As a journalist, I am of the generation that watched, lynx-like, the play of 1960s history on blurry black and white newsreels in Devonport’s cinemas. The grave import of updates by Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 to 1961 were inspiring.
Earlier this year, we were in the midst of a global existential crisis that seemed as if it was going to finally crush the optimistic years that followed the second world war and leave us, like Lot’s wife, frozen into a pillar of salt and looking back at the destruction of civilisation in a hell of our own making.
It was an odd moment for a perfectly sane, well-grounded friend to tentatively put forward an astrology prediction that the bad times would get bleaker for the early months of the year, before breaking through into a new epoch for humankind.
I sort of took it under advisement.
Yet, a few short months ago, who would have predicted that Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney would, by now, have taken a leading role among the middle powers to work together to counter the rise of hard power and international rivalries and build a more cooperative, resilient world. Canada is adapting by building strategic autonomy while maintaining values like human rights and sovereignty. I am reminded of the inestimable statesman Dag Hammarskjöld.
Or too, that the King of England’s state visit to Washington would be hailed as an elegant display of diplomacy by a debonair defender of democracy, gently and successfully reminding Americans who they were in the world.
Certainly not that the Russian premier’s war against Ukraine might be exposing cracks in Putin’s war machine, wrecking his annual Victory Day parades and, in spite of Donald Trump’s withdrawal of financial support, that Russians would also be struggling with manpower shortages and Ukraine would be making long range strikes deep into soviet territory with increasingly potent long-range strike capability.
Our own weird ‘back to the future’ government doesn’t look so rosy and the flood of legislation to replace pretty-much-everything leaves society in ribbons.
This month it’s the Broadcasting Standards Authority, which has done an excellent job keeping our television and radio broadcasters up to scratch since 1989, says Better Public Media Trust chair Myles Thomas, who is strongly opposed to government plans to scrap it.
The industry watchdog upholds standards by which all broadcasters must abide in matters of offensive and disturbing content, the interests of children, promotion of illegal or antisocial behaviour, discrimination and denigration, balance, accuracy, privacy and fairness.
“We’ve seen what has happened in the US without proper media regulation. Such an organisation would have no ‘teeth’ and as a result standards will slide,” he said.
Without it, New Zealand’s media will get a lot worse and, for years, as media has been summarily divested of its traditional and trusted revenue streams and professional journalistic independence in the service of their citizen readers, media observers have been calling on successive governments to, in fact, increase the Broadcasting Standards Association’s scope to include online media, he says.
In 2023, the Department of Internal Affairs even conducted a huge research project called ‘Safer Online Services’ and recommended a system like that of Australia and the UK that includes elements of industry self-regulation backed up by a strong statutory authority like the standards watchdog.
It was ready to go, but soon-to-be-departed Internal Affairs Minister and ACT MP Brooke Van Velden scrapped it in 2024. Now, Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith proposes to remove statutory authority to stop the media cowboys and replace the BSA with a system where media manage their own standards.
This is an election year and it feels as if we are way off the eight ball under a government that, three years ago, fielded no policy and is actively embracing far right tactics: privatising and reaming out our public sector, putting profits over people when it comes to health and the wellbeing of the majority of working people.
Essentially flooding the zone with constant law changes to keep us overwhelmed.
Then there is the scapegoating other political parties ad nauseum, the eagerness to forward the sale or alienation of strategic assets and making no attempt to mitigate the damage to the fabric of society from the loss of industry – mostly because of a cavalier attitude to power distribution.
With the fallacies of monopoly capitalism finally an open book, we see the global hegemonies and mega-corporations scraping the barrel of the Earth’s natural bounty – and swallowing more and more of our shared resources – in the mindless drive for profit and power.
Catching up on the new and more generous playbook will harm no one.
• Liz Waters
