Analysis: Newshub is a canary in the coal mine for New Zealand’s media, writes Q+A presenter Jack Tame.
For anyone with a few years in the TV news business, it has been evident for some time that times are changing.
Nothing quite matches the power of moving pictures and TV is still the best news medium for the collective experience of elections, natural disasters, breaking news, and nationally or globally significant events.
In the digital age however, linear TV does not consistently command the same audience share or revenues it once did.
At a human level, the announcement this week of Newshub’s impending closure is devastating. People’s livelihoods and futures have been thrown into profound uncertainty in unusually public circumstances.
No one is suggesting that those affected are in any way to blame for the situation – indeed, Newshub often distinguishes itself with the quality of its journalism and reportage – but economic conditions and changing audience habits make it an unsustainably unprofitable venture in the eyes of its foreign owner.
In the past, it’s quite possible a government of the day might have stepped in.
But from the first word of the Newshub proposal, the coalition government stamped out any suggestion it might intervene.
For a Prime Minister elected on a promise to cut wasteful spending and with an avowed free marketeer coalition partner, the prospect of bailing out a global media company within the first 100 days of the new government was inconceivable.
But if not now, when?
Bad news for the news - and democracy
Emotion overflows as Melissa Chan-Green and Lloyd Burr talk about the shock decision by Warner Bros Discovery. (Source: Breakfast)
As both ACT leader David Seymour and NZ First leader Winston Peters acknowledged, the loss of any national news outlet is ultimately bad for democracy.
And while Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee says she’s unconcerned about the effect on media plurality in New Zealand, Newshub’s fate cannot be separated from the broader economic woes of the news business.
So when might plurality be under threat?
In the eyes of the minister, does media plurality mean multiple outlets for each of the different traditional mediums? Or would Lee’s plurality threshold be satisfed with a singular dominant outlet in each?
Even though all media companies are endeavouring to adapt to multi-format digital models, the traditional media formats of TV/video, radio, and print are still dominated by their respective traditional players.
And although several smaller operations command meaningful audiences, few news producers in New Zealand boast newsrooms with the journalistic capacity to cover more than a few stories at once.
The Government is yet to articulate a distinct vision for the role news media should play in New Zealand, and the policy settings which might facilitate such an environment in the age of Meta and Google.
National did not publish a broadcasting policy in its election manifesto, and news bosses are waiting for the Government’s response to the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, which would force the digital giants to compensate news producers for their content.
With Newshub’s sad demise, however, it’s worth remembering that plurality isn’t the only measure by which media strengthens democracy. It cannot be good for New Zealand if our enduring news producers are struggling to survive.
The rest of the news industry remains under extraordinary pressure. Newshub may not warrant a government intervention, but it is a canary in the coal mine for an industry in peril.
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