April 17, 2024
Lee silent as media implodes
Former broadcasting minister Willie Jackson says the coalition Government has no plan for media in a state of crisis.
Yesterday Stuff swooped in with a deal to produce a 6pm news bulletin for TV3 from July when Warner Brothers-Discovery shuts its Newshub news and current affairs division.
Mr Jackson says the inaction of current minister Melissa Lee contrasts with his 18 months in the job when he put $25 million into Radio New Zealand, allocated record funding for Māori broadcasting, introduced the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill that will make platforms like Meta and Google pay for news that appears on their social media channels, and attempted to merge Radio New Zealand and TVNZ.
“I’m not saying the government should be putting in hundreds of millions of dollars but government should be brokering and supporting organisations like Newshub and Newshub have got where they are, through their own initiative and working through their own strategies,” he says.
Mr Jackson says Labour’s critics are now trying to paint Labour as a do-nothing Government when the record shows an extraordinary list of achievements.