I have major concerns about how media gives selective and disproportionate coverage for some parties and some candidates.
Media often pre-selects candidates and gives them favourable publicity while they ignore or dismiss others. This is common with the selection of which candidates or parties feature in debates.
This is doing a disservice to the public and to democracy.
In part it is probably little more than headline hunting. The amount of political oxygen they give Winston Peters is probably a major factor in his success, as is media failure to hold Peters to account adequately. They seem more interested in his story creating potential and forget their fourth estate responsibilities.
Media can also have a negative effect, often blowing problems and potential things up out of proportion to their importance.
One simple example is renewed media attention given to dildo news. Journalists like to snigger and promote offensive attacks and threats against politicians without caring about the implications of attaching dildo imagery with the targets. I doubt that media outlets would be so salacious if they were the targets.
Selective reporting can lift lucky candidates out of obscurity. This happened in the boring Auckland mayoral campaign, which was everyone thought was a foregone conclusion with a boring Phil Goff. So the media switched their attention to promote Chloe Swarbrick, seemingly for novelty value and to put some interest into their coverage.
As a result Swarbrick did unexpectedly well in the election, and has since been given more media attention when she became a Green candidate.
The media have also been prominent in the rise of Jacinda Ardern to deputy leadership of the Labour Party.
It’s unclear whether media promotion pushed Andrew Little into pushing Annette King and installing Ardern, or whether Labour or Ardern operators manipulated the media to help orchestrate the coup. Whichever it was it was democratically suspect.
The Spinoff is a new media alternative to the old school ‘mainstream’ media. They describe themselves:
The Spinoff is a New Zealand online magazine covering politics, pop culture and social issues. We also have a custom editorial division which creates smart, shareable content for brands.
There seems to be a confusion there between editorial and brand promotion. I thought that news and advertising were supposed to be kept separate.
Yesterday “Politics editor for The Spinoff” Toby Manhire drew my attention to something via Twitter:
That was an odd call for three new candidates. it referred to a this post:
In her second candidate diary for the Spinoff, Labour’s candidate for East Coast describes door-knocking in the electorate, meeting fellow diarist Chlöe Swarbrick, fronting a press stand-up after that controversial list announcement, and a big TV appearance.
It seems that Allan (Labour), Stanford (National) and Swarbrick (Greens) are being given an ongoing opportunity to promote themselves and their election campaigns via The Spinoff.
There is no suggestion that money is involved but this looks like a selective promotion of “shareable content for brands”.
Sure, media play an important part in allowing the public to learn about political candidates and parties – but a sound democracy requires this to be reasonably fair and balanced rather than picking winners and giving them disproportionate promotion opportunities.
I sought clarification from Manhire about how their ‘candidate diary for the Spinoff’ thing worked and asked “Is giving all first time candidates the same opportunity to promote themselves? Or just a select few?”
Manhire seemed to be deliberately unclear in his response.
All candidates arefree to comment here at Your NZ, or to submit guest posts or inform me of items of interest, but I’m not going to give special preference to any.
@TheSpinoffTV later also simply answered “No”. It seems like another evasive fobbing off.
Last month Manhire detailed The Spinoff versus the 2017 election: our campaign plans exclusively revealed
Generally that sounds quite good, but…
Candidate diaries
We have enlisted a stellar bunch of first-time candidates to write regular posts documenting their experiences as newbies. We begin today with the first pieces from Erica Stanford, National’s candidate in the electorate of East Coast Bays, and Kiri Allan, Labour’s candidate for East Coast.
Not all of our candidates have East Coast in their constituency names, however; we’re also welcoming Chlöe Swarbrick, the insurgent runner for the Auckland mayoralty, Green candidate for Maungakiekie and 13th placed in the “initial” party list. And, with a bit of luck, someone from NZ First, too.
“Enlisted’ sounds like The Spinoff are recruiting – selecting – a handful of candidates to give them special attention. Just candidates from the four largest parties, who already get substantial campaign advantages.
The three already chosen are all youngish and female. Geographically two electorates are in Auckland, one in the north east of the North island. So these selections are not very representative.
Perhaps all three of these candidates will become MPs and may even eventually become Prime Minister as Manhire proposes. And The Spinoff may pat themselves on the back for successfully picking winners.
But in a fair democracy I don’t think the media should be pre-picking winners and providing them with special attention.
Media has to make enough money to sustain their operations, and to do that they have to provide news and information that interests and attracts readers and listeners and viewers.
But if a democracy is to function fairly the media also needs to meet it’s responsibilities. There are growing signs that they are straying from fair and balanced coverage.
We are nowhere near the media and political mess that the US is in, but the power and ability of media to swing an election is certainly there. They need to be as aware of this as they are aware of the need to make money and look cool by selecting a small number hip looking candidates.
Fair and balanced coverage can be difficult to achieve – but it should at least be given priority.
