Crosslink column
By Richard Davis
Executive Officer
Joint Methodist Presbyterian Public Questions Committee
Going in circle, gazing at our navels
I'd love Broadcasting Minister Marian Hobbs to be right about what she thinks people want on their TV screens at 6 o'clock in the evening. In the fallout of the John Hawkesby saga she has been saying people are more concerned with having better quality news than about who actually reads it. I'm sad to report that my observations are the complete opposite: people seem to care more about who reads the news than the quality of the journalism.
TVNZ, while publicly owned, is a commercial television station and the Hawkesby affair clearly shows the effects of the government adopting the State Owned Enterprise model. Television makes money from advertising. To be able to attract high-paying advertisers the network must draw a large and affluent audience. TVNZ obviously thought it could improve its audience by having John Hawkesby paired with Judy Bailey on One Network News. Unfortunately for them, and the taxpayer, this strategy conflicted with another audience gathering device used by the station - establishing a cult of personality around the news team of Richard Long and Judy Bailey.
Rather than credibility for the news being gained through quality investigative journalism, their strategy over many years has been to gain it through advertising. However, the plastering of newsreaders' faces on the biggest billboards in town puts the cart before the horse and makes presenters into stars of an entertainment programme. This focus on the news readers has made their appearance more likely on the cover of tabloids and gossip magazines than on the cover of serious journals. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was an inverse relationship between the amounts spent advertising the news and newsreaders salaries, and the journalism budget. Not only has the news become a commodity and a show in its own right, it has also become the news itself. When the news has become the news then why bother with it at all? We merely go round in circles gazing at our navels.
Given this cult of personality it is not surprising there was backlash over the dumping of Long, merely to make way for Hawkesby. The fuss over this, and the ongoing public acceptance of extremely shallow journalism and analysis makes me suspect Marian Hobbs is a little optimistic about what the people really want - but I'd love her to be right all the same.
The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the Public Questions Committee