News turns fake when facts give way to hyperbole
Onmonday thisweek
Newshub’s Tova O’brien was quick to announce the results of the Newshub/reid-research poll of 1000 people with her statement: ‘‘It’s official: Jacinda Ardern is New Zealand’s most popular prime minister in a century and Simon Bridges is hurtling into political oblivion.’’
OK, one out of two isn’t bad, but now I’m starting to realise why – according to a recent Stuff report – O’brien has been copping a lot of abuse on socialmedia.
I’ve already addressed in an earlier column how political journalists’ questioning of the prime minister during the daily briefings was disappointing, so let’s not revisit that.
Instead, let’s focus on this fake news that Ardern is the ‘‘most popular primeminister in a century’’, which was also picked up by other newsmedia in New Zealand and overseas.
Kudos to Stuff, which covered the poll but didn’t fall for the ‘‘most popular primeminister in a century’’ myth. Someone at Stuff is fact-checking the propaganda – give that person a raise.
Do not be fooled: Ardern is not the ‘‘most popular prime minister in a century’’.
On Monday evening and Tuesday The New Zealand Herald followed this ‘‘most popular prime minister in a century’’ line.
However, by Wednesday it had started questioning that line and came to the conclusion that ‘‘there were no opinion polls before 1974’’ and Newshub had carelessly compared its latest poll to a century worth of election results. Well done NZ Herald – questioning the obvious two days late is better than not questioning it at all.
The book Public Opinion and Polling Around theworld: A Historical Encyclopedia points to 1971 – three years before The NZ Herald’s date.
But whether it’s 1971 or 1974 doesn’t matter because what matters is that political opinion polling was not around in 1920.
Therefore, Ardern is not the ‘‘most popular primeminister in a century’’.
According to The NZ Herald, the Reid-research poll has only been around since 2009.
So perhaps we can say Ardern is the ‘‘most popular prime minister in the last decade’’?
Ah… not quite. The NZ Herald went on to say that former prime minister Sir John Key had consistently polled around 60 per cent in its Digipolls and he had reached as high as 73.3 per cent back in 2014, which is significantly higher than Ardern’s current 59.5 per cent.
The definition of a century hasn’t changed. So, what has?
The credibility of news media – that’s what. Reuters, Forbes, The Guardian, and many other news media agencies and outlets from around the world all ran reports of Ardern as the ‘‘most popular prime minister in a century’’. That’s fake news, folks. Why? Because it isn’t true.
And if the news media are meant to hold the watchdog role of society by questioning and holding power to account, but instead fly the flag for power and spread fake news, who then holds the news media to account?
Yes, it is meant to be the New Zealand Media Council. Sure, they’re the toothless selfregulatory body for New Zealand’s media but they have no influence over the globalmedia organisations who have already spread this fiction particular to their audiences.
According to my students, those global news media feeds appear prominently in the socialmedia feeds of New Zealanders – well, at least for those in their age bracket.
I would go so far to say that fake news is a real threat to the democracy of our country.
In this case, the question needs to be asked: Why was Ardern promoted as the ‘‘most popular primeminister in a century’’ when she clearly wasn’t?
Steve Elers is a senior lecturer at Massey University’s school of communication, journalism and marketing who writes aweekly column for Stuff on social and cultural issues. His views are his own and do not represent Massey University.