Mediawatch looks critically at the New Zealand media - television, radio, newspapers and magazines as well as the 'new' electronic media.
Manus Island and media manipulation:
Manus Island has been in the headlines a lot lately but few reporters have been able to report from there on the ground. Ben Robinson-Drawbridge looks at whether news reports are giving an accurate picture - and growing concerns about efforts to manipulate the media.
Few reporters have been able or allowed to report on what has really been happening on Manus Island. Secrecy law prevents the dissemination of official information from Australia's refugee detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Leaked intelligence, claims from politicians, advocates and the refugees themselves have formed the basis of many reports in this vacuum.
Among those who are not sure what to believe are New Zealand MPs.
The government's offer to resettle 150 refugees from offshore detention has repeatedly been knocked back by Australia.
The offer was examined this month during a meeting of the parliamentary Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade.
Civil servants were also quizzed by MPs, including Gerry Brownlee, on the veracity of media reports that featured leaked intelligence cables.
"Clearly from media reports anyway, and I guess the word 'clearly' is wrong when you talk about media reports... even if the 150 places were taken up, Australia is still left with a problem. And the backgrounds of some of those people, if you can believe the media, are quite interesting," said Mr Brownlee.
His "interesting backgrounds" comment came from a media report of alleged criminal activity by Manus Island refugees that surfaced in an intelligence cable obtained by the Australian Financial Review.
"Intelligence advice sent to Canberra from Port Moresby last month describes shocking behaviour from residents at the now-closed Australian Regional Processing Centre on Manus Island.
"In addition to broader allegations of drug taking and dealing (marijuana), there were overarching community concerns regarding allegations that some residents were engaged in sexual activities with underage girls."
Political scientist Binoy Kampmark from Melbourne's RMIT University said given the secrecy law, it was possible the leak had been authorised by the Australian government.
"The Australian approach has been to try to maintain total secrecy under the Australian Border Force Act. So it's interesting that suddenly there have been these tactical leaks, that seem to be tactical, that come out showing the disposition of the refugees," said Dr Kampmark, who has written extensively about Australian refugee policy.
"It's an attempt to change New Zealand opinion. An attempt to also to undermine the Ardern government," he said.
Anti-whistle blower provisions in the act did not stop two men, who claimed to be former guards at the Manus Island detention centre, from talking to RNZ's Checkpoint last month, including a New Zealander known as Ian.
"You've got some 161 offences which have been reported by the Papua New Guinea authorities to the Australian authorities since October. Do we want these kinds of people in New Zealand? I most certainly do not," said Ian.
Ian might have been doing the rounds of the Australian shock jocks, according to refugee advocate Ian Rintoul.
"It's interesting that he repeats the figures coming out of the immigration department in Australia. So the figure about 161 incidents that have been reported, there's no details about what those figures represent," said Mr Rintoul.
"Because Wilson, the security company, has not had the authority inside the detention centre since it was declared unlawful in 2016, it is quite common for the PNG police to lay charges against people inside the detention centre as a mechanism of behavioural control, over incidents of scuffles with guards, complaints about food. They've been arrested, taken to the police station, when the bail money is paid, it's forgotten," he said.
"These figures are thrown around to create a picture of criminality."
Dr Kampmark said the vilification of refugees in the media by guards could be politically motivated.
"There is a close working relationship between the Australian government and the contractors who work on these facilities," said Dr Kampmark.
"What has happened subsequently over the years have been testimony and accounts that seem remarkably cultivated to fit a particular purpose," he said.
"The point is to undermine and sow the seeds of discord. The slant is to demonstrate them (refugees) to be innately rotten, so that New Zealand should not touch them with a 20 foot barge pole."
Last year, the former MP for Manus Island Ronnie Knight told RNZ Pacific he wanted five former Manus guards extradited to PNG from Australia and New Zealand, to face trial for the rape of a colleague and the murder of refugee.
Another intelligence cable leaked to Brisbane's Courier Mail and picked up by the New Zealand Herald, was cited by MP Simon Bridges during the select committee meeting.
"It says Australian officials had leaked intelligence reports that border officials had come across four boat loads of asylum seekers reportedly trying to reach New Zealand, citing the more friendly approach of the new Labour government," said Mr Bridges.
In response, a deputy secretary from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Jeff Langley, said it was his understanding that, "the reference to the four shipments is a historical reference, it's not a recent one."
The information in that story could also have been leaked for political gain, according to Dr Kampmark.
"It's built up on this notion that New Zealanders should be delighted, comfortable, or grateful for the Australian effort to stop vessels that might be heading to New Zealand," he said.
"Suddenly to get information in the last few weeks that four vessels were intercepted on the way down to New Zealand with 164 people is curious, to say the least."
Throughout Australian history, intelligence has been leaked to the media to gain advantage in the political realm, according to RMIT social scientist Justin McPhee.
Dr McPhee, who specialises in the history and politicisation of Australian intelligence, said leaks were often designed "to discredit or persuade."
"So we're seeing a leak designed to discredit the Ardern government and also designed to enhance the credibility of the Turnbull government's policy," said Dr McPhee.
"There are many other cases of intelligence leaks throughout Australian history being used to persuade the public to accept the legitimacy of a predetermined position," he said.
"But we do need to be cautious about deciding the veracity of the information, where it's coming from and who it may benefit."
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Online services like Netflix, iTunes and Amazon work out what we like based on what we do online.
News websites know what we have read and shared, but not what we might want next. Mediawatch meets a scientist who joined a newsroom to fix that.
Some found that funny - judging by all those 'likes' but others thought it was downright mean to call out the binge-watching habits of a handful of customers like that.
It was also a reminder that while more than 100 million people watch Netflix - including more than a million households in New Zealand - Netflix watches them.
Netflix first became a huge player by making shows and movies available online and now makes its own ones. (A Christmas Prince is one of them).
A key factor in their success is the data provided by its viewers themselves.
A recent New Zealand Herald article headed 'has Netflix changed TV forever?' explained it like this:
"Where once, film and television companies relied on test screenings and focus groups to gauge audience reaction, Netflix feeds off vast amounts of data on the viewing habits and tastes of its subscribers; it classifies its shows and films using about 77,000 individual "micro-genres" - and commissions more programmes that fit into the most popular ones."
Once Netflix has done that, it lets the right customers know when it's available.
Retailers like iTunes and Amazon also prompt their customers with variations of: “if you liked this; you might like these.”
But for broadcasters and news media outfits operating online, this is harder to do. Satisfying people’s demand for compelling content every day is tougher than selling them a book or a movie once in a while.
Those lists of 'most read' and 'most shared' stories can show what people have been looking at and the 'related stories' links might be of interest, but it’s much harder for them to work out what people might want to read or watch next.
Leading digital news media thinker Frederick Filloux said no news media company was able to invest US$20m a year to design a recommendation engine as Netflix had done, or have 70 digital engineers working on it.
Online opportunists seeking to fill the gap so far haven't really helped.
When you scroll down some news websites to the bottom you might find a set of stories tagged 'recommended for you' from recommendation engines like Taboola or Outbrain.
Mr Filloux described these as “a horror show” and the "worst visual polluters of digital news."
"In most cases, they send the reader to myriads of clickbait sites. This comes with several side-effects: readers go away, and it disfigures the best design," he said.
"Repeatedly direct your reader toward a shallow three-year-old piece, and it’s highly likely she might never again click on your suggestions," he added.
He’s currently at Stanford University working on something better: the News Quality Scoring Project, which he said will use machine learning to highlight quality journalism online - and not stale paid-for clickbait.
Closer to home, a New Zealand-born biophysicist based in Sydney has also been working on something better for the media.
In 2012 Dr Matt Baker joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as scientist in residence and in 2016 he was embedded at the Sydney Morning Herald to point its readers to stories online that are relevant to them.
So how did he work out what they might want to read next?
"The crudest way of doing it is to look at the 'most viewed' but a better way is looking at who's reading selected articles and offer five articles most similar to the one you are reading," he said.
'Related stories' links don't always help, he said, if the reader had already read those stories.
"If you can recommend three things they haven't read, that can be a win for the reader and the publisher."
Dating sites work in a similar way, he said.
Different sort of preference surely?
"Yes - but the same sort of mathematics," he replied.
"Computationally you can say these articles are probably similar - and you can (find) cases a human might not do."
"People might read a couple of rugby articles and then a business article. A human looks at that and says: "That's a rugby article. Serve them another rugby article.' The computer is looking at tens of thousands of articles and it's able to say which one of these is most similar to the one they're reading now.
"Some people are pushing for free-form pages for websites where there are no topics. It's customised based on the user and it flows based on things it knows about you and your region."
He said that only worked really well if users were logged in, which many were still reluctant to do.
And maybe for good reason.
"One of the things that's good about traditional newspapers and magazines is serendipity. You don't know what you're going to get when you turn the page. A human has curated that content in that order and in that space.
"Recommendations being served to you digitally means you get less of that. Sprinkling a bit of magic randomness in there retains a bit of serendipity and that's quite powerful because it delivers new information to people who may not have been looking for it."
Prime time presenters call it quits:
Toni Street and Mike Hosking are quitting TVNZ’s Seven Sharp to spend more time with their families - and their respective radio networks. What next for a show that's often in the news because of its hosts?
Whatever big-name local broadcasters do these days seems to make news across the media.
So when the pair presenting TVNZ 1’s 7pm show told viewers on Thursday they were calling it quits after four years, notifications were pinged out to the nation’s phones with the urgency of a tsunami alert. Homepage banners were cleared out to carry the news.
On the same day the government announced its new families package and opened its books for the first time since being elected.
But there was nothing about that on Seven Sharp.
Instead, the show told us how to avoid sandfly bites, ran a feel-good section sponsored by a bank, and Hosking and Street goofed around with marmite and vegemite iceblocks.
The show's forerunners Holmes and Close Up took on the news of the day and forced news-makers to front up.
But the progression towards entertainment over news in the 7pm slot was underway before Street and Hosking took over.
“It was in trouble and the challenge was to turn this show around,” Hosking told viewers on Thursday about joining the show four years ago alongside Street. The show’s ratings picked after they came on board.
But even though their show has dominated the commercial competition at a critical prime time half-hour for TVNZ, both hosts also have well-paid radio jobs each day.
“She’s got radio and I’ve got radio and these are long hours and hard days,” Hosking told viewers.
In the past TVNZ bosses might have found it galling for such prime roles to be considered an optional add-on to radio jobs, but Hosking’s big morning audience on Newstalk ZB was considered an asset. Likewise, Street's morning gig on The Hits.
TVNZ didn't mind Hosking urging Seven Sharp viewers to tune in to hear him on ZB the following morning, even though TVNZ’s own breakfast show also wanted their eyeballs at the same time. Just after he announced his departure from Seven Sharp on Thursday, he told its viewers to tune in for his chat with Paul McCartney on his radio show the following morning.
The TV / radio crossover also gave Hosking a second soapbox for frequent pro-National-led government opinions he aired on Newstalk ZB. The New Zealand Herald (also NZME-owned) gave him another one.
That raised uncomfortable questions of bias for state-owned TVNZ. Never before had one host had such a big and multi-platformed pulpit from which to dispense political reckons.
But TVNZ was prepared to take the criticism for the sake of ratings. On Thursday’s Seven Sharp, Hosking revealed he had wanted to leave Seven Sharp a year ago, but TVNZ asked him to stay “to do election year”.
While TVNZ’s statement insists the pair have quit to spend more time with their families (and their respective radio networks) can it be a coincidence Hosking departs just as a new political landscape takes shape?
His strident political opinion pieces on Seven Sharp have thinned out post-election and it may have been seen as both a commercial and a political risk for state-owned TVNZ to have an older right-wing host regularly criticising a left-leaning government, especially if the polls proved it was led by a persistently popular PM in Jacinda Ardern.
On nzherald.co.nz, the headline “Labour's package expected to halve child poverty” was elbowed aside for “Will Hilary take over?” (Hilary Barry - TV stars need no surnames).
But the bigger question is: what will TVNZ serve up to one of New Zealand’s largest prime time audiences?
It could be more of the same with new faces, or it could shape a new show in the new year that deals with more deeply with issues at a time of change under a new government.
From: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch