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Mediawatch looks critically at the New Zealand media - television, radio, newspapers and magazines as well as the 'new' electronic media.
‘Bugger the pollsters’ - and the broadcasters?
Two contrary political opinion polls this week raised big questions about the quality and the purpose of them. Politicians disputing the broadcasters' conclusions were dismissed as “in denial.” But are the media the ones who need to confront the contradictions in their reporting?
Newshub at 6 reports yet again on poor personal performance of Simon Bridges in its own paid-for poll. Photo: screenshot / Newshub at 6
“It’s reminded many of [former prime] minister Jim Bolger's words in 1993: Bugger the polls,” said Newstalk ZB’s news one hour after the two big TV networks unveiled their latest political opinion polls simultaneously last Sunday - and the very different results and wildly differing conclusions.
It was odd to hear a quarter of a century-old quote from a long-gone PM in the news like that.
But what Mr Bolger actually said back then after winning the 1993 election was: “Bugger the pollsters”.
Coincidentally it was the history show Total Recall next up Newstalk ZB after that bulletin.
“The polls are rubbish," said host Frank Ritchie.
"Don't bother listening to them. There‘s only one poll that counts and that's on election night.”
But what he was advising us to ignore was talked up in advance by Newshub last weekend as something you must not miss.
“The verdict is in for Simon Bridges and it doesn't get much worse. Under his leadership National is in a tailspin with the party's popularity nosediving,” said Newshub at 6.
“Newshub's Reid Research poll was the poll that was the most accurate going into the 2017 election,” Newshub at 6 reminded its viewers.
But many viewers will be questioning that now - or that Newshub’s “verdict” on the National Party’s leader would stand up in court because the Colmar Brunton poll on TVNZ 1 News painted a different picture.
“National has bounced back,” TVNZ declared pushing it out on Facebook.
While the rest of the media debated whether polls this far apart should be taken seriously, Newshub and TVNZ kept calm and carried on strenuously ignoring the contradictory results of their rivals.
When political scientist Dr Bryce Edwards acknowledged the existence of TVNZ’s contradictory poll on the AM show, Newshub’s website could only refer to it as “a slightly less disastrous one released at the exact same time”.
On TVNZ’s Breakfast show on Monday morning, political editor Jessica Mutch-McKay stuck to her line that their poll numbers were good news for National.
“This is why we in the political world find them so exciting. They are a shapshot in time."
The TVNZ poll was a snapshot they carefully framed to make sure no-one else’s numbers were in the picture.
But not everyone in the media was as excited as she was by it all.
NZME - publisher of the New Zealand Herald and owner of Newstalk ZB - does not bother forking out for polls any more this far from an election.
One-by-one this week, its hosts bagged both TV polls.
On RNZ’s Nine to Noon, weekly politics pundit Stephen Mills - an executive director for Labour’s preferred pollster UMR - was one of several pundits pointing out that we never see the most revealing opinion polling.
That is kept under wraps by the political parties who pay for them for their own political purposes.
National's deputy Paula Bennett hit back at Newshub’s poll on AM on Monday.
“You’re having fun writing a narrative about National I notice - with a lot of fiction in it."
Newshub’s Tova O’Brien was not happy and said Ms Bennett was “in denial”.
“This isn't my narrative - or Newshub's narrative. Voters simply do not like Simon Bridges and it's starting to hurt National,” she wrote on Newshub’s website.
But there is a narrative in Newshub’s coverage of its political polls that’s pretty plain.
Newshub has reported Mr Bridges as a "dead man walking" after all its polls this year - and that Judith Collins is poised to take over.
The Newshub poll in February was hyped as “devastating” and “a game changer” for National. It was a similar story in April.
But the game remains the same - and Mr Bridges remains National’s leader.
On TV this week Ms O’Brien said vultures were circling Mr Bridges. Online, she wrote he was the rotting head of a fish ripe for lopping off.
Even when reporting the comments of those who say he’s not about to lose his leaders’ job, Newshub makes it sound like he is already dead.
“Dr Edwards urged caution on predicting Bridges' days were numbered - even as the nails are being hammered into his coffin,” says one of it's online reports of its poll.
When The Spinoff asked Newshub’s pollsters for more details and data they said got this reply:
“Reid Research was not at liberty to release more information to us due to its commercial relationship with Newshub.”
So just like the political parties, there’s only so much Newshub and its pollster wants people to know.
Mr Bridges’ low preferred prime minister ratings sparked the now obligatory AM show online poll this week asking: Who should be the leader of National? Simon Bridges, Paula Bennett or Judith Collins?
Again, part of the familiar narrative.
The Judith Collins leadership denial follow-up story duly arrived on cue on Newshub at 6 on Monday.
But down the years, incumbent PMs have rated so highly in these polls that it’s been hard for any rival to rate highly.
Newshub and TVNZ never say clearly how many in their sample of 1000 don’t know who should be PM or refuse to answer the question.
On Colmar Brunton’s website, it says one-in-three of the sample in last weekend's TVNZ poll did not or would not name one.
From 2014 to 2018, the "don't knows" accounted for for 19 and 30 percent of the sample in each of Reid Research’s polls for TV3.
That means the question is a lot less important to real people than it is for TVNZ and Newshub.
On Tuesday’s Newhub at 6, Ms O’Brien went on to concede the "dead man" was still walking despite previous predictions.
“He does seem safe for now. The National Party is in denial about our poll because it doesn’t like the numbers.
"It’s basically sticking its fingers in its ears and singing 'la-la-la' at the top of its lungs and trying to pretend our poll doesn’t exist."
A lot of Newshub viewers could be saying "blah-blah-blah" because they've heard it all before after Newshub’s polls.
‘Baby uplift story raises awkward questions’:
A fly-on-the-wall account of an attempt to take a newborn baby from a Māori whānau put Oranga Tamariki’s methods under the spotlight and sparked claims of "a stolen generation." Those who saw it were shocked but it was far from the first time cases like it had been aired in the media.
NZ's Own Taken Generation is a strikingly intimate and up-close account of something few of us will ever see - or would want to.
Over 45 minutes, the fly-on-the-wall Newsroom documentary captured an alarming attempt by Oranga Tamariki, social workers, DHB staff and police officers to enforce a court order to take a new baby from a 19-year-old Māori mother in Hastings hospital.
When Melanie Reid and cameraman Phil Prendeville were not in the room, whānau members captured the standoff on their cellphones.
Another case of a child in care being moved in upsetting circumstances unfolded on RNZ National on Friday morning.
First Up reported on a Samoan couple who said Oranga Tamariki gave them less than 48 hours' notice their foster daughter would be taken away. They said were told they could not be her permanent carers because they were not European. The removal was covered live from their house on Morning Report by RNZ’s Indira Stewart.
Last Tuesday, Ms Reid told RNZ’s story-behind-the story podcast The Detail this was not just about individual cases of child welfare - but “racial profiling”.
“If you or I took our baby into hospital with a broken arm, do you think Oranga Tamariki would come and uplift our kids?” she asked The Detail host Sharon Brettkelly.
“I bet you they wouldn’t. That’s what midwives, iwi leaders and some academics are now saying.
"I believe that my job is to show some transparency of what is really going on . . . with these uplifts. If I've upset a few of these agencies along the way, then I'll wear that."
She certainly did.
Oranga Tamariki engaged former broadcaster Linda Clark - now a partner at law firm Kensington Swan - to try to get the Family Court to order Newsroom to alter the documentary in order to protect the baby's identity. The bid failed.
Ironically, Ms Clark was only recently appointed to the board of the government’s broadcasting funding agency New Zealand on Air which funded this Newsroom documentary .
After that Oranga Tamariki chief executive Grainne Moss appeared on the AM show to defend her ministry and its staff. She would not answer questions about the Hawke's Bay Hospital case but was pretty specific about Newsroom’s report.
“What you are seeing there is 36 hours of footage cut down to 40 minutes so I would say it’s a significant misrepresentation of the story,” she told AM.
She was not asked - and did not say - just how Newsroom’s report had misrepresented a situation that on the face if it was far from best practice.
Not for nothing is an order to take a newborn issued by the court, and Newsroom’s Ms Reid told The Detail her report was not a condemnation of the entire system of care for vulnerable children.
But within two days a group called Hands Off our Tamariki had formed calling for an end to uplifts of Māori babies.
“Oranga Tamariki plans to work closely with Māori and earn their trust are up in smoke,” Stuff’s Māori affairs correspondent Carmen Parahi concluded on Thursday.
“Social workers who need to be protected from the public vitriol, many of whom are Māori and trying to help their communities and whānau, will feel the heat and leave," she wrote.
"Foster parents, often not supported fully by the state, will also rethink their positions."
Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers chief executive Lucy Sandford-Reed told RNZ’s Charlie Dreaver identifying the "damned if they do, damned if they don’t” professionals doing their job was unfair.
“It makes them the target of people who think they know better and these cases.
"They're incredibly complex and nobody can talk about them publicly because that would be breaching confidentiality, privacy and potentially compromising court hearings.".
But while many journalists commentators and politicians have expressed shock and alarm about this happening in New Zealand in 2019, it’s hard to see why.
Over the past two years Ms Reid has done a series of stories for Newsroom about children being removed from families by police acting on court orders.
Some from 2017 also feature confronting cellphone video from family members at the scene showing chaotic scenes when police uplifted children.
Jean Te Huia has been talking about it in the media for some time too.
Six month ago, an investigation by Stuff reported around five babies a week - most of them Māori - now separated from their mothers.
“In delivery rooms around New Zealand, the state is removing baby after baby," Stuff wrote.
"More children are now born into care than at any time in the past decade."
The actual case depicted in Newsroom’s documentary has also been reported already.
Newsroom’s Ms Reid reported it at the time back in early May for Newsroom - but without the startling video - and Stuff republished her story to a far bigger online audience.
RNZ’s Ms Dreaver interviewed Ms Te Huia at that time and reported Māori newborns taken into state care rose from 110 in 2015 to 172 last year.
Ms Te Huia told Māori news network Radio Waatea the Hastings case was part of a wider problem.
Whether the situation really parallels Australia stolen generation is a matter of interpretation.
Whether the court-ordered uplifts are justified and whether Oranga Tamariki are carrying them out properly is a matter for debate and investigation by those who know the facts.
It is hard for journalists and the public alike to form a view on that from media eye-witness accounts of individuals cases at the point where the distressing removals are happening.
But the nature of the problem and the scale of it have been no secret thanks to the media exposure that goes going back far further than this past week on Newsroom and RNZ.
Perhaps the startling scenes in Newsroom’s video this week show New Zealanders still have to see it to believe it - and then respond.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch