Facebook - freshly rebadged as ‘Meta’ - gives local news media content huge extra reach, but it covers none of the cost of creating it while snaring the bulk of the digital ad revenue it attracts. This week the trillion-dollar company unveiled a programme to help sustain our news media - but some experts and editors are underwhelmed.

RNZ: Mediawatch

Meta’s moves to boost our media underwhelms observers

During the homosexual law reform campaign 35 years ago plenty of inflammatory, derogatory and sometimes downright bigoted portrayals of gay people were published and aired in our media. Some have apologised for that since then. Are our media repeating the same mistakes reporting controversies over transgender peoples' rights today?       

Avoiding the mistakes of the past in trans rights coverage

Another Monday, another review of alert level condition for Auckland and other areas this week -  along with ample evidence in the media that the change can’t come soon enough for Aucklanders who are over it. Including radio hosts . . .  

Alert level angst not leveling off on radio

The owners of Facebook - now known as 'Meta' - announced a plan to boost news publishers here this week. Mediawatch looks at the media's response to that. Also: how media angst about upcoming alert level changes is not levelling off just yet -- and are our media getting it right when reporting on transgender peoples' rights?

Mediawatch for 7 November 2021

Midweek Mediawatch - our weekly catch-up with Karyn Hay on Lately.  This week Colin Peacock talks to Karyn about a shake-up in news radio that made headlines - while another went under the radar. Also: covering COP-26; deep-dive but highly-readable Covid journalism, the dangers of allowing people to grandstand on air - and is the number of the beast actually 616?

Midweek Mediawatch: COP-26, Covid-19, radio re-jigs and grandstanders

Did our media keep calm and carry on when Covid came to Christchurch this week? Or amplify anger and confusion about loose borders and unvaccinated travellers? Bit of both . . .

Keeping calm (or not) as Covid comes to Christchurch

We’ve had too few journalists of Māori, Pasifika and Asian origin in our newsrooms for decades - and now there’s a new publicly-funded push to turn that round. Four established outlets are backing the Te Rito Journalism project. How will this work? And what’s the endgame?

Te Rito - a new bid to boost diversity in our newsrooms

Keeping calm as Covid comes to Christchurch - and not; a new bid to boost diversity in our news; Australian media straying into fake news about NZ.

Mediawatch for 31 October 2021

One Australian news outlet seized on a Kiwi commentator's claim this week that our media is 'fully controlled' by the PM - while a big name broadcaster here seized on fake news from another Aussie outlet to hint at the same thing.

'Straya media strays from mainstream reporting NZ

In this week's episode of Midweek Mediawatch, Hayden Donnell talks to Karyn Hay about anti-vax messages finding a media platform, some outstanding local investigative reporting this week - and confirmation that you can't grow concrete, in spite of what talk radio tells you.

Midweek Mediawatch: Anti-vax messages in the media

As the Covid crisis deepens and lockdown levels give way to traffic lights, the mental health effects of it all are being aired more than ever in the media - sometimes along with assumptions that don’t always stack up.

Media mull mental health amid lingering lockdowns

Last weekend’s hastily-organised eight-hour Vaxathon TV extravaganza silenced most critics after a record number of jabs last weekend - but not all.  We ask the brains behind the broadcast - Bailey Mackey - what we learned from the effort, and why few opposition politicians were seen on screen.

Wrapping up the vaxathon

The media marked a quarter of a century of MMP with a lot of mixed reviews on how it has changed our politics - and our country. Mediawatch talks to a documentary-maker who created one of the most vivid vignettes of MMP in action 25 years ago - and asks how it's changed the media.

Reflecting on a revolution-MMP in the rear-view mirror

Media mull mental health impact of lingering lockdowns; wrapping up the Vaxathon, MMP in the rear view mirror.

Mediawatch for 24 October 2021

Analysis: Our epidemiologists and Covid modellers have faced an increasingly bitter series of barbs from commentators and columnists over the last month, and it's making their often thankless task even harder.

A pundit backlash against actual experts

Mediawatch looks critically at the New Zealand media - television, radio, newspapers and magazines as well as the 'new' electronic media.

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RNZ: Mediawatch

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