the newsroom (RNZ Photo)
Our Leader in Indian Newslink March 1, 2024 Edition
Venkat Raman
Auckland, March 1, 2024
The week ending February will be among the bleakest for the world of journalism.
The announcement on Tuesday (February 28, 2024) that Warner Bros Discovery will close the newsroom of Newshub sent an ominous note throughout the industry. About 300 staff are likely to be out of job if the plan is put into effect at the end of June.
A parade of negative events
Warner Bros Discovery said in a statement that it had “commenced consultation on a proposed remodelling and restructure of its ANZ free-to-air business in New Zealand.”
According to the Company’s Asia Pacific President James Gibbons, the move was a result of negative events in New Zealand and globally and “the impacts of the economic downturn had been severe.” The company has plans to focus on digital business with ThreeNow (the successor of TV3) at the core of that operation.
Warner Bros Discovery ANZ Senior Vice President Head of Networks Glen Kyne said that the Company had to find ways and means of reducing costs.
“We have now reached a stage where any further reduction in costs means proposing major changes. This is why we are proposing to shut down the newsroom. This would mean stopping all news production including the Newshub website from June 30.”
Businesses going bust is a recurring worldwide phenomenon and New Zealand has had its share over the years but the shutdown of a media operation such as Newhub is a sad story; for it deprives democracy of its right to diverse opinion. Sans newsroom, ThreeNow will be reduced to the status of a digital entertainer. TVNZ and 1News will remain the only player and a state-owned operation, which is not a healthy sign.
A ray of hope
But as we wrote this, a ray of hope was seen on the horizon.
We understand that some staff of Newshub were preparing an alternative proposal to Warner Bros Discovery to keep the newsroom alive.
“We will present a counterproposal to the management of Warner Bros Discovery. We believe that there exists an opportunity for the staff to provide feedback and the management has promised to listen,” Michael Morrah, Investigations Correspondent said.
But he was not sure how the proposal would be shaped.
Mark Jennings, who was the Head of Current Affairs at TV3 many years ago, has suggested that Newshub can cut costs by reducing the 6 pm Bulletin to 30 minutes with a single anchor and making foreign correspondents redundant. Mr Jenning’s article on the issue appears on the front page of this issue.
While the future of Newshub is yet to be determined, the decision of Warner Bros Discovery to pull down the shutters of its newsroom, throwing 300 people out of their jobs does not bode well for journalism.
It once again brings to the fore the wisdom of the government to allow foreign ownership of the media industry and the eligibility to draw upon taxpayer funding.
The rippling effect
Former Journalist Dr Greg Treadwell who works at Auckland University of Technology’s Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy wrote in The Conversation that if journalism in Western democracies has been on a rollercoaster in recent decades, in Aotearoa New Zealand this week it threatened to come right off the rails.
“The shocking announcement by owners Warner Bros Discovery of the closure of Newshub by the end of June will leave only state-owned TVNZ and Whakaata Maori, providing public-interest, free-to-air broadcast news. The impact on the country’s already shrinking and fragile public sphere will be considerable, as yet another tranche of sacked New Zealand journalists goes looking for work. The brutal nature of the decision and the apparent disregard for affected staff echoes the closure last year of Mediaworks’ Today FM Radio Station. It should be another wakeup call about the vulnerability of the country’s precious and struggling news media to global investment priorities,” he said.
Oxford University Reuters Institute Director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen said in a report that digital media brings many challenges for journalism and societies and opportunities for the news media and the public.
“The challenge for journalists and news media is to continue to adapt to the digital media that people all around the world are eagerly embracing at the expense of print and broadcast and build a profession and a business fit for the future,” he said.
Aligning with that view, Co-Author Meera Selva said that the role of journalism in many different cases, including the #MeToo movement, in confronting corruption amongst public officials, and in fuelling public debate around platform companies’ power and privacy practices, underlines the continued relevance of investigative reporting.”
The sad news from Newshub has thrown up a volley of emotions and demonstration of solidarity from across New Zealand. But there should be a discussion in the larger context of foreign ownership, protection of the news media and the promotion of a free and fair fourth estate. And that debate should be ongoing and all-inclusive.
