MEDIAWATCH: Spinoff sinking, Māori TV bleeding and 14 Newspapers culled – the media are dying and our democracy will be far worse for it
The entire media ecosystem is imploding and killing off Fourth Estate Journalism with it.
Spinoff is sinking, Maori TV announced the axing of its news room that seems like an enormous breach of their obligations while 14 Newspapers are being culled.
We will have news deserts and social media hate algorithms will be left to generate tsunamis of ignorance and hate in an ever increasing washing machine of polarisation.
This on top of TVNZ cut backs and the destruction of Newshub.
The legacy media based their revenue on ratings systems that were always more art than science.
The capital cost of a printer, a satellite or a radio frequency disappeared and far more critical analysis of viewer interaction with content demanded a new economic model, especially with Vulture Capitalists wanting to cover their debt and social media sucked away all the revenue.
Into this dystopian reality comes the power of the podcasts and the rise of a new news media filtered by their own ideologies.
We don’t trust the news any longer, but we trust the filter we view that news through now.
Facts are behind paywalls, the lies are free.
Imagine how little we would know of what was really going on in Gaza if we had relied on the mainstream media coverage?
The people lost trust in capitalist media, because capitalist media had betrayed them.
They turned us from citizens into consumers. It’s never been a better time to buy a house in the NZ Herald world view because the real estate pimps are the biggest advertisers.
The intense loneliness that plagues so many lives has led to rabid hole doom scrolling that brainwashes people into MAGA Qanon anti-vaxxer hate cults.
This fracturing of realities mixed with social media ‘facts’ will corrode the heart of democracy, which is why Public broadcasting matters so much.
There have to be new ideas from the State to enable and support a plurality of voices and production companies.
Pumping $10m into The Spinoff over a decade wasn’t the problem, the problem was that it was just limited to them and their chums. There are lots of important existing content that deserves the same level of taxpayer support because of the job they do in creating a media ecosystem for the Fourth Estate.
There are solutions to the problems we face, no one politically seems to have anything other than shrugging.
We need new regulations in media and new funding from NZ on Air and a social media campaign to point to that content.
There is currently no vision from any political party on this.
As the guard dogs of our democracy are euthanised, our democracy is at risk.
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.
The guard dogs of our democracy have been biting us these last few years. Time for that last trip to the vet.
It’s a shame about the local newspapers. The Spinoff is woke joke.
I wish that mainstream media was dying but I am seeing no signs of it, despite what is happening to our own media sphere. From what I can see, people are just gravitating from local mainstream sources to international mainstream sources helped along by the fact that our local news incorporates a lot of international mainstream sources anyway. Despite all this, it is indeed a tragedy that local news sources, mainstream or not, that primarily focus on local issues, is under threat. But again, we have a political opposition that can have a say about this, depending upon how much pressure we push upon them! This is democracy….but as we are starting to see, there is a growing list of issues where all political interests align – conflict is a prime example – therefore we are near powerless to be able to do anything about, and it is these issues that illustrate how broken our democracy actually, or already, is.
My pet hate is adjectives used by jounalists ,both written and spoken I might add. Just report the facts please.
And there is still room for opinion and you can then use all the adjectives you want….
Good to see these woke dogs die.
I will have a party when stuff of the spinoff sink.