A recent Dominion Post
column of mine headlined “Dinosaur versus Dominatrix” (reproduced on this site),
about an on-air clash between Kim Hill and Don Brash, brought a couple of
old-school broadcasting grandees out of the woodwork.
Ian Johnstone, a familiar face on TV screens from the 1960s
till the 1990s, and Geoffrey Whitehead, a former BBC deputy political editor
who became CEO of Radio New Zealand and now lives in retirement in Napier, both
had a whack at me for criticising Hill’s hostile demolition job on Brash.
Both seemed to think that unleashing RNZ’s most aggressive
interviewer against Brash, for the sin of criticising Morning Report’s Guyon Espiner over his use of the Maori language,
was a perfectly legitimate thing for the state broadcaster to do.
I haven’t responded to either of my critics until now
because more important things – family and holidays – have occupied my
attention. But before I get on to Johnstone and Whitehead, there are a couple
of points to be made about the furore that arose from Brash’s Facebook post
about Espiner.
Was it a storm in a teacup, as the leftist comedian Jeremy
Elwood (“leftist” and “comedian” are virtually synonymous these days) disingenuously
wrote in a column? Yes, it was. But it was the Left that whipped up the storm,
and it did so for a reason. It seized on Brash’s objection to the use of te reo
on RNZ and turned it into a rallying point in the ongoing culture war between
“progressives” and conservatives.
That’s the wider context in which the debate played out, and
it explains the ferocity of the reaction against Brash. The aim was to make an
example of him: to inflict such bruising punishment that opponents of the Left’s
identity politics agenda would be fearful about the consequences of speaking
out in future.
Kim Hill’s overtly hostile “interview” [sic] with Brash was
part of this response, which brings me back to Johnstone and Whitehead. These
two men clearly regard themselves as lofty guardians of the public broadcasting
heritage and see it as their duty to correct those of us who, for reasons of ignorance,
malice or political misguidedness, don’t properly appreciate it.
Johnstone wrote a piece in the Dominion Post in which he defended Hill's confrontation with Brash as “lively,
challenging and entertaining”. It didn’t surprise me that he approved.
Johnstone is a genteel old Leftie – too genteel by far to have attempted a
Hill-style demolition job when he was still a broadcaster himself, but I’ve no
doubt he would have quietly applauded. Brash’s neoliberalism would be anathema
to him.
Johnstone adopted a patronising tone toward me, wagging a
finger at me for my “comical hyperbole”. Here was the seasoned broadcasting
veteran patiently explaining, for the benefit of the irksome johnny-come-lately
(hell, I’ve been in the media for only 50 years – what would I know?), that
what Hill did to Brash fell within the finest traditions of public
broadcasting.
Strangely, he wrote of me: “I guess what he’d really like to
say, but dare not, is that he thinks too many RNZ staff are ‘Left-leaning’.” I
can’t imagine why Johnstone would think I dare not say that, seeing I’ve been
saying it for years, but let me say it again, unequivocally. I not only think many RNZ staff are left-leaning; I
know they are, because I know many of
them personally and know their political views.
It’s virtually imprinted in the DNA of public broadcasting
organisations that they lean to the left. One of the reasons people seek work
with state broadcasting organisations is that they distrust capitalism and the
profit motive, and regard state-owned media as pure and untainted. And since
like attracts like, there evolves a self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing monoculture.
That’s true of RNZ just as it is of the BBC, Australia’s ABC and National
Public Radio in the United States (all of which I listen to).
This becomes a problem only if RNZ employees allow their
political views to influence their work. Many of them don’t, and I respect them
for it, but others make no attempt to disguise their political leanings. (I
note that Finlay Macdonald, whose wife Carol Hirschfeld is RNZ’s head of content,
recently used the RNZ website a to write a piece gleefully rubbing the National
Party’s nose in the dirt over the
election outcome. It doesn’t say much for RNZ’s, Hirschfeld’s or Macdonald’s
ethics that this cosy nepotistic arrangement is permitted, but it certainly
says something about the political ethos of what is supposed to be a neutral
organisation.)
Back to Johnstone. He rebukes me for saying that RNZ no
longer regards its job as being to serve all New Zealanders, and he asks rhetorically
whether I hear its daily news reports from all over the country, as if these
contradict my argument. Well yes, I do, but they don’t prove a thing. RNZ
generally – generally – plays with a
straight bat when it comes to news reportage, and I’ve praised it in the past
for adhering to journalism values that have largely been abandoned by other
news organisations. The country would be much the poorer without RNZ’s news
bulletins. But news reports are just a small part of what RNZ does, and
Johnstone can’t expect to get away with the trick of cherry-picking his
evidence to suit his argument.
The political taint that permeates much of what RNZ does is
found elsewhere – in current affairs and magazine-style interviews and discussion programmes, in
the subjects and interviewees selected, in the slant of the questions asked and
the stance (either sympathetic or hostile) of the presenter, and in so-called
“debates” that are anything but, because only people with views that are deemed
acceptable (and who all conveniently agree with each other) are invited to take
part.
Even then the picture is far from uniform across all of RNZ,
because some of its programmes (Nine to
Noon, for instance, and Morning
Report, at least most of the time) are generally even-handed. I have huge regard for Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan.
I would never subject RNZ to blanket condemnation, because
it continues to do a lot of things very well and conscientiously. In a moment
of cultural sensitivity, I once labelled it a national taonga. But to those like
Johnstone who insist that RNZ caters for all New Zealanders, I can only ask why
so many people I know – intelligent, informed people with a keen interest in
politics, society and culture – have long since given up listening to it because they object to the relentless political and ideological spin. They
ask me why I still bother, and I reply that I listen to RNZ because it it’s my
right to listen to RNZ and to expect it to adhere to its charter. I’m a part-owner
of it, after all, and my taxes help pay the salaries of its employees. Call me
bloody-minded, call me naïve, but if more New Zealanders, rather than giving up
and switching to NewstalkZB or Radio Live, listened to RNZ and insisted that it
cater to a true cross-section of tastes and political views, as is their right,
perhaps it would feel obliged to lift its game.
As it is, RNZ will of course continue to be defended by people
like Johnstone and Whitehead. They have spent their lives in public
broadcasting and regard RNZ’s pervasive soft-Left bias and uncritical embrace of "progressive" causes as the natural order of
things.
