|
April 3, 2009
The Nationals are in power in New Zealand. Surprise, surprise, the state-owned Television New Zealand is facing looming job cuts, with the organization looking to shave $25 million from its annual budget:
The job losses come from most areas including news and current affairs, finance and legal, marketing, sports, broadcast services and corporate affairs.The national Government sees things in terms of having $200 million invested in TVNZ, that's the equity in TVNZ. If the government doesn't receive a return on that equity in the form of a dividend then that's less money the government has to pay for hospital beds, less money it has to pay its doctors and less money it has to pay its teachers.
So much for public broadcasting--or what Eric Beecher calls "public trust" journalism.
This "public trust" journalism applies scrutiny, analysis and accountability to governments, parliaments, politicians, public servants, judges, police, councils, the military, NGOs, diplomats, business and community leaders and the recipients of public funding. It is an essential element of a functioning, informed democracy and just as important as the parliament or the judiciary and therei s here is no hint anywhere of an emerging commercial model for the large-scale "public trust" journalism. Not a hint.
|
Gary,
I suppose the digital world has caused many job losses in media like the production line/automation caused job losses in manufacturing?