Throng

Chris Trotter has blogged about the Plain English ads for TVNZ 7's Explaining the Economy Series and makes some interesting, if not accurate, observations about our state broadcaster.

First, there’s the network’s deeply ingrained anti-intellectualism: its reflexive hostility towards anything resembling a complex idea.

Then there’s the obvious, and very troubling, disconnection between TVNZ’s news and current affairs producers, and the people responsible for marketing their product.

That disconnection is amplified by the quite breath-taking inability of TVNZ’s senior management to recognise that scheduling a promo featuring the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Bill English, delivering an up-beat assessment of the Government’s handling of the economy, screened across four channels in prime time, might – just possibly – be construed as a "party political broadcast".

Lastly, and this is where the "Plain English" imbroglio gets really serious: it demonstrates just how deeply the whole neoliberal ideological agenda has become embedded in TVNZ’s institutional culture.

A media organisation in which "politics" can be neatly separated-off from "economics" is one in which anything resembling critical and conscientious thinking has stopped.

One does wonder what goes on over there sometimes.

And nowhere was this intellectual and moral vacuity more clearly demonstrated than in the statements of TVNZ’s spokesperson, Andi Brotherston.

Insisting that the promotion had "nothing to do with news and current affairs" – a statement directly contradicted by the all-too-obvious fact that she was responding to a major news story about current affairs – Brotherston compounded her error by suggesting that TVNZ’s obligation to provide fair and balanced coverage of political events only applied in the run-up to a general election: "We are not within an election time frame so there isn’t a requirement on us to give equal time to specific parties."

That does sound as though they believe they can broadcast unbalanced opinion, doesn't it?

 

Any notion that by favouring the governing party so blatantly, the state-owned television network might be influencing the outcome of the next election, was clearly much too fanciful an idea to deserve even an atom of Brotherston’s brain-power.
"The other thing is", Brotherston breezily continued, "while other parties might think it’s an ad for Bill English, if we consider it from the viewers’ point of view, they see it as the Finance Minister.
"The series is about demystifying the economy. Viewers might see it differently and they’re the people we have in mind.
"Those people may not care about the other politicians and the time they have on television."
Consider what Brotherston is saying here: that TVNZ has taken on the role of the people’s tribune; that it possesses both the right and the mandate to speak confidently on behalf of the millions of citizen-viewers who comprise its audience; and that, whilst acting in this capacity, it enjoys a status far superior to that of any democratically-elected politician or party.
These are quite extraordinary claims – and they’re just plain wrong.

I'm always intrigued by TVNZ's position on what they believe the viewer wants.

 

Brotherston’s saddest statement, however, is the one in which she assures the public that the "Plain English" promo went through all of TVNZ’s internal approval channels. These "consider all aspects" of the programmes which go to air.
That such a blatant breach of public broadcasting norms and ethics could have been signed-off without demure is astonishing.
Is there no one left in TVNZ who understands that its role as the "national town hall" forbids it from taking sides? That there’s a crucial moral distinction to be drawn between a public television network which provides a forum for complex, multi-faceted and contentious civic debate, and one which serves up only such "debate" as it believes its viewers ought to be watching?

 

Perhaps it's all just an attempt to warm the left to the idea of selling it off.  If the left don't see the state broadcaster as being at least unbiased then perhaps they'd be more willing to have it offloaded to someone who was.

I asked Andi Brotherston if she'd like to respond to any of Chris' comments.  She declined.