The recent controversy surrounding a proposed law to make tech giants like Google and Facebook pay for local news content highlights a clear disconnect between government action and practical policy outcomes.
Despite being pitched as a lifeline for a flailing legacy mainstream media sector, the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill has stirred more confusion than consensus, according to a report today in state media.
The latest efforts of Paul Goldsmith, the Minister of Media and Communications, to push the bill through Parliament has not found favour with a number of government MPs, leading to its failure at the select committee stage. The sequence of events in the report paints a bleak picture of a legacy media industry in crisis, clinging to government intervention and taxpayer handouts for survival while facing a dramatic decrease in public trust as well as the rise of independent media both in New Zealand and abroad.
The initial enthusiasm from previous media minister Kris Faafoi and his successor Willie Jackson has waned under the scrutiny of the current Parliament. Critics have labelled the bill a “shakedown,” highlighting its failure to address the complexities of modern news consumption, such as the impact of artificial intelligence on news distribution.
It isn’t the internet or Google or Facebook that’s killing them (those have all been around for decades). 1-News have a website too last time I checked. Blaming “the changing landscape” or whatever is the Olympic gold medal of BS excuses.
It isn’t AI either. I know they keep promising us it’s going to be such a “force to be reckoned with”, but at this stage it’s basically still a novelty.
No, Mainstream media’s problem is that they spent the last ten years lying, bullying and overplaying their hand. Taking government money to push government talking points, while insulting and maligning citizens worried that too much immigration was turning their country into a place they no longer recognised, farmers who said no to the climate agenda, teachers and parents who fought back against the gay agenda, and ordinary people who were worried about taking a dodgy vaccine.
Now, surprise surprise, none of those people trust the media anymore; nobody wants to buy their papers or subscribe to their apps or hit their websites. And no amount of government-issued taxpayer bailout money will fix that. They have richly earned their predicament through every lie, every obfuscation and every snarky and insulting opinion piece over the past ten years. The chickens have come home to roost.
Now they like to pretend they’re those violinists who keep playing even as the titanic sinks. Let them all go under, good riddance.
Where is the like button. 👍
Where is the like button. 👍
Made my own like button.
I printed and stuck it to my rear window:
“dailytelegraph.co.nz
The only free truth media in NZ”
💯
Defund the lot of them. We can not afford to subsidise these lying grifters. Let the market decide.
Haven’t watched TV in 4 years. Don’t miss it.
Don’t even take offers for free newspapers.
They F’ed around with us, now they’re finding out.
Mainstream media cannot be saved. Good riddance to the b*******.
taxpayers have been paying warner bros ffs – f off mainstream liars, you are a bunch of murderers! – see ya
No ones believes what they are peddling anymore…the clowns in Wellington can draft as much as they like, it aint changing….