Nobody in the media appears to be asking – why do 2 in 3 kiwis still not trust us – and more importantly, how do we win back the trust? 1News confirmed this week that even when they’re caught out (going down a rabbit hole rather than report the relevant news accurately), they dig an even bigger hole for themselves. The board chair of TVNZ was simply saying what we’re all thinking. We deserve better.
Show Script:
1News’ Spectacular Own Goal
At the end of last March, the Edelman Trust Barometer, a global study published every year revealed that while trust in media has slightly increased worldwide, trust in NZ media continues to slide.
We dropped to 35% – from 41% two years ago. (The drop they show is compared to last year). So it’s been a gradual drop over the years. 41% down to 35% in just 24 months.
But note the “global” trust rate. It’s increased! Trust in news media worldwide has actually increased on average. NZ has gone against the trend – which is a real slight on our media, isn’t it.
The month before, the 2024 Quality of Life survey was released. It’s a collaborative local government research project which is run by Ipsos – a large international polling company. In 2024, a total of just under 7,000 respondents completed the Quality of Life survey – so that’s a significant survey. They asked amongst other things about trust in media.
This large poll shows that just 27% of kiwis have some level of trust for the news media.
Just under half of us (48%) have various levels of distrust – with the remaining 25% sitting on the fence.
Five months before that (October 2024), a new survey by academics from Victoria University and University of Otago was reported, with an accompanying op-ed by the authors in EveningReport.nz.
They found that 60% of survey participants reported they sometimes, often, or almost always avoid the news.
But this total of 60% is higher than any other national figure reported in other studies. The average news avoidance across the 46 countries surveyed by Reuters was 32.6%.
The average. We’re almost double that! Yes – we have some of the highest rates of news avoidance in the world.
The most recent measurement was last April – the Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report produced by the AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) in collaboration with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism – a survey of 47 countries.
The slide continues. In 2020, 53% of New Zealanders trusted news in general. That figure is now at 32%. 21 percentage point drop. Just 1 in 3 NZ’ers trust “most of the news most of the time”. So that’s not even “fully trust”.
Nobody in the media appears to be asking – why do 2 in 3 kiwis still not trust us? – and more importantly, how do we win back the trust.
There is no better example that what we saw from 1News this week.
To recap, I did a McBlog analysis on this on Monday
https://mcblog.substack.com/p/media-wont-celebrate-drop-in-violent
A quick summary
Most of the media reported “drop in violent crime”
But 1News went for Gang members now officially outnumber police officers
Rather than report the latest data, they went down a rabbit hole to make a point – a totally different point to what most viewers could see – that victims of violent crime had dramatically dropped.
But 1News wanted you to panic that there were more gang members –
Even though gang experts say that police gang statistics have been sharply over-estimated and are inaccurate.
So here was their report. See if you see the graph about victims of violent crime, or ANY mention about 49,000 fewer victims
3 more gang members – based on figures that nobody can rely on or can guarantee.
And according to Labour, a big failure. A decent reporter would have asked the previous Minister of Police – um, this person Ginny Anderson – why the violent crime had exploded to such a number and why they were so useless at their job. You see, I don’t know if you saw but gang numbers were also apparently rising under Labour – a 50% increase during Labour’s first term in Government under Jacinda. Did the reporter mention that?
Anyway, there was obviously embarrassment about this coverage by even people in 1News. So much so that a reporter apparently rang the Police Minister Mark Mitchell to apologise, and some of the Government ministers told the 1News reporters what they thought of their “reporting”- which they’re completely entitled to do. David Seymour and Winston Peters have got this down to an art – calling out appalling news media.
So the following night, there was a follow up story – to try and present what was actually the news. The falling violent crime rate.
Apparently the statistics are “not so straightforward”.
Watch out for the massive own goal in this one.
See if they show the graph.
Look carefully at the graph they do show
And note the comment that reporting good figures is just “a golden opportunity for putting the boot in”
Oh interestingly while the previous gang story is on TVNZ’s website, they don’t seem to have published this one. How convenient. So apologies for the quality.
Did you see that graph they used
So-called reporter Benedict Collins uses a graph that changes from yearly (while Labour is in power) to either 2-monthly or 3-monthly gaps once National is in power! Yes – three different measurements on the X-axis!!
It deliberately makes the increase when National first became Government look worse. That most of the increase was National’s fault!
If 1News wanted to be – sort of – truthful, they’d include the long term trend
Which found that – not surprisingly – crime dropped during COVID, because most of us were in lockdown, but then dramatically increased. It’s part of the reason Labour got booted out of office in 2023.
They also fail to acknowledge that a change of Government & a tough-on-crime approach takes at least 6 months to take effect – if not longer.
That second graph – the Sallies State of the Nation report confirms that reported violent crimes increased 32%+ under Labour but in the most recent year it dropped to under 2% increase. That’s reported crime only – and doesn’t include victimisation where people don’t make police complaints for varying reasons.
It’s a good trend – but yes, still work to do.
Why the second story?
A TVNZ spokesperson said:
“TVNZ’s Political Editor contacted Minister Mitchell’s office the morning after the 1News gang numbers story to advise that victim-of-crime data should have been included. The story was then reviewed internally, and the editorial decision was made to run a follow-up story incorporating those figures to ensure balanced coverage and to aid audience understanding around the use of differing crime statistics. The resulting piece ran last night.
If that was to balance the coverage, I have a bridge to sell you. They cant even show a reliable graph.
But then the other media were all over the fact that politicians were calling out media for crap reporting.
Newsroom – Govt gets its wish from 1News – a headline on fewer crime victims
You mean – reporting that actual latest news accurately?
Newsroom again – TVNZ board chair rang senior minister to discuss negative coverage
Not negative coverage. Poor coverage which didn’t focus on the actual news item at hand. Even the board chair of TVNZ thought it was poor journalism. Good.
RNZ – TVNZ chair calls Paul Goldsmith after police minister dissatisfied with gang numbers story
1News themselves – Minister says TVNZ board chair raised crime story with him
It was even discussed in Parliament where the failed Labour Minister of Police Ginny Anderson was trying to catch out Mark Mitchell the current Minister of Police – and failed spectacularly
Just to show how awkward things were at TVNZ, they did yet another followup story on Wednesday night – once again, this is not posted on their website, conveniently, but here it is.
Remember – the government didn’t like the story – because it wasn’t the story. The coverage completely ignored the latest data on falling violent crime victimization.
And they talk about policy. The policy should be to report the news.
Not go down a rabbit hole with disinformation! (I enjoyed saying that)
To Mr Hipkins, if a board member of TVNZ says that TVNZ has done a crap job, TVNZ should probably listen.
1News have scored a spectacular own goal. Even when trying to remedy it, they’ve stuffed up.
Now look – it’s not only 1News that aren’t being accurate.
Over the weekend I called out the Sunday Star Times for showing this graph claiming with the heading that “voters are more likely to expect that the economy will worsen”
But if you look at the graph, only 38% (26 + 12) think it will worsen.
34% at the top think it will improve and a further 25% say it will stay the same – which is NOT worsen.
So in fact, almost 60% say it won’t worsen.
But that’s not the narrative they want to push eh.
At a time when 1News and also Stuff should be doing everything within their power to win back trust, gain credibility, show balance, accept contrary views on transgenderism, climate alarmism and Donald Trump, they’re just digging in and confirming our distrust.
And the numbers show that it’s not just right wing people turning off because it’s left wing, or left wing turning off because it’s right wing. It’s both. It’s not people who didn’t want the vaccine or climate change deniers or TERFs or white people or importers of so-called culture wars or Christian nationalists.
It’s across the board.
I think the board chair of TVNZ was simply saying what we’re all thinking.
We deserve better news.
