RNZ on building up public trust

While many reports suggest there is a global trend of declining trust in media and public service media, surveys have recently showed that Radio New Zealand is going against that flow, with their trust indices growing since last year.

In 2024, the Public Media Alliance has been exploring trust through a series of articles, interviews and podcasts, looking at how trust can be lost, and how public media are trying to win it back.

PMA’s Charlotte Pion spoke with Jane Patterson, RNZ’s Director of Editorial Quality and Training about the journey the public broadcaster undertook to build trust among New Zealanders, and establish itself as a strong and trustworthy public broadcaster.

Charlotte Pion: There is general decline of trust in the media and public service media across the world. Research has shown that RNZ is going against that flow, how can you explain this?

Jane Patterson: I suppose where we look at the value indices while they’re encouraging for us, we’re still not popping the champagne corks because there is a long way to go. Even though audiences are shifting around, we still have really great engagement, as our reaching [of] 80% of 18+-year-olds demonstrates that people are still interested, people still want the news. Podcasting, audio is an incredible medium that’s developing and flourishing and people are really engaging with it.  We’re going to keep trying and we’re very much seeing this as a long game. But it’s also about maximising the opportunities to reach our audience and serve our audience. That’s the reason why we’re here. And I’m optimistic, that we can do it and that the appetite and engagement is going to be there if we get it right.

Read more: It’s about trust: Public service media and disinformation

CP: How do you measure the trust people have in RNZ?

JP: So we hit the values indices, which is done by surveys and conducted by RNZ. But we also have other feedback mechanisms. For example, one of the recommendations of the independent panel review was to have a direct feedback, which is part of complaints system as well. With this, people can give us direct and ongoing feedback about what they are hearing or listening. We also have a texting system that we put up online, for people to text us if our shows are online and we monitor these carefully as well. Both of these mechanisms are really good, real-time feedback in terms of what the audience are thinking, what they like or don’t like. These are the kinds of direct conversation that we have with our audiences.

CP: What is RNZ’s strategy to boost people’s trust in the public broadcaster? Are there concrete measures that you took to foster people’s trust?

JP: Media trust has always been a big focus for us, especially since the pandemic. It challenged our role in society. So since the pandemic there has been a heightened sense of awareness about media trust. And last year we’ve had the issue of inappropriate editing, which sparked the independence review. Even though it was a challenging incident for us, as it harmed the trust people had in RNZ and was a very public situation, we were very honest, open and proactive at addressing it. It gave us the opportunity to have independent experts coming together and really go through all our operations. That group came up with several recommendations, and every single one of these recommendations have been implemented – a lot of them aimed specifically at rebuilding trust or demonstrating that we can be a trustworthy organisation. One of these recommendations was also the creation of my position, but other recommendations also concerned complaints or practices and the structure of the organisation, to improve the way we operate.

In terms of the specific trust building, when it comes to my role, it comes to giving guidance on really difficult stories so that our people can have a good understanding of complex situations or stories and thus report on them more credibly and in a more engaging way. We have started this year some base trainings. We have gone back to some basic editorial training, some media law training and right now we’re in the middle of an introductory AI-training as well.

“If you have lofty expectations, that’s all very well. But if your staff aren’t skilled up and confident, it’s very, very difficult to get to that place.” – Jane Patterson, Director of Editorial Quality and Training at RNZ

We are really making sure that our kaimahi [staff] are really supported with the expectation that they will be delivering fantastic and trustworthy content. But from an organisation [perspective], we had to make sure that we are supporting them, given the expectations but also given the help.

There are another range of different things that we do, even editorially in terms of trust. We take a media council or a broadcasting state decision with an expert and we pull it apart, looking at all the different elements on how we tell the story. But it was really essential for us to come back to the basics, our principal focus is really in making sure that the capability, understanding and knowledge was with the kaimahi. If you have lofty expectations, that’s all very well. But if your staff aren’t skilled up and confident, it’s very, very difficult to get to that place.

What we have also done at RNZ is we set up an editorial subcommittee of our board. So there is a board that meets regularly during the year, a subcommittee of the RNZ board and that’s very much a chance to discuss the editorial initiatives that are coming through and it’s also the acknowledgment about the editorial capability and trust at that very, very highest level.

CP: What were, or still are, the challenges that you are facing in all these steps that you’re taking within RNZ?

JP: Part of it is just workload. So our newsrooms and our producers and our people across the organisation, the demands of news, the 24-hour cycle, the rapid fire demand, we have to make sure we carve out time for training and also get the buy -in from staff. I had fantastic support from the executive that if I had an idea I could go and do it.

[To overcome] the bridge between us and the news and content teams, we operated our trainings on flexibility, accessibility, engagement. We would do short and sharp sessions that keep people engaged. It was key to make it easier for our teams to get along. We’ve had people really benefit and really enjoy the training. And that’s

something we really want to keep developing. The “why” is a real focus for us. It is vital that they understand what it means and why it is important, as media trust, engagement and the credibility of the media is at the heart of all of it.

CP: Could you tell me what are the next steps RNZ is planning to take?

JP: Next year we plan on continuing the trainings and to build on that, of really coming back to the real trade craft of journalism. We [are] also going to work on transparency and communication with the audiences.

I believe it is a real change for journalists, who probably in the past have done the job and went on with it without necessarily explaining the decision-making process or why we are doing things like this. I’m thinking about some podcast or columns potentially that might help to explain and facilitate that conversation. It can be quite confronting for us at RNZ, because we’re literally coming out and saying “This is how we operate, this is why we make these decisions”. It’s really to bring the audience to what we do.

“Because if we lose impartiality and start to slip and slide, it’s not a good place for us to be. We have a new coalition government, we have the elections in the US, we have topics and issues that fire people up, that we should be covering as knowledgeable and smart journalists, not at activists” – Jane Patterson, Director of Editorial Quality and Training at RNZ

The other thing is making things such as content surveys. By taking a particular programme and checking that we have a really good range of contributors, that we provide a balanced view of things overtime. So, we’re going to make source surveys, again to make sure that we are reflecting our communities here in New Zealand, which is so important. We are doing a lot of trust research as well. Another thing in New Zealand like in many other countries, we are going through a very difficult time in terms of the media industry, a lot of major broadcasters have to cut staff. RNZ is in a position where we are one of the more stable companies because of our funding, so we want to collaborate, share our expertise and support the industry as much as we can. Of course, the media and journalism industry is still a competitive industry but recognise that collaboration and resources can be put together and help us all in the end.

The other part of it is that I am a member of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, and also of Project Origin which is a project initiative gathering broadcasters and tech companies across the world. So between those two memberships, RNZ wants to take an active part of international efforts around trust, developing tech that can help us, but also leveraging that knowledge.

So we’re very excited to be in that space as well, being a little country at the bottom of the world.