Herald has eight left columnists and one right one
I’ve been looking through the list of columnists that the Herald has, and it is remarkable how skewed it is.
I am excluding those who are NZME staff such as Simon Wilson (left) and Mike Hosking (right). This is looking at people who don’t work for NZME but have been offered a regular column that discuss politics. The Editor makes a deliberate decision that we need them to have a regular column.
The sole right columnist is Matthew Hooton, a very recent addition.
On the left we have:
- Brian Rudman
- Rachel Stewart
- John Tamihere
- Jarrod Gilbert
- David Cormack
- Bryan Gould
- Lizzie Marvelly
- Bryce Edwards
So media is meant to be about holding the powerful to account, but actually the Herald is full of people who are ideologically very supportive of the Government. An 8:1 ratio is why trust in media is so low.
Now in no way am I saying any of those eight columnists shouldn’t be in the Herald. What I’m saying is the Herald is failing in having a diversity of views within its columnists. They have basically no one (bar Hooton) who is not a supporter of the Government. It’s like Fox and Friends!