The Detail: Kiwi journos tackling issue of distrust in NZ media
Photo:
Davina Zimmer
There's been a lot of discussion over recent years on the lack of public trust in institutions and the levels of disinformation.
The issues increasingly concern media organisations, as they watch the levels of trust in their work slide.
While the latest figures show
that slide may have been arrested
, that's a bit like saying the floodwaters have stopped rising - there's still a flood to clean up.
RNZ head of podcasts Tim Watkin is one media executive tasked with serious research to work out how to restore trust in journalism. He spent three months at the University of Glasgow's philosophy department and, on
The Detail
, shares what he's learnt and what he's telling RNZ's top brass needs to be done.
"If we actually can't trust the information around us, then it is potentially at least society-threatening, democracy-threatening, if not species-damaging," he says.
"This is really important stuff, so I think we have to fix this. We have to wrestle with it, we have to make it a priority."
This isn't the first era historically where trust in news outlets has been poor.
Watkin says, while we are stretching our trust muscles so thin these days, living our lives online and more disconnected from face-to-face transactions, journalism has been in this place before - and has won back trust.
"A hundred years ago... the propaganda out of World War I really had the public sceptical about what they could believe.
"That was the yellow press era, the rise of the tabloids in the UK and the US... [people were] just making stuff up, crazy stories."
Like this one
.
"Through the late 1800s in particular and early 1900s, there was a real problem with trust in media. Journalism has often been unreliable, for most of its time in existence, but in the 20th century, journalism really buckled down and earnt trust.
"If you go back 50 years, the trust stats were way higher than they are now."
Watkin tells
The Detail
about the importance of a discipline of objectivity to show people journalists can take themselves out of the story to avoid bias - and the pressures that have tempted the media to push the boundaries between facts and opinion.
Richard Sutherland is a media executive who's worked in several big New Zealand newsrooms - he's currently back at RNZ, but later this year, he will travel to Estonia to do an MA in Disinformation and Societal Resilience.
"There's a lot of disinformation out there and what are you going to do?" he says. "Shrug your hands up and go, 'There's no point fighting back against it', or do you go, 'We've got to work out how do deal with this'.".
Why Estonia? Well, it's a western-facing country with an English-language course in combating disinformation, which is of special interest to the nation.
Sutherland says Estonia is an interesting case study in rebuilding a country from the ground up, after the break-up of the Soviet Union. There was a recognition in 2007 that Russia was flooding the place with disinformation and, as a result, a decision was made to teach school children media literacy from a very early age.
New Zealand, he suggests, perhaps doesn't see this issue through the same urgent lens, after being isolated by geography for years from war tearing down our cities or real sectarian violence. He says, while 100 years ago, that may have given us a degree of protection, it doesn't any more.
"The internet means the bad actor can be sitting 12,000 miles away and still have an impact on you. These guys know what it's like when things are bad, they don't want to go back.
"In the 1940s, there was a great mass deportation of people from Estonia and the other Baltic states. Tens of thousands of people were shipped off to Siberia and most of them never came back, so every family now has a story about a great uncle or a grandmother or a grandfather shipped off by the Russians to Siberia, and never returned.
"When you have that kind of theme running through your national story, it focuses your mind on, 'Well, we did that once, we didn't like it and we're not going back'.
"The disinformation piece the Estonians are working on is very much based on that."
Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail
here
.
You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on
or following us on
.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
17 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Live: High schools close as teachers hold one-day strike
Live: High schools close as teachers take to picket lines Striking teachers at Wellinton Railway Station. Photo: RNZ/ John Gerritsen Thousands of secondary school teachers are walking off the job after stalled collective agreement negotiations with the government. Teachers were offered a one percent pay increase which their union, the PPTA, says is insulting. However, the government is highly critical of the industrial action, calling it "a political stunt", "deeply unfair" and premeditated on the union's part. Follow updates with RNZ's live blog at the top of this page.
Otago Daily Times
an hour ago
- Otago Daily Times
'Frustration starting to kick in': High schools close as teachers go on strike
Image: RNZ Thousands of secondary school teachers are striking on Wednesday, over stalled collective agreement negotiations. The action has forced many high schools to close. The Post Primary Teachers' Association says the government's offer of a 1 percent pay rise every year for three years is the lowest in a generation. Higher salaries were needed to attract and retain teachers, especially amid NCEA reforms, the union said. It's planning more industrial action that will involve schools rostering students home from the middle of next month, if the negotiations make no progress. Education Minister Erica Stanford says progress was made in recent mediation, but she could not provide details. 'Frustration starting to kick in' Public Service Minister Judith Collins has apologised and said she mixed up her messaging after earlier claiming high school teachers with 10 years' experience could earn $147,000. One of the teachers baffled by Collins' initial claim was Kiwibank's Local Hero of the Year, maths educator Subash Chandar K, also known as Infinity Plus One. Subash Chandar K says teachers love being in the classroom but they also have a lot of extra demands piled on to them. Photo: Supplied He told First Up he was earning $103,000 and wondered if he was being "short-changed". Chandar believed Collins might have been referring to principals or associate principals with at least 10 years' experience. One of his colleagues reviewed 1006 teaching jobs being advertised and found only two would have attracted a salary of more than $140,000, Chandar said. It was frustrating to know that backbench MPs were on salaries of $163,000, he said. He described days beginning at 8am and ending with department or staff meetings plus meetings with families. "Our students are so much more diverse now in terms of their learning and we need to support these students and sometimes we need to meet with whanau to come up with plans for the best ways to support them." As well, there was work to take home to mark and parent/teacher meetings at night. On top of that, were school camps and extra curricular activities such as kapa haka. Teachers were also adjusting to curriculum changes. "Most teachers love being in the classroom ... but it's all these extra things that are added on that is actually devaluing what we're doing." Extra things were being piled on to teachers but the pay was being kept at the same level. "That's where the frustration is starting to kick in."
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
National and Labour deputy leaders go head-to-head on Morning Report
Carmel Sepuloni and Nicola Willis go head-to-head on Morning Report's weekly political panel. Photo: RNZ The National and Labour deputy leaders are set to go head-to-head on Morning Report's weekly political panel. You can listen live above, on our app or on the radio . So far this week, there has been plenty to discuss, including buildings, ferries, and a tit-for-tat on the economy. The government has kept its AA+ credit rating, with ratings agency Fitch praising both National and Labour's emphasis on fiscal responsibility . But on Tuesday, Nicola Willis said the reminder of fiscal responsibility was a "warning shot" to Labour. She accused Labour leader Chris Hipkins of pretending the country's debt servicing costs were not something to worry about, despite the bill reaching almost $9 billion a year. "This kind of fiscal innumeracy is dangerous for New Zealand," she said. "Every New Zealander will pay the price if a Labour-Greens government puts our fiscal reputation at risk." In return, Hipkins scoffed at Willis' assessment, noting Labour had not yet released its full fiscal plan. "Nicola Willis is speculating on what our policy may or may not be. We haven't set out a policy yet," he said. "We've got to see how much more damage she'll do in the next 12 months before we can do that." The government began the week with an announcement it will change the liability settings in the Building Act to a proportionate system, in which parties are only liable for the work they carry out. It is a change from the 'joint and several' system, where liability is shared between all parties, regardless of cost or responsibility. Details on consumer protections, including whether the government will require mandatory professional indemnity insurance or warranties, are still to be worked through ahead of the legislation's introduction. Labour has said it is broadly supportive of the changes, but wants to see more work around those consumer protections so homeowners are not left out of pocket. Also recently in the news has been the money spent on cancelling the Cook Strait ferry contracts . A final $144 million payout to Hyundai Mipo shipyards in South Korea brought the total cost to $671m. Willis cancelled the iReX project shortly after the coalition came into power, saying the budget had blown out. New ferries are not due until 2029, with the Aratere sailing its final journey. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
