RNZ: Mediawatch

A former editor warns the weakening of the news media threatens our right to know - a right we tend to take for granted. How should the media respond?

A controversial bid to extend Wellington's airport runway was back in the news this week - but not in a way that interested citizens could easily understand. 

New Zealand media reports portrayed Rio as a place of peril, while outlets without reporters on the ground seized on clickbait. 

A proposed merger of New Zealand’s two biggest news publishers is being questioned by many of the country’s independent publishers. Some are asking, will the country’s papers be better off returning to local ownership.

The medical profession has begun to question whether the use of military style metaphors, such as "battling cancer",  are bad for a patients health. Mediawatch asks whether the time has come for the media to declare war on the cancerous cliches.

OlympicWatch - reporting Rio as a place of peril; independent papers resist a mega-merger in publishing; the curse of cancerous cliches.

The Maori Party's position on Helen Clark’s bid for the UN's top job made headlines this week. But why were the media so surprised and outraged by it?

More and more of us have news fed to us from Facebook or we get it via Google. While they're making it easy to find what we want, they also influence which news and views we get - and the ones we don’t.

Maori opposition to 'Helen4SG' takes the media by surprise; the power and influence of Google and Facebook; spotlight falls on sexism in Ad-land.

Former Saatchi and Saatchi executive Kevin Roberts isn't the only New Zealand adman called out by one of the industry's most outspoken women over sexism lately.

False claims can spread faster than ever in the media these days - far faster than the truth about them can be established. Journalists make things worse "behaving like young people online", says one overseas expert. But fact-checking services to set the record straight are on the rise.

Some long-standing feature programmes have gone from RNZ National lately, and others are being scaled back. A new Podcasts and Series unit has been set up to offer more feature content on-demand. Mediawatch asks chief executive Paul Thompson what listeners can expect - and why RNZ is hooking up with New Zealand's biggest commercial news website.

Checking the facts in the digital age; out with the old and in with the new at RNZ; TV drama decisions confound the critics.

TVNZ is winding up critics by screening dramas they've panned, and axing ones they rate. Mediawatch looks at a drama that's on TV in Australia, the US and UK, but not here - even though we're paying some of the bills.

Two big names in NZ media have told their sports reporters not to pack their bags for Rio just two weeks out from the Olympic Games. Why? And what will it mean for coverage of Kiwi competitors in our news?