Budget 2025: More money for journalists, less for RNZ
Photo:
RNZ / Diego Opatowski
The government is putting more money into hiring local journalists, but cutting Radio New Zealand's (RNZ) budget.
Budget 2025 includes $6.4 million over four years to hire journalists in heartland New Zealand for reporting on councils and courts.
Minister for Media and Communications Paul Goldsmith said the funding will help communities stay informed and hold decision-makers to account.
"It will get funding into regional newsrooms so that more local frontline journalists can report on the things that matter to their audiences."
The money will expand two existing programmes -
Local Democracy Reporting
and
Open Justice
- which the minister said had an emphasis on "reporting, rather than opinion".
At the same time, RNZ will have its budget cut by $18m over four years - $4.6m a year - around 7 percent of its current $67m allocation.
Goldsmith said the savings would recognise that government-funded media needed to deliver the same efficiency and value as the rest of the public sector.
"I expect RNZ to improve audience reach, trust and transparency. I am confident the organisation can do so while operating in a period of tightened fiscal constraint."
The minister said RNZ had had funding increases in recent years, including a $26m boost in 2023 and $7.3m in 2020.
In a statement, RNZ board chair Jim Mather said the organisation was "naturally disappointed" but it "acknowledged the government's fiscal challenges at present as well as the headwinds affecting the wider media sector".
RNZ will review its plans.
Away from funding allocation, Goldsmith said he was considering submissions on media reform. He would have more information in the "coming months".
The minister said media were facing significant challenges and needed modern legislation to keep the sector financially sustainable.
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