May 11, 2008...12:57 pm
Should the news media endorse political parties? Not in a small democracy like New Zealand. We don’t have the media competition for that
Should the New Zealand news media endorse political parties? I don’t think so, and nor do most New Zealand journalists and media organisations. Unlike somewhere like, say, Britain, with many competing daily newspapers offering competing political views on the world, we tend to have one daily newspaper in each city and town, and they see their job as reporting the news, and letting voters make up their own minds.
Yes, newspaper editors have opinions, which they have always stated robustly in their editorials. But they have tended not to be party-political opinions. New Zealand newspapers do not usually endorse a political party at election time, nor try to tell readers how to vote.
I’m musing about this issue because of a thought-provoking comment posted on this blog by Hayden Munro, who identified himself as doing a Master of Communications degree and hoping to get into a postgraduate journalism course.
“ I was wondering what your opinion was on political endorsements by the media,” Hayden Munro said. “I’m having the ‘press must be politically objective’ message hammered home again and again. Yet the New York Times for example endorsed Obama, and there was the infamous Herald campaign against the EFA. As someone whose worked in the field for a while, how are things like that thought of?”
Hayden Munro apologies for “threadjacking” but I don’t see it like that at all. It made me think. And marshall my arguments and beliefs on this issue, which is an important one in a small democracy like ours.
Internationally, newspapers in many (but not all) democratic countries have traditionally endorsed political parties in their leader columns (their editorials), while their news pages have made at least an effort to publish fact rather than opinion. Nonetheless, where there are many newspapers, such as in London, each paper will often quietly “slant” some stories, or story selection, to support the paper’s editorial stance. But even when this happens, the story almost always seeks to give enough unvarnished facts for readers to make up their own minds.
In New Zealand, as in other countries with an “objective journalism” tradition such as the United States and Australia, the news pages have traditionally reported the news as factually as possible and without the newspaper’s or the reporter’s political opinions being in the story. The leader and op-ed pages have been the preserve of comment and any calls to support some issue or cause or party or another.
When a New Zealand newspaper has endorsed a political party at an election, this has tended to be newsworthy, as it has been rare. But it is not rare overseas.
The New Zealand Herald’s campaign against the Electoral Finance Act was groundbreaking journalistically, because it saw editorial writers and journalists promoting a distinct stance on the front page rather than on the leader page, and the facts of what was in the bill went so far out the window that even the Press Council felt moved to uphold complaints against the paper for running misleading and dead wrong information under the guise of news.
But even with this anti-EFA campaign, the Herald stood back from promoting or opposing a political party. Its stand was based on what it claimed was in the bill and why it thought that was “an attack on democracy.”
I believe the Herald did this for circulation reasons (it has lost significant daily sales in recent years despite Auckland’s population growth, while the DomPost in Wellington, the Press in Christchurch and the Waikato Times in Hamilton have held or grown their circulation) rather than having any actual belief in what it published (which as I said, the Press Council found was wrong and misleading). It wanted to be seen making a stand and attract the publicity from other media that came with that. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with a newspaper making a stand — I just think that such a stand should be clearly marked as such, which the Herald’s EFA campaign was not. The line was blurred too much there.
The Herald in particular these days has its reporters writing “comment” pieces on the news pages, though they are mostly, but not always, clearly marked as such. The DomPost does it to a lesser degree. Personally, I don’t believe a working news reporter should express party political views as part of their job. I never did, and never would, not even in this, my personal blog. I genuinely do not have party political views, and that comes from years of working as a journalist. Many journalists, I believe, are similar. Most New Zealand journalists see their job as reporting the news, not campaigning for a party or an ideology or a cause.
I think it is pretentiously elitist of a journalist to think their view is so important that they would tell readers or audiences how to vote. I would be very surprised if any daily or Sunday paper this year endorses any party for the election. If it does happen, it will make headlines for being so unusual.
All that said, I am getting concerned at the boundaries being pushed by the Herald in the “comment” pieces published on the news pages by some of their journalists. Often, these pieces are well written and worthwhile reading, but their often overtly opinionated content belongs, in my opinion, on the op-ed page with the other columnists rather than on the news pages. Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that you should expect to find news, not opinion, on the news pages of a major daily newspaper.
28 Comments
May 11, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The council found one error of fact. One.
[Poneke adds: From the NZ Press Council:
Case Number: 2024 COALITION FOR OPEN GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Council Meeting APRIL 2008
The Coalition for Open Government complained that two editorials in The New Zealand Herald concerning the Electoral Finance Bill contained inaccurate statements. The complaint is upheld.
http://www.presscouncil.org.nz/display_ruling.asp?casenumber=2024
You can't get more upheld than this. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.]
May 11, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that you should expect to find news, not opinion, on the news pages of a major daily newspaper.
You are old-fashioned, Poneke. So am I. Opinion is not news and shouldn’t be presented as such..
May 11, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Thanks for the informative reply Poneke. I’ve just had it pointed out to me I was wrong about the NY Times endorsing Obama, although I think that my point about foreign media being a little quicker to endorse specific political stances than our own rings true.
May 11, 2008 at 9:35 pm
I studied journalism at Ryerson in Toronto in the late 1970s. I agree with you on every point.
Where I may differ is that newspapers favouring one party over another impicitly, if not explicitly is not new or rare. The DomPost has been doing it at least since 1990 on a almost daily basis. In the Herald, I see it daily. Fran O’Sullivan, Liam Dann (editor of the Business section) and others give the impression they couldn’t say a nice word about Labour if their lives depended on it.
O’Sullivan describes anyone with reservations about foreign investment as “xenophobic”…..no matter what their real objections may be. Dann uses “left” and “right” so much I sent him an e-mail the other day asking if he could stop. He’s making me dizzy….
That’s the sort of writing I expect from WhaleOil…..not Auckland’s journal of record.
So….I agree. With my own provisos. Thanks again for sparking discussion.
May 11, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I pretty much agree with you, Poneke.
The Kiwi market is so small and monopolistic that paper taking party lines is most unfair, as well as bad for business.
I am familiar with the UK market where the market is big enough for a diverse range of papers and party affiliations.
Ditto wth Australia where the Murdoch papers lean to the Coalition and Fairfax to Labor.
Here in New Zealand, I would say it would be bad for business, if say the Herald went for National, DomPost for Liarbour, or whatever.
Our papers tend to be monopolists, so if they took a partisan stance they would piss off a certain section of their readers.
This would harm democracy and their business.
But in Election 2005, I recall the Fairfax Sundays both went for Liarbour and the Herald on Sunday sat on the fence.
Thus, there was no-one backing National in the Sunday market.
Yet, Liarbour and National were almost neck and neck.
A few points: There was no paper appealing to the National supporting parts of NZ, so the media was out of step with their readers. Such clear partisanship from the Sundays, at least, might have impacted on the election result. And with the papers so left of their readers, it was probably bad for business. I note the two Fairfax Sundays are suffering a major slide in sales while the more centrist Herald on Sunday is prospering.
Fairfax is probably losing millions from the leftist sland of the Sunday Star-Times.
So for Election 2008, one might expect at least one Sunday to back National, at least to be in tune with their readers. If anything, I would say the boadsheet Sunday Star-Times should do this, or is it too stuck in the hands of the latte left?
May 11, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I profoundly disagree with FM. I don’t think a newspaper has any business adopting a political bias to reflect the perceived bias of its readers. Its business is to report the facts and so to enable its readers to make informed judgments - and those are judgments informed by facts, not biases reinforced by directives from proprietors.
May 12, 2008 at 7:41 am
Forgive me for for reacting with a healthy dose of amused cynicism.
“Objective” or “just the facts” journalism that leaves it up to readers to decide is a farce. It always has been. It is utterly disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
How many of the journalists gravely endorsing Poneke’s post will be the first to “tut tut” at Phil O’Reilly’s claim that when you listen to his programme you are entering the “No spin zone”. You know and I know that there is spin at every turn–and it will always be the case. Every news media, and every journalist, is no different. At best (and it is rare that we see examples of the best) we are only talking about relative objectivity–which, of course, means that every journalist and every news media is relatively subjective and biased.
Stop trying to maintain a patina of false professional pride and tell the truth. It will do wonders for your soul. It is possible that a standard or ethic of objective journalism is taught in our “journalism schools” even while they propagate ceaselessly doctrinaire left wing world-views. But such nominalism is beneath contempt.
You know, and I know, and so does everyone else who cares to give it a moment’s thought that objectivity in media is a farce. Let’s just quickly count some of the ways that the medium itself provides the message, to borrow from McLuhan:
1. Space/time is limited, so the “facts” become a highly selected menu of the truth–which requires selection, ranking, discarding. Bias and pre-commitments intrude from the outset and through the whole process.
2. Placement/prominence. This requires ranking stories according to their perceived level of importance, which in turn draws upon one or more value systems
3. Revenue and profitability. The need to make a buck is paramount–and rightly so. Don’t tell us, therefore, that news media do anything else than try to garner readers/listeners. In order to do that the medium has to have a view of who the readers are and what they want to read/hear. Bias, bias, bias. Brute objectivity in such a world is completely impossible. Why not be honest about it?
4. Career dynamics. Reporters and news media people are as bound to their employers as anyone else. In order to get ahead they have to deliver what employers want and require. Don’t even suggest for a nano-second that this does not bring untrammelled bias into everything news reporters, sub-editors and editors do. To not be unfront about such things is simply unbecoming–and somewhat embarrassing.
What’s the solution? Journalists and news media need to do what everyone else is required to do in the real world–engage in disclosure, disclosure, disclosure. It ought to be mandatory in every news media that regular disclosures are given of ownership, how the media makes its money, what its beliefs are about what its audience wants, what the world-view of the particular institution is, etc. Such disclosures ought to be audited regularly to ensure they meet a defined code of standards.
Moreover, each news story should declare any conflicts of interest of the journalist briefly at the end of each piece. For example, if the journalist happens to believe that privatisation of state assets is wrong, and he/she is writing a story on the State’s re-purchase of trains, he/she ought to be required to declare the belief at the foot of the story. Failure to declare ought to result in formal notification (and publication) of a breach of ethics.
In the light of this, I have no problem whatsoever in a paper endorsing a political party or candidates–provided the paper declares overtly the basis of its endorsement and continues to publish its commitment and bias in this regard. It should also be required to give a health warning that its precommitments are likely influence its selection and presentation of all news.
These are not hard concepts. Fiduciary obligations to one’s clients is a well-established, widely practised, and a universally required duty in common law.
In fact, it would be a great deal better than our current Alice in Wonderland world where the media and journalists gravely intone noble ideals of objectivity, which everyone knows are completely untrue. Its almost as bad as the kind of parody of the truth which plays out in regimes where official propaganda is the received truth.
It is only when bias and pre-commitment is disclosed that truly objective discourse can occur, since bent and bias on the part of every human being is inescapable and inevitable. If everyone else in the real world has fiduciary requirement to disclose conflicts of interest, why should the media be exempt? If the news media would be rightly indignant at a real-estate agent who did not declare a conflict of interest in a house sale, why should the media itself be excused such basic ethical behaviour when it comes to its own conflicts. If the real-estate agent were to claim some sort of professional objectivity which meant that he really did tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the client, despite not disclosing his conflicts, he would be laughed out of court. But why, then, a double standard for the media?
I suggest that this intrinsic duplicity, represented in all media in New Zealand, is one of the key reasons why the media is held in such low esteem almost everywhere.
May 12, 2008 at 10:20 am
It’s Bill O’Reilly, John. Does that mean you should put a disclaimer at the bottom of your posting suggesting you’re not that clear on right-wing US commentators?
May 12, 2008 at 10:53 am
>we tend to have one daily newspaper in each city and town
Why has NZ never developed national daily newspapers like they have in the UK? Are NZers like those British people who prefer to read their (sad) regional paper rather than one of the quality nationals?
May 12, 2008 at 11:34 am
Hey, Pio. Thanks, mate. I guess it does confirm that I don’t pay much attention to the No Spin Zone. Cheers, JT
May 12, 2008 at 11:44 am
FM: Trying to portray NZ’s print media as “left-leaning” by citing the Sunday papers doesn’t stack up. Not sure how you missed the National-loving stance of the DomPost the past 18 years. The NZ Herald is making up for lost time.
May 12, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I would guess the affection for regional papers probably goes back to the tradition of strong provincialism in New Zealand. But don’t knock the regionals. Journalistically, we’ve seen a constant cycle of centralisation and rationalisation in the media to the point where the regions are now basically ignored, unless its quaint travel features or a quirky human interest story. It seems to me that the print media is now centralised in two or three places and non-print media basically come out of Auckland. To take my particular bug bear the place where I grew up is Napier. When I was a lad we had a ZB station that covered provincial issues in local news breakouts, and two papers. Editorially, the Napier Daily Telegraph was centre right with a capital “C” and the Hastings Hawkes Bay Herald Tribune was country Tory with a big “T”. Locals were well informed with three news outlets offering a range of viewpoints. Nowadays, the entire Hawkes Bay region is served by Hawkes Bay Today, a paper that treats its readers with contempt, and is little more than a soapbox for the bigotry of its editorial line. To say they hate Labour would possibly be an understatement. the result is the sort of news-deficit driven tragedy of the commons you see over the dismissal of the local DHB, with an ill-informed local public being by the nose by a partisan newspaper making common cause with the squawking local oligarchs.
May 12, 2008 at 12:35 pm
It’s a constant source of amusement to me how partisans on both sides of the political divide complain about the media being against them - it’s the universal excuse. Both sides simply take it as a home truth and claim underdog advantage as a consequence.
At issue is not so much objectivity, but even-handedness (some people say `fairness’ or `balance’ but both of these have become loaded beyond usefulness). People seem to be arguing that objectivity is lacking because editors or editorial policy favours or gives precedence to one party or political view over another. If present, this would be a failing of even-handedness, not of objectivity. Objectivity would be deciding and decreeing the veracity of facts or events without the necessary evidence, and recourse to that is via the Press Council. Even-handedness, on the other hand, is squarely the domain of editors - and media consumers and commentators tend to act as a very good brake on editorial extremism, especially in a small, crowded media ecology such as ours.
So the rantings about the `Communist-run media’ or the `business lobby’s propaganda machine’ are basically conspiracy theory. They have no basis in logic when applied to a media ecology as a whole, and none even when applied to a single major outlet except where the ecology is broad enough for that outlet to target one political demographic only - as it may be in the UK and USA, but certainly not in NZ. All the major news outlets in NZ - the big 4 papers, National Radio, One and 3 - are generalists appealing to different segments of the same audience - New Zealanders. If they focussed their appeal any more tightly they’d quickly run out of eyeballs, earholes and advertising revenue.
By the way: Fairfacts Media, I’m not sure how you expect to be taken seriously on political or media issues - or indeed seen as anything other than a barking lunatic - talking about `Liarbour’.
L
May 12, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I would agree that media endorsements can have incredibly over-blown effects on people’s perceptions in a small competition market. Even in the US, where media competition is huge, the intentionally promoted perception that the local media is objective and working to represent the public can taint the readers’ views in reading editorial opinion. I am lucky; in that my Mother, wise woman that she was, taught me to analyze and understand the writer before I analyzed and tried to understand the writer’s opinion. For more on this, see
http://onthebias.wordpress.com
May 12, 2008 at 1:43 pm
As I understand, professional media is all about bringing truths and facts to people. That facts could be favorable to one party may be incidental. For media to play intentional partisan politics would be like dirt on holy ground. Yes some media people do play partisan politics which I think is already abuse.
May 12, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Regarding John’s comment about applying disclaimer, I would be thrilled to see a footnote encouraging readers to further read up on a story. Whether it be a report that the article is attempting to summarise or background information leading up to the current situation, it is guaranteed that there is more to the story than what the newspaper presents, or could possibly present. Having a reference to follow treats the reader as an intelligent human being, capable of understanding more than what is spoon-fed.
Blogs fill this function well with links to all sorts of media, but it’s trickier in print; listing publication information takes up valuable space. Technical magazines and journals often manage to fit in a side-bar or footnote, but the content and layout style is slightly more amenable than in news print. But it’s not impossible to make it work.
May 12, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Hi there. Thanks for this nice piece of blogging. I think you have some valid points here. I live in Iceland (also a small state - being an island and stuff out in the middle of nowhere just like New Zeeland). I think I’ll steal your idea =). (I link to your contribution though).
May 12, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Greg: The only reason media outlets would do this is if that use of column-inches gives a better return than either news or advertising. This might happen when it can point to an alternative source controlled by the same group - such as when the DomPost includes a link to Stuff in an infobar, but newspapers aren’t particularly interested in directing eyeballs away from their own matter.
They’re not peer-reviewed journals, which live and breathe by the transparency of their articles’ reasoning. Most people simply don’t care that much.
L
May 12, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I think it is universal, the best selling media are those known to be impartial and total. They are patronized by people of all parties.
Media that lean on partisan politics might be on their way to extinction. They’ll be patronized only by people who want to read or hear their kind of news only, or else they have to be bankrolled by the party that they favor.
That’s mother nature regulating things when or if some cannot regulate themselves, I guess.
May 12, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Trevor misquotes me.
I agree with Poneke that our small monopolistic markets means that it will be bad for business if it becomes too partisan and endorses a party.
I certainly know of people who no longer buy the Sunday Star-Times because of its perceived leftist leanings.
However, in larger markets it maybe possible to be more partisan.
The only case here maybe the New Zealand Sunday market as there are 3 papers to choose from.
Steve, only recently has the NZ Herald given the appearance of swinging anti-Labour.
I would say Helen Clark has been lucky to benefit from a very timid and supportive media, especially compared to the robust press you see in Britain and Australia.
I would say the monopolistic nature of our Kiwi media is part of this. And maybe journos are too scared of being cast in the cold by the PM.
I cannot comment about the Dom-Post having never lived in Wellington, but I can vouch that the Waikato Times and The Press have been professionally neutral when I have read them, and in the case of one, worked for them.
Furthermore, looking back to my UK training on the regional dailies, as regionals they too tended to be monopolies, though there is a diverse national media.
Anyway, the local paper’s main goal was to be in tune with readers, so they made for moderate/ centrist non-partisan views at local/regional level.
I would say the Herald’s change of emphasis towards Labour is that it is in tune with public opinion. Granny sees Labour is not as popular as 5-6-7 years ago and now after 3 terms, the failings of Labour are clear to most of us, especially in Auckland, judging by the polls.
May 12, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Fairfacts: You seem to misunderstand the symbiosis between the media and politics. A politician, especially one in government, fears being shut out by the press as much as the converse; it gives the paper no option but to print opposition views without any right of reply.
This argument sounds like another in the `Helen Clark is a bully and Labour are totalitarians’ line.
L
May 12, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Poneke wrote: “the facts of what was in the bill went so far out the window that even the Press Council felt moved to uphold complaints against the paper for running misleading and dead wrong information under the guise of news.”
Perhaps rather a moot point. Agreed that information relating to the threshold was absent and thus had potential to mislead, but didn’t the *misrepresentations* that led to the upheld complaint occur in editorials? Strictly speaking, is that “under the guise of news.”?
Just wondering, since accuracy is at stake. Otherwise, I couldn’t agree more with the post.
May 13, 2008 at 1:37 am
It is obvious that reporters, editors, and owners will hold political opinions. These political opinions can be expressed in a newspaper without an explicit endorsement of a party. For example, a newspaper could report scandals relating to a political party much more prominently than they report achievements.
It seems to me that newspapers have two options: they can do their best to limit the extent to which the private opinions of their reporters are expressed within their pages, or they can explicitly endorse a candidate.
I agree with Poneke that it is probably ideal if newspapers in a small market like NZ are not biased. However I wonder how close to this ideal newspapers actually reach.
If there is one thing that is worse than a newspaper endorsing a political viewpoint, it is biased reporting which masquerades as objective journalism.
May 13, 2008 at 8:07 am
didn’t the *misrepresentations* that led to the upheld complaint occur in editorials? Strictly speaking, is that “under the guise of news.”?
The point is, the Herald ran this “editorial” as its main front page story, with the huge headline “Democracy under attack.” It looked like a news story. It had the banner headline of a news story. It was placed where readers expect a news story to be. Readers could have expected it was a news story, and that editorials would be on the editorial page.
The Herald did an own-goal with that one.
May 13, 2008 at 8:17 am
Poneke: I agree. It’d be better if papers had no “leanings”. In England, on top of the sheer range of national papers available to balance this out (and find their own niche), the stances of the papers seem so well known and of such long standing as to almost be “tradition”, so there is barely any practical issue in the bias. Incidentally, I was in England when The Independent was launched. I recall that the name was to reflect their (claimed!) independence of political stance. They were my paper of choice at the time.
Fairfacts Media: For what its worth, the main reasons I no longer buy the Sunday Star Times are its “feminine” leanings (not saying its wrong, just that there isn’t much in that leaning for a guy!) and the odd story falling below my comfort zone for lack of basis on fact.
Greg: I made exactly this suggestion to a media centre survey some time ago. In my case it was for just “science” stories, to assist presentation of the “key facts” by having a qualified person or group present a “facts” sidebar to run alongside the main peice, ideally with “further information” links.
I understand Lew’s point about publications not wanting to “lose” the reader, but if these point to material beyond what the publication would present anyway, there is an argument that there would be no loss in sales and the references would givw give the story additional credibility—?
May 14, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Poneke:
I’d strongly recommend to your attention Michael Kinsley’s latest essay collection Please Don’t Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries (W.W. Norton, hardcover).
It includes a memo to the editorial writers of the LA Times, when he took up his brief reign as editorial and opinion editor. As he notes at the beginning, “it got a very chilly reception”.
It’s too long and complicated to paraphrase fairly, but here’s one part that caught my attention:
I think the ’small market’ argument against media outlets issuing political endorsements in a fundamentally bogus one. I’d rather see such endorsements being made openly, honestly and subject to Kinsley’s standards of intellectual honesty than covertly. It also helps of you have a strong culture and editorial leadership that values the separation of reportage and opinion. (For example, the Wall Street Journal has a strongly conservative/market liberal editorial and op-ed line, but even if you think it’s all a load of crap the breadth and depth of its business and economic reporting is respected internationally.)
May 14, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I agree broadly with John that “objective” is fantasy, but also with the commentators who suggest that when both sides are complaining that the bought media is against them we’ve got at least a semblance of balance. I do like the idea of media who try to be objective, but I’ve seen little evidence that they succeed. Usually they argue a commercial imperative, which is why I call them the bought media.
I’d love to see more stories based on objective reality and what flows from it (as some of the commentary on the Australian budget has, focussing on the “ok, you say you accept human caused climate change, but you’re not acting that way” and so on). All to often we get instead “objectively X is true but here’s a summary of the debate between X and Y” where Y is some complete looney presented as “balance”.
There’s also the ever-present bias towards extreme similification. Exemplified by the presentation of politics as a contest between two parties and other such drivel. Even in horse racing there are more than two contenders which makes most of the analogies used more accurate than the presentation would suggest.
Keep trying for objectivity though, by all means. Perhaps even add accuracy to your goals…
May 15, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Coupla things:
1. Craig, thanks for the tip about the Kinsley book. Read quite a bit of his stuff when he was at the New Republic - he’s one of those ones who is thought provoking even - especially? - when I don’t agree with him.
2. on the wider point of political endorsements: I’m not a fan of it: I think it should be done sparingly. Personally I find the idea of endorsing any political party vaguely unnatural. I draw a pretty strong distinction between taking a clear philosophical stance and actually supporting a party. This may sound like a fine distinction…and it would be, if politicians were more consistent creatures than we know they in fact are.
Taking a firm stance from the point of view of political philosophy can actually be a way of holding those in power to account. I’m not so sure endorsing a particular political party is.
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