Censorship and Collusion

Struggling media companies reject real money

Media censorship is alive and well in New Zealand.

What’s worse is that editors of newspapers seem to be jumping the so-called Chinese wall between editorial and commercial.

In days gone by, editors were given the space around the advertising for their journalists to write their news.

The content of the advertising was not part of an editor’s remit. That was the job of the commercial department.

But something’s happened. Editors now appear to have a say not just in editorial content but in advertising content too.

This is obvious in some email discussion seen by Bob McCoskrie at Family First. The editors and CEOs at NZME, Stuff and Allied Press, who run the Otago Daily Times, colluded to stop Family First running full page ads in six major daily newspapers on Wednesday (July 19) to launch their What is a Woman campaign.

At the 11^th hour the three companies all decided to pull the ad. The email trail includes one saying – “the editors and CEOs are speaking now.”

Also in the trail, a note on Wednesday from the Group Sales Manager at  Stuff saying “the campaign doesn’t align with the values of Stuff.” Which if you read and know Stuff, won’t surprise you in the slightest.

But this was only two days after a marketing strategist at Stuff had told Family First that the ad had been “approved and was good to go.”

It’s a staggering decision. Full page ads are good revenue earners for struggling media companies, yet the three companies turned away thousands of dollars.

A full page ad in the NZ Herald is $16,835. In The Post it’s $5184,  in The Press $4,544 and in the Southland Times $3328. I couldn’t find  the rate for the ODT or the Bay of Plenty Times but it’s likely in the $3000 -$4000 range.

So the money from Family First’s full page ad would pay a week’s wages for 2 or three journalists on most of the papers, and a lot more than that at the Herald.

This was money, real money,  the companies rejected because .. well, I don’t know why. Are they being bullied by Shaneel Lal too? 

NZME has form on this issue. Last year they wouldn’t take ads from the group Stand Up for Women.

Media censorship in news reporting and editorial is bad enough, but when it moves into what products and ideas can and cannot be advertised and promoted, we are in dangerous, censorious territory. 

That is not the mark of a free and democratic society.