Mediawatch

In this week's edition of Midweek Mediawatch, Hayden Donnell recaps the big stories of 2022 and the questions they raise for 2023, and delivers his own personal worst of and best of list for the year in media.

For years, Silicon Valley's stars have been able to drum up positive media headlines with their visions of a future tech utopia. In 2022, several of them ran into the hard wall of reality.

Mediawatch's mash-up of 2022 in review; reversal of fortunes for Silicon Valley moguls in the media.

Mediawatch says goodbye - and good riddance - to 2022 in the media.

Midweek Mediawatch - Colin Peacock talks to Karyn Hay about the government's media merger under the spotlight again - along with top brass of TVNZ and RNZ. Also: the death of two much-admired journalists; Qatar's issues overshadowed by the World Cup spectacle; overheated reports of road repair rage, and who's telling the Prime Minister what to do on her summer break?

The PM's hints this week reforms will be pared back in 2023 - and an untidy interview by the broadcasting minister - added to skepticism about the government's public media plan. But while the media have aired angst about editorial independence, trust and costs, the opportunities have barely been addressed - or the consequences of sticking with the status quo.

American newspaper editor turned academic Kenton Bird traveled this country in 2010 to see if the 'news deserts' caused by newspaper closures in the US could happen here. 12 years on, he's back - and happy to find our papers still in print even though the 'rivers of gold' dried up long ago and our biggest publisher was sold for a single gold coin in 2020.

Why has our biggest and only truly national news publisher Stuff just rejigged its regional reporting to have fewer reporters in its local newsrooms - and none at all in some at certain times of the week? The move has antagonised some staff against the backdrop of disputes over journalists' pay.

In this week's edition of Midweek Mediawatch, Hayden Donnell talks to Karyn Hay about a media tussle with Pharmac, a so-called 'trainweck' interview by the broadcasting minister and two interesting Media Council decisions.

One press conference question at a Prime Ministerial summit kicked off a wave of social media scorn this week - and even criticism and international headlines about sexism. But media made a better fist of the awkward questions thrown up by parents withholding consent for the treatment of their sick baby and their supporters.

For more than 30 years the nation's independent producers have been able to bid for money from the public purse to make programmes via New Zealand on Air. But from next year, the new public media entity that replaces RNZ and TVNZ will hold the purse strings for the bulk of the taxpayers' money - and they're anxious about it. But if there's more money available for the stuff they make, what's the problem?

Handling awkward questions; programme-makers anxious about public media project; why Stuff journalists walked off the job.

Journalism's never been an especially well-paid job, except for a few bosses and stars in big jobs at the top end. But industrial action is rare - and no journalists at major news media have gone on strike here for almost a decade and half. Why did some Stuff reporters walk off the job this week and picket their own premises?