COMMENTARY: By Gavin Ellis, Knightly Views publisher
Three primary indicators of the health of New Zealand news media are being published this week and, if the first is anything to go by, the industry needs to be moved to the Intensive Care Unit.

AUT’s JM&D Trust in News Survey, the Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer, and the annual breakdown of advertising spend by the Advertising Standards Authority are all due this week.

The JM&D report – based on methodology developed by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University for its survey of global trust – was released last weekend. It shows overall trust in news has dropped dramatically in the past year.

Two-thirds of people do not trust the news. Surely that sends a message to all mainstream, media that their approach to journalism has to change.

The overall level of trust has dropped by a staggering 38 percent in the five years the AUT study has been carried out. Even trust in the news people use has declined by more than 27 per cent since 2020 and now fewer than half of us trust those sources.

We now rank alongside the UK in the low proportion of people who trust most news most of the time. Only the United States posted lower rates.

We also ranked highest in news avoidance in a comparison with the Reuters international survey. In New Zealand, three-quarters actively avoid the news to some extent.  Greece ranks next with about 58 per cent and the international average sits below 40 percent.

Media news selection
That does not mean people are not interested in news. More than 70 percent of Kiwis said there were interested in news to some degree. That suggests news avoidance is a function of media’s news selection and presentation.

It is interesting that the most trusted news source in New Zealand is the Otago Daily Times, which takes a more traditional or measured approach to selection and presentation. Mind you, there is not much between any of the top 10 sources and all – including the ODT – have declined in trust in the past year. 

Only Dunedin’s newspaper makes it to the halfway point in the percentage of trust. The lowest – iwi radio – has a trust score of 39 percent.

While the JM&D report has been running since 2020, the Acumen barometer is a subset of a global survey that has been published for more than 20 years. It is due to release its findings tomorrow.

New Zealand is not included in the Edelman Global report. Acumen (a group of strategic communications advisors) separately surveys New Zealanders to add a local insert using identical parameters.

The 2024 Edelman global barometer released in February shows trust in journalists is continuing to decline. Almost two-thirds of people surveyed believed journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations. That level of distrust had increased by three percentage points (to 64 per cent) over last year. Overall, the average level of institutional trust among developed nations has fallen to a level where those countries are regarded as distrusting.

Last year’s New Zealand Acumen survey showed the country tracked below the global average on levels of trust in most institutions, and particularly in relation to trust in media.

Falling sharply
The JM&D results are a strong indication that the Acumen Edelman Barometer will also show the mercury falling sharply. The only question will be by how much.

The JM&D survey shows continuing concern over political influence, disinformation, and poor journalism. Forty seven per cent think there is political or government influences on the media, 84 per cent were worried about fake news, and 92 percent were concerned about poor journalism.

I think we need to treat these numbers with a little caution, given an increasing tendency here and elsewhere to see conspiracy in things with which we disagree. Nonetheless, they remain worrying as general indicators.

News avoidance also has complex roots, but a study led by the Reuters Institute last year shows that anxiety is cited as a common reason. Anxiety is not down to a single cause, but I have no doubt the news can make us feel more anxious.

I went back and reviewed the front page lead stories of our metropolitan papers published last year and found that, with only irregular glimmers of hope, they were unremittingly negative. A third of the New Zealand Herald’s lead stories in that period were related to crime or serious injury.

Now, I know many people are doing it tough, but most of us don’t see our lives falling into Thomas Hobbes’ description as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Our lives are a mix of good, bad, happiness, and sometimes sadness. Unrelenting gloom is something we shy away from. And, if we see media painting an exaggerated picture that does not reflect our own reality, our trust in them is also likely to diminish.

Similarly, if our government and NGOs are out of step with how we see the world, we don’t trust them either. The Acumen Edelman Barometer – which polls trust in government, business, NGOs, and media ­– will show us whether our declining trust in media is shared with other institutions.

Shock media sector
The level of distrust shown in the JM&D results should shock the media sector, but they probably already have a very good idea of the other canary in the coalmine – the Advertising Standards Authority’s annual review of advertising spend.

What they will be waiting to see is what change there has been in in the dominance of the transnational platforms.

In 2003, the first year that digital media figures in the Advertising Standards Authority’s annual overview, the new medium recorded only $8 million out of a total advertising spend of $1.77 billion. In 2022, digital raked in over $2 billion out of a total of $3.57 billion and the vast majority of that headed straight overseas (paying minimal tax along the way).

Last year was a difficult one for the domestic media sector. TVNZ’s total revenue, for example, was down $14 million on the previous year. So, our domestic sector will have a clear idea of where they are tracking.

What they have yet to find out is whether the transnationals suffered the same level of revenue decline. Given the trajectory they have followed since 2003, it more likely to be ever upward. There has not been a single year in the past two decades in which the digital spend has dropped. The only question is likely to be the size of the increase.

And surely the numbers will sheet home to government the need for change.

One test for New Zealand’s news media this week will be how frank they are about what the numbers say about their own performances. Another test will be the internal analyses to which they subject the JM&D and Acumen Edelman surveys and how much they take them to heart. If they treat the numbers seriously, they will embark on soul-searching reappraisals of their respective news values and news judgements.

Some need to be more soul-searching than others but all need to ask themselves what they can do to restore the public’s trust.

This article was first published on Gavin Ellis's The Knightly Views website. Dr Ellis is a member of APMN. The JM&D study is led by Dr Merja Myllylahti and Dr Greg Treadwell. You can read the full report here.