MEDIAWATCH: You, your dumb feelings and Kate Hawkesby – 3 reasons why Media trust has plummeted in NZ

Kiwi trust in news now well below global average, report suggests

The public’s trust in New Zealand’s news media has fallen sharply over the past year and is now “well below” the global average, a new report suggests.

Survey results also suggest Kiwis are now world leaders in actively avoiding the news due to the perception the news available was either too negative or of poor quality.

Trust in news publishers has been trending downwards for years in published polling.

The AUT Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy released its fifth annual Trust in News report earlier this morning, which included data from a 2023 survey.

According to the report, trust in news fell nine points from 42% last year to 33% this year, “well below” the international average of 40%.

General trust in news in New Zealand is now at the same level as the UK and very close to the US, the survey results suggest.

All week the hand wringing over the loss of trust in the media has been a one sided rugby match between the All Blacks and a team consisting of disabled pets.

The feral antivaxx conspiracy theorists screamed ‘Go woke, Go Broke’ at the demise of NewsHub with all the same intellectual rigour of, ‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’.

It’s as if two words rhyming is the height of clever for those people.

The tribal Right sneered at bailing out a private company and  Winston kept claiming the entire mainstream media were bribed anyway.

The rednecks sang songs of pro Maaaaori bias and everyone got to climb on their high horse and shit on the media.

It’s all been a bit ‘full-blown-alcoholic-lecturing-pot-smoker’ level sanctimonious from the good old Kiwi clobbering machine.

There are 3 very simple reasons as to why NZ has lost trust in the media.

1 – Kate Hawkesby

2 – You

3 – Your stupid fucking feelings.

1: Why NZ has lost trust in the media – Kate Hawkesby 

Kate Hawkesby waitlist comments on Māori, Pasifika ‘misleading, discriminatory’

Former Newstalk ZB host Kate Hawkesby’s on-air comments that “Māori and Pacific patients are being moved to the top of surgery waitlists” were “misleading and discriminatory”, the broadcasting regulator has ruled.

Hawkesby’s on-air commentary came amid controversy last June over Health NZ’s development of a surgery waitlist prioritisation tool, which included ethnicity as a factor.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has today ordered broadcaster NZME to air a statement summarising the decision and to pay Crown costs of $1500.

The regulator upheld a complaint that remarks broadcast on Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby breached accuracy, discrimination and denigration standards.

The decision relates to a June 19 broadcast in which Hawkesby discussed the new “Equity Adjustor Score” waitlist system being trialled in the Auckland region.

This system uses five categories to place patients on the non-urgent surgical waitlist, including clinical priority, time spent waiting, location, deprivation level and ethnicity.

In the broadcast, Hawkesby “made statements to the effect that the score meant Māori and Pacific people were being ‘moved to the top of surgery waitlists’.”

“The BSA found this gave the misleading impression ethnicity was the only, or the key factor, involved in the assessment, and this meant Māori and Pacific patients would be given immediate precedence on the surgical waitlist,” a BSA spokesperson said.

In its ruling, the regulator wrote: “Despite accurate information being to hand, the host put a misleading spin on the story, and was allowed to repeat misleading statements numerous times over the course of the broadcast.”

Additionally, the BSA described Hawkesby’s assertions as “exaggerated and misleading”.

“Hawkesby’s comments played into the stereotype that Māori and Pacific peoples disproportionately take up resources and are given undeserved special treatment in Aotearoa New Zealand’s society, at the expense of other ethnicities,” the BSA wrote.

“While not said explicitly, in our view, the exaggerated and misleading nature of Hawkesby’s comments had the effect of evoking this type of prejudicial bias.”

In deciding to impose orders, the authority noted: “The conduct was serious, featuring repeated and sustained inaccurate descriptions of the Equity Adjustor Score over the course of a one-hour broadcast, which in turn had the effect of embedding negative stereotypes about Māori and Pacific peoples.

“This was despite accurate information being to hand.

Kate is the first reason why media are losing trust.

Not Kate per se, but what she represents. Right wing elitism.

Working People should always mistrust mainstream corporate media, because mainstream corporate media have lied and manipulated working people since their arrival!

The first editorial in the NZ Herald was calling on white people to start a war against Māori FFS!

The reason Trump’s ‘Fake News’ resonated so much as it has is because working epode who had been betrayed by free market economics had watched their standards of living fall while being told it was great by the corporate mainstream media!

Pilger and Chomsky have provided vast evidence of mainstream media bias in the mainstream media, so let’s not suddenly pretend that those criticisms of mainstream corporate media aren’t valid, because they are.

Kate sells lies and racist tropes to her feckless ZB acolytes so insurance adverts and quack science herbal remedies can be sold around her bigotry.

Here’s the list of things you can’t talk about from the Right and Left:

Palestine: You can not talk about the brutal occupation of Palestine by Israel in NZ media. It’s just not allowed, any discussion has to be framed as ‘Poor Israeli’s being terrorised by evil angry Muslims’, there is never focus on the brutal occupation and when it ever does emerge in the media it’s always insinuated that any criticism is anti-Semitism.

Child Poverty NEVER adult poverty: We only talk about child poverty because they deserve our pity. Adults in poverty can go fuck themselves. Despite numbering around 800 000, adults in poverty are there because they ‘choose’ to be there. The most important myth of neoliberalism is that your success is all your own, as is your failure. If an adult is in poverty, neoliberal cultural mythology states that is all on them and we have no obligation to help. That’s why we only ever talk endlessly about children in poverty because the vast majority of hard hearted NZers want to blame adults in poverty on them so we can pretend to be egalitarian without actually having to implement any policy.

The Neoliberal NZ experiment: You are never allowed to question the de-unionised work force that amputated wages, you can never question selling off our assets, you can never criticise the growth uber allas mentality, you are never allowed to attack the free market outcomes and you can’t step back and evaluate the 35 year neoliberal experiment in NZ because you remind the wage slaves of the horror of it all.

Class: You can not point out that the demarcation line in a capitalist democracy like NZ is the 1% richest plus their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us. Oh you can wank on and on about your identity and your feelings about your identity in a never ending intersectionist diversity pronoun word salad, but you can’t point out that it’s really the 90% us vs the 10% them class break down because that would be effective and we can’t have effective on mainstream media when feelings are the currency to audience solidarity in an ever diminishing pie of attention.

Immigration: It must always be framed as positive. It can never be argued that it is a cheap and lazy growth model that pushes down wages and places domestic poor in competition with International student language school scams and exploited migrant workers. Any criticism of Immigration makes you a Xenophobe and because the Middle Classes like travelling and have global skills for sale, they see any criticism of migrants as an attack on their economic privileges.

Hyper Tourism: We are never allowed to ask ‘how many is too many you greedy fucks’. The tourism industry that doesn’t give a shit about us locals, live for the 4million tourists who visit annually. We are not allowed to ask why that amount of air travel is sustainable, we are not allowed to ask why selling Red Bull and V at tourist stops is somehow an economic miracle and we are certainly not allowed to question why these tourists aren’t directly being taxed meaningfully for the infrastructure they clog.

Dairy as a Sunset Industry: We are never allowed to point out that the millisecond the manufactured food industry can make synthetic milk powder, they will dump us as a base ingredient and the entire Dairy Industry overnight will collapse. With synthetic milks and meats here within a decade, it is time to radically cull herds, focus on only organic and free range sustainable herds and move away from mass production dairy forever. No one is allowed to mention the iceberg that is looming up in front of the Fonteera Titanic.

B-E-L-I-E-V-E victims: It’s like ‘How to Kill a MockingBird’ was never written. People making serious allegations should be taken seriously, not B-E-L-I-E-V-E-D. That’s a tad fanatical Christian for me. It’s led to a change in our sexual assault laws where the Greens and Labour removed the only defence to rape so as to get more convictions, which when you think about it, is cult like and terrifying. Gerrymandering the law to ensure conviction isn’t justice, but in the current B-E-L-I-E-V-E victims culture it sure is and anyone saying otherwise is probably a rape apologist who should be put in prison immediately.

The Trans debate: This debate is so toxic and anyone asking any question gets immediately decried as transphobic. I’ve seen nuclear reactor meltdowns that are less radioactive than this debate. I’m so terrified I’m not going to say anything other than ‘please don’t hurt my family’ for even mentioning it.

It’s never climate change for this catastrophic weather event: Catastrophic weather event after catastrophic weather event but it’s never connected to global warming! It’s like the weather is changing cataclysmically around us but because it’s not 100% sure that cigarette you are smoking right now is the one that causes that lump inside you to become cancer, so we can’t connect this catastrophic weather event with a climate warming model that states clearly that we will see more and more catastrophic weather events.

Scoops: No NZ media will ever acknowledge another medias scoop despite a united front being able to generate more exposure and better journalism.

Te Reo fanaticism: You are not allowed to point out that barely 5% of the population speak Te Reo and that everyone who militantly fires up about it being an ‘official language’ never seem that antagonistic about the lack of sign language use. Look, my daughter goes to a Māori immersion class and when she speaks Te Reo it makes me cry joyfully and I feel more connected to NZ than any other single moment, but endlessly ramming it down people’s throats seems woke language policing rather than a shared cultural treasure. You can still be an ok human being and not speak Te Reo.

Māori land confiscation: Māori suffer losing 95% of their land in less than a century, they were almost decimated by disease and technology brought via colonisation, they endured the 1863 Settlements Act, they survived blatant lies and falsehoods devised to create the pretext for confiscation and saw violence in the Waikato. Māori have lived throughout that entire experience and still get told to be grateful because Pakeha brought blankets, tobacco and ‘technology’.

The Disabled: Almost 25% of NZ is disabled, yet for such a staggeringly huge number of people, their interests get sweet fuck all mention in the mainstream media.

Corporate Iwi: You can’t bring up that the corporate model used for Iwi to negotiate settlements is outrageous and has created a Maori capitalist elite who are as venal as pakeha capitalists.

House prices will increase FOREVER! Too many middle class folk are now property speculators and they must see their values climb to afford the extra credit cards the bank sends them. We can never talk about house prices coming down. They must never fall. Fuck the homeless, fuck the generations locked out of home ownership and fuck the working poor. Buying a house is only for the children of the middle classes now. Fuck everyone else. Boomer cradle to the grave subsidisations that didn’t extend to any other generation uber allas baby! Free Ben and Jerry Ice Cream for every Boomer forever! ME! ME! MEEEEEEEEEEEE!

People SHOULD distrust corporate mainstream media, but armed with that skepticism, we can all still acknowledge the importance of the Fourth Estate for our Democracy!

So yes trust has fallen, but that’s a righteous skepticism of the corporate interests that drive corporate media!

2: Why NZ has lost trust in the media – YOU!

For all the blaming of the media, we are ignoring the biggest factor in this – YOU!

Yes – YOU.

YOU who are swamped with social media preening your vanity, your next comment, your likes, your need for affirmation, the self involved echo chamber YOU create has far more impact on how you see the media!

Yes the media went a bit woke, yes the media has always been racist and classist – but the biggest change has been YOU!

Social media algorithms have allowed for a toxicity of debate that is easily manipulated.

A cacophony of sweaty truths all screaming for attention and no one listening.

Woke Identity Politics activists have seized the joy of having no gatekeepers to express how much they hate white men while alt right Incel Nazi’s have seized upon the joy of having no gatekeepers to express how much they hate everyone else.

Millennial woke culture sees macro violence coming from micro aggressions and piously police those micro aggressions with virtue signalling purity mantras.

Alt Right Incel Nazis see white persecution and create some bullshit replacement narrative to justify their powerlessness and feed that resentment online.

Most people are on social media and most people have a woke activist or Qanon antivaxxer fanatic in their social media feed screaming their feverish truths. While these activists certainly think they are speaking truth to power by endlessly calling people out for breaches of woke mantra or fake news anti Trump lies, to everyone else they are simply toxic.

Sartre said ‘Hell is other people’.

I say ‘Hell is other people’s social media feed’.

People stop seeing the political party and only see the activist and in the end proxification means the activist becomes the proxy representation of the Party, and seeing as people have negative feelings towards the proxy, they turn from the Party.

Voters aren’t voting on policy, they are voting on who made them feel resentful on social media!

The political is the personal now means what hurts me personally becomes political.

Before social media activists could only face each other off at protests or through letters to the editor or talkback radio. There were constraints of interaction but with social media there are none and it turns out the freedom to insult and dehumanise others is more addictive than nicotine, alcohol and meth combined.

Wokeness has become a puritanical religion with none of the beauty – it’s not so much the personal virtue signal, (we are all dicks at times), it’s the weaponization by algorithms that make it so dangerous and damaging.

The danger of identity politics is that it locks people intellectually into only defining the world through their skin colour, genitalia or sexual orientation – it also becomes toxically subjective and tribal where the only solidarity is with other people who share the skin colour or genitalia or sexual orientation- without shared truths and values, the 1% and their 9% enablers continue to divide the rest of us 90%.

Twitter outrage is woke righteousness porn for the middle classes. A puritanical razoring where the self elected morality police publicly shame and cancel anyone for not using the language protocols of the conclave.

On the other side, feral Incel antivaxx racists are in full death threat mode on anything that makes them feel insecure, which apparently is everything.

The biggest reason so many have lost trust in the media is because many have been led down rabbit holes and believed the hate algorithms they’ve been fed!

When Winston lies that the entire media were bribed, it allows conspiracy to become the new editorial line.

We have changed more than the media have!

3: Why NZ has lost trust in the media – Your dumb feelings!

The biggest reason NZ has lost trust in media is because we as a people are no longer being rational nor objective about the way we interact with the world, we are totally subjective and base everything now on our ‘feelings’.

Right now in New Zealand, you can win an argument with nothing more than ‘feelings’.

If you ‘feel’ the argument more than the other, then you win.

Crazy no?

Because objective truth, logic and rational debate are all heteronormative white cis male privileges, ‘FEELINGS’ are all that matter now and once the middle class woke activists triggered that new threshold for truth, the feral anti vaxxers and Incels and redneck racists and Groundswell astroturf protests have done exactly the same!

This is the new politics of the neoliberal subjective!

We have chosen to feed our emotions and feelings rather than engage our rational objective minds.

We are all burning the library while complaining the library doesn’t have the books we like.

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