Transport Minister Simeon Brown has made best politician lists this year. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Mediawatch: Ah Christmas, a time for family, cheer, a cheeky touch of shopping, and the media undertaking the gargantuan task of systematically ranking everything humanity produced in the year 2024.
Every day now, audiences are presented with a new best-of list, as our journalists attempt to file all the world's content in order and subjugate the subjective under the divine rule of empiricism.
Here at Mediawatch, we're not critiquing that effort.
We're engaging in it. In the spirit of the season, here are the media's best-of 2024 lists ranked from best to worst.
Number one. Best books. Summer is the only time when the howling blizzard of news eases up enough to make space in my life for fiction.
Two. Best TV shows. That's what I'll actually be watching instead of reading.
Three. The 2024 guide to best vacuum cleaners.
Four. Best parts of New Zealand to watch Geminids meteor shower.
Five. The Mediawatch media awards.
After that we have to traverse 24 hectares of swamp sludge to get to best politician awards.
Mediawatch for Sunday 22 December 2024
Case in point: the New Zealand Herald's effort this year.
It puts Transport Minister Simeon Brown in the top spot, justifying the gong like this...
"People like roads and he gets to build them. People also do not like lower speed limits, potholes or speed bumps and raised crossings every 200 metres, and he got to declare their demise. His potholes fund seemed like a gimmick at the time he came up with it, but he has proved a master at squeezing every drop of publicity out of it."
It's not just the Herald. This writer named Brown as one of the year's political winners in a recent podcast for almost the same set of reasons.
Politicians are nearly always judged in the media on whether their actions are going over well with the so-called "people", whoever they are. Those people decide whether they qualify for the ultimate label of success, "good politics".
Case in point: this is how former 1News political editor Jessica Mutch-McKay assessed Labour's flagship economic policy ahead of last year's general election.
"Several experts, the Tax Working Group and Finance Minister Grant Robertson aren't keen on the idea as it puts holes in our very simple goods and service tax.
"But that doesn't stop it being a good political move."
And here's how she analysed National's flagship economic policy.
"This was National's big bang policy announcement and it's a good political move."
Assessing things as a good political move is a good political move if you're a journalist.
It allows you to maintain a pretence of objectivity, floating above the action and only assessing it by how it affects other people's imaginary opinions.
But is that really the best criteria?
Both those economic policies faced strong criticism.
Economists said National's numbers didn't add up. They said that Labour's proposals would not only complicate our tax system but do very little to relieve the cost of living crisis.
Brown's actions this year are hardly without their detractors as well.
NZTA officials told Cabinet his efforts to raise speed limits will likely result in more deaths, and the government hasn't released evidence that people will actually get to their destinations faster.
Given that, perhaps it would be good to put less weight on whether things are popular, and more on whether they're actually effective.
For one thing, judging policies on how they play with voters elides the media's role in how things play with voters.
Take that pothole fund which Brown was credited with milking for publicity.
It was presented in the media as new money.
Many reports didn't note it was actually funded by emptying out some old road maintenance funds that were used for, you guessed it, fixing potholes.
Perhaps these announcements wouldn't be the same PR fillip if our journalists were more focused on the detail, rather than the politics.
On that note, credit to Newsroom's political editor Laura Walters for going in a different direction in naming her politician of the year on the Raw Politics podcast.
Education Minister Erica Stanford Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
She chose Erica Stanford, citing the education minister's effort to bed structured literacy into the curriculum, and her plans to close the equity gap and raise the value of the teaching profession.
"Those all sound like very difficult things to achieve but she's obviously a very hard worker and very committed."
Interesting, but has Walters considered how all that stuff polls with the median voter?
Anyway I should stop being grumpy and attempt to muster up some holiday cheer.
After all, it's Christmas.
But if our news organisations do want to give us a gift outside of not shutting down, it could be more of a focus in 2025 on political substance over just style.