same and present what is in their best interest, so it is difficult to strike a balance.
When the news has great downside people pay big bucks to Forbes, WSJ, FT, NBR and those organisations report pretty accurately and objectively.
People have seen through the narrative MSM deliver (on whose behalf?) and more and more have turned to Rogan, TDB, Greenwald, Taibbi, multitudes of substacks, raw pr feeds, Fb clickbait, a zillion youtube podcasts. Is new media just a new thing like thousands of pamphleteers and hundreds of yellow press papers a century and a half ago and after a while Hard News will drive out soft news and people will subscribe? Now that everyone (well over 60%) knows that all the wars were sold with lies by the MSM there will be no going back to accept the prescribed narrative – trust will not be given to ‘News’ only to the particular journalist/commentator until they breach trust.
The ‘objective’ MSM may have reported accurately on stories but the way the big stuff of import was storied was always about shaping and manipulating power’s narrative. Now there is a heap of competition attempting this with ease.
Even 32% have faith in the news media? Apparently the left. Seriously it’s only the left.
You’re not good with stats so we take your figure with a grain of salt annus. Apparently the right only have Newstalk ZB, Fox News,The New Zealand Herald, Reality Check, Bassett, Brash and Hide, down the rabbit hole Peter Williams and Christ himself for their media content but seriously that’s all the right have, conspiracy theory media.
Mainstream media =rich Mihi Forbes= push the red power button off. Zzz I’ve given up and now watch history docos.
Comments are closed.