Shane Te Pou – One man, one board, one newsroom and no one at the wheel

A lot of people will know by now that I’ve turned into a bit of a digital nomad in my old age. I’m closing in on 60, and I’ve spent a good chunk of this year knocking about Europe. One thing I’ve always had a bit of a knack for, wherever I land, is getting into a proper natter with whoever’s nearby — dive bar regulars, waiters at flash restaurants, public servants, the odd politician who lets their guard down after the second glass. I seem to fall into conversations about all sorts of things without much effort, politics included, and it doesn’t seem to matter much where I am.

Take Athens. I don’t speak a word of Greek, and plenty of the people I got talking to didn’t have much English either. Didn’t stop us. A few glasses of ouzo in, somehow, we always found a way to get the point across — a bit of pidgin English, a lot of hand gestures, the odd word typed into a phone. And more than once, those half-broken conversations turned into real ones about the state of the local media. People over here have strong feelings about who owns their newspapers and TV stations, and they don’t need fluent English to make that clear. A shrug, a name, a roll of the eyes — you get the message.

Because what’s on a lot of minds over here, in bars and boardrooms alike, is who owns the media. It comes up more than you’d think. A public servant in Brussels will happily explain, over a beer, exactly why his government doesn’t trust its own newspapers anymore. Mind you I did interrupt him and say to him. Hey a lot of people don’t trust government’s true true he said

Now folks most of the people I talked to in bars are roughly the same age as me so media means newspapers radio and television but of course new media ownership and control is a hot button subject.

A journalist in a dive bar in Vienna yes they do exist in Vienna will tell you which billionaire owns which masthead before you’ve finished your first pint. It’s not paranoia.

It’s just something Europeans have learned to watch closely, because they’ve seen what happens when they don’t.

The EU has just brought in something called the European Media Freedom Act. Cuts through the spin: media companies have to say who actually owns them, governments can’t lean on newsrooms, and if one company or one rich owner starts buying up too much of the market, there’s a process to stop it. Nobody’s pretending it’s perfect. Half the member states are dragging the chain on bringing it into force, and there’ll always be someone clever enough to find the gap. But at least someone over there has decided this is worth legislating for. Whoever owns the newsroom has a real say in what a country ends up believing. Europe gets that.

Now think about us back in Aotearoa

Our entire media market is smaller than one reasonably large American city’s advertising spend. We are a minnow. And that makes us cheap to buy. Also on some issues if you can knock over New Zealand, you have a win internationally a case in point this governments surrender to big tabbaco

You don’t need Elon Musk money to own a chunk of this country’s news — you just need more cash than most Kiwi companies will ever see in a decade, and the patience to sit on it.

We’ve had a dry run already. Remember Peter Thiel? Fast-tracked into citizenship, big speeches about how much he loved Aotearoa, how this was his refuge from the apocalypse. Barely spent a summer here. Got the passport, got the headlines, then got bored and buggered off . Haven’t heard much from him since. I wouldn’t bet on that lasting.

But Thiel was small beer next to Jim Grenon in terms of his involvement in New Zealand

This Canadian-born billionaire started buying up NZME The company that owns the Herald and Newstalk ZB and a host of regional radio stations and newspapers he didn’t stop until he’d built a real war chest of shares. At the same time he was buying up here. He was quietly backing dubious defamation cases

You see when billionaires with big bucks take on individuals and New Zealand businesses the real message here is shut up or I’ll do you. I’ve got the money to silence you.

Anyway, back to NZME share ownership crept up around 20 percent. One-tenth of one percent under the line that would’ve forced him to make a takeover offer to every other shareholder. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a man who’s read the rulebook closely enough to know exactly where he can get more than just a foot in the door

He got his seat on the board. He got Steven Joyce in the chair. And then Christopher Luxon’s own chief press secretary — the guy whose whole job was managing how the Prime Minister looks on the six o’clock news — left the Beehive and took a top editorial role at NZME. Hamish Rutherford went from spinning for Luxon to helping decide what the Herald says about Luxon. He changed jobs quicker than most people change their bath water. The journo’s union sounded the alarm the whole way through. Nobody with any actual power did a thing about it.

We don’t have a law like Europe’s. Our takeover rules are written for ordinary companies — trading companies, supermarkets, banks (and we’re being pretty bad there )

They were never built for the one kind of company that shapes what an entire small nation like ours thinks. A newsroom isn’t just another line on a balance sheet, and it’s about time our law treated it that way.

We’re a small country with small institutions. That means it doesn’t take an army to walk in and take over — it just takes one bloke with deep pockets and the patience to wait us out. Europe’s at least trying to close that door. We haven’t even noticed it’s open.