Crisis as media ecosystem faces collapse - Hūhana Lyndon

Hūhana Lyndon, right, with the team behind the Ngati Hine FM-led Te Matatini live translation service.

Opinion

Hūhana Lyndon is a Green Party list MP based in Whangārei, Te Tai Tokerau. Lyndon’s portfolios include health, Māori development, Whānau Ora and forestry. She is a proud descendant of Ngāti Hine, Ngātiwai, Ngāti Whātua, Waikato Tainui and Hauraki.

This year’s Te Matatini National Kapa Haka Festival hosted in Taranaki was an amazing display of the richness of our nation’s indigenous culture and the power of people coming together.

The event was broadcast live with translations in te reo Māori via the Te Matatini app, beaming out across Aotearoa, the Pacific and other parts of the world, showing how innovation stems from collaboration.

I was also heartened to see the broader media sector out in strength to cover the event, but I also found myself wondering whether we will be able to count on having such coverage available in the future.

I’m talking about the rapidly vanishing media environment, something that anyone who believes events of national significance should be covered by the media would be concerned about. Not a month goes by these days without some announcement about cuts or closures at local media outlets. The number of journalists, editors, broadcasters, camera people and producers is steadily shrinking.

Newspapers have been hit hard by the decline of revenue, especially in the regions. Up here in the north, we’re lucky that the Northern Advocate is still doing mahi. But at the end of last year, 14 NZME community newspapers, all in the North Island, closed, which was shattering for local communities.

Lack of funding has forced hard times on TV too. Programming and staff cuts have been widespread in our country’s relatively small media landscape – whether that be staples like Fair Go or Sunday on TVNZ, or the loss of te reo Māori nightly news and current affairs programmes of Whakaata Māori, with the te reo channel moving online only. Whakaata Māori is set to lose $10.3 million in the financial year to come.

Some parts of our community are cheering on the collapse of the news media ecosystem in particular. That’s hardly surprising. Media or journos have rarely been near the top of the “most trusted professions” list. Usually they’re with us politicians near the bottom.

But we should not be fooled into thinking that big tech can be depended on to provide independent news and programmes that reflect the social and cultural diversity of Aotearoa; or to hold those in power and corporate interests to account.

The media did a good job of covering Te Matatini 2025 on the smell of an oily rag. But the way things are tracking, there’s no guarantee that these media outlets will have the resources to go and cover future editions.

The impact will be far wider than just this event. If communities like ours in Te Tai Tokerau are empowered with the tools to share our people’s stories and cover the news that affects us in a way that reflects who we are, our democracy will be all the stronger.

The Government should take action to support increased funding for quality, non-commercial public media that reaches out to the regions and tells their stories, but also that nurtures and promotes our talent and creativity as a nation, reflecting the unique social and cultural diversity of Aotearoa.

We must also increase resourcing for student, community Māori, and Pasifika media and radio.

We support the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, which will require big digital platforms to negotiate compensation with news publishers for their content.

It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s an important step to recouping fair compensation for media organisations whose content is used and recycled by big social media companies.

Unfortunately, the Government has decided not to include AI companies in the legislation, despite generative AI being trained on and regurgitating New Zealand news media content without compensation or even accreditation.

This is a problem. It would be a shame to kick the can down the road and leave ChatGPT and similar to harvest NZ news freely.

A sustainable media ecosystem is not just essential if the country at large is to be able to watch or listen to significant events like Te Matatini, it’s critical to democracy.

Just look at Russia or the US to see how the misinformation vortex erodes the media landscape to the detriment of social cohesion.

We take an independent and well-resourced media for granted, and won’t realise how much we value it until it’s gone.