Nickie Muir: Fourth Estate under threat

Nickie Muir.

It's the media's fault.

From the rise of the deranged and dangerous Donald to the drop in literacy rates, it's all the media's fault.

Wandering along a lonely beach in the Far North a few weeks ago, I crossed paths with John Campbell. I shook his hand and gave my condolences at the loss of the last of TV journalism that his show represented, and congratulated him on his new show with Radio New Zealand.

I get nearly all my news now from RNZ which, despite running on diesel, still manages to drive like a stately Rolls Royce of respectable journalism.

Arthur Miller described newspapers as "a nation talking to itself" and I miss the sense of that with the loss of Campbell Live.

We talked of the rise of Donald Trump and how, perhaps, an uneducated mass of underprivileged people could see him as a saviour.

I wondered whether, if the health and education stats persisted in the North, we'd be susceptible to the same thing. "Perhaps we've done this to ourselves?" wondered John.

Did he mean we've been playing the game of following personalities over policy and we've forgotten what we're playing for? I left him to his walk. He looked harried.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with New Shub (neither a shower or a tub) and it's daily sprinkle of once over lightly.

Nothing offensive either about Seven Sharp, with all the cutting-edge journalism of your average butter knife. At least if I watch Mike Hosking I don't have to search for John Key's press releases - I can just get Mike's version and save myself any thinking.

I would watch Story except it feels like being on the other side of a smart-phone when the person in front of you is taking one big selfie. I don't get where the actual story is or why I should care.

It's as if we've forgotten the role of rigorous journalism in the functioning of democracy and it's going to take a Donald to teach us a lesson.

It becomes very difficult for any news organisation to stand up to the legion of lawyers and spin doctors, often paid for with public money, poised to protect their patrons' names and reputations, especially when those very same people head organisations that advertise in or control news media.

Without the ability to charge for their online material, it becomes almost impossible for editors to stand up to the business managers who are rightly more interested in shareholders than such ephemeral concepts as civic literacy or public debate.

Guardian columnist Roy Greenslade's piece on why the pending newspaper merger in New Zealand would be a threat to democracy makes for interesting reading.

Even more telling are the comments there from recent visitors to our land. Sometimes it's the public, unaware or unfettered by threats of defamation, who are the true journalists.

If indeed, Orwell was right and "Journalism is printing what someone else doesn't want you to print, and everything else is public relations."