A few years ago I gave a talk at an investigative journalism conference and focused my attention on the industry’s coverage of Māori issues. At one point I made an off-the-cuff comment that being a Pākehā journalist doesn’t make you racist, but it doesn’t make you neutral, either. One of the attendees later expressed astonishment at this simple observation, which I thought was fairly mundane. I was polite about it but I was also slightly alarmed – if journalists like her assumed their view of the world was the neutral one then it explained a lot.
In my more than 25 years in the media industry, there have been huge upheavals, particularly in the technology and business models. Although the technology has been remarkable and welcome, some technologies have destroyed the industry’s business models, and the revenue streams that actually fund the journalism have dried up to a trickle.
But technology is not the only problem. I’m quite aware that a large proportion of the readers of the Listener, if not the majority, are Pākehā Baby Boomers. That is true of most media outlets. As I said to the journalist I spoke with that day, it doesn’t make the outlets or their audience inherently racist. But it most certainly doesn’t make them neutral.
A monolithic media audience creates a feedback loop where the audience is delivered news that is compatible with its point of view, even when it’s about someone or something outside its circle.
Though media outfits like to puff out their chests and invoke all sorts of clichés about independence and speaking truth to power, this is a slightly disingenuous self-delusion. The abuses of power that Māori have been on the receiving end of have not received the media attention they deserved. In fact, the abuse of power is often carried out by the media itself. Silence is a species of violence.
The media’s heyday has corresponded with the lifetime of Baby Boomers who came of age in the 1960s, settled into adulthood in the 70s and 80s, took up leadership roles in the 90s and 2000s, and are now heading for retirement. As a result, the media’s coverage has often looked like Pākehā of a certain age talking to themselves, even when they’re talking about someone else.
When I started out, if you asked any publisher or editor what their target audience was they’d tell you it was in the 25-55 age group. It would have been taken as read it was Pākehā and middle-class to wealthy. The industry continues to cling to this audience even as it ages. In a recent review, Radio New Zealand stated its core audience was 50-69, without a hint of embarrassment.
Relying on those heading for the rest homes or the grave is not a growth strategy. Many of the executives in charge will shortly be retiring and will leave the mess for someone else to clean up. Until then, they’ll continue parroting corporate platitudes and excuses for the industry’s demise that’s happened on their watch.
The main political parties, along with Act and NZ First, are also fixated on this demographic because if you win this voting bloc, or at least a significant chunk of it, you win the election. It’s just numbers. But it also makes an assumption – a false and dangerous one, I would argue – that the best interests of this group equate to the best interests and future of the country. They don’t. But the media and politicians are largely speaking to the same audience, so the operating assumption continues.
I haven’t watched TV news for years, but I was at a family member’s house when the news came on. It confirmed I wasn’t missing much. What also struck me was the ads. They were for rest homes and hearing aids, which told me who the audience was.
Younger audiences’ media consumption is far more fragmented thanks to social media, and mainstream media executives seem to have given up even trying to reach them, if they bothered at all.
This constant tilt towards an older white audience distorts the public conversation on all manner of subjects, from housing and education to crime and retirement, but particularly anything involving Māori.
If all stories are constructed to make them palatable to this older Pākehā demographic, to the point of treating them like they’re the centre of the universe, then the media is failing to give a well-rounded view of the world. It leads to this audience being constantly coddled and reassured, or simply spooked with the latest moral panic. But it doesn’t seriously challenge their views.
Take house prices. If your audience is more likely to be not just a property owner but to own investment properties, then you’re hardly going to give much of a platform to those voices who believe house prices should drop. Or that voice – even if it’s someone as dull, old and white as Don Brash – is going to be presented as an outlier.
Next time a political leader stands in front of a wall of cameras and microphones, filter out what they’re talking about and ask yourself who the politician and the media outlet is talking to and who they’re not talking to.
Because the audience creates the message. And it’s not neutral.
