Ingrid Hipkiss is the relatively new anchor on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report programme. She was recruited from the private sector media agency called Newshub, and was a regular weather presenter, and then briefly anchored their late news programme. Newshub are well known for their sardonic presentation of political news stories, rather than genuine reporting, and frequent use of the term ‘conspiracy theory’ to refer to anyone opposing the political consensus on mandatory vaccination.

Morning Report used to be the ‘flagship’ programme for RNZ, and public broadcasting in New Zealand. For many years it was anchored by veteran journalist Geoff Robinson, and a string of co-hosts who went on to become major figures in public and private sector broadcasting. That was quite a while before the Covid pandemic, but Robinson’s authority and impartiality has never been adequately replaced. And since the ascension of Ardern’s brand of authoritarianism, RNZ had been competing with Newshub to be her main cheerleaders. So it was natural for someone like Hipkiss to join RNZ, and continue to battle the so-called misinformation war with the conspiracy theorists, who are never named or make an appearance. In old school journalism the label conspiracy theory was surely not used so often, so lazily.

A particularly egregious example of this lazy approach to to current affairs occurred this morning, as Hipkiss interviewed two political commentators about the current election campaign. Ben Thomas and Shane te Pou are respectively, former National and Labour Party staffers or candidates, who now operate as lobbyists, and simultaneously as independent commentators. Their many appearances on different media always come with a cynical and lazy commentary on smaller political parties, and fringe elements, if not outright cheerleading for their political masters. Anyway, on this occasion in the firing line was Winston Peters, the former deputy Prime Minister (to Ardern), whose party is currently not in Parliament, but is likely to return. Mr Thomas referred to Peters’ comments in a public meeting about the need for compensation for Covid vaccine injuries. Except that Thomas deliberately dissembled, and claimed that Peters wanted compensation for those who missed out on the vaccine. He obviously couldn’t be arsed saying what Peters actually said, and Hipkiss reflexively called it a conspiracy theory.

Even though I don’t listen to RNZ current affairs programmes much, I did listen to it a bit when Ms Hipkiss had just started earlier in the year, to see if she was capable of being impartial and objective. Of course she isn’t, as whenever vaccination comes up she always puts ‘conspiracy theory’ in the same sentence. Even when she was talking to an Emeritus Professor of Medicine about the Covid policy response, and the impending royal commission into it. Des Gorman appeared on 20 April, fronting his report for a right wing think tank called ‘Lifting the Lid’, which was critical of the government response in policy terms. He was able to expand on that view, and mentioned the fact that the initial response was based on fear, with the publication of the modelling of fatalities which was used to scare people into vaccination. He got through this part, but went on to criticise the hubris of the Ardern government, and he claimed that certain facts were made to fit a political narrative. When he mentioned that there had been mistruths knowingly repeated by Ardern, Ms Hipkiss quickly accused him of a conspiracy theory.

Now, in this situation Professor Gorman was allowed to proceed with the interview, and explain one of his points. This seemed to be that a form of spin was involved, which seems pretty obvious even to an Ardern stooge like Hipkiss. However, Gorman never got to state what the ‘mistruths’ were, and how they applied to ongoing Covid policymaking, which of course veered from the draconian measures to there being no effective restriction at all, once Ardern had forced enough people into being injected twice with the Pfizer drug. It would have been at least interesting to know whether the Professor was referring to vaccine efficacy. But Hipkiss knew instinctively to shut that one down with the ‘conspiracy’ button.

Of course RNZ have the most programming involving current affairs, and had many appearances each day from vaccine evangelists like Professor Michael Baker. We remember that academic dissenters on vaccine efficacy were shouted down by their peers, then ostracised on the airwaves. The punishment for a dissent by medical practitioners who publicly criticised the vaccine was even more severe, involving being forced out of the profession, and subject to witchhunts by media organisations like Newshub and the Stuff newspaper group. Even when these medical tribunal hearings were reported, long after the offender had left the profession, the speech crime was deemed too subversive to be published. In this new world of censorship and partisan journalism, a pretty face/voice like Hipkiss’ is just so perfect.