Former Dominion Editor: 'Fed up with the bias'

Karl du Fresne expresses his frustration with the decline in editorial standards.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

It’s not unusual these days to read interesting and reflective articles about New Zealand in overseas publications. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to see an article by the former editor of The Dominion, Karl du Fresne, appear in The Spectator Australia last week.

It’s one of the reasons why I maintain that traditional media outlets cannot continue to be the gatekeepers of news and opinion. There are so many platforms available, both home and abroad, that writers can simply go direct to their readership regardless of the whims of a handful of local editors. Politicians, too, are also increasingly using social media to get their messages out directly to voters without the application of editorial gloss.

When you read du Fresne’s latest article it becomes obvious why it appears in an overseas publication rather than in one of our own.

It raises some of the same concerns that Winston Peters made in an article which I published on ZB Plus just over one year ago regarding the state of New Zealand’s media. In it, Peters wrote:

The impartiality of media should be the foundation of reporting, but in the main, it has morphed over the past few years to rely on opinion, narrative, agendas and click bait. This is one more significant reason why the majority of mainstream media are no longer trusted by the majority of New Zealanders.