RNZ NATIONAL. MEDIAWATCH 5/07/2020

Mediawatch looks critically at the New Zealand media - television, radio, newspapers and magazines as well as the 'new' electronic media. It also examines the performance of the agencies, corporations and institutions that regulate them. It looks into the impact the media has on the nation, highlighting good practice as well as bad along the way - and it also enquires into overseas trends and technological developments which New Zealanders need to know about.
It aims to enlighten everyone with an interest in the media about how it all works, how quickly things are changing - and how certain significant stories and issues are being covered. It's also intended to be essential listening for those who work in the industry itself - as well as those who simply enjoy well-produced and lively radio.

Mediawatch for 5 July 2020:

Breaking for the border; forcing the issue of race at the Herald; slippery slope of safety.

Breaking for the borders:
There are more than 10 million Covid cases around the world and climbing - and more than half a million dead so far. New South Wales won’t take flights from neighbouring Victoria right now. But there have been long, loud calls in the media here to open the border and fire up international tourism.
On TVNZ’s Breakfast last Monday the PM bridled when John Campbell put it to her it was “good luck rather than good management” community transmission of Covid-19 had not resurfaced in recent days.
“Frankly it is insulting to say we're in the position we’re in because of good luck,” she said forcefully.
John Campbell was channelling an earlier guest on the show - National MP Michael Woodhouse - who claimed to know of “a swag of cases” where transmission was a possibility thanks to failures in quarantine and isolation oversight.
But writing on Scoop.co.nz, commentator Gordon Campbell reckoned some journalists were too willing to believe the worst and to echo opposition politicians’ blurts about “botches at the border.”
“Amidst all this talk of “fiascos” and ”chaos” anyone could be forgiven for failing to grasp that as yet, not a single person has become ill, let alone died as a result of these allegedly calamitous lapses in border security and quarantine testing,” he wrote.
After the PM’s plea for perspective on TVNZ's Breakfast, John Campbell described her response to his questions as “Churchillian.”
While that was over-the-top, Churchill’s finest hour also came when successfully protecting the borders of his island nation back in the day.
‘Team Churchill’ won the Battle of Britain 80 years ago this month, but to win the war they had to storm their way across the borders.
But that’s not an imminent prospect for New Zealanders today.
“This trans-Tasman bubble’s not going to happen any time soon is it?” John Campbell asked the PM wearily on Monday, acknowledging the spike in cases spreading in parts of Victoria. By Wednesday not even neighbouring New South Wales was accepting flights from there.
But in spite of all that, some in the media this week insisted a plan for reopening our border was urgent.
In the Sunday Star Times last weekend, Stuff’s political editor Luke Malpass said New Zealand risked becoming a “COVID-free cul de sac” without one.
“Unless a second wave of Covid sees the globe drift into a Mad Max-type world - with New Zealand becoming a beacon of civilisation - we can’t simply live shut off forever,” he wrote.
That fear was shared - at length - by Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB this week.
“Why are the borders still closed?” he asked.
“How is it England, with thousands of cases, is off to Benidorm? How is it the good people of France are off to the Amalfi Coast?” he asked.
“There’s really nothing stopping us opening up with Australia and certainly nothing stopping us with the Pacific Islands,” he told ZB listeners on Tuesday.
But Europeans are not on the move across borders en masse for holidays just yet.
Bookings are being taken in the UK in anticipation of limited travel next week between some European countries including the UK, Germany, France and Spain.
But the UK Foreign Office advice this week still stated Britons are still not permitted to travel abroad. Spain’s beaches were officially reopened to the public on 25 May in regions that have entered phase two of the government’s de-escalation plan, but although beach bars were also allowed to open with strict social distancing and cleaning measures many remain closed.
Nine out of 10 people on summer holidays in France right now are - reportedly - French.
Ireland’s chief medical officer told the paper people who have booked a getaway abroad should back out because of the risk of picking up Covid-19 and bringing it back.
“Many holidaymakers are wondering if they are worth the hassle and if their trip will be the relaxing break they had looked forward to,” Ireland’s Independent newspaper reported the same day.
Mike Hosking endorsed a warning from IATA - the International Air Travel Association - that quarantining people was killing international air travel and jobs around the world.
“Quarantine measures may play a role in keeping people safe, but they will also keep many unemployed. The alternative is to reduce risks through a series of measures," IATA’s president Alexandre De Juniac said in a statement.
“What was the point of a great health outcome if the economic one is a catastrophe? For a country that needs, relies on, and is beholden to the world, that's a disaster,” he said.
But what are IATA’s alternatives?
Aside from observing standard Covid-19 hygiene on the plane - and keeping passengers from high and low risk countries apart on the ground, the IATA plan is effectively this:
Health declarations, screening and testing by governments will “add extra layers of protection.”
If someone travels while infected “we can reduce the risk of transmission with protocols to prevent the spread during travel or when at destination”.
“Effective contact tracing can isolate those most at risk without major disruptions.”
And that’s about it. Most of the heavy lifting is to be done by the government and authorities here - not by the airline industry.
IATA is effectively asking governments: do you feel lucky?
National Party leader Todd Muller and Business New Zealand also pushed hard in media interviews for a plan on when and how borders might be opened if the rest of the world hasn’t stamped out Covid-19.
On Friday a “conversation paper” (PDF) authored by former PM Helen Clark, former PM science advisor Sir Peter Gluckman and former Air New Zealand boss Rob Fyfe received widespread media coverage and applause from the business community.
Sir Peter told Morning Report now was not the time to open up - but it is the time to plan for how it could be done. He said we must look at how places like Taiwan are already doing it and the contact tracing we would need to have in place.
Some people resented the fact the trio commanded so much media attention with a paper that was just three-and a half pages long, light on detail - and which raised but did not answer no fewer than 22 separate questions.
On Newshub Nation this weekend, the PM challenged Sir Peter’s backing of tech and phone-based contract tracing systems.
But this is what Sir Peter, Helen Clark and Rob Fyfe wanted - a debate in public and in the media about how best to re-open borders when the time comes.
On his site Politik.co.nz Richard Harman said all this is also in tune with Sir Peter Gluckman’s mission to link together a number of “small advanced economies” around the world including New Zealand. Scientific experts are co-operating while diplomats and political leaders seem to struggle.
That sounds like more like something the media could examine, rather than the lobbying of overseas airlines and tourism - and pundits painting misleading pictures of fun in the sun in Europe’s holiday hotspots.

Forcing the issue of race at the Herald:
The Herald recently published a column which criticises its own record on race. Teuila Fuatai explains why she felt she had to call out the paper that commissioned her.​
On Monday the Herald carried a surprising headline: ‘Why I found it so hard writing about racism in New Zealand for the Herald’.
In the column, journalist Teuila Fuatai detailed her concerns about the Herald’s record on race and her efforts to raise those with her editors.
It wasn’t what she was originally commissioned to write.
Her editors had asked for an article about racism in New Zealand more generally, covering systemic issues in institutions like Oranga Tamariki, the police, and the justice system.
Fuatai says she started out trying to follow that brief before a conversation with the New Zealand organisers of Black Lives Matter left her feeling she couldn’t follow through on that brief without addressing the Herald’s coverage first.
“I suppose it was just a week after the first protest march in New Zealand and I thought they’d be a great group to speak to as an anti-racism group,” she says.
“It changed when they basically said they didn’t want to talk to me because the Herald and its coverage was racist and upheld structures of white supremacy.”
Teuila Fuatai's column on the Herald's coverage of raceTeuila Fuatai's column on
The criticism was hard to hear, but Fuatai agreed with the organisers.
The Herald has been criticised over its coverage of race in the past, notably when it published a 2012 column by Paul Holmes calling Waitangi Day a “complete waste” and in 2014 when it printed a white fist on its masthead along with a promise its Waitangi coverage would be “protest-free”.
More recently journalist Madeleine Chapman highlighted the lack of diversity in the paper’s editorial department.
However, the Herald has responded to the Black Lives Matter protests with examinations of racism and colonial legacies in New Zealand - among them, the piece Teuila Fautai was asked to write.
In late June for example, Herald Māori affairs reporter Michael Neilson looked at "a local dispute about trees, which for many is about much more than just trees” under the headline: How Ōwairaka/Mt Albert tree protest became a flashpoint for racism, colonisation debate.
Nielsen has also written in depth about the ‘statues issue’ under the explicit heading ‘George Floyd protests and racism.’
Fuatai is now a freelancer, but has been on staff at the Herald, and she says many of the paper's issues with race are structural and systemic.
“I do think that there is a lack of diversity in their newsroom and I do think that we’ve seen, publicly, problematic coverage pointed out - both recent and historic,” she says.
“From my personal perspective I think that we operate in inherently racist structures. So for the Herald to not be like that - it would be an outlier.”
Fuatai went back to her editors offering to write an assessment of the Herald’s coverage of race.
She cited the example of National Geographic which carried out an audit of its history of racist reporting in the leadup to Martin Luther King day in 2018.
That sort of harsh self-reflection is taking place in an increasing number of news organisations around the world, as journalists are called on to re-examine their treatment of race in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.
In the US, The New York Times underwent a staff revolt after publishing a column by the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton which called for the government to send in the military against Black Lives Matter protesters.
Dozens of journalists said the column put the paper’s Black staff in danger, eventually prompting the Times’ Opinion section editor James Bennet to tender his resignation.
The Times wasn’t alone. A top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer resigned after printing the headline ‘Buildings Matter Too’ during the Black Lives Matter protests.
Editors at other outlets including Variety, Bon Appétit magazine and the fashion and culture website Refinery29 stepped down under employee pressure.
Some newsrooms have moved proactively to improve their coverage. In a tacit acknowledgement of its own failure to cover the issue adequately, The Washington Post has set up a dedicated unit covering race in the US.
Similar discussions are starting to take place here in New Zealand. Under its new owner Sinead Boucher, Stuff is looking to set up a section devoted to covering Te Ao Māori, the Māori world.
Fuatai says editors need to understand the value in promoting people of colour to positions of influence, giving platforms to diverse voices, and catering content to diverse audiences.
“Understand that in 10 years time, your audience and your readership or your viewers - you want to be right there with them in understanding the issues and the conversations that they’re having. Part of that is looking at the makeup of your newsroom. To do that you have to understand the value in actually diversifying,” she told Mediawatch
Fuatai’s first conversation with a Herald editor ended with her being told to stick to her original story brief.
The column published on Monday was the result of a lengthy editing process.
She’s pleased with the final result, and with the fact that the paper was willing to confront its record in public.
That sort of self-examination needs to keep happening, not just at the Herald, but in newsrooms across the country, she says.
“You have to work hard to be anti-racist. You have to work against the status quo. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to stand up and say ‘let’s look at ourselves’.”
New Zealand Herald editor Murray Kirkness responded to Teulia Fuatai’s column on Monday with a statement of his own.
“Being accused of racism is a difficult pill to swallow,” he wrote.
“But it would be reckless to dismiss it and say, 'not on our watch'. We accept the criticism and accept we must do better.”
“We cannot agree with Black Lives Matter's refusal to engage with Teuila Fuatai. For what hope is there without debate? What future without striving for a shared understanding?
“But we can understand their insistence that it is not that group's responsibility to educate the Herald. No victim should carry that burden,” he wrote.
Kirkness said the Herald’s publisher NZME - which also owns half the country’s radio stations - is committed to accountability and monitors diversity of voice. It formed a diversity and inclusion committee in 2016 overseeing all the company's media outlets, he said.
“We hope we can be agents for change across society — a role the Herald has fulfilled for more than 150 years,” he wrote.

Safety on a slippery slope:
The capital's daily paper highlighted the tragic consequences of a dangerous job on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it minimised the risks of another one when highlighting motorists frustration.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch?page=2