(Page 19 of 28) - Campaign Effects in New Zealand: Evidence from Recent Elections authored by Atkinson, Joseph. and Vowles, Jack.

Political Support and the Media
The minority perception that some media outlets disfavour smaller parties, while they
selectively favour major parties, may simply reflect the familiar tendency for the media to
ignore smaller parties between elections. But political support – for the system itself, as
well as for rival political forces operating within it – also shows a patterned link to media
attention. The 2002 NZES data reported in Table 5 show a tendency for high media users
to be more satisfied with democracy than the general population, but this appears to
depend on media content, with high users of RNZ and newspaper readers roughly three
per cent more satisfied, and television viewers roughly two per cent more satisfied.

As Banducci and Karp discovered in 1999, however, talkback radio provides a glaring
exception to New Zealand’s otherwise virtuous circle. In 2002 high use of talkback radio
was once again associated with one per cent less democratic satisfaction than both low
users and the general population, and thus 3-4 per cent less than other high users of the
non-talkback media. Conversely, while satisfaction with democracy was unaffected by
usage levels of all other media, high talkback users were 5 per cent more dissatisfied than
the general population.

Other measures of political support underscore this link. RNZ, TV1 and newspaper users
were 1-4 per cent less likely than both the general population (and TV3 users) to see MPs
as out of touch, whereas a full 10 per cent of talkback radio aficionados were more
inclined than the general population to see them so. In contrast to the 1999 NZES,
however, a much more positive tendency also turned up in the 2002 data on the political
efficacy of talkbackers. Even when compared to high users of all other media,
talkbackers were more prepared to regard their vote as really counting. High users of
other media, in their turn, saw themselves as more efficacious than non-users. This
appears to confirm the hypothesis that the participatory nature of talk radio may help to
boost users’ feelings of personal efficacy, even if it does less to improve their faith in
representative democracy or political accountability (Pfau, et al. 1998).

A plausible explanation for the exceptionalism of talkback radio can be found in the talk
itself. The right-wing populist rhetoric of talkbackers is characteristically anti-
government, ethnocentric and assertively self-reliant. Its most celebrated New Zealand
champion is the charismatic maverick New Zealand First leader, Winston Peters, who ran
a sharply focused campaign in 2002 for tougher measures on crime, against immigration
and against the Treaty of Waitangi (Maori) reparations’ “industry”.