A Break-up Letter to Broadcast Media.

One of my many faults is that I was an avid consumer of news: please note the past tense.

I think impartial news is a bit of a myth, but I did try to find broadcast, curated news sources that were balanced and delivered well-written, broad general news and commentary: my the smorgasbord was wide. 

I differentiate broadcast news that has editors and curation from narrow-casting like pod-casts: that area is something for another day as it's very much a curate's egg.

Vanity Fair's writing years ago was first class, but it had nothing to do with NZ and deteriorated in to trivia. The Atlantic's long form writing is superb, but there is, understandably being American, no New Zealand news. The NY Times, London Times and other international news sources had similar problems.

Working my way through local sources -

Television news became trivia-, personality- and sensationalism-obsessed decades ago, while being made unwatchable from advertiser carpet-bombing, and a news policy that ignores important events where there's no footage (if we didn't film it, it didn't happen). 

The closure of TV3's news service and the current downsizing of TVNZ's news suggests legacy broadcast media have not convinced their audience they are still relevant and  government funding of journalism quite possibly contributed to that via the decay in public trust in the media. 

The idea of public funding for what has turned itself in to a business that's now failing, but still claims it has a special role and status that the business model trashed years ago, is entitled newspeak nonsense of jaw-dropping proportions. But they are ideally placed to make a lot of noise about it.

Commercial radio seemed to be either witless chatter, tedious high rotation music or talkback ranting of truly scary proportions. So, a hard no.

Newspaper ownership has become so concentrated that the article sharing makes them mostly look the same. They toe the fashionable editorial line, while being uninquiring and innumerate, where a lot of stories, perfect for print journalism, get missed. I think it's becasue so many journalists have never done anything but journalism and don't understand the implications of, say, the potential business or scientific stories that pass before them.

Some specialist publications like Interest.co.nz do well in their lane - but they are specialised, so are light on general news.

Local magazines. Yeah. Well. Perhaps just better to draw a veil. The Listener used be good but hived off down the path to what looks like a mildly sensational lifestyle publication, focussed on 'wellness' and 'health' and right thinking and being part of the progressive, 'right-on!' class.

For decades I usually found my way back to Radio New Zealand National, but over the last few years - since the change in management - it has deteriorated to the point that this is kind of a break up letter, and RNZN: it's you, not me.

And here's why.

Balance seems to have become a problem, where advocacy, opinion and doctrine are taking over. It's hard listening to interviews where some get treated as hostile witnesses while others get softballed-in questions and the opportunity to sermonise.

Journalism is not: 'expert' taking heads whose affiliations are undisclosed and therefore their credibility is unknowable; taking heads whose affiliations and agenda are disclosed but they still get treated as disinterested experts; endless vox-pops of whoever-is-standing-about-in-the-street; repetitively shouting an over-simple question at someone; talking across an interviewee to express the interviewer's opinion; reporting on trivia becasue it matches some kind of virtuous agenda... The list just grows.

The virtue signalling in programming and by some of the announcers, seemingly to establish their 'personality' and credibility, has reached painful proportions. I want to be educated and entertained, not to have to listen to earnest Manichaeanism: if I am not part of your conception of a solution, I am not necessarily part of a problem.

Reportage has become ever-less numerate: numbers get quoted as writ, without examination or context that makes them meaningful or useful.

Reporting on the small areas I do know something about quite often contains errors of omission or fact, and I can't help but think that all reportage is like that. It makes me question the accuracy of everything reported,

For god's sake, hire announcers who can speak cogently and writers who can produce engaging copy. The stumbling over news-reading that's like the announcers are sight-reading, mis-usage, website typos, and plain old poor writing just keeps rising.

In closing; I'm off to the web, and I suspect I'm not coming back.