This week RNZ and TVNZ both put out statements about public trust, transparency and how they make their news. On Mediawatch we ask the top editor from each one if they are feeling the heat over the reputations of both broadcasters - and the news media in general.
NZ on Air's 'Where are the Audiences?' report 2024. Photo: NZ on Air / Glasshouse
NZ On Air’s annual survey of New Zealanders’ media habits asked 1400 people to choose their regular sources of news this year. TVNZ and Stuff were ahead of the pack on that.
RNZ was picked by only half as many people.
But when asked which one was their most trusted source of news, twice as many people picked TVNZ as the next most popular - Stuff and the New Zealand Herald.
“An exceptional result for TVNZ... which was due a dose of good news,” said The Spinoff’s Duncan Grieve.
But on Friday, the financial news was all bad. TVNZ announced $85m in losses for the last financial year, just under $30m of which was operational.
(There was also plenty of bad news about TVNZ news in April and May, when that NZ On Air survey was done. TVNZ was shutting down daily news shows, Sunday and Fair Go at the time).
Hear Mediawatch report on these issues in this week's show here
Last Monday, the day before the NZ On Air research came out, 1 News made a move of its own to shore up trust - publishing new information on its news website about how its newsroom operates.
That included editorial standards requiring reporters to “ask tough questions of yourself before you ask them of anyone else” and to “work hard to set aside” their own views on issues.
A te reo Māori policy, a statement on generative AI and information about how news and current affairs is funded was also published on 1News.co.nz.
TVNZ’s executive editor of news Phil O’Sullivan said it was important to be transparent when some people said they no longer trusted mainstream media - and many were getting their news from social media.
The day after that NZ On Air report, RNZ also went public with a statement on public trust, transparency and its popularity.
RNZ said it was reaching more New Zealanders than ever.
RNZ said its Value Indices survey - carried out since 2018 by pollster Verian - found 49 percent of people agreed “RNZ is an organisation you can trust,” up from 45 percent a year ago; 73 percent agreed it’s “important to have a public service broadcaster” (up from 69 percent); and 62 percent believed RNZ “provides a valuable service”, a 4 percent jump.
RNZ is expanding its reach online - and through sharing its content with other media, the statement said.
But at the same time, CEO Paul Thompson acknowledged the latest industry-wide radio surveys showed RNZ’s radio audience was falling. RNZ’s market share had dropped from 12.5 percent to 11.7 percent.
Thompson said RNZ would be “looking at ways we can stabilise our numbers”.
This was awkward timing, given the NZOA survey had just reported its first recorded rise in overall radio listening for several years.
Why go public all of a sudden?
Phil O'Sullivan, TVNZ's Executive Editor, News. Photo: TVNZ
“We believe we are highly trusted by our very large audiences but with the explosion of misinformation on social media and disinformation as well, we want to try and maintain the trust that we have,” O’Sullivan told Mediawatch.
“I think it's a responsibility of a state-owned broadcaster to point out what we're doing and to show that we're taking steps to correct some of those misconceptions about how we operate.”
TVNZ’s explainers said its news operation “is often mistakenly thought to be government-funded, even by senior politicians”.
1 News is mostly funded through advertising revenue, but sometimes from the public purse via NZ on Air and Te Māngai Pāho.
“That’s a frustration of us who work very hard at TVNZ,” he said. “The rest of the newsroom needs to wash its own face. We are a commercial operation. We are funded by advertising and some sponsorships - and our editorial independence is enshrined in the TVNZ Act.”
There’s nothing in the documents about the lucrative sponsored content deals and ‘activations’ which allow clients to buy coverage on Breakfast and Seven Sharp - programmes which survived the cost-cutting cull last year - and occasional special programmes.
“We can always try and do better, but we think that any sponsorships or integrations that we do with any news properties are very clearly marked. We have a pretty rigorous process to ensure that the integrated pieces of content that we put in these shows is a good editorial fit.
“I think our audience seems to accept that. I think we're still regarded as highly trusted. We are one of the most popular news sources in this country, so I think we're getting the balance right.”
“You take the wins when you get them,” O’Sullivan said of TVNZ’s ‘most trusted’ status in NZ On Air’s survey.
“But we need to consider a wide range of internal and external sources and measures when it comes to trust and reputation. My biggest concern regarding trust surveys is when they're perception-based rather than usage-based. I think the AUT survey falls down in that area in some respects.”
Sources of news chosen in NZ On Air's 2024 'Where are the Audiences' report. Photo: NZ on Air / Glasshouse
RNZ has been surveying trust in itself and its reputation since 2018, but has rarely made the results public.
Paul Thompson denies RNZ did so this week because of media coverage of its decline in radio listenership.
“We think it is time that we report them more fully, because it goes to our purpose as a public media organisation, which is to deliver the charter and make a real difference. We're working really hard to get our public media content to where New Zealanders are spending their time, and that's working.
“It's not about being driven solely by the size of the audience. It's also the value of what we do, because our content should be different because we're delivering on that public media mandate.”
RNZ resisted NZ Herald requests for detailed audience survey data. After Official Information Act requests and an appeal to the ombudsman, the information was given to the Herald and reported last month by editor-at-large Shayne Currie.
His comparisons with the radio ratings enjoyed by Herald’s stablemate Newstalk ZB were not favourable. Was that why RNZ resisted the disclosure?
“That information is not RNZ's information. It's held by (radio industry surveyors) GFK. There are contractual restrictions on how you can share that information and distribute it. We went to the [radio] industry for a waiver... to be able to share the information, which we've done to get it out to the journalist.”
Outside scrutiny of news standards
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson. Photo: RNZ
RNZ also pledged to implement the recommendations of an independent inquiry (PDF) into the ‘Russia editing controversy’ which rocked its reputation last year.
What’s changed as a result?
“We've improved our complaints procedure. We make sure that we fix errors more quickly than we have done in the past, and people can track how we've made changes. We've built our editorial policy to make it more muscular, and we've done a lot of training and development with our people around standards,” Thompson told Mediawatch.
What about the oversight of news online - the main problem with the ‘Russia editing’?
“It starts with a strong editorial policy... and a key step was appointing our former political editor Jane Patterson as our director of editorial standards and training. We help them to do accurate, robust reporting, and when there are problems that we respond really professionally to them.”
TVNZ carried out its own review of news practices (PDF) last year in the wake of RNZ’s crisis. It’s harder to find on TVNZ website, but it;s a lot more detailed than the documents publicised last Monday.
It sets out the layers of authority and approval for different tasks, right down to the procedure for issuing push notifications to users of TVNZ’s mobile news app.
“It was conducted by Brent McAnulty, our general counsel - someone outside of the newsroom who came in and had a really good look at what we were doing,” O’Sullivan told Mediawatch. (McAnulty also served as TVNZ’s interim CEO for much of 2023).
“We found that on the whole editorial systems were fit-for-purpose, but also picked up where perhaps more oversight [was] required. Eleven recommendations came out of that to strengthen the good practice that we already had.”
The public cost of cuts
One final recommendation of TVNZ's review was: “Consider the resourcing levels across the newsroom for appropriate staffing, resource and budget.”
But this year TVNZ slashed news jobs and shows to save $10m because of a slump in advertising revenue.
The losses announced this week raise fears of further cutbacks which could also damage public confidence in its news.
“I don't think TVNZ has made any secret of the fact that we're trying to find $30m in either new revenue or cost savings over the next financial year” O'Sullivan told Mediawatch. "That's across the whole business, and we're pulling every lever we can to try and reduce the cost. It's destabilising, and it takes our eye off being able to cover the news every day, which we still have to do.
“But when your costs are higher than your revenue, it's like any household in this country. You have to adjust and that's what we're focused on doing.”
At RNZ, Thompson doesn’t have the same sort of worries about revenue, which was boosted substantially by the previous government after it collapsed the long-planned merger with TVNZ.
But the public - and other stakeholders - expect returns, and reports of listeners deserting its radio networks don’t help.
“We have some challenges with our live listening. The NZ on Air research this week is roughly aligned with what GFK is telling us, but RNZ is a multimedia organisation getting really strong audience engagement - and driving public perceptions of trust and value up across platforms,” Thompson told Mediawatch.
“We still love radio. It's still really important. We've got to roll up our sleeves. But our 60 percent increase this year in the digital audience to our website is giving us a very strong platform to deliver our public media content - and also we share our content with nearly every major news website in New Zealand, newspapers and broadcasters’ websites”.
The 60 percent increase in website visitors is based on 1.4m recorded in July.
“That's a big change from RNZ’s traditional audience footprint, which was about 20 percent (for its radio networks). But it is a challenging transition,” Thompson told Mediawatch.
RNZ claims only 2 percent of its audience listen only via radio today - but are they finding out why tens of thousands of live listeners have gone since 2021?
“We're going to have a deep dive into the research and look at what data we have.”
It’s not a new trend. Is no plan already in place?
“We do have plans. We've worked hard to improve our radio performance, but it hasn't worked yet. I'm not going to be drawn today on the specifics. We'll take time - a month or two - to come up with a plan.”
The government appointed a former long-serving media company CEO to the board of each of the state-owned broadcasters this week. Former MediaWorks CEO Brent Impey (whose partner is current MediaWorks CEO Wendy Palmer) joins RNZ’s board - and former Sky TV boss John Fellett joins TVNZ’s governors.