Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman is expected to announce soon that Prime Television will join Freeview in the next six to eight weeks.

This is a good move as it will get all free to air channels on Freeview, and is a good contra for TVNZ 6 and 7 going onto Sky.

As the media often rate how well MPs are doing, I thought it appropriate to reverse this and ask the questions in reverse. The media are a hugely powerful filter, and it is appropriate (in my opinion) to have some focus on how well they are perceived to be performing.

The questions were:

1. For each media organisation please give them a rating from 0 to 10 for how well you think they do in their parliamentary reporting. This should take account of all relevant factors – accuracy, fairness, thoroughness, relevance, substance etc.
2. Now for some individual senior members of the press gallery, please rate from 0 to 10 how well you think they perform at proving fair, accurate, unbiased and informative reporting on Parliament. You can skip any that you do not feel able to rate.
3. Finally can you indicate your party grouping as National, Labour or Other. Your individual identity is not sought by us, and we have no way or interest in identifying individual respondents. However we would like to summarise results for all MPs and by the three groupings to see if they vary by party grouping.

It is important that these be read in context, so make the following points:

1. This is the opinion of MPs only. It does not set out to be an objective rating, and should not be seen as such.
2. MPs get reported on by the gallery. While this makes them the group of NZers potentially best able to have an informed opinion on the media (which is why I surveyed them), it also gives them a conflict of interest. MPs may score journalists lowly due to personal run ins with them, or the fact they are too good at their job! This should be borne in mind.
3. I only e-mailed the survey to the 121 MPs, but it is possible that one or more responses was filled in by a staff member who has access to the MPs mailbox. I think this is unlikely, as most staff are very professional. However MPs were not required to prove their identity to vote, as confidentiality of individual responses was important. You need to know the Survey URL to be able to vote.
4. National MPs made up 43% of responses, slightly above their numbers in Parliament. Minor Party MPs were also slightly over-represented, Labour MPs under-represented and some MPs did not give a party identification.

NZ Press Association tops the rankings with a mean or average 6.1 rating – and received no very low ratings from anyone. The two Internet agencies were in the top five, indicating MPs like the fact their releases are carried in full. Trans-Tasman also does well.

Television generally gets ranked lowly with all four stations in the bottom half. Sky News actually ranks highest.

Radio is middle of the field with NewstalkZB being the highest ranked radio broadcaster.

The newspapers range the spectrum. The NZ Herald is up at 5.3, Press at 4.2 and Dom Post at 4.1. I would have them all higher, but this is a survey of MPs, not of my views.

Now the sample sizes are of course very small (but of a limited population) but let us look at how National MPs ranked media compared to all the other MPs:

National MPs ranked the four TV channels much higher than other MPs did. Maybe this is minor parties upset that they do not get on TV much?

Despite the generally accepted lean to the left of Radio NZ, National MPs ranked Radio NZ higher than other MPs did. And while some on the left attack the NZ Herald at favouring National, National MPs actually ranked them lower than other MPs did. The Listener and NBR also get accused of leaning right, but again get ranked lower by National MPs.

The Nat MPs also rated the online media very lowly.

Now the journalists. I decided not to list all members of the press gallery, but only those who are relatively senior, and are more likely to have a reasonable number of MPs have formed opinions about them. Looking back I could have included more.

If any journalist is unhappy about being missed out, happy to include you next year. Now again it is worth remembering these are only the opinions of those MPs who responded to my survey – it is not an objective rating.

John Armstrong tops the ratings, followed by the NZPA Political Editor Peter Wilson. Generally MPs ranked journalists slightly higher than media organisations. As can be seen by the minimum ratings showing, some MPs were very harsh handing out zeroes. Did WInston multiple vote? (Note I have no idea if Winston did vote)

And once again we compare responses between National MPs and other MPs.

Again very interesting. The SST is generally seen as hostile to National, but Ruth Laugeson is ranked much higher by National MPs, than by other MPs. Likewise the Gordon Campbell and Brent Edwards (both left leaning) are ranked higher by National MPs than other MPs.

Also for some reasons National MPs ranked Ian Templeton very lowly. Maybe they don’t like his weekly chats with Clark and Key, ignoring the lesser MPs?

• ONE News: 57% News, 27% Sport, 16% Weather
• 3 News: 65% News, 25% Sport, 10% Weather
• PRIME: 59% News, 36% Sport, 4% Weather
• TVNZ 7: 74% News, 15% Sport, 11% Weather

So Prime has the second least news and most sport. One News has the most weather. TVNZ 7 the most sport and 3 News in the middle.

In terms of live crosses:

• ONE News: averaged 3.3/bulletin, maximum: 7 in a bulletin
• 3 News: averaged 2.6/bulletin, maximum: 6 in a bulletin
• PRIME News: only 1 in the survey period
• TVNZ 7: averaged 1.9/bulletin, maximum: 5 in a bulletin

This probably shows the greater resources of TVNZ. Too many live crosses do get annoying but TV does them to give you a sense of urgency and being totally up to date.

Then finally they look at how often the news is used to promote other programmes:

• ONE News: Agenda (5 times), Breakfast, Hannah Montana, Reluctant Hero documentary, Sex and the City and South Park
• 3 News: 60 Minutes, Campbell Live, Home and Away (twice), Rove (twice), Kath & Kim and Prison Break
• PRIME News: Flight of the Conchords, Oprah, Sky News, WWE Raw and Hannah Montana
• TVNZ 7: Agenda (5 times), Close Up, The View and The Bachelor

To be fair to TVNZ, Agenda is a legitimate source of news from their weekly interviews, so one does expect them to reference it.

I record both One News and Three News on My Sky and just watch the segments from each I am interested in. Normally can do both bulletins in 30 – 40 minutes.

A reader has e-mailed me about the billboards, which say:

“Advertising agency seeks clients — all business considered, even from Jews.”

Now my first reaction was that the TV show is lampooning anti Jewish bigotry, rather than targeting Jews. The Borat movie is a prime example of that. So I’m not particularly offended by the billboard.

However upon further reflection I wondered if Prime and its advertising agency would have dared to run billboards saying “all business considered, even from Maoris” or “all business considered, even from Polynesians”. I suspect not.

And as David Cohen points out, were such anti Jewish sentiments ever part of the advertising industry in the 1960s? Like David, I suspect not.

Now as I said, I understand that the adverts are meant to be in the same category as the anti Jewish sentiment done by Borat. However I would make the point that Borat could get away with it, because Sacha Baron-Cohen is in fact Jewish, and because it was so absolutely over the top no-one could take it seriously.

Where Prime is risking trouble, is by the nature of its advertising being on billboards. The average person walking down the street may not get the context. A billboard is arguably the most intrusive form of advertising, and elderly members of the Jewish community may not enjoy seeing such a billboard, as the humour will be lost on them with their real world experiences of living in countries where Jews were banned from many many types of business.