Hold the front page .. from provocateurs

Comment: Was it wrong for the New Zealand Herald to publish as its front page the infamous Hobson’s Pledge advertisement calling out Māori over coastal customary rights claims?
Yes, for two reasons:
Some of the claims made in that ad, in a combustible race relations environment, were wrong.
Second, our major newspaper ought not to sell its front page as a platform for any political advocacy, or for paid messages that run across the path of the newspaper’s independent journalism on contentious public issues.
Other media would not hire out, say, Simon Dallow or Samantha Hayes or Mike Hosking’s voice or ‘brand’ at the top of their news shows to read out a political ad or an advocacy ad.
In a newspaper, the front page and masthead should carry the same special place and independence.
Importantly, media should not pour petrol on political and racial fires by allowing wrong information to be presented with an informal imprimatur – an unspoken stamp of approval of the masthead above – to viewers and readers.
Newspapers and their editors long ago lost the battle to keep commercial advertisements from taking over entire front pages or wrapping whole sections. The commercial departments of media firms simply could not resist the dollars advertisers would offer back then – and for a cool $40,000 or so the news was relegated to an inside page.
Editors no longer always commanded the high ground of the front page.
It was a devaluing of the journalism then and it remains so now. But as newspaper revenues melted away as audiences fled to digital platforms on mobile phones, editors’ chances of resisting the ad departments’ fistfuls of dollars have evaporated.
Indeed, revenue from Harvey Norman wraparound ads, faux front pages and double-page-spreads on pages two and three might have singlehandedly saved the Herald and other titles during the leanest times of the pandemic years.
But retail ads for PCs and TVs are one thing.
Highly contentious and, as it turns out, factually-challenged advocacy campaigns on sensitive public issues are another.
Front pages end up on display in thousands of shops, supermarkets, service stations and face-up in cafes and offices. They serve as public bulletin boards, their bold statements infiltrating all corners of a paper’s circulation area.
While media businesses have traded their special status to the highest bidders, readers might not have got the memo that the front page is no longer such a big deal in representing what a paper stands for and its impact on its community.
Hobson’s Pledge is a lobby group that builds arguments and acts as a provocateur against rights recognised, negotiated, won and being exercised by Māori. In its eyes, these can be viewed as special privileges based on race.
When the group came calling with its latest campaign, the Herald owner NZME should have been ready. It had already miscued during the last election campaign in publishing a front page attack ad on National leader Christopher Luxon from the CTU, and suffered serious PR blowback.
It should have had clear and internally agreed principles covering the selling of its front page and protection of its own masthead’s reputation.
First, those principles should have eliminated any advertisements that lobbied on one side of controversial public issues that the Herald newsroom and its journalists would also be reporting on and having to make independent editorial decisions about.
Second, the principles should have instantly ruled out material found to be factually incorrect, incomplete or misleading.
Hobson’s Pledge, probably paying around $25,000 raised from its members, plainly did not face such hurdles. Like Harvey Norman, it paid its money and took its chances with the Herald and its readers.
When a Māori journalists’ group, Te Pāti Māori, other Māori politicians, human rights and legal groups complained that the resulting full page ad was not only provocative but in their eyes contained misinformation denigrating to Māori, the Herald said the ad met industry criteria. It resisted calls to apologise.
Hobson’s Pledge decried what it saw as an attempt at censorship, and challenged its critics to show any content that was “misinformation” or incorrect.
Some did so. A 170-strong group of Māori lawyers and legal experts pointed out on Tuesday that the ad urged restoration of public ownership of marine and coastal areas, when that ‘public’ ownership had never been the case.
The group pointed to three other specific claims it said were incorrect, including any suggestion Māori customary ownership could stop others using beaches or fishing – access and activities the existing law expressly allows.
It deplored what it called “the attempt to reignite division and discrimination” and to “fuel racism against Māori.”
Hobson’s Pledge had already sought to place a second ad to run in the Herald on Wednesday.
But NZME, bruised by the public, social media and apparent subscriber backlash, suddenly changed course and told the lobby group it would no longer publish its campaign.
The side of the business that had been happy to take the front page dollars now faced potential brand damage and subscription revenue cancellations. Money talks, both ways.
NZME used its editorial media column to announce its decision on Monday night to cancel the further ads, but oddly kept that behind its paywall. Hobson’s Choice did not take the change-of-heart well, urging its members in turn to contact the paper’s subscriptions call centre.
The Free Speech Union, another noisy lobby group, castigated NZME for the backdown, curiously challenging its exercising freedom of choice not to run an ad in its newspaper.
Exactly what was unacceptable about the second ad, compared with the first, was not made clear by NZME, which said it would be discussing the issue at its top executive level.
Some of those NZME executives must surely have greenlit the publication of the first front page ad. It would almost certainly have been against the counsel of top editors who would have instinctively anticipated the offence it could cause and the storm of criticism the Herald could suffer. Not to mention the taint to the Herald’s own journalists’ independence in covering issues like marine customary rights.
The commercial executives, the chief publishing officer Caroline Luey and the chief executive officer Michael Boggs, now find themselves having offended and alienated both ends of this dispute.
The front page sellout and subsequent backdown does not indicate consistency or coherence in decision-making. It seemed hasty, wild, reminiscent of the All Blacks’ notorious two rushed passes backwards into their own in-goal against Argentina last Saturday. Like the All Blacks, The Herald’s brand and reputation took a hit.
It did report on the Māori lawyers’ statement that took the original ad and publication to task, but again behind its paywall in the premium content section.
The fact this controversy comes within a fortnight of a revelation the Herald had used generative AI to ‘write’ several of its editorials without informing its readers will have done nothing for newsroom morale.
In that case the drive to experiment with the powers of AI for speed and efficiency was conducted without sufficient “rigour”, the paper said. Many outsiders were astonished that that lack of rigour was allowed to apply to the editorial, the daily viewpoint of the editor and the masthead.
NZME’s chief content officer, publishing, Murray Kirkness, an editor of real news values, could help salve both public controversies now with one bold move.
He could reclaim editorial ownership of the front page, using that space to write an editorial that directly addresses the company’s decisions made to publish Hobson’s Pledge’s claims (and then to decline their further advertisements).
It could apologise for mis-statements the paper’s advertising department allowed to be published and for NZME succumbing to the lobbyists’ dollar at such a politically-charged moment. It could set out the Herald’s latest criteria on such advertising.
And, most importantly it could make it clear the Herald’s journalism continues to be independent of commercial pressures, sensitive to all its communities and committed to presenting the full story on issues of such importance.