(Estimated reading time: 10 minutes)
Last Tuesday’s edition of my local paper, the Wairarapa Times-Age, devoted an entire page to an Associated Press (i.e. American) feature story about affluent middle-class professionals taking extended career breaks.
The people mentioned in the story are representatives of an elite US metropolitan class who can afford to put their careers on hold while they spend months enjoying a “reset” in exotic locations such as Egypt and Brazil. It’s hard to imagine a story less relevant to readers of a paper in a New Zealand provincial town where many people are struggling.
Stuff, which provides most of the content in the Times-Age, made a half-hearted and thoroughly unconvincing effort to dress up the article as something important by labelling it “The Global Read”. That it was published in the Times-Age was an insult; in fact a double insult. It was insulting to the paper’s readers first because it was a lazy way to fill space, and second because of its complete lack of empathy. People who worry about being unable to pay the grocery or electricity bill are hardly likely to relate to stories about privileged lifestyles that they could never dream of emulating.
The article lacked even the saving grace of being well written. In common with much American journalism produced by earnest university graduates, it was turgid and overlong. I couldn’t imagine a single Times-Age reader persevering to the end. Most would have given up after the first few sentences, the subject matter being only marginally more compelling than a doctoral thesis on nematodes.
For this, the small editorial staff of the Times-Age are blameless. The paper is owned by Stuff and much of its content is generic, being shared with other papers in the Stuff chain. Local (i.e. Wairarapa) input is generally restricted to three or four news pages at the front, plus letters to the editor, an occasional opinion column, some featherweight community-contributed content (the “Thought of the Day” is popular) and a bit of sport. The rest is centrally generated by Stuff and relies heavily on syndicated content from overseas providers such as the aforementioned Associated Press. The editor of the Times-Age has no control over it and his opinion of its merit is not known to me.
Stuff papers are – excuse the pun – stuffed full of content that’s shovelled into the pages with little concern for relevance and even less for attractive display. Turn the pages of any Stuff paper and you’re bound to be confronted by great slabs of dull grey type devoted to subjects of minimal interest, typically illustrated with lifeless, static pictures downloaded from an online image library. Filling the space seems the sole imperative, and Stuff’s editors appear to grab whatever happens to be available.
It’s cheap and it requires minimal effort; that seems to be Stuff’s operating model. Never mind what the readers might want. Who cares?
Let’s return to Tuesday’s Times-Age. Eager to read something interesting and relevant after the AP snorefest, readers would have turned the page to see a double-page spread, this time reproduced from Britain’s Sunday Times, about Ukraine creating underground classrooms where children can learn without the disruption caused by Russian missiles and drone attacks.
I didn’t have the patience to do a count but I would guess the story ran to at least 2000 words, which is far too much to ask of a provincial newspaper reader on a weekday morning. (Note that the original British version was published on a Sunday, when people have the luxury of time – and bear in mind that the Sunday Times is read by the leisured class.) And while the subject was interesting enough, the story could have easily been crunched down to a quarter of its length without losing any crucial information (hint: it’s called editing).
And so it continued. The following page was another grey slab – this time a wordy opinion column on aged care, accompanied by another file picture retrieved from an overseas image library. More laziness.
Further on, another two-page spread: a travel article about a remote location in Queensland. Travel pieces are a handy way of padding a newspaper with fluff. The writers are often prepared to accept a token payment because their principal reward is the free trip (or junket, in journalistic parlance).
The Wednesday paper wasn’t much better. This time, the full-page “Global Read” was about Singapore Airport’s introduction of a levy to pay for sustainable aviation fuel. Really? An entire page, in a paper serving provincial New Zealand? Couldn’t they find something a little more germane to readers’ lives and interests?
Oh, but hang on – there’s more. A few pages further on, there’s a full-page opinion piece – running, I’d guess, to about 1500 words – by a university lecturer from Leicester, England, about the potential harm done by social media. And opposite that, another full-page piece of similar length by another university academic, this time an Australian-based American writing about cyber crime.
Most readers of the Times-Age will have flicked over these pages with barely a pause because they offered nothing to lure them in. The vital principle that a successful newspaper reflects its community appears to have been forgotten or ignored.
Thursday’s paper brought yet another double-page spread, again from the purveyors of stodge at Associated Press, about an American man raising twin boys with autism. It was labelled with the tag line “In depth”, as if that magically made it something people in provincial New Zealand would want to read about. And on the following page, an opinion piece by a University of Auckland academic about slavery laws. Academics, like freelance travel writers, are a handy source of cheap copy because they’re keen to get published and in their case, the taxpayer picks up the tab because the writers are on the public payroll.
This is a rip-off worthy of the attention of Consumer magazine. People in the Wairarapa (and come to that, in Wellington and the Manawatu and the Waikato and Christchurch and Timaru and Nelson and Invercargill too, all of whom get served the same dross by their local Stuff papers) don’t buy their daily paper to read wordy articles by academic non-entities about subjects far removed from readers’ real-life interests and concerns.
Another “In depth” piece on Friday – from The Times of London – was a dispatch from Greenland about how Donald Trump is making the locals nervous. Again, a legitimate subject – but two pages? And further back in the paper, another two pages devoted to newly released movies that may never be screened in the Wairarapa.
People pay good money for their paper. They deserve better than to be presented with pretend newspapers that contain barely a skerrick of hard news. Every one of those esoteric non-stories occupied precious space that in a previous era would have been filled with content of genuine interest and value; information vital to the functioning of informed communities. Even as recently as 10 years ago, no self-respecting paper would have wasted space on them.
To use a biblical analogy, we’re being fed lots of chaff but precious little wheat. Even the few supposed news pages come up short. In seven years as a news editor on daily papers, I always held to the view that on a typical day there were probably about half a dozen stories of such national interest and importance that they had to be in the paper. They might be stories about politics, crime, business takeovers, fires and fatal car accidents or whatever. You could be confident that if you read a daily paper in any of the major cities or provincial centres, you’d be informed about them. And if you didn't see them, by definition you were not well informed.
That operating principle was abandoned years ago. News coverage is now a random, hit-and-miss affair. You might read about a major event or you might not. We literally don’t know what we’re missing. Vast areas of the country are black holes; we hear virtually nothing about them. (The demise of the New Zealand Press Association, which used to ensure that all news of significance from anywhere in the country was promptly distributed nationwide, is a separate tragedy of its own.)
The American journalist Walter Lippman once said that without the news media, we would live in an invisible society; we wouldn’t know anything. We haven’t quite reached that point, but we’re heading in that direction. We know less about ourselves than at any time since the emergence of the popular press in the 19th century.
In place of news, we now get bulky opinion pieces from Stuff journalists. Too often they take a partisan political or ideological line. The short, sharp, punchy news story, which previous generations of reporters could write in their sleep and once filled papers, is virtually extinct.
In the case of Stuff papers, there’s a disproportionate preponderance of content from the Press. The Christchurch paper has become the engine room of the Stuff chain, with the result that Stuff papers carry a lot of Christchurch news that’s of zero interest to readers elsewhere.
Obituaries? Don’t get me started. I frequently see full-page obits for Americans and Brits whom most Stuff readers will have never heard of. The deaths of notable New Zealanders, meanwhile, pass unnoticed.
I could go on. I haven’t mentioned the pages devoted to soft, lifestyle-oriented content that used to be the preserve of glossy magazines: articles about gardening, interior design, food, fashion and relationships. The Times-Age, like other Stuff papers, also devotes acres of space to movies and TV shows that most people will never watch. In the days when everyone viewed the same free-to-air television, stories about programmes and personalities made sense. Not so, however, when most TV content is streamed on subscription platforms and viewing patterns have become hopelessly fragmented.
A few of the Stuff journalists who edit all this generic copy (if editing is the appropriate word, given that much of it is lifted holus-bolus, headlines and all, from other sources) are old enough to remember when newspapers were full of stuff that mattered. I can’t imagine all of them are happy to be processing editorial content whose sole purpose is to fill space.
It seems hard to believe that with its resources, Stuff can’t present the readers of its papers with a more compelling editorial product. I’m therefore forced to the conclusion that the company is run by people who don’t care much about newspapers and may even regard them as a tiresome anachronism that they would rather be rid of. I get the impression print readers are deemed far less important than those who “consume content” – a hideous phrase – online (Stuff owner Sinead Boucher was an early convert to digital).
How have we come to this? That’s a long, sad story that can wait for another time. Suffice it to say that newspapers were hit by a digital technology revolution that fatally undermined their profitability, and their decline was hastened by owners who were panicked into doing the wrong things – such as making content available free online.
The strange thing, in view of all the foregoing, is that I still value the Times-Age enough to keep paying my subscription. Reading it with my first coffee of the day, although it takes far less time than it once did, is a morning ritual. But more than that, the local paper – even in its tragically feeble and eviscerated state – is still a valuable means of keeping communities connected. With a bit more care and commitment from their apparently indifferent owner, Stuff papers might yet avoid the inevitable fate that otherwise confronts them.
Saturday, February 21, 2026
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Will a new RNZ board stop the rot?
The Treasury has publicly advertised vacancies on the RNZ board for a new chair and two “governors” (I presume that means directors). The appointees will replace current chair Jim Mather and board members Jane Wrightson and Irene Gardiner, all of whom were installed during the term of the Ardern government. All three are well-connected Wellington insiders who were never going to upset the status quo by insisting RNZ fulfil its obligation to cater to a wider audience than the privileged “progressive” class – I use the inverted commas deliberately – from which the state broadcaster draws its core support. The question now is whether the government will appoint people willing and able to do the job the current board clearly had no interest in tackling.
The advertisement for candidates is notable for its use of the word “trust”. It mentions that RNZ “plays a vital role in fostering a strong national identity through trusted journalism, current affairs, and cultural programming”. Later, it says applicants should have an understanding of “media and public sector dynamics, public trust, and audience engagement”.
Trust has emerged as a crucial issue for media credibility. Judging by the wording of the ad, it seems to be assumed that RNZ enjoys wide public trust, but that’s not necessarily the case. While RNZ can claim to be the “most trusted” New Zealand news source, according to a 2025 survey conducted by the Auckland University of Technology, it’s merely the best of a bad lot. RNZ was given an average score of six out of 10, zero being not at all trustworthy and 10 being beyond reproach. So barely a pass mark.
RNZ itself published a piece by the authors of the AUT report noting that New Zealanders’ overall trust in the news had declined “precipitously” – from 58 per cent to 32 per cent over the past five years. Mather, who has chaired the RNZ board since 2018 (in other words, a period coinciding with that decline), acknowledged in RNZ’s annual report that trust in the media had been shaken globally and said it was incumbent on public media, in particular, to address this.
The AUT survey also revealed that despite generous taxpayer funding and the great marketing advantage of not being encumbered by crass, intrusive advertising, RNZ trails well behind its private-sector competitors in the news business. Last year it was the sixth most popular news source in New Zealand, lagging behind Stuff, TVNZ, the New Zealand Herald and even Facebook and YouTube. That indicates there’s a lot of ground to gain. Trust could (and should) be a vital factor in winning back all those New Zealanders who have turned sour on the media.
So what is RNZ doing to rebuild public confidence? Er, not a lot. It signalled last month, when it announced the appointment of John Campbell as co-host of its flagship news and current affairs programme Morning Report, that it was wilfully blind to mounting public concerns about political bias in the media and the tendency in recent years to blur the lines between news and opinion, of which Campbell is a master practitioner. RNZ either didn’t grasp or chose to ignore (either is inexcusable, but it was far more likely the latter) the reality that Campbell is a polarising figure who has done nothing to disguise his political leanings, and in particular his dislike for the government that his fellow New Zealanders chose to elect in 2023.
The advertisement for candidates is notable for its use of the word “trust”. It mentions that RNZ “plays a vital role in fostering a strong national identity through trusted journalism, current affairs, and cultural programming”. Later, it says applicants should have an understanding of “media and public sector dynamics, public trust, and audience engagement”.
Trust has emerged as a crucial issue for media credibility. Judging by the wording of the ad, it seems to be assumed that RNZ enjoys wide public trust, but that’s not necessarily the case. While RNZ can claim to be the “most trusted” New Zealand news source, according to a 2025 survey conducted by the Auckland University of Technology, it’s merely the best of a bad lot. RNZ was given an average score of six out of 10, zero being not at all trustworthy and 10 being beyond reproach. So barely a pass mark.
RNZ itself published a piece by the authors of the AUT report noting that New Zealanders’ overall trust in the news had declined “precipitously” – from 58 per cent to 32 per cent over the past five years. Mather, who has chaired the RNZ board since 2018 (in other words, a period coinciding with that decline), acknowledged in RNZ’s annual report that trust in the media had been shaken globally and said it was incumbent on public media, in particular, to address this.
The AUT survey also revealed that despite generous taxpayer funding and the great marketing advantage of not being encumbered by crass, intrusive advertising, RNZ trails well behind its private-sector competitors in the news business. Last year it was the sixth most popular news source in New Zealand, lagging behind Stuff, TVNZ, the New Zealand Herald and even Facebook and YouTube. That indicates there’s a lot of ground to gain. Trust could (and should) be a vital factor in winning back all those New Zealanders who have turned sour on the media.
So what is RNZ doing to rebuild public confidence? Er, not a lot. It signalled last month, when it announced the appointment of John Campbell as co-host of its flagship news and current affairs programme Morning Report, that it was wilfully blind to mounting public concerns about political bias in the media and the tendency in recent years to blur the lines between news and opinion, of which Campbell is a master practitioner. RNZ either didn’t grasp or chose to ignore (either is inexcusable, but it was far more likely the latter) the reality that Campbell is a polarising figure who has done nothing to disguise his political leanings, and in particular his dislike for the government that his fellow New Zealanders chose to elect in 2023.
Coming immediately before the start of an election year, when the quality and fairness of political journalism will be under intense scrutiny, his appointment should be seen as an act of provocation and defiance - not so much against the government (since journalists in a liberal democracy owe governments no loyalty), but more importantly against the many thousands of New Zealanders who, like me, were once RNZ devotees but gave up listening because they felt they could no longer rely on it to be fair, balanced and impartial. To that I might add … and also against the millions of New Zealanders whose taxes pay for RNZ but who never listen to it, and indeed may not even realise it exists, because for decades it has ignored them, preferring to position itself as a bastion of cultural privilege. (I will here insert my usual qualification to the effect that there are people at RNZ, including some journalists, whom I respect, and who I believe do their jobs conscientiously and professionally. This article is not about them.)
The New Year brought fresh evidence of RNZ’s disregard for basic principles of editorial balance and impartiality. A story broadcast on January 3 noted that there had been a 37 percent increase in the number of abortions – up from 12,948 to 17,785 – since the few remaining legal impediments were lifted in 2020.
This was presented as a benign, indeed positive, trend. The sole source quoted in RNZ’s story was Dr Simon Snook, whom the lobby group Voice for Life identifies as the man who set up the 0800 Dial-an-Abortion service and has spent years lobbying for an increase in the number of abortion facilities around the country.
Snook’s own company, Magma Healthcare, provides medical abortions through a service funded by Health New Zealand (i.e. the taxpayer). It’s hardly surprising, then, that he put the best possible spin on the surge in abortion numbers, saying it reflected "improved access to care" rather than an increase in demand.
Referring to the tendency for women to obtain medical (i.e. drug-induced) abortions rather than invasive surgical ones, Snook was reported as saying: “I think what we are seeing now is people who previously would have wanted an abortion and couldn’t get one for their own reasons are now getting it. We are getting the abortion numbers correct for the country’s need.”
To quote a celebrated line from Mandy Rice Davies of Profumo scandal fame, “He would say that, wouldn’t he?” Of course Snook is going to spruik an increase in the number of abortions as a good thing. No doubt he would argue that he’s approaching the issue from a position of sympathy for women, but there’s no getting around the fact that it's good for his business. That doesn’t rule him out as a legitimate source, but his credibility needs to be judged in terms of his vested interest in the lucrative abortion business.
A competent, fair-minded reporter would have recognised this and sought to balance the story with comment from someone with a different perspective on the abortion trend. Failing that, someone further up the editorial chain should have insisted on it.
After all, it’s not hard: Voice for Life, the country’s main anti-abortion lobby group, has been around for decades. It has a website with an email address for media inquiries. And it’s not as if VFL is some lunatic fringe group: it tells me it has 30 branches, more than 8000 newsletter subscribers and more than 14,000 followers on social media. (I’m not a member, although my views on abortion are reasonably well known.)
Here’s the thing. Setting aside personal views, abortion remains a highly contentious and divisive issue in New Zealand. Responsible editorial decision-makers would recognise that and realise that any story on the subject calls for balance. RNZ failed that elementary test. Small wonder that VFL described the RNZ story as “a shocking example of woefully biased pro-abortion propaganda, where one of the very people who should be held accountable by the media for the massive increase in abortions is effectively allowed to wave away the harm he has actively contributed to by claiming this increase in harm is a good thing”.
Of course VFL’s statement didn’t get published. Journalists now routinely ignore people whose opinions they disagree with. This became especially noticeable during the term of the Ardern government, when lobby groups dissenting from ideological orthodoxy valiantly kept pushing out media statements knowing they were doomed to languish unseen.
There’s a striking contrast here with previous generations of reporters who went out of their way to seek and report opinions and statements that they often heartily disagreed with. That the current generation doesn’t bother – in fact is often taught by journalism tutors that there’s no need for impartiality and balance – is a prime reason why trust in journalism has collapsed.
It needs to be stated repeatedly that RNZ, as a publicly funded news organisation, has a special obligation to be neutral and balanced; to publish stories that reflect the diversity of public opinion rather than those that conveniently correspond with its journalists’ own views. Mather's statement seemed to tacitly acknowledge that public media operate to different criteria from their private competitors. Companies such as Stuff and NZME (publisher of the Herald) can make their own rules, as long as they’re willing to risk consequences such as loss of trust and declining readership. RNZ (and TVNZ, but let’s not go there) has no such latitude.
Will the new appointees to the RNZ board recognise all this and do something about it, or will they meekly accept advice from RNZ functionaries that editorial practices are an operational matter, therefore none of their concern, and sit uselessly and impotently on their hands? We shall see.
The New Year brought fresh evidence of RNZ’s disregard for basic principles of editorial balance and impartiality. A story broadcast on January 3 noted that there had been a 37 percent increase in the number of abortions – up from 12,948 to 17,785 – since the few remaining legal impediments were lifted in 2020.
This was presented as a benign, indeed positive, trend. The sole source quoted in RNZ’s story was Dr Simon Snook, whom the lobby group Voice for Life identifies as the man who set up the 0800 Dial-an-Abortion service and has spent years lobbying for an increase in the number of abortion facilities around the country.
Snook’s own company, Magma Healthcare, provides medical abortions through a service funded by Health New Zealand (i.e. the taxpayer). It’s hardly surprising, then, that he put the best possible spin on the surge in abortion numbers, saying it reflected "improved access to care" rather than an increase in demand.
Referring to the tendency for women to obtain medical (i.e. drug-induced) abortions rather than invasive surgical ones, Snook was reported as saying: “I think what we are seeing now is people who previously would have wanted an abortion and couldn’t get one for their own reasons are now getting it. We are getting the abortion numbers correct for the country’s need.”
To quote a celebrated line from Mandy Rice Davies of Profumo scandal fame, “He would say that, wouldn’t he?” Of course Snook is going to spruik an increase in the number of abortions as a good thing. No doubt he would argue that he’s approaching the issue from a position of sympathy for women, but there’s no getting around the fact that it's good for his business. That doesn’t rule him out as a legitimate source, but his credibility needs to be judged in terms of his vested interest in the lucrative abortion business.
A competent, fair-minded reporter would have recognised this and sought to balance the story with comment from someone with a different perspective on the abortion trend. Failing that, someone further up the editorial chain should have insisted on it.
After all, it’s not hard: Voice for Life, the country’s main anti-abortion lobby group, has been around for decades. It has a website with an email address for media inquiries. And it’s not as if VFL is some lunatic fringe group: it tells me it has 30 branches, more than 8000 newsletter subscribers and more than 14,000 followers on social media. (I’m not a member, although my views on abortion are reasonably well known.)
Here’s the thing. Setting aside personal views, abortion remains a highly contentious and divisive issue in New Zealand. Responsible editorial decision-makers would recognise that and realise that any story on the subject calls for balance. RNZ failed that elementary test. Small wonder that VFL described the RNZ story as “a shocking example of woefully biased pro-abortion propaganda, where one of the very people who should be held accountable by the media for the massive increase in abortions is effectively allowed to wave away the harm he has actively contributed to by claiming this increase in harm is a good thing”.
Of course VFL’s statement didn’t get published. Journalists now routinely ignore people whose opinions they disagree with. This became especially noticeable during the term of the Ardern government, when lobby groups dissenting from ideological orthodoxy valiantly kept pushing out media statements knowing they were doomed to languish unseen.
There’s a striking contrast here with previous generations of reporters who went out of their way to seek and report opinions and statements that they often heartily disagreed with. That the current generation doesn’t bother – in fact is often taught by journalism tutors that there’s no need for impartiality and balance – is a prime reason why trust in journalism has collapsed.
It needs to be stated repeatedly that RNZ, as a publicly funded news organisation, has a special obligation to be neutral and balanced; to publish stories that reflect the diversity of public opinion rather than those that conveniently correspond with its journalists’ own views. Mather's statement seemed to tacitly acknowledge that public media operate to different criteria from their private competitors. Companies such as Stuff and NZME (publisher of the Herald) can make their own rules, as long as they’re willing to risk consequences such as loss of trust and declining readership. RNZ (and TVNZ, but let’s not go there) has no such latitude.
Will the new appointees to the RNZ board recognise all this and do something about it, or will they meekly accept advice from RNZ functionaries that editorial practices are an operational matter, therefore none of their concern, and sit uselessly and impotently on their hands? We shall see.
(Footnote: The original version of this article has been slightly tweaked to insert a new point and clarify an earlier one.)