Why we need uncomfortable journalism

Sunday, 5 October 2025

Tracy Watkins is editor of The Post and Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: Democracy and journalism are apparently loaded words now. As trust in media plummets, a recent survey in the United States sought to understand how Americans viewed local news.

While 93% of people believed reliable local news was necessary for democracy, many of those same people reacted negatively to explicit democracy messaging.

The researchers surmised that years of political messaging had created fatigue around the word “democracy”; it now triggered partisan defences regardless of people’s actual beliefs.

Equally worrying was that the word “journalism” appeared to trigger a similar response.

“While we heard throughout the research that people value the role of local news, the word “journalism” can evoke partisanship or elitism for some audiences,” the researchers noted.

“People don’t dislike what you do,” the researchers noted. “They dislike what they think ‘journalism’ means.”

This does not come as news to me or any working journalist these days. My inbox never lacks for people telling me I’m the reason no one trusts the media any more. In a world where it is easy to find a sympathetic echo chamber, any view in the media that challenges, or rejects, someone’s own world view is a source of suspicion, frustration and anger.

Their anger is validated by politicians who, since the rise of Facebook and other platforms that connect them directly with voters, have sought to undermine trust in the media. It suits them to diminish the media’s reach and influence in its role as a watchdog on democracy (yes, that word).

While the research was done in the United States, I don’t believe the findings are particularly unique to America.

Trust in the media in New Zealand is almost as low as in the US. So it is more important than ever that the institutions around media, and those responsible for upholding media standards, are robust, and have the trust of the media, as well as the public.

One such institution is the New Zealand Media Council; the council is a self regulatory body funded by the industry. It has been in existence for more than 50 years and has a long history of ruling on contentious stories in a thoughtful and even-handed way that balances the rights of individuals against the media’s watchdog role. Importantly, its members include lay people, as well as working journalists.

So it is troubling that recent decisions have sparked rumblings of unease: In the most recent case, the Media Council ruled against an NZME story about a cold case that has gripped New Zealand for 50 years, the Mona Blades killing.

It was a typical cold case report - it revisited long held theories and interviews, and relitigated one particular theory that had preoccupied police for many years. They had famously dug up the laundry in a suspect’s former home - but were never able to prove guilt. Both the policeman who had put forward the theory, and the suspect, are now dead.

The council found that while the story was not factually incorrect, it was not fair to the suspect’s surviving family.

Former Herald editor and high profile media commentator Gavin Ellis is among those who have called for the decision to be overturned. I cannot recall such unease over any previous decision.

I too am troubled. It reads to me as though the Media Council - and in particular its lay members - have sought to erase history, and 50 years of reporting, by their decision.

It’s a worrying lapse for a watchdog body that, for five decades, has got it right most of the time. And potentially a worrying sign of a growing cleave between its lay members and working journalists on the council, as reflected in other recent decisions.

The Government has long looked for an excuse to replace the Media Council with a regulatory body; acceptance that the Media Council is doing the job well has been a critical defence against heavy handed regulation.

So even when we in the media disagree with Media Council decisions - and we have all had decisions that go against us - we have accepted their reasoning.

It’s therefore troubling that so many journalists, including the likes of Ellis, feel compelled to speak out.

For me, it also raises other questions.

How would today’s Media Council - and the public - for instance, judge the famous Napalm girl photograph, that became a powerful anti-war symbol?

The photo is undoubtedly confronting. Would we run it today? Public attitudes today are very different. But journalism, including photo journalism, is supposed to be confronting.

The Media Council has been a powerful advocate for the basic principles of journalism, upholding the right to freedom of speech, and the right to be confronting in the public interest.

But its role is also about accepting that journalism will often make people feel uncomfortable; journalism is there to test, to probe, to sometimes disturb.

The Media Council’s value lies not in softening those edges, but in defending them.

What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz. Please include your full name and address.