Newshub: how we all may lose

And is there any upside?

The announcement that Newshub’s newsroom will close is a loss for all New Zealanders – not least for its employees. As I started writing this, the Newshub website was live-streaming the memorial for Efeso Collins – performing a public service, and covering another huge loss. Later that evening, news came of a possible rescue plan from Newshub staff – perhaps a staff buy-out, a collective haircut, fresh input online not linked to TV, a paywall and go hard.

Can we see the imminent loss of Newshub as a loss for “our democracy”?

There was a lot of hand-wringing about this from politicians, including Winston Peters, a man who’s made a profession out of attacking the media while preening himself in its limelight.

Labour’s Willie Jackson got stuck in to the minister for broadcasting, National’s Melissa Lee who’d admitted to “misspeaking” about a conversation with Newshub. But the loss of Newshub only reinforces why Mr Jackson’s failed merger of Radio NZ and TVNZ was a bad idea: we need more, not fewer, media organisations.

A publicly funded bailout for Newshub looks unlikely, and probably would only be a stop-gap. The basic problem is reportedly a decline of commercial advertising revenue.

Anonymous folk on X celebrated the demise of Newshub, however, with jibes of “go woke, go broke”. They’re a minority who distrust “the MSM”, refuse vaccines and voted for Winston or for one of those minnow parties. They’re still angry that the media conveyed (to the best of their ability, and based on what was known at the time) information about the pandemic and about the public-health measures.

Newshub gets the latest and breaking news up on its site pretty quickly. They interview a range of political actors and commentators. It’s one of my regular go-to news-sites. (I don’t own a TV set, and generally read online, so I miss the ads.)

From here, there are two ways things can go: the “creative destruction” route by which we see innovative news services employ those journalists who get laid off, and the “destructive destruction” route by which capacity in the industry only continues to decline. The latter path reminds me of the universities, especially their humanities departments: ongoing decline, accompanied by plenty of handwringing, followed by more of the same. It’s like the decline of Byzantium and the sack of Constantinople but with no Renaissance.

Some journalists may end up on here (Substack) as they try to eke out a living. A newsroom, however, is more than just a collection of individuals: it’s an organisation with ICT resources to record first-hand, to analyse, to inquire and to broadcast. Individuals online can’t do all of those things, and certainly not to the same scale. People like me who comment online are relying on the Newshubs of this world for basic information about prominent people and political events – and, yes, sometimes for things to mock or criticise.

Getting back to democracy, then, there’s no doubt that a free press plays a vital part. People need a variety of sources of information and opinion. Taking away one of the institutional pillars is not what we need, even though we may have criticised what or how it reported.

Democracy relies on a paradoxical mix of trust and distrust. When we vote for our representatives, in effect we’re trusting them (including the successful ones for whom we didn’t vote) with awesome powers to make laws and to govern communities. But, because we trust no one with unlimited powers, we separate and limit the powers that they can wield. Periodic elections, which place a time-limit, are one important means of doing that. The transparency and accountability that comes from having a free press is another – because we shouldn’t trust others to act on our behalf without at least some of us watching them.

Consuming “the news” is also an exercise in simultaneously trusting and distrusting. As audiences become more literate and gain access to wider varieties of competing news sources, they become more critical of what they see and hear. After all, we shouldn’t just believe what we’re told. Like the sciences, a credible system thrives on a healthy scepticism, as well as on trust in our senses. (Conspiracy theorists confuse being sceptical with believing implausible alternatives. Those who think they can’t be duped become the biggest dupes.)

There’s a similar trust/distrust in educational institutions: even as the teacher is speaking, the students in a lecture room can search online to fact-check and to seek out alternative views. After all, we’re supposed to be training people in critical thinking. Once they’ve got their pass grades, they’re free to think what they like anyway.

Authority is easily questioned online, which is why authoritarian regimes, such as China and Russia, have become experts in controlling and weaponising the internet. But a competitive open digital environment, in the American style, comes with a destructive effect: the dismantling of the institutions that informed and educated us. And western openness to dissent is vulnerable to info-ops from those same authoritarian regimes that don’t respect their own people’s right to express dissenting opinions.

Ironically, though, it’s the big American digital platforms (and not the Chinese or Russians) that are shoplifting our information and attracting advertisers’ dollars and hence starving small fry like Newshub.

It’s simplistic to say that the news media has “trust issues” when there are far more untrustworthy forces at play.

Why do people assume that democracy and a free press depend on trust when they’re premised on our not trusting those who rule?