A documentary on those spreading harmful disinformation in New Zealand drew outrage from its targets. However, in our search for balance, writes senior journalism lecturer Dr Greg Treadwell, there is a duty to not empower the lies and propaganda.
It feels as though the ice might be cracking under our democracy. Disinformation, mistrust, division, radicalisation, even the impacts of war – the pathway ahead seems treacherous underfoot.
The ice might be thought of as our ability to remain a cohesive, tolerant and democratic nation in the rocky decades ahead.
Our ability to stop the fracturing will soon be helped – or possibly hindered – by the decisions of the dozen or so people who make up the New Zealand Media Council.
The Media Council adjudicates on complaints about print and online journalism in New Zealand.
It will soon consider complaints against Fire and Fury, a Stuff Circuit documentary on the tactical use of disinformation by far-right agents of social disruption, in particular the group that calls itself Voices for Freedom.
Presumably, many of the complaints to the council will focus on the documentary makers’ decision to not offer a right of reply to the subjects of their film.
Complaints to the Media Council must allege the story at issue has breached one or more of the 12 principles that make up the council's code of ethics for print and online journalists.
The absence of a right of reply in the investigative documentary will no doubt catalyse allegations that Principle One, which insists on ‘accuracy, fairness and balance’ in reporting, has been ignored.
Complainants are likely to ask the council to rule a piece of journalism cannot be accurate, fair and balanced if it silences those who are the subject of its allegations.
Such a finding, despite any immediate logic to it, would be simply unthinkable.
It would allow purveyors of disinformation to cast themselves even further as victims of the “mainstream media” and perhaps even force Stuff to provide a platform for their mistruths and conspiracies.
It would open the gate wider to proto-fascist movements seeking to pollute our public sphere and thereby wound our democracy.
Instead, the Media Council may decide there has been no breach of Principle One, that the documentary, despite the lack of right of reply, is indeed accurate, fair and balanced.
After all, the documentary contains regular and substantial repetitions of the views of the disinformation agents as they attempt to cajole New Zealanders to join their uprising on social media platforms.
Fire and Fury is, as journalist Paula Penfold says, itself a right of reply to the untold hours of video and other content published by disinformation agents to tens of thousands of followers in their campaign to seed lies and discord in our communities.
Or the council could take the view the disinformation war launched on Western societies when Trump took office in 2016, and which manifested itself in the occupation of Parliament's grounds, has changed the rules of engagement: that Principle One does not apply when bad actors are dining at the table of democracy.
This would raise, of course, the question of the suitability of the Media Council’s statement of principles in today’s world and might expedite a long overdue rewrite of the code.
Whichever way the council goes, it will be a pivotal decision, setting the tone for its response to these multiplying problems.
Balance in journalism is no longer what it was – an equal opportunity for those in news coverage of almost any sort to speak and put their case on the given issue. It was once even counted in column inches to make sure it was fair.
Such an approach was idealistic at best and exposed as inadequate by the influence oil companies have had on the debate about climate change, holding us back from meaningful action on fossil-fuel use for decades.
Now disinformation merchants, who use falsehoods to increase fear and misunderstanding as they build their libertarian armies of the ignorant, want ‘fair’ access to the public sphere.
As Penfold has said, they have almost inestimable access to audiences via social media and make the most of it, with thousands of hours of propaganda about Covid-19 and the so-called deep state already under their belt.
Journalist Robert Fisk was once asked by an AUT journalism student about the ‘balance’ of his reporting.
Oh, you must be at journalism school, said the legendary Middle East correspondent. Balance, he said. But the Middle East isn’t a football match or a new motorway in Auckland – it’s a massive human tragedy.
What Fire and Fury is about is not the accuracy or otherwise of the outlandish and dangerous claims of disinformation agents but the role disinformation played at the Wellington occupation and its connection to outside forces of subversion.
These are, after all, information saboteurs with ambitions of unleashing anarchy against the social order. They network with those who call for insurrection and the murder of our elected representatives.
Fire and Fury was accurate in its expose, fair to the public in whose interest it was produced and balanced in its investigation of the causes and impacts of dangerous disinformation.
Around the world, journalists and researchers are working to find the balance required to report about lies and hate without helping spread them.
Penfold’s documentary followed these developing guidelines and is a pioneer in this new world of public-interest balance for the disinformation age.
If we’re to protect our precious, albeit flawed, public sphere from those who would destroy it, we need to redefine the rights of journalists.
We need to stop those cracks in the ice from worsening, exclude dangerous falsehoods from the national conversation.
To do this, we could need to rewrite the rules about fairness and balance and the Media Council may well be about to make a start.
