When you give politicians and their cronies a bit of a say over broadcasts, it's surprising how often their perception of fair and balanced coincides with their grasp of how the content makes them look.
Or to put it another way, politicians like to get what you pay for.
Back in the early days of broadcasting, the Government of the day took over ownership of the radio stations and the prime minister used to personally edit the single daily evening news bulletin. Naturally, the headlines delighted in his fabulous achievements.
When TV news started up it had a bit more distance, but I still recall one early evening TV news story where Prime Minister Rob Muldoon grumped at a reporter for bringing too many cameras to an interview. TV was virtually a government department, with its bosses responsible to ministers. What could possibly go wrong?
The rules were changed about the time TV3 started up and broadcasters began to proliferate.
These days NZ On Air gets a gob of taxpayers' money each year and dishes it out to producers to make TV shows about All Blacks learning to dance the conga in Tonga.
How one programme gets funded, and another misses out, is a turbid process. TV production houses swear the people making decisions are blithering fools, until decision-makers mysteriously come to their senses and fund their idea for a new show, Does my butt look big in this?, in Coro Street's old slot.
One of the chaps on the NZ On Air board, Steven McElrea, has quite a long history as a broadcast executive.
Just before the election he complained that one of the programmes they were paying to screen on TV3 was about poverty.
Now stop me if you've heard this one before, but Mr McElrea is John Key's electorate chairman. And his objection was to the politics of the broadcast - the timing of screening that content.
Do you think I'm oversensitive if I tell you that his intervention stinks of cronyism? It smells like an old fashioned political rort, like crooked banana republic village politics, for the prime minister's personal henchman to be swinging his hook into decisions about TV current affairs during the election.
Decisions about political balance on the tele are not even any of his business.
We have an outfit whose job is to decide issues of balance - the Broadcasting Standards Authority (and even it couldn't even see anything wrong with Mr Key getting his own hour-long advertisement on Radio Live in the middle of the election campaign, so it's not as if the BSA is unfavourable to the Nats.)
The more NZ On Air attempts to defend itself by arguing there is a legitimate question about when the show should air, the more vividly it reveals its misunderstanding of its role and of propriety.
So we have a battalion of blue cronies, with their little blue paws grasping a purse of your money, double-checking broadcasts to make sure they are quite blue enough.
It's dodgy as.
This morning I heard shadow finance minister Steven Joyce defaming the documentary on Mike Hosking's radio programme - calling it left wing. By this he means it discussed poverty and solutions to it. Now let's see if we can think why a senior National Party minister thinks a documentary about poverty is implicitly against his government? Hang on, if you give me a moment, I'm sure I can think of a reason.
Confronted with the shabbiness of political interference, the Minister's response was not to be appalled by indefensible behaviour, but to smear the documentary.
There is only one way they are going to repair confidence after this jack up. The board of NZ On Air have to go. They are impossibly compromised now. Not just Mr McElrea, but also his weak and compromised colleagues who failed to do the right thing when the moment called for courage.
We are too small, we have too much to do, to have political cronies misusing the power of the state to get broadcasts that favour their side.
John Pagani is a former senior adviser to past Labour leader Phil Goff and before that was a key player in Jim Anderton's Alliance team.
» Follow NZStuffBlogs on Twitter and get fast updates on all Stuff's blogs.
Sponsored links
Newest First
Oldest First
Oh, give it up. The left got busted using state funding for inappropriate propaganda in the days before the election, and you're tyring to blame the whistleblower for your lot's abuse of the system? Puh-leeeze!
I fully agree that media in New Zealand should be free to screen/print/publish/disemminate any political commentary at any time. In the lead-up to the last election TV3 seemed to take a strong pro-Labour editorial line - once again, nothing wrong with that. What I think is missing is that media outlets need to come clean about any overarching editorial line they are taking, like media in the UK do.
I don't get it, surely the impartiality of the programme is governed by the Broadcasting Standards Act, and its applicability during an election by the various legislation around electioneering broadcasts? The liability here is not NZ on Air's but TV3's for broadcasting the programme ... smells to me like NZ on Air's lost its spine somewhere: if the doco was good enough to commission, then its good enough to broadcast; end of story.
Where are we, China?
I am absolutely disgusted by the actions of Stephen McElrea, acting on behalf of the National Party. What sort of a democracy is this, when our politicians seek to suppress information before elections? How are NZers to vote without knowledge? Child poverty is a human rights issue - and to seek to suppress information about it for political motives is abhorrent, disgraceful and inhumane. I don't believe we live in a dictatorship state, so NZers deserve better than this.
Don't know what Mr McElrea is getting so po faced about. Its abunbandantly clear that the Doco (which was great BTW)had no influence on voters what so ever - the tragic election result is evidence of that. Why are they complaining? You're right Mr Pagani, its dodgy as. What's next? NZ style Fox news to promote the Nat's?
Just like the TVNZ charter was not interfering in the Nature and operation of TV in NZ? - Really?
The only concern here is was the documentary balanced? and should it have even had state funding? These questions should be asked, and while there is a place for shows to be controversial, right before an election, might not be the best time.
IMHO media in NZ is too powerful, and lacks any real accountability, With media tactics getting more like news of the world each day, I am glad the questions are being asked.
I agreed with most of the poverty doco. However the way it was presented and the timing was definately politically biased. They could have presented it by saying things like " in [date] the government (or name the minister) did something and it was bad for children, in [another date] the government did something good for children" etc instead of "in [date] National did something and it was bad for children, in [another date] the Labour did something good for children" etc or played at a more appropriate date (ie not four days before the election).
It would of been ok if the doco was balanced but it was blatantly not
It was a well researched program that had most New Zealanders (from all parties)who saw it feeling it touched a raw nerve about the issue of poverty in New Zealand. People reacted based on their compassion and empathy for others. Our conscience made us think twice about our preconceived ideas. The trouble for the National party is that even National supporters can have a conscience and be appalled with our poverty. This is a dilemna for National MP's. They need to distract their own supporters from the key issues. If a National MP can have compassion and empathy for others then you will see it in their reaction to the program and what solutions they will have to resolve the issue of poverty. If they have no conscience they will work hard to discredit, and ignore it. Bullies will attack anyone who supports a victim. Using the old boys network is just one of those methods of bullying and manipulating. Of course anyone who supported the program in anyway will be attacked, or manipulated and controlled. NZ on Air would have seen this coming. National has been showing for some time that they are made up of bullies. Muldoon was brillant at it. The tea cup scandal was again an example of National bringing undue influence or bully tactics on a government department to deal with an issue that was not in their interests. We have one of the highest child abuse and child sex abuse in the developed world and the police were spending time investigating what was said in a public place.
Not with a bang or even a whimper
You can't beat Wellington (on a good day)
'Happy' Gilmore's political career likely to be brief
Labour's crazy new energy policy
Time to call Tiwai smelter's Bluff
Is car park tax National's 'lightbulb moment'?
Backtracks on climate change cause little heat
Woman critical after being 'dragged behind car'
Bumbling Blues fail to play to bad conditions
Highlanders squander winning chance again
Bell, Root help to steady England's innings
Rain and tides could flood motorway
Jeremy Thrush called into ABs training squad
Man arrested after London attack interview
'Battery farm' puppies die in pet stores
These Tories are unbelievable. They really cannot handle any form of questioning of their policies (apparently they do have some). Joyce plays the heavy and Key plays the old 'out of the country and unavailable for comment line'. Though it is not NZOA money, we had to watch their campaign ads - made with taxpayer money - which in the case of the Nats were as full of b/s as a cattle trucks tanks.