Mediawatch hands out its not-very-prestigious and not-at-all coveted annual media awards for 2024. Photo: Supplied
It's been a rough year for the commercial media with cuts to programmes, papers closing and hundreds of journalists' jobs lost. Revenue has slumped in the recession and some have also suffered from cuts in funding from the public purse.
State-owned broadcasters laid out their problems (RNZ excepted) to MPs in Parliamentary select committee hearings today.
But back in March - when Newshub's shock closure and TVNZ's first big cuts to news were announced - ACT leader and TVNZ shareholding minister David Seymour went on the attack.
He criticised 1News journalist Benedict Collins for "grinning down the camera about Chris Luxon's apartment costs".
"These are the people that cry, 'Oh you've got to give us sympathy, and you're inhumane and you should be kinder to us'.
"But they have spent years celebrating and dancing at every slip a politician makes, competing to get scalps. I think it shows their delightful lack of self-awareness and immaturity."
Seymour told RNZ he was simply making a "wider point that media need a bit of self-reflection".
Seymour also put pressure on by asking Treasury to review TVNZ's financial performance in the same month the demise of Sunday, Fair Go and other news shows was first announced.
The media financial crisis is, of course, global and New Yorker writer Clare Malone harnessed the vibe in a February article: Is the media ready for an extinction-level event?
In it, writer Jack Crosbie cut loose with this:
"This shit is all dying. There is like one place you can work right now with any kind of job security and it is The New York Times and that's only because they have a shitload of recipes on a nicely coded little cooking app that you can subscribe to and also because your parents are hooked on Wordle. "
Ouch.
But while decades-old news shows were axed here, Duncan Garner launched a new live-streamed breakfast news show and podcast for MediaWorks called Editor in Chief.
The control room putting out Duncan Garner's new live Editor-in-Chief vodcast. Photo: screenshot
But Garner was not talking about green shoots and innovation on his show when TVNZ confirmed its deep cuts to news back in May.
"My industry has collapsed. There is nothing for me here. No-one wants to pay for an experienced broadcast journalist. Hell no. I liken the industry here to those rubbish chutes in hotels. Open the little door. Drop the rubbish from a great height til it goes down and goes bang in the skip dead in the basement. That's journalism now. All the experience stuffed into the rubbish long drop."
That bleak assessment must have perplexed the employers who commissioned the new show. But it wins him Mediawatch's Media Commentary of the Year 2024 award.
AI is coming, ready or not
When Alicia Keys hit a bum note in the Superbowl halftime show this year, millions heard it live. AI was deployed to airbrush out vocal wobble from YouTube videos, but it also brought the Streisand effect into full effect. Non NFL-fans the world over got to know about the airbrushing of history.
Also in March, Stuff - which had earlier warned AI could wreck journalism - used Chat GPT to write a story that said: "Stuff poll says Christchurch NZ's best place. New Plymouth not happy about it."
New Plymouth is not alive. It cannot be happy or unhappy. It is a city. Happily Stuff stopped feeding readers' opinions to AI soon after.
But the prize for Worst Use of AI in 2024 goes to the the Weekend Herald for using AI in July to write prosaic editorials about who the All Blacks should pick to play at centre and the achievements of Israel Adesanya which both drew heavily on previous Herald articles.
The Herald admitted it should have employed "more journalistic rigour" - but not less chat GPT?.
After an inquiry, the Herald's AI policy has not changed much.
Undeterred, the Herald on Sunday deployed AI and stock images to create a very inauthentic rendering of a dirty Dunedin student flat for a feature in October.
The robots' input was acknowledged this time, but are there no real photos of dirty flats on file?
Holding power to account
ZB political editor Barry Soper chides colleague Mike Hosking on the Herald site on Wednesday Photo: screenshot
Jack Tame's forensic questioning of cabinet ministers and other public figures on the Q+A show won him much praise - again.
But how hard is it really to painstakingly research a topic, assemble facts and confront the powers-that-be after days of prep?
Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking Breakfast took a different tack back in February when a listener asked why the host seemed to give the PM an easier ride than opposition politicians.
"Mate. he hasn't done anything apart from open some envelopes and they've exploded in his face. Let him get his feet under the table, get a bit of legislation passed and then in three years time when he has another crack, watch me give him a hard time. You bet I will."
An interesting strategy to promise the PM an easy ride for a full term.
But would he stick to this position?
The following month he offered Luxon a reassurance.
"I'm feeling sorry for you, there's a bomb going off every day," Hosking told the PM.
"I'm glad you feel sorry for me," the PM replied, bemoaning the mess the previous government left for him - perhaps unaware he had fallen into Hosking's subtle trap which might snap shut on him in two and a half years from now after he's done some things.
Meanwhile, 1News' Benedict Collins appeared to shrug off Seymour's criticism. Polite but persistent questioning on how gang membership is measured made the Prime Minister frickin cross in September.
How ballsy?
When ZB's Heather du Plessis-Allan picked Simeon Brown as her runner-up politician of the year last Monday she said caucus colleagues approvingly called him 'Goldenballs.'
"I don't know how true this is, but I'm going to tell you regardless," she said in September, claiming caucus colleagues called him Goldenballs because he gets everything right.
The next day fellow ZB host Nick Mills told his listeners the same thing - and scrapping funds for cycleways in Wellington was a goldenballsy move.
But when Mediawatch scoured the archives and the internet, we could find no references outside of ZB hosts to the ballsy name. Political journalists spoken to in confidence could not confirm or deny the existence of the nickname. One said they'd never heard of it.
The Goldenballs source should reveal themselves to end the suspicion.
Until then, the claim holds the Mediawatch award for Baseless Rumour of the Year.
Blue tunes
The award for Boldly Pushing Boundaries in Music Broadcasting in 2024 goes to RNZ National.
On 11 June, Jesse Mulligan fearlessly challenged his after school audience with the gunshots and f-bomb laden original version of MIA's hip hop classic 'Paper Planes'.
Hours later Nights host Emile E-Dog Donovan granted an Australian listeners' Jukebox request for [ur pretty good lookin' lyrics 'Good Lookin by Dixon Dallas] - fairly saccharine-sounding country music on the surface, but peppered with - er - intensely intimate lyrics and imagery.
When the facts change...
Parliament Speaker Gerry Brownlee wins the Flip-Flop of the Year for briefly banning Newsroom journalist Aaron Smale from the official apology to abuse in care survivors in November, apparently after complaints from within the Prime Minister's office.
Essentially he was banned from an event aimed at holding power accountable for being too forceful holding power accountable.
This created a huge backlash, given Smale has been the most committed and consistent reporter on abuse in care, and has formed connections with many of the survivors.
The Spinoff's Toby Manhire called the ban a disgrace, likewise "the impulse to seek it".
Smale was un-banned within a day, but only allowed to attend with a chaperone from Newsroom.
There were people in the room known to him who had served time in prison for violent offences who needed no such supervision - though they didn't have a record for annoying any cabinet ministers in press conferences.
TVNZ made a play for the award by scrapping, then not scrapping its news website in 2025.
It announced on 7 October that it was planning to ditch the website from February next year.
Not even a month later, the organisation backtracked on that decision, saying it'll keep a stripped back version of the site.
But having signalled it will continue in a reduced form only, maybe that was actually a spot of expectation management.
Another political flip-flop came from Chris 'Entitled' Luxon, who decided to pay back his accommodation supplement after his decision to claim it was exposed by Newsroom's Marc Daalder.
Luxon claimed he had to live in his own apartment because Premier House was too decrepit to be liveable. Newshub pushed hard for permission to film inside Premier House - and were denied for security reasons. But a quick Google revealed plenty of videos and photos online from functions held here.
The now-departed Newshub picks up Mediawatch's Juxtaposition of 2024 Award for a hefty 15-second headline sequence.
"The PM makes a sudden u-turn on his 52k accommodation allowance. Meanwhile no ACC-funded accommodation for a Te Kuiti grandmother who's had half her body amputated."
Unmute the world
A speech by FIFA president Gianni Infantino is broadcasted on a screen at a ceremony in Saudi capital Riyadh during the FIFA congress for the hosting rights for the 2034 World Cup. Photo: AFP
While that was a spin doctor's nightmare, the recent stage-managed event contrived by FIFA to hand the 2030 World Cup tournament to Saudi Arabia uncontested went like clockwork - for a while.
A farcical glitch-ridden virtual ceremony reached a peak at the point they asked delegates in 200 countries and legitimise what was a fait accompli. When asked to signal their affirmation online, they forgot to mute 200+ national delegates online.
The resulting digital cacophony turned what was supposed to be a magic moment for the Saudi regime into a massive minties moment beamed around a laughing world.
Better media manipulation skills were deployed by Sail GP's boss Sir Russell Coutts in March, making him Mediawatch's Master Media Manipulator of 2024.
After a rare dolphin on the course - a protected marine reserve near Christchurch - stalled the racing in accordance with the rules, Sir Russell co-opted Newstalk ZB's Saturday Sport show to make a live statement condemning the rules. He accused named marine experts of lying about the frolicking dolphins' vulnerability.
The PM then complained it was the "obstruction economy" at work, and an editorial in the Press even accused dolphins of "loitering" on the course - which was its own habitat.
SailGP itself picked the marine reserve as the venue and the guidelines were Sail GP's own. Its environmental responsibility commitments are trumpeted in its own PR content and videos.
Newsroom's David Williams had predicted the problem covering the resource consent applications a year earlier. On Newstalk ZB later, host Andrew Dickens pointed out that "everything was fine - until Sail GP lost money".
Man bites dog. Or mouse?
This specimen possibly preparing to repay a rodent friend who previously bought a trolley-full of groceries Photo: 123rf
Years ago comedian Billy Connolly joked in a TV special seen around the world that a cat stuck in a tree could make headlines in New Zealand. The implication that not much that's newsworthy happens here irritated Kiwis at the time.
Year after year, news events back up Mr Connolly's comedic claim.
The winner of this year's Billy Connolly Trophy for Headline News about a Single Animal is TVNZ's Thomas Mead.
During a sudden spate of rodent infestations in South Island supermarkets, Mead appeared live on 1 News with breaking news about the problem further north.
"We've just heard from Foodstuffs that a lone mouse was spotted scurrying among the aisles by customers at their Pak N Save in Lincoln Road in West Auckland. Pest control was called and the mouse was caught and disposed of - so that crisis has been averted," he told viewers live on 1 News at 6.
The word 'crisis' has been heavily used in this difficult year for our country. Comforting to know than even in such turbulent times, a single mouse in a single store could still eek out coverage on the 6pm news in 2024.