Media Matters: wet bus tickets & another round of restructuring

In this instalment of Media Matters, NBR Radio’s Owen Poland chats with Campbell Gibson and Nick Grant about the inner workings of New Zealand’s media industrial complex.

As another month rolls around, another newsroom restructure has been confirmed.

This week it’s Television New Zealand that’s entering into a “consultation process with staff.”

Mr Grant notes, however, that it does seem TVNZ has made a better fist of front-footing the issue (to clumsily conflate two body-based figures of speech) than Fairfax, NZME and MediaWorks have done in recent times.

As he understands it, it was signalled months ago that some changes were likely in the near future – hardly a newsflash given the turbulent times media companies are going through currently but something that was apparently appreciated by staff nonetheless.

TVNZ’s approach to dealing with the inevitable external enquiries also appears to have been much better thought out than that of its media rivals, featuring some clear “messaging” – the restructure’s likely to affect eight to 10 employees among the ranks of journalists, camera operators and producers – and an absence of impenetrable corporate speak.

Mr Poland, a veteran of the state-owned broadcaster, observes that this might be due to it having a great deal of experience of newsroom rejigs and suggests self-declared non-journalist Mike Hosking is unlikely to be in the firing line, despite having been under fire this week.

BSA issues damp bus pass

This masterful segue gives Mr Gibson the opportunity to talk about how the Broadcasting Standards Authority has upheld four complaints about Mike Hosking’s rant against the waitress at the centre of the “ponytailgate” saga.

Yesterday, the BSA released a decision in which it upheld four complaints about Mr Hosking’s rant against a café waitress who complained her ponytail was pulled by Prime Minister John Key. The media watchdog said the broadcaster was “unfair” to waitress Amanda Bailey because she is not a public figure.

Media commentators Brian Edwards and Bill Ralston disagree over the decision.

Dr Edwards has told Mr Gibson the decision is “very sound” but doesn’t go far enough because Mr Hosking abused his position of power. He says TVNZ should face financial penalties such as temporary advertising restrictions or a fine.

Instead, as one on the complainants tweeted acerbically of the BSA decision:

So if you ever need your bus tickets moistened, the Broadcasting Standards Authority is the place to go.

— Giovanni Tiso (@gtiso) September 29, 2015

On the other side of the fence, Mr Ralston says the complaint shouldn’t have been upheld in the first place because the waitress put herself in the public arena when she wrote the initial blog post and politicised the affair.

Ending proceedings on a positive note, Messrs Gibson and Grant both thoroughly recommend the Alternative Commentary Collective’s Champagne Rugby, a new online show in which Matt Heath, Jeremy Wells, Leigh Hart, Jason Hoyte and Mike Lane take a break from providing hilarious cricket commentaries to turn their attention (and their apparently complete lack of knowledge) to the Rugby World Cup. Be warned, though, it’s not for the easily offended or faint of heart.

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