A Media Coup

The empire's striking back

It is one of the most significant moves in the history of the New Zealand media. In time it may be seen as one of the most important manoeuvres in our recent social history.

Ex-pat Canadian businessman Jim Grenon has bought just under ten percent of New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME) and now says he has the support of enough other shareholders to force a complete replacement of the company’s board.

We know a little of Grenon’s mindset through his previous ownership of the small online media outlet The Centrist. He has views which might be regarded as conservative and contrary to the prevailing media narrative in this country. It appears he wants more opportunity for all sides of a particular story to be told through outlets like the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB.

If he can be successful in his boardroom coup, then he and the other like-minded company owners are almost certain to bring their view of the world to company management and staff and make changes to editorial direction.

It is common practice in the world of the media business. Rupert Murdoch is a past and present master of the art. At the New York Times the Ochs - Sulzberger family has been at the helm since 1896 offering support to causes as varied as Fidel Castro, the Nazis and the ideologically driven “1619 Project.” In more recent times Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post and Paul Marshall in charge of the Spectator and GB News have stamped their personal authority on the direction of those outlets.

In this country it’s about time. While NZME’s flagships have been more centre-leaning others in the market, there are still numerous issues it refuses to really engage on.

So an opportunity to make the country’s mainstream media more diverse in its editorial outlooks should be something the country celebrates.

Unsurprisingly much reporting around Grenon’s move has been negative. The reaction of one time Labour Party cabinet minister and now union organizer Michael Wood was as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

"We see a pattern that has been incredibly unhealthy in other countries," Wood said, of billionaires "moving into media ownership roles to be able to promote their own particular view of the world".

A few questions for Mr Wood. Why is the pattern “incredibly unhealthy?” Is it because Mr Grenon’s “particular view of the world” is not the view of Mr Wood or of the journalists he represents?

The answer to that is obviously yes. But why is that a bad thing?

Why is having the opportunity for differing approaches to an issue such a problem?

Mr Wood and his clients have been able to rule the roost for too long. Reporting on the numerous contentious issues of the last five years has been dreadfully imbalanced.

Take the matter of the Treaty of Waitangi and race relations in general. Every media outlet in this country took money from the improbably named Public Interest Journalism Fund started by the Jacinda Ardern Labour government in 2021. NZME had received nearly seven million dollars up till the middle of 2023.

One of the conditions attached to receipt of any money from that $55 million fund was that it must be used to “actively promote the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Maori as a Te Tiriti partner.”

That one condition alone immediately meant the entire mainstream media industry was compromised in its reporting of treaty issues.

I raised this issue in a speech I gave to the New Zealand Initiative in 2023 where the chair of NZME, Barbara Chapman, was present. Out of courtesy because I knew her a little (she lived in our neighbourhood in Auckland), I warned her in advance about what I was about to say. She told me that NZME had an exemption from that clause in its PIJF conditions of acceptance, but I’ve never seen any reporting or analysis in the Herald asking whether treaty principles really exist or providing a platform for those opposed to what may be termed the “treaty industry.”

Voices such as historian and former Waitangi Tribunal member Michael Bassett have been actively banned from the Herald. Doctor Bassett wrote a column for the Northland Age (part of the NZME stable) in early 2021 headlined “Racism on a Grand Scale.” The column, which started life on the Bassett Brash and Hide website questioned, among other things, why “we are expected to embrace all things Māori.”

It was available, briefly, on nzherald.co.nz.

The then NZME managing Editor Shayne Currie described the article as “unacceptable.” He said at the time the article “failed our standards and should not have been published.”

Currie, who now writes the Media Insider column for the Herald and has covered Grenon’s moves in a balanced and fair way, did not want one of the country’s most respected and knowledgeable historians offering an opinion on issues regarding race relations and the treaty on a website that he was ultimately responsible for.

Even though he was supposedly in charge only of editorial content, Currie was widely thought to also be involved in NZME’s decisions not to carry paid advertising for women’s rights group Stand Up for Women.

On other occasions the company has refused to publish advertising for racial equality group Hobson’s Pledge and eponymous family values group Family First.

Three of the four major pillars of mainstream media in this country promote a fervently anti-government narrative. The extraordinary reporting by TVNZ’s Political Editor of the 1News/Verian poll last winter which attracted a record 309 complaints is but an example.

The recent full frontal attack on the new school lunch programme by the state run media companies plus Stuff, with more than a helping hand from the Herald is another.

Where for example has there been any analysis from some sort of parenting specialist (there must be a few hundred thousand out there!) about how to make inexpensive and healthy school lunches at home for children to take to school?

(As a parent, a grandparent and a former school lunch maker and eater I could have written that piece very quickly and asked why my advice could not have been followed!)

The examples of a biased mainstream media presenting one narrative of life in New Zealand are numerous.

Think treaty, think transgender issues, think climate change.

It’s been going on for so long this world view is beginning to stick in the minds of many New Zealand media consumers who now believe this must be the only truth.

What Jim Grenon’s move has the potential to do is to present to all New Zealanders an alternative view of the world, and of this country in particular.

That cannot ever be a bad thing.