Why New Zealanders Are Tuning Out and Why Your Portfolio Should Too

NZ’s high cost of free news media

There was a time when the evening news was a communal ritual. At 6pm, the nation collectively sat down to be told what happened, why it mattered, and how the weather might ruin their weekend! It was a predictable, if somewhat narrow window into the world. Fast forward to the present day, and that window has been replaced by a 24-hour digital firehose that seems less interested in informing the public and more interested in inducing a state of permanent, low-grade neurological distress.

New Zealanders are noticing.

According to the most recent Trust in News in New Zealand report by the Auckland University of Technology (AUT), our collective faith in the media continues its steady, rhythmic slide toward the floor. Only about 33% of New Zealanders now trust the news most of the time. For a country that prides itself on being a high-trust society, those numbers are more than just a statistical outlier; they are a loud, clear signal that the legacy media model is failing its audience.

For the modern investor or the professional trying to build a stable financial future, this isn’t just a curiosity. It is a risk factor. The incentives of the modern newsroom are fundamentally at odds with the incentives of a successful investor. While you require calm, long-term thinking, the media requires clicks, urgency, and catastrophe. Understanding why the media is untrustworthy is the first step toward reclaiming a valuable personal asset: your attention.

New Zealand Media and The Crisis of Competence

The latest data from AUT suggests that the decline in trust isn’t merely a byproduct of fake news or social media conspiracies. It is a response to the quality and tone of the output itself. People are tired. The phenomenon of news fatigue has moved from a fringe complaint to a mainstream reality. The relentless cycle of breaking news that rarely breaks anything of substance has led many to simply turn off the tap.

Several further reasons have been suggested for New Zealand media’s latest decline.

One apparent driver of this fatigue in the last year has been the saturation of overseas political drama. Some New Zealanders have expressed a growing exhaustion with the Trump-centric nature of global reporting. When a domestic news outlet spends more time analysing a social media post from a politician in Florida (or the latest movements of a Kardashian!) than it does investigating local infrastructure failures, it signals a move away from public service and toward entertainment.

Another issue for many is lingering doubts after the New Zealand media’s performance during the 2020–2023 pandemic. During this window, some suggested the mainstream media transitioned from a watchdog to a communications department for the state. The daily ritual ‘1pm update’ became a borderline sermon where journalists competed to ask which restrictions could be tightened rather than questioning anything about the current path or suggesting alternative approaches.

• The $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF, essentially a taxpayer-funded media bailout) introduced an incentive for media outlets to align with government objectives. The first listed general eligibility criteria of the PIJF was a “Commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”. This $55 million bailout was plenty of ammunition for critics to suggest compromised editorial independence. Whatever your personal thoughts on this matter, it is tough to refute allegations media outlets benefiting from the bailout have developed a bias or preference towards the government or the political party responsible for the funding, and perceived influence on editorial content. Such perception issues may arise regardless of any government’s intentions or the actual impact on journalistic integrity.
• More importantly for the investor, the media failed to provide any investigative journalism, such as a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of covid-related fiscal policies. While global financial bodies were signalling the inflationary risks of massive stimulus, domestic reporting remained focused on immediate compliance rather than long-term economic health. This lack of diverse perspective probably left many New Zealanders unprepared for the subsequent rise in interest rates and the cost of living. For those prioritising financial self-reliance, it was a stark reminder of the necessity of seeking primary data over potentially biased narratives.

New Zealand Media and The Invisible Hand of the State

An uncomfortable fact about the New Zealand media environment is the level of government involvement. The country’s two largest broadcasters, Television New Zealand (TVNZ) and Radio New Zealand (RNZ), are state-owned. While they maintain editorial independence on paper, the financial umbilical cord is hard to ignore. Government (taxpayer) funding is also provided directly via NZ On Air, which has also been the subject of recent controversy and allegations of political bias.

In a small market like ours, the government is not just a regulator; it is the primary benefactor. When any commercial industry relies on government-funded initiatives or direct subsidies to survive, a pervasive conflict of interest emerges. It is difficult to bite the hand that feeds you. This creates a feedback loop where the media may reflect the priorities and perspectives of the political class rather than the concerns of the citizens of a dynamic economy. At best, it is reasonable to question the claimed impartiality.

When an organisation is owned or funded by the taxpayer, it naturally views the world through the lens of the state. These outlets might naturally favour big government politicians because those leaders advocate for the same centralised systems which keep the media entity’s lights on. It is a simple matter of survival: you are unlikely to champion the person promising to cut your funding or dismantle your parent department. Such outlets might be incentivised to frame problems as things the government should solve, rather than things individuals should navigate.

When was the last time you saw a New Zealand media outlet, especially a state-owned one, break a major investigative journalism story?

This centralisation of information is particularly dangerous for those who value self-reliance. If your primary source of information is an entity funded by the state, you may be receiving a curated version of reality. This is not necessarily a conspiracy; it is simply the nature of institutional bias, or at minimum, perceived bias.

The Media and the Financial Adviser: Two Opposing Views

Our brains are evolutionarily hardwired for a negativity bias, a survival mechanism that prioritises threats over opportunities. Many years ago when our ancestors were cave dwellers, ignoring a potential predator was fatal, while missing out on a berry bush was merely a missed snack. Consequently, we are cognitively primed to react more intensely to a single headline saying ‘market crash’ than to a decade of steady growth. The media exploits this ancient mental architecture, knowing that fear triggers an immediate, involuntary engagement that logic and optimism simply cannot match.

If you want to understand why financial news is so often wrong, look at the incentives. The late and great investor Charlie Munger famously noted: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” In most cases, the media’s incentive is to kidnap your attention for thirty seconds and sell it to an advertiser. Fear is their most reliable hostage-taker. A headline predicting a “Steady Six Percent Return” gets zero clicks, but “The Great Reset: Why Your KiwiSaver Is Toast” could be shared ten thousand times before your morning coffee goes cold.

Conversely, a high-quality financial adviser is paid to keep you calm. The media wants you in a state of anxiety; the adviser wants you to wait. The media sells “now”; the adviser sells the “next twenty years.” In this sense, the media is the natural enemy of the long-term investor.

When a market expert predicts a market crash on the evening news, they aren’t there to be right; they are there to be provocative. If they happen to be right, they are hailed as prophets. If they are wrong, they are never asked back to explain why, because the circus has already moved on. Volatility is the media’s business, but compounding is yours. These two cannot coexist in the same headspace.

The red “Breaking News” banner is a masterclass in psychological manipulation. It suggests an event so vital it demands the interruption of your day. Usually, it’s just a minor development in a story that was already boring. By treating every sneeze in Wellington as a plague, the media has desensitised us to actual importance.

The End of Legacy Media?

The legacy media environment may be in its final years. News was once an exclusive, expensive commodity requiring printing presses and satellite trucks; now, anyone with an iPhone can broadcast globally in an instant. The legacy newsroom has lost the race to be first to every person with a Twitter account and a view of the street.

Narratives can no longer be as carefully curated, anyone can see things live online, in an instant.

This democratisation has turned the public from passive audience members into their own editors. While the gatekeepers are gone though, so is the quality control! We are now tasked with the exhausting job of filtering a global torrent of raw data to find the few drops of actual insight.

Practical Solutions for the Information Age

Wealth building requires a media diet as strict as any financial budget. To reclaim your perspective:

• Stop Day-Watching: Unless you are a professional day trader, daily market movements are irrelevant. Your investment portfolio does not care about Tuesday morning’s mood swings. Check it quarterly, at most.
• Diversify Your Sources: Step outside the local bubble. High-authority global sites like the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg offer a level of rigor missing from local outlets. They still love a good crisis, but the data is better.
• Question Experts: When a talking head appears, ask what they are selling. Is it a fund? A political party? Or just their own ego? Understanding the incentive is the ultimate filter for truth.
• Focus on Controllables: The news obsessively reports on things you cannot influence: geopolitics, pandemics, natural disasters, and the whims of the Beehive. Your ultimate success depends on what you can control: your savings rate, your asset allocation, and your ability to stay rational when the headlines are screaming.
• What Versus Why: A sophisticated approach involves moving from the “what” to the “why.” If you stop following the daily twitches of the investment markets and start reading deep-dive analysis or historical market cycles, you might learn something. It turns out the world keeps spinning even if you aren’t watching the live updates.

The most successful people we know are surprisingly uninformed about the latest news cycle. They haven’t seen the most recent political hot take, don’t know who the Kardashians are dating, and couldn’t tell you what the headline on the NZ Herald was this morning.

It is worth noting that the AUT report mentioned earlier highlights a growing segment of the population that is news avoiding. This is often framed by journalists as a failure of democracy or a rise in apathy. We would argue it is a sign of psychological health. Even the report said:

“… news avoiders told us the news was too negative and depressing, with many saying it was bad for their mental health. Secondly, they told us the news they were avoiding was biased and too opinionated. A lesser but significant issue among news avoiders was that news was repetitive, boring or irrelevant to them.”

Choosing to ignore a low-quality (and potentially biased) product that makes you feel powerless is a rational act of self-preservation.

The Bottom Line: New Zealanders Falling Faith in The Media

Transparency is at the root of trust.

People like to know the truth, and the steady decline in faith in mainstream New Zealand media outlets is likely to continue. As these legacy outlets decline, we will see the rise of more niche, independent voices. Some of these will be excellent; many will be worse than what we have now.

The responsibility, as always, lies with you: the individual. You are the editor of your own life. You get to decide which voices are allowed into your head and which ones are left at the door.

Your financial freedom should be robust enough to survive the headlines. If a single news report can make you want to change your investment approach, or something else in your life, the problem isn’t the news; it’s your approach. A well-constructed framework for financial freedom should be built on timeless principles, not the whims of a 6pm broadcast.

In summary, the legacy media is a business. Its product is your attention, and its primary tool is your anxiety. By recognizing this, you can step out of the cycle and focus on the productive, quiet work of building a life of ownership and independence.

Stay disciplined. Stay sceptical. And for your own sake, stop checking the news.

Ready to stop reacting to the noise and start focusing on your own financial future? Here at Become Wealth, we help New Zealanders take control of their wealth with a focus on behaviour and long-term results. Book a consultation with our team today.