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Mediawatch looks critically at the New Zealand media - television, radio, newspapers and magazines as well as the 'new' electronic media.
Debatable benefits of head-to-head clashes:
Three live Ardern v English debates in seven days pumped up coverage of the election campaign. The media picked out the leaders’ zingers, bangers and clangers - and agonised over who won and who lost. But who cares, so long as voters learn something useful?
“Politics is these days missing the theatre," veteran political editor Barry Soper said sadly on Newstalk ZB’s website last Monday.
There's been no shortage of people hailing this campaign for throwing up unexpected drama - with the prospect of more to come - but for Barry Soper, it seems ‘drama’ is not the same thing.
“The current aspirants don't put in the same election campaign hard slog that former contenders did. Long gone are the daily Town Hall meetings around regional New Zealand, along with the theatre that accompanied them," he wrote.
Barry Soper seemed to be pining there for the days when Rob Muldoon could pull a mob to the Wiri woolstores. These days Jacinda Ardern and Bill English traipse around schools, workplaces and shopping malls instead, posing for peoples' selfies. Political reporters following the leaders lately have sent out steady streams of such pictures on their social media feeds.
But Barry Soper's main point was this:
“These are essentially the fill-in events while they prepare and perform for their spin doctors away from the cameras for the main event - - - the television debate."
Just as Wiri woolstores of yesterday have been replaced by Westfield malls today, the TV studio is now the town hall.
The first live head-to-head debate on TVNZ was teed up by a poll putting Labour in the lead, but it disappointed former TV3 news boss Mark Jennings who oversaw dozens of debates in his time at the channel.
“As a contest of ideas and issues, it was fine. As a piece of television, it was dire. It lacked any sense of theatre or drama. The audience, small, mute and mainly sitting in the dark, might as well not have been there,” he wrote on the news website he now co-edits, Newsroom.co.nz.
"I think TVNZ was caught out. If you go back two or three months when these things are planned we had a boring election on our hands. They probably thought there was no point in sinking money and effort into it," he told Mediawatch.
Patrick Gower - political editor at TV3 under Mark Jennings in the past - was the host of the next debate on Three last Monday night. He seems to relish the exposure and the chance to play a role as much as the prospective PMs.
Like TVNZ's debate, this one was also teed up with a story no-one saw coming earlier in the day. But Decision 2017 skated over Steven Joyce’s claims of a fiscal hole nearly $12 billion dollars-deep, even though it was almost certainly designed and timed to disrupt the debate in National’s favour.
But viewers did learn some new things from the Newshub debate. Bill English set a child poverty target and Jacinda Ardern said she would retaliate against further Australian crackdowns on Kiws’ rights over there.
Turning back the clock, town hall-style
That night, stuff.co.nz published a piece questioning the impact of set-piece leaders' debates.
"The leaders of the major parties get to fire off a few zingers at each other. But the debates don't seem to have much impact on voting," said stuff.co.nz.
But the article reckoned one exchange in its own debate bucked the trend - PM John Key telling Labour's leader Phil Goff to "show me the money" in 2011.
It quoted the editor-in-chief of The Press, Joanna Norris, as saying it was a turning point in the whole campaign.
Big call.
As it happened, she was the host of the next leaders debate run by Stuff.co.nz on Thursday, billed as a "town hall- style" affair also available online to anyone with broadband around the country.
This provided some of the old-school 'theatre' Barry Soper fondly remembered from campaigns past.
It got heated, yes, but scarcely any more so than Question Time in the House on good day (or a bad one depending on your appetite for angry MPs).
Unlike the TV efforts, this one had time on its side. It went on for almost two hours with no jarring ad breaks - only one big water break for the hardworking contenders.
Major election issues were thrashed out in more detail and with more to-and-fro than the TV debates delivered.
Mark Jennings oversaw many live leaders’ debates over many years as head of news at TV3.
"I think all the debates have been useful. They've given us a good insight into the two leaders and their parties and the clear differences emerging," he told Mediawatch.
"The TVNZ one was basically two interviews conducted in the same place. The Stuff.co.nz was one loosely controlled by print journalists. Tracy Watkins was looking down at her notes while the leaders argued. They were playing to the crowd," he said.
"I preferred the TV3 debate because it had debate but was controlled enough to move things along," he said.
It certainly did move along.
Topics were raised and abandoned at breakneck speed in the Decision 2017 debate, especially in a gameshow-style "quickfire round" shoehorned in at the end.
“Leaders’ debates are one of the most popular ways to learn about policies -- and one of the worst ways to learn about policies,” comedian Ray O'Leary said on Twitter at the time.
In other countries, including Germany and the US, candidates' election debates are co-operative affairs rather than rating-driven rival events. They are planned and staffed by journalists from a range of outlets and even different media.
Will we ever see that here?
"It would be great if all the best talent (was pooled). You could turn out something really special. We have a small media but a highly competitive media. We're not really mature enough to talk to each other and work together on these sorts of events," Mark Jennings told Mediawatch.
Who won and lost these debates seemed to matter more to the media than the viewers. The media also almost universally over-egged the aggro on offer as well. Why?
"It's the biggest game in town. This is the most interesting election in a long time and the media are genuinely excited," said Mark Jennings.
Having apparently rediscovered an appetite for politics in primetime during this campaign after the ascent of Ardern, it remains to be seen if TV networks will be as interested after "the biggest game in town" comes to an end, and the questions of who won and who lost have bee answered on September 23.
Pundits with skin in the campaign game:
Election campaigns are boom time for PR consultants and pundits, but the public need to know if they’re also in the middle of their spin cycle when they appear in the media.
When former National Party president Michelle Boag - currently a PR consultant - appeared as a post-debate pundit on TV3’s AM the morning after last Thursday's leaders' debate, the first question she faced was: "Who won?"
"What happens in these debates is that people on the left say Jacinda won and people on the right say Bill won," she said.
Good answer.
The former TV news chief Mark Jennings wasn’t impressed to see partisan pundits on a panel discussion immediately after the TV3 leaders' debate last Thursday.
"They seemed keener on expressing their own political views rather than a dispassionate dissection of the debate." he wrote on the website he co-edits, Newsroom.co.nz.
These days, many journalists blurt out opinions, reckons and feels on social media. Senior politicians appear as guests on TV3's current affairs show The Project as participants, not interview subjects. The attitude to impartiality has clearly shifted.
In that climate it is perhaps no surprise lobbyists with vested interests are also invited to share their insider insights which can be genuinely enlightening for the audience.
But while many viewers can spot partisan punditry a mile off at election time, some are actively involved in the campaign and it’s not always easy to tell.
Lobbyist Jenna Raeburn, the partner of a National MP, is a frequent pundit on politics shows like TVNZ's Q+A. Last week she also appeared in a Paula Bennett Facebook video singing along with National Party MP's and staff aboard a campaign bus.
"Is any other country this loose with its TV election coverage?" asked Herald media writer John Drinnan.
Back in June, John Drinnan said the use of lobbyists and public relations consultants as political commentators was on the rise.
One who asked to not be named told him that was because they know the issues and they are articulate. Political insiders certainly can shed light on issues in the media in a way that politicians themselves can't or won't do. But viewers, listeners and readers are usually in the dark about the vested interests the lobbyists and PR consultants may have.
"Surely there is room for broadcasters to talk to more real people. Is there nobody with strong views outside the world of PR?" John Drinnan asked back in June.
He said recent elections in the UK and the US had exposed the media as out of touch and he wondered whether New Zealand broadcasters might change the way they cover our upcoming election.
No sign of it so far.
The morning after the first leaders debate on TVNZ 1 last week, RNZ's Morning Report turned to left-leaning PR consultant Josie Pagani and former news boss turned PR man Bill Ralston.
Host Guyon Espiner asked Bill Ralston if it was true he had been hired to help Bill English manage the media. Bill Ralston refused to say and the potential conflict of interest clouded anything he said without such a disclosure.
On the eve of this week’s debate, Mark Sainsbury didn't even bother pressing Bill Ralston on whether he’s actually employed by Bill English on his Radio Live slot Sainso’s Political Chinwag - even though he clearly knew the answer.
Just after Labour’s campaign launch in Auckland Bill Ralston told Mark Sainbury on Sainso's Political Chinwag how he'd just "bumped into Bill English in The Koru Club in Hawke's Bay." If Bill Ralston is Bill English’s hired media man, catching up with him would hardly be a coincidence.At a time when broadcasters make special efforts to be especially fair and balanced, all this seems doubly out of place.
Another regular pundit is Ben Thomas, a former government press secretary who now works at Matthew Hooton’s PR company Exceltium, which currently works on behalf of the ACT Party.
He is a regular guest on the Gone By Lunchtime politics podcast of The Spinoff, and this week the New Zealand Herald published his thoughts on the campaign so far with a footnote acknowledging he had some skin in the game.
Ben Thomas doesn’t deny he has a political party as a client, and the arrangement is pretty obvious from his frequent tweets praising act policies - and its leader’s statements.
Dr Brian Edwards is anther former broadcaster who has combined political PR with punditry. He served Helen Clark and other Labour ministers as a professional media trainer in the past while appearing as a pundit in the media.
This week he blogged to say he was bothered by the sight of Bill English being upstaged in the media by Jacinda Ardern.
Why did that bother a Labour man and a self-identified "champagne socialist"?
“The media trainer prides himself on his ability to turn sows’ ears into silk purses. He has a rescuer mentality. He backs losers, and himself, to win,” Dr Edwards wrote.
That makes the job sound almost humanitarian, or like social work - rather than selling skills acquired in serving the public to pick up cheques from politicians prepared to pay for them.
Digging deep for the hole truth:
National’s discovery of a 12 billion dollar-deep hole triggered a string of claims, counterclaims and sporting similes in the media. But did they get to the hole truth in time?
From: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch