Do you trust the media? New research by AUT reveals an ongoing and rapid decline in trust, with only 45% of kiwis still trusting the legacy media. More than half of kiwis do NOT trust our media.
The report, by Auckland University of Technology’s journalism, media and democracy centre, showed nationwide trust in the media had fallen from 53 per cent in 2020, to 45 per cent in 2022.
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One of the study’s co-authors, AUT senior lecturer Dr Merja Myllylahti said a major reason for the decline in trust, and increase of aggression and attacks on journalists, was a perceived link between the media and the government.
“The general trust in the government has declined, and we now have funding of the news by the government, so a lot of people perceive that the media is in the government’s pocket,” she said.
“One major answer that we got from our respondents was that bias and opinion should be kept out of the news.’
We believe much of this decline is happening because many kiwis can see for themselves the extreme bias coming from a woke media, and their selective use of information to support certain “progressive” agendas. Many people also believe the media has mostly become a marketing & PR department for the Government.
Instead of reporting the news and presenting facts, the media has increasingly become activists for woke agendas, pushing opinions instead of facts, trying to control the narrative. There is rarely any balanced or informative reporting.
Of course we’ve seen this media bias first-hand on many issues, but particularly during the 2000 cannabis referendum, and the recent debate on the ‘conversion therapy’ ban. Analysis of both these political events proved “extreme bias” from our mainstream media. This is deeply concerning that our media is actively trying to sway the results of important social issues and political outcomes. We must pushback by switching off from such biased ‘news’ platforms.
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