Media failing in role —Peters

Press, 29 July 1989, Page 16

Media failing in role —Peters

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington Precious little crusading is done in the New Zealand news media, says Mr Winston Peters. Rated in the polls as the country’s most popular politician, Mr Peters has made it his business in recent years to seek to expose scandal, bad administration, corruption and incompetence in Government and publicly funded organisations. He told a conference of the Community Newspapers Association in Auckland yesterday that he possessed no special skills. “I am one Opposition M.P. with a part-time researcher,” Mr Peters said, “yet we have doner more investigative reporting than most of the rest of the news media lumped together.” The New Zealand news media did not have a proper investigative capacity, he said. What democracy needed was good-quality and well-researched investigative journalism, but that was not being deliv-; ered. As a result, damning Audit Department reports into the Public Accounts or into a $3BO million training scheme would command a short burst of attention in the news media and then disappear. It was not surprising the news media had a credibility problem, Mr Peters said, or that only 11 per cent of the public trusted them. “Instead, we are almost getting to the stage where ‘That’s Entertainment’ can be ranked as a news item.” Traditionally in the Western world the news media had campaigned for democracy, for a more just social and economic system, and for restraints on the abuse of power by any favoured elite. Now the agglomeration of news media power in fewer hands must militate against such a role, either overseas or here, Mr Peters said.