Media mania
Calls for a media diversity royal commission aim for a monoculture of left-wing leader worship, epitomised by the Cult of Ardern in New Zealand. By Nick Cater.
A recent report by Media Diversity Australia, for example, voiced its concern about the narrowness of the gene pool from which TV news presenters were drawn.
Nineteen out of 20 come from European stock, apparently. As if that is not shocking enough, “almost 76 per cent of those on Australian screens were found to have an Anglo-Celtic background”, reports the ABC, where diversity is defined by the colour of one’s skin rather than the content of one’s politics.
Will experts from Ancestry.com be hauled before the Rudd inquiry to identify samples of DNA? Probably not. For Rudd, diversity appears to mean conformity. He wants a diversity of players who adhere to the consensus of intelligent right-thinking people; that is, left-leaning elitists who think like him.
Rudd may or may not be as smart as he thinks he is, but he is certainly smart enough to know that his complaints about the concentration of media ownership cannot be taken seriously.
News Corp’s first sin, according to Kevin Rudd’s petition to parliament, is that it owns too many newspapers. Its second sin is that it recently closed “more than 200” titles (36, actually). It’s like the two ladies at lunch in the old New York gag. “The food here is terrible,” says one. “And such small portions,” replies the other.
In the eyes of the new bunyip aristocracy, News Corp’s real sin is insubordination, the irritating habit of its journalists to ask the question, “says who?”.
It is their stubborn refusal to accept the conventional wisdom without making a fuss that irks them most, the determination to look at the world through different eyes, principally those of the readers.
The media paradise Rudd craves looks somewhat like New Zealand, where inoffensive newspapers compete for drabness and commentators are all but united in adoration of Jacinda Ardern.
You’ll struggle to read a word of dissent in the four daily newspapers. Mike Hosking and some of his fellow presenters are prepared to break from the pack at Newstalk ZB, but that’s it. Retired ZB host Leighton Smith remains in the fray as a podcaster and columnist but, when it comes to broadcast media, Hosking is Alan Jones, Chris Kenny, Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and Paul Murray rolled into one.
The only hint of irritation at the Prime Minister’s weekly press conference is that she isn’t running fast enough with her agenda of “transformational change”, the umbrella term for the righting of social injustices, including those yet to be invented.
Ardern’s decision to hold a referendum on the legalisation of cannabis was widely praised as another step on the path to sainthood. The proposal was rejected by 51.6 per cent of voters, prompting this exchange.
Media: “In terms of governing for all New Zealanders, you do have 48.4 per cent of New Zealanders who did vote for legalised cannabis.”
PM: “And the majority who didn’t, and so we have to be mindful of that, too.”
Media: “But you’ve promised to govern for all of those New Zealanders, including the 48.4 per cent who did … there is an appetite among an enormous section of the population for something. And obviously the referendum did fail, but it doesn’t mean … ”
Can we assume that because 48.9 per cent of Americans didn’t vote for Joe Biden, Donald Trump can stay in the White House? Or does the ballot only count when the left is winning?
Those with a more sophisticated understanding of liberal democracy than “Media” (the generic name ascribed to journalists in the transcript, presumably because they are all of one mind) may be feeling a little queasy.
A Prime Minister who tells voters she chose politics because it was a profession that “would make me feel I was making a difference”, and holds an absolute majority in the parliament’s only chamber, is an accident waiting to happen. An independent media should be the first responders in such circumstances, ready to erect barriers in the path of the Prime Minister, should she swerve across the line.
Yet the press pack are not merely on the bus, they are telling her how to drive it.
New Zealand’s small population and splendid isolation are part of the explanation for the enfeeblement of its media. Ardern’s sledgehammer response to the COVID-19 pandemic hastened the decline.
In May, Nine Entertainment let go of the newspapers it inherited from Fairfax, The Dominion Post, The Press and The Sunday Star-Times, for $1 to a company that goes by the name of Stuff. It seems like a bargain given the copy of the Post at the newsstand will set you back $2.90, hardly a vote of confidence in the future of NZ media.
Yet market size is only part of the explanation. It doesn’t explain why, for example, in a country split politically down the middle, 100 per cent of daily newspapers and virtually every TV and radio station stand proudly with Ardern.
We can only conclude that commercial logic no longer applies. Media companies are no longer driven by the pursuit of unserved segments in the market. It’s not the product that is faulty but the customer. When commercially minded proprietors leave the building, the journalists take charge. They are university-educated professionals cut from the same narcissistic cloth as Ardern. They, too, want to feel like they are making a difference.
With the collapse of NZ’s Fourth Estate it is difficult to see what might stop Ardernism becoming the country’s official religion. The National Party is in no position to offer effective political opposition. The party that reinvented credible government in NZ is bruised from two defeats, uncertain who should lead or in what direction it should head.
Intellectual opposition is all but extinguished in the universities, but still flickers on in alternative media, blogs, websites and YouTube channels, which serve as a faint beacon of dissent.
Is this what Rudd seeks? The last thing a country needs is a prime minister basking in applause who switches on the news and finds herself staring at the mirror.