KEY INSIGHTS

In the Curia Market Research April Public Poll (n=1000):

• The NZ Herald was rated the most politically balanced media outlet, with very similar left and right scores, and a net left score of only 0.7%.
• Radio NZ was rated the 2nd most balanced with a net left score of 6.1% (some might argue this is not balanced).

• The Platform had the highest neutral score with 48% of respondents rating them as such, followed by Stuff with 47%. However, both were seen as significantly right-leaning and significantly left-leaning overall.

• Stuff was rated the most left-leaning media outlet overall with a net left score of 19%.
• The Spinoff was rated the most strongly left, with 16% of respondents rating them as such.
• One News and Newshub were also rated as significantly left-leaning, with net left scores of 15% and 12%, respectively.

• Newstalk ZB was rated the most right-leaning (51%), the most strongly right-leaning (19%), and also the most politically leaning overall (+36% net right)
• Despite a high neutral score (48%), The Platform was also seen as significantly right-leaning, with a net right score of 28%

• If we consider the NZ Herald’s 0.7% net left score as balanced, then 5/8 (62.5%) of these media outlets were rated as leaning left, and 2/8 as leaning right (25%).

NOTE: see notes below for the number of respondents for each media outlet.

KEY QUESTIONS

1. Do you agree with these public ratings?
2. Do they pose any challenges for a free and fair election in October?

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Other notes:

• All available information has been published.
• We used exact %s in the graph but hid decimal places. We also removed the ‘%’ symbol from Strongly Left, Somewhat Left, Somewhat Right, and Strongly Right scores so that we could make the number a more readable font size.
• The question asked was, “I’m going to read out a list of media outlets in New Zealand. For each one please tell me how you regard their coverage of New Zealand politics from the following options of strongly right-leaning, somewhat right-leaning, neutral, somewhat left-leaning and strongly left-leaning.
  • TVNZ/One News
  • TV3/Newshub
  • Radio New Zealand
  • NewstalkZB
  • New Zealand Herald
  • Stuff
  • The Spinoff
  • The Platform”
• Not every respondent out of the 1,000 polled gave a political rating for every media outlet. This will likely correlate to the familiarity and audience with each platform. The sample sizes were:
  • One News = 843
  • Newshub = 783
  • Stuff = 772
  • NZ Herald = 744
  • Radio NZ = 732
  • Newstalk ZB = 674
  • The Spinoff = 456
  • The Platform = 363
• Other media outlets outside of this list of 8 were not included in this poll.
• We ranked the media outlets from least to most politically leaning based on their net left or net right scores.
• For the colours used in the graph:
  • We chose red to represent the left since it is the primary colour of the largest left-wing party in New Zealand at present (Labour) and used a 50% transparency fill for Somewhat Left.
  • We chose grey for neutral.
  • We chose blue to represent the right since it is the primary colour of the largest right-wing party in New Zealand at present (National) and used a 50% transparency fill for Somewhat Right.
• You might also be interested in this fact where journalists were asked to identify their own political leaning https://thefacts.nz/social/journalists-political-views/
• All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.

Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.

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SOURCE:

• Curia Market Research

(c) Curia Market Research Limited

Republished with permission.

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