The death throes of traditional media

The New Zealand news last week was filled with the shocking story of the departure of news presenter Hilary Barry from the TV3 network. Actually it is not shocking at all but to see and listen to the media coverage, you would think it is the greatest story here since the earthquake that devastated Christchurch or maybe even since New Zealand's entry into World War 2. 

One of the worst characteristics of the mainstream media both here and overseas is their obsession with themselves. Personally I don't find the comings and goings of TV news presenters to be of any great moment and can't imagine that Hilary Barry changing jobs means much to anyone other than her immediate family, but there is a far more interesting story about the media that is going largely unremarked upon. That story is signalled by this lesser-heralded news report that TV3 owner MediaWorks is to close down sister channel TV4 and replace it with an all-reality TV channel to be called Bravo.

Variety magazine reports that the top four television series watched by the key 18-24 demographic in America during the important fall season were Netflix shows. The New Zealand equivalent ratings are not published (to my knowledge) but I imagine they show a similar picture. This confirms anecdotal evidence that broadcast television is in steep decline and the replacement of TV4 with a reality channel is surely evidence of a ratings-driven rush to the bottom in terms of quality that has more than a hint of desperation about it.

There is a similar decline in newspaper sales. The Wellington daily, The Dominion Post, declined nearly 14% in the last year alone and all the other major dailies showed sales falls. This is hardly surprising given the quality of those newspapers, particularly the appalling DomPost. The lower the circulation or ratings, the more desperate the response of the media outlet to try and save itself. Like a man drowning in quicksand, the flailing attempts at self-preservation just hurry the demise.

I think the decline of the mainstream media, in fairness, is not entirely self-inflicted. Popular culture is so shallow and evanescent that those trying to predict and cater to the public's tastes must have an almost impossible job. Prurient interest in the petty problems of other human beings, the staple of reality TV, seems to be the only bankable fashion for mass media these days. Those who are prepared to pay more - the subscribers of Netflix and the like - can still get a level of quality programming but the rest of the population are served dross, which they gratefully lap up like starved dogs.

The mainstream media are fond of decrying increased inequality in our society (real or imagined) but their own industry is developing into a two-tiered world where the walls to get into the premium section are getting higher while the standard of the economy section falls further and further. Ultimately we get exactly what we pay for.

Media mendacity makes for mistrust

In the James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, Agent 007 battles the megalomaniacal media king, Elliot Carver, who is not content with reporting on the news and decides to manufacture it by committing terrorist acts in the hope of starting a war between China and the United States. It seems that the mainstream media, so desperate for ratings or readership in their fight for survival, is now following the Elliot Carver model. Sure, they are not yet sinking British warships in their attempts to make news, but they are committing serious criminal acts to boost their ratings and readership.

Two recent examples are the case of the Australian Channel Nine news team who were involved in the seizing of two children in Lebanon, and the New Zealand TV3 reporter, Heather du Plessis-Allan, who fraudulently purchased a rifle from a gun shop over the Internet.

In the Channel Nine case, the exact facts of the sordid affair are hard to determine but the children were with their father in Lebanon when the Australian mother, Sally Faulkner, decided to have the children snatched on a Beirut street. Channel Nine paid for four 'child recovery experts' from a UK organisation called Child Abduction Recovery International (CARI) to grab the children. The operation was botched and the Channel Nine news crew along with the mother and the CARI team were arrested. Channel Nine has now paid a significant sum of compensation to the father to obtain the release of its new crew and the mother but has left the CARI team it employed to rot in the Beirut jail. The journalists even tweeted a photo of themselves drinking and grinning in an airport bar on the way home.

I don't know where the right or wrong is in the custody dispute between the parents in this case, but the actions of the Channel Nine news crew are contemptible on so many levels. They were foolish in the extreme, insulting to their viewers, and utter cowards in abandoning the men they had employed to carry out the operation.

In the New Zealand gun purchase case, Heather du Plessis-Allan set out to prove that anyone could buy a rifle online from a Christchurch gun shop without having a permit, and all she ended up proving is that you can't do that without committing fraud. She used a fictitious police ID number and signature to purchase the gun, which fooled an otherwise responsible gun shop owner to supply the firearm, and she and TV3 had the gall to present this as a failure of the firearms licensing system and misconduct on the part of the gun shop owner.

We all know the mainstream media have long since abandoned any pretence of neutrality and take sides in any controversial story they cover. They have become propagandists and political agitators for any cause they deem merits their support. In doing so they have utterly destroyed the public's trust in themselves, with a recent survey showing that only 9% of New Zealanders trust them.

The mainstream media have always claimed they deserve special status under the law. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects the freedom of the press and in most Common Law jurisdictions the press enjoys similar special rights. But the mainstream media risk losing these protections for everyone when they they consider they are completely above the law.

The Demise of Objective Journalism?

In his blog post this week, Kiwi journalist Karl du Fresne laments the loss of an objective viewpoint in the mainstream media.  In particular, he comments on the obvious bias of New Zealand television current affairs presenter John Campbell. Personally, I don't watch John Campbell and haven't done so since the 2005 election campaign in which he was so one-sided in his coverage (in favour of the left-of-centre Labour Party and its leader, Prime Minister Helen Clark, and against the right-of-centre National Party) that his broadcasts resembled the party political advertisements that were being run between the programme segments rather than a current affairs show.  However, I commented on du Fresne's blog that I did not agree with him that journalists had some sort of moral obligation to be unbiased.  If someone like John Campbell wants to push his personal political views, then those like myself who don't agree with him can turn his programme off. Fortunately, in most Western countries at least, we are not yet in the position where we are forced to watch such biased opinion masquerading as informed commentary.  Don't get me wrong, I think Campbell abuses the trust that the viewing public and the channels owners are placing in him and should be sacked, but the reason it doesn't bother me is that I know he and his kind are doomed.

The mainstream media in most Western countries is becoming increasingly fragmented and traditional newspaper, television and radio outlets are becoming uncompetitive and unprofitable.  The reason for this is, of course, the huge growth of online media such as news websites, blogs, and instant message feeds.  I get most of my news from online sources. I no longer subscribe to a major daily print newspaper and rarely watch or listen to television and radio news. On my iPad I have the dozens of feeds from media outlets all over the world, all funneled through some very smart software applications that know what I am interested in and enjoy reading and watching.  Many of my sources of news and commentary are individuals or very small businesses rather the traditional large corporate and government media outlets that dominate the mainstream media.  I often get the news unfiltered, in real-time from people on the ground in New York, Moscow, Benghazi or Harare and I get a much broader and better informed range of opinions than I ever got from New Zealand's television networks, radio channels and daily newspapers.  I know that I am immensely better informed and have access to a much broader range of editorial comment than I ever was when I relied on traditional print and broadcast media.

The new on-line media allow me to be far more selective and far more precise about my sources of news.  They allow me to pick and choose from a broad smorgasbord of information rather than having to take the set menu that the likes of TV3 (the New Zealand television channel that employs John Campbell) serves up each night. I am not alone – every other informed consumer of news I know has made the transition (but perhaps not as completely as I have) to online sources.

The only reason the likes of John Campbell survive is because they are part of the set fare that New Zealand network television viewers are forced to consume each night.  But it is only a matter of time before almost all video, including news and current affairs, is watched on the Internet rather than on broadcast TV.  Viewers and advertisers will be much more selective about the content they consume and pay for.  I cannot imagine that anyone in this new world will want to pay to hear the ill-informed, petty and highly-biased comments of a silly New Zealand current affairs presenter.  Can you? 

The Morality of Welfare

This blog incorporates the comments I posted on Karl du Fresne's blog this week. Karl posted about a documentary that aired on TV3 during the last week of the New Zealand general election campaign (and of course TV3's timing was not coincidental - it was just part of their on-going pro-Labour, pro-Greens editorial campaign). I didn't see the documentary but in Karl's view it was "very one-sided", presenting the "message...that the welfare state has failed our poor."

This sort of overtly left-wing polemic always tries to cast the rest of us (i.e. those other than the 'deserving poor') as uncaring and immoral. How could we in good conscience possibly let one child anywhere go hungry? It never asks the same question of the parents and extended families of such children, assuming that they must be victims of circumstances like their children.

Those who oppose further extension to the already ubiquitous welfare state, and who oppose further taxation increases to pay for it, are often put on the back foot by such arguments. They seldom challenge the de facto position that there is no moral argument that could possibly be put forward to justify less state intervention in the welfare of poor children.

Well, I am not afraid of entering the moral debate on the side of the oppressed taxpayer. My comments on Karl's blog follow.

I guess you could call the welfare state 'compulsory altruism', if that is not too much of an oxymoron. The system of taxation and redistribution through welfare is enforced by the state's exclusive legal mandate to use violence (and if you don't believe this, then let's make taxation voluntary tomorrow and see what happens).

So, the moral argument in regards to welfare is whether it is right for the state to threaten and use violence against some people to force them to support others (whether such people are deserving or not may change the weight of the argument but not the principle).

I believe that a rational, moral society is one where families and communities look after those less fortunate than themselves. I also believe that a rational, moral society is one where no man or woman is forced to work for the benefit of another (or another's children).

I don't believe these two things are mutually exclusive, but so long as the taxation and welfare system is based on the threat of violence, it will lack any real moral mandate in my view, no matter how many heart-rending documentaries appear on TV.

Forcing people to work for someone else's benefit is slavery. The needs of others do not justify this slavery no matter how compelling that need. The only choice we have is to submit to the slavery or join the ranks of those benefiting from the corrupt welfare system. The system may make most New Zealanders feel like they are part of a 'caring society' but we should not pretend it is anything other than extortion based on the threat of violence. It is certainly not moral.