MEDIAWATCH: Trust in media drops again as Western Democratic Institutions fail to address inequality of unbridled free market neoliberalism

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.

 

 

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