We are a pretty emotionally stunted people.

We are passionate about cow udders, Rugby and denying alcoholism, but not really a renaissance people when it comes to emotional range or depth.

That’s why the closure of Newshub has been a mix of kiwi awkwardness and stunned shock.

The enormity of what we have just lost culturally and journalistically simply hasn’t dawned on us yet.

Losing Newshub is one of the worst days in NZ broadcasting history.

We are simply too stupid a people to appreciate what we have allowed to simply slip beneath the waters.

It felt at times like watching a Dr Who reunion with all the different manifestations of Breakfast shows and 6pm News programmes.

NZ Herald did a very respectful review over the last 3 decades.

Paul Henry, Oliver Driver, Campbell Live, Paddy, Hillary, Melissa Chan-Green, Mark Richards, Mike McRoberts, Duncan, Lloyd and Ryan, they’ve all led our national agenda and the loss will be enormous.

My personal favourite was the original Nightline with Belinda Todd. It was a legitimately anarchic and wonderful time in TV that was magical and subversive.

In terms of democratic infrastructure, Newshub closing is like two lanes falling off the Harbour Bridge.

We have allowed one of the main guard dogs of our democracy to be euthanised and we will all suffer you morons!

The way we have allowed capitalist mythology to shrug this all away as the free market at work simply highlights how totally brainwashed we have become by free market mythology.

The Social Contract of the fourth estate has been sold off in favour of a consumer media network. The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free, we have a journalism crisis, the social cost of that is…

• Citizens less informed about politics
• Citizens less civically engaged
• Citizens less likely to vote
• higher levels of corruption
• increased polarisation

…and that’s the way the Right Wing wants it!

There are of course winners and losers.

 

WINNERS:

Capitalism Mythology – It really says something about us as a culture when Capitalist Mythology takes over as the only value. Newshub falling over has been sold as the ‘Free Market Working’, that Fourth Estate Journalism has been relegated to a mere product rather than an essential institutional necessity for a functional democracy.  We have been cheated by this mindset because it ignores the reality that capitalist media is in a forever crisis with

Atlas Network + Taxpayers’s Union – Less scrutiny allows their agenda to be promoted.

ACT Party +NZF + National – They want less accountability and want less attention on their terrible anti-worker, anti-Treaty, anti-environment, anti-Renter, anti-Māori, anti-beneficiary agenda.

Anti Vaxx lunatics – Less actual information allowed Qanon to spread.

Social Media Hate Algorithms & Political Polarisation – 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. 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.

Soft American Cultural Dominance –

TVNZ’s mediocrity – They have always been reactionary to Newshub, they always were a slow follower to the innovation TV3 brought and all TVNZ had to do was sit on its hands, produce mediocrity and wait for the free market to kill off TV3.

 

LOSERS:

Democracy – With less Fourth Estate Journalism, we are all in far more in danger of abuse of power than any of you comprehend.

Renters – With less Fourth Estate Journalism, renters rights will go backwards under a Government of Landlords.

Beneficiaries – With less Fourth Estate Journalism, beneficiaries will be brutalised.

Workers – With less Fourth Estate Journalism, the Government will be able to erode worker rights.

Climate change – With less Fourth Estate Journalism, the polluters gerrymandering law to stop their interests from being curtained will allow more catastrophic climate change.

Migrant worker exploitation – With less Fourth Estate Journalism, migrant worker exploitation will explode.

 

CONCLUSIONS:

Now what do I know?

I’ve only produced the best weekly political podcast (that isn’t funded by NZ on Air), pointed out Today FM was going to go under 6 months before anyone else and that Newshub was on the chopping block.

So what do I know, but my suspicion is that the Newshub replacement on Stuff will end up costing Stuff more and damaging them.

The question will be who goes under first, Stuff or The Spinoff.

Watch how TVNZ joins the Paywall movement, we are doomed to a Democracy Project future where public institutions erect Paywalls so that  the masses are left to the misinformation and disinformation of Social Media.

People will turn to filters of the News rather than. the actual News itself.

Our opinions will be built upon the opinions of opinions of opinions.

Newshub closing is like the burning of the Library at Alexandria, if you mean by library a Pau shell covered shed with a book about Lyn from Tawa in it and if by Alexandria you mean the Waikato.

We will be a lesser culture, we will be a lesser democracy and we will be a lesser society for the closing of Newshub and all it would have taken to keep it alive was $30million and when you consider the Government just borrowed $14billion for Tax cuts, the only winners here are those who don’t want more scrutiny and accountability.

Moving forward, we are a more shallow people.

This is what we is now, this is what we have become.