REVIEW: Noted: Fix the system before it’s too late

Review of The Broken Estate: Journalism and Democracy in a Post-Truth World, by Mel Bunce

Abstract

The Broken Estate: Journalism and Democracy in a Post-Truth World, by Mel Bunce. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2019. 224 pages. ISBN 9780947518356

NEW ZEALAND has probably the worst television systems of any OECD nation, media ownership so concentrated that there is only one truly independent newspaper left, plummeting readership levels and almost insuperable economic challenges. And yet, as London-based New Zealand journalist-turned academic Mel Bunce observes, there has never been a time when the country most needed a functioning, independent media system that people could trust.

In this slim, but powerful volume, she outlines what is wrong with New Zealand’s media and ways that it might be fixed.