NZ Media Outlets Have Little Financial Incentive to Publish Truthful Vaping News

A few years ago, a seemingly innocuous app called “This Is Your Digital Life” appeared on Facebook. The app included a personal survey, which hundreds of thousands of people completed. Those who completed the survey understood – if they read the terms and conditions, at least – that their responses were being harvested for research. What those people didn’t know, though, was that in completing the survey, they also gave permission for the survey’s creators to harvest data from their friends. The company behind the survey was Cambridge Analytica. In all, Cambridge Analytica harvested data from up to 87 million Facebook users – mostly without those users’ consent.

What does the Cambridge Analytica scandal have to do with vaping and the New Zealand media? You’re about to learn the story of how news reaches you – and what’s being done to manipulate that information along the way. Journalism isn’t what it used to be, and the worldwide vaping community is one of the biggest victims of calculated media bias. Reading this article, you’re going to learn what’s happening and what you can do to fight it.

Social Media Influences the Course of World Politics

Cambridge Analytica didn’t only collect data from Facebook. They also used mobile apps and other public and private data sources to build psychological profiles of millions of people around the world. The group used those profiles to create segments that advertisers could target on platforms such as Facebook, and they sold those segments to politicians looking to gain an edge in campaigns. Cambridge Analytica influenced the 2016 United States Presidential election in which they worked for Donald Trump. The company also worked for the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

There are further allegations that the Russian government worked illegally to influence both the 2016 United States Presidential election and the Brexit referendum.

In both cases, campaigners combined an unprecedented ability to target individuals and small groups with a complete disregard for the truth, blasting social media users with fake news designed to appeal to base emotions and stimulate the rapid proliferation of misinformation via sharing. Campaigners might have blasted Catholic voters, for example, with a headline claiming that the Pope endorsed Donald Trump – a statement that was completely untrue. By the time anyone paused to verify the statement, though, it would have already reached thousands of people.

Multivariate testing makes it possible to test dozens of different headlines simultaneously and identify the headlines that target groups will find irresistible. Cambridge Analytica is just one of many companies whose business model is to collect data, learn how to influence people and sell that power to those with the ability to pay for it.

What does all of this have to do with vaping in New Zealand? Let’s pause to examine the earnings of two of the world’s most prominent media companies.

In 2018:

• Facebook reported revenue of $55.8 billion.
• The New York Times company reported revenue of $1.74 billion.

Clearly, there is an enormous income disparity between the largest social media companies and the largest traditional media companies.

Now, let’s learn how that income disparity affects those who consume news – people like you.

Traditional Media Lags Behind Social Media in Revenue and Advertising Power

Social media companies like Facebook give advertisers the ability to target people with certain characteristics and pay to push advertisements and content to just those people. The ability to target a specific audience can make an advertising campaign extremely effective. Advertising in a traditional media outlet like The New York Times, on the other hand, is hardly worth the expense because many of the people who see the ad won’t be interested in it at all.

In the past, most traditional media outlets used subscription-driven revenue models. A publisher like The New York Times earned its revenue by selling copies of newspapers. Advertisers further subsidized the publishers’ expenses. Publishers had a strong financial incentive to provide the best news. If they didn’t, readers would take their money elsewhere.

Today, though, the subscription-driven revenue model no longer works for traditional media outlets. Most people prefer to get their news online rather than buying print newspapers and magazines, and no one wants to pay for online content. In addition, traditional news outlets no longer have the prominence they once enjoyed. It’s estimated that about one third of young adults get all of their news from their social media feeds and don’t bother reading traditional news sources at all.

Traditional Media’s Attempt to Become More Like Social Media

For most traditional news outlets, digital operations have become more important than print publications. As we’ve just mentioned, though, people are largely unwilling to pay for access to online news. In most cases, therefore, access to news websites is free.

If you aren’t paying to use a product, then you are the product. You don’t have to pay to use a website like Facebook because you – the user – are the product being sold to advertisers. The same is true of free news websites. Media outlets have no financial incentive to make you happy. Their obligation is to their advertisers.

Since people have proven that they’re largely unwilling to pay for access to news, traditional media companies have found themselves with little choice but to behave more like social media companies. When a media company’s revenue is driven by page views rather than paid subscriptions, the company will tend to:

• Get posts online as quickly as possible by spinning “unique” stories out of existing content from syndicated sources like the Associated Press
• Keep expenses low by not paying writers to conduct original research or check facts
• Inflate page views by writing click-bait headlines that inspire a strong emotional response

In short, the company’s goal is to get you on the website by any means possible and to keep you on the website for as long as possible by showing you headlines that you can’t resist clicking. That’s what maximizes the company’s revenue.

The Slow Decline of Independent Media

In short, this is the current state of independent media.

• Print media subscriptions are on the decline, with no end in sight.
• Traditional media companies have therefore focused on their online properties as their primary generators of revenue.
• Few people are willing to pay for access to online news. Therefore, the revenue for traditional news websites is often poor.
• To keep expenses down, traditional media companies cut corners whenever possible. The shortcuts reduce the quality of the news.
• Increasingly, people turn to social media rather than traditional media for their news because they feel that the quality of the journalism is about the same.
• Poor readership contributes to reduced revenue, and reduced revenue further decreases the quality of the news. The situation perpetuates itself.

The current outlook for traditional news media has created a situation in which the world’s newspapers and magazines have essentially become distressed properties. Investors have purchased those distressed properties by the hundreds, resulting in the creation of major conglomerates that largely control the worldwide distribution of information.

The consolidation of traditional media has also affected New Zealand. MediaWorks New Zealand, for example, owns 11 radio stations, three television networks and 13 websites as of 2019. MediaWorks New Zealand is owned by Oaktree Capital Management, an American company. Effectively, the control of much of the media you consume originates from outside your own country.

Truly independent media is increasingly difficult to find in 2019. If a website manages to attract a truly massive readership, that site probably receives funding from a much larger conglomerate.

So, what does it mean when large multinational corporations control access to news and information? It means that it is very easy for those with deep pockets to influence the information that reaches the mass market.

How Corporations Influence the News

As you’ve seen, the decline of independent media has created a situation in which what you read is highly susceptible to outside influence. Special interests have a greater ability than ever to influence the news because influencing one conglomerate means that you’re influencing news reports all around the world.

The community-based news reporting of the past is largely dead, and the conglomerates that have taken the place of the old guard have no sense of loyalty toward their readers. They want to see the biggest possible returns on their investments, and they’ll happily take money from the corporations that have the deepest pockets.

To make matters worse, once a media conglomerate is “on the take,” it becomes nearly impossible to break that relationship. The large media corporations of the world know how to extract the maximum possible value from their investments, but that doesn’t mean they can afford to lose their most important partners.

How Media Bias in New Zealand Affects the Vaping Community

Now, we’ve come full circle back to how media bias in New Zealand can affect the vaping community. As it turns out, some of the world’s richest corporations are also the organizations who have the most to gain from the proliferation of a negative perception about vaping.

Who benefits from media bias against the vaping industry?

• Big Tobacco would like to see vaping go away because every time a smoker switches to vaping, the tobacco industry loses a customer. When people do switch to vaping, the tobacco companies would prefer that those people use their proprietary closed-system products rather than buying open-system products. Some of the e-cigarette brands owned or partially owned by tobacco companies include JUUL, Blu, Vuse, Logic and Vype.
• Big Pharma would like to see vaping go away because any person who quits smoking by switching to vaping isn’t quitting smoking with traditional nicotine replacement products or with prescription medications such as Chantix. Some researchers believe that the global market for smoking cessation products could be as large as $21.8 billion by 2024. The global market for vaping products, meanwhile, is about $19.3 billion and is putting a serious dent in the smoking cessation industry.

Media Bias Against Vaping Results in a Misinformed Public

As you may already know, the term “vaping” means different things to different people. For some, vaping refers to the consumption of e-liquid. For others, it refers to the consumption of cannabis-derived products. In the United States, illegal cannabis vaping products diluted with Vitamin E oil have caused an outbreak of a severe lung illness that’s sickened more than 2,100 people and killed at least 42.

The vaping lung illness is obviously a major news item, and it’s also a terrible tragedy for those whose lives have been affected by the illness. Many members of the mainstream media in the United States, however, have used the outbreak as an excuse to publish what essentially amounts to a misinformation campaign against the e-liquid vaping industry.

The propaganda against the vaping industry is just as egregious in its own way as the fake news that helped get President Trump elected. It’s also incredibly dangerous because the U.S. public remains largely unaware of the dangers of illicit THC vaping products.

In a September 2019 survey of 2,200 Americans, 66 percent of respondents said that they thought e-cigarettes were just as dangerous as – or more dangerous than – tobacco cigarettes. The respondents were also asked, based on current news reports, what they believed was causing the vaping-related lung illness. More than half of the respondents – 58 percent – said that traditional e-cigarettes such as the JUUL vaping system were causing the illness. Only 34 percent of those surveyed correctly identified THC vaping products as the cause.

The misinformation campaign, it seems, has been a massive success – and mainstream media outlets aren’t the only guilty parties. Some U.S. state governors – such as Andrew Cuomo of New York – have used the lung illness as an excuse to enact “emergency” bans of flavoured e-liquids. As the survey above shows, the average member of the public in the U.S. actually thinks that nicotine e-liquid is causing the lung illness and will therefore support an e-liquid flavour ban.

Examples of Poor Journalism and Bias Against Vaping in the NZ Media

Now, you’re beginning to understand how the poor financial strength of most traditional media outlets – and the consolidation of those outlets under the umbrellas of larger conglomerates – have created a situation in which the dissemination of information is easy to manipulate. Because of misinformation and media bias against vaping in the United States, millions of U.S. vapers now have no legal way to buy flavoured e-liquids.

Before you begin to think that media bias against vaping can’t possibly happen here in New Zealand the way it has happened in the United States, remember once again that about 70 percent of major NZ media outlets are, in fact, owned by a U.S.-based company.

Mainstream media outlets in New Zealand are already using the vaping-related lung illness in the United States as an excuse to spread misinformation about e-liquid vaping, and it’s happening right under our noses. We have known for months that illicit THC vaping products are causing the illness. If you look at several prominent NZ news websites, though, you might get the impression that nicotine e-liquid is the cause.

A simple Google search reveals a virtually endless supply of vaping-related news content published right here in New Zealand that contains blatant mistruths. All of the stories cited below were published this month. At this point, there shouldn’t be a single new article even hinting that nicotine e-liquid is causing the vaping lung illness in the United States. As it turns out, though, the campaign of misinformation hasn’t slowed down at all.

• A story on NewstalkZB reports on the illness but doesn’t mention that illegal THC vaping is the cause. NewsalkZB is owned by New Zealand Media and Entertainment, a company spun out of the Australian-owned Here, There & Everywhere (formerly APN News & Media).
• An article in the NZ Herald contains the text “stories of young people overseas succumbing to life-threatening lung issues from vaping” in an article about lung cancer. The NZ Herald is also owned by New Zealand Media & Entertainment.
• Another article in the NZ Herald about nicotine addition contains the text “US health officials are investigating deaths possibly linked to vaping.”
• The Otago Daily Times published an article about the impending vaping ban in the Philippines. The article mentions “a growing number of nations moving to ban devices that have been linked to deaths.” The Otago Daily Times is owned by Allied Press Limited, a New Zealand company.

How to Become a Critical News Reader and Prevent the Spread of Misinformation About Vaping

Reading this article, you’ve learned about the financial challenges that mainstream media outlets face.

You’ve learned that, as print media becomes increasingly irrelevant, media outlets have been forced to behave more like social media companies and have allowed the quality of their journalism to decline.

You’ve also learned that multinational conglomerates have bought struggling media outlets and that special interests can influence the distribution of news around the world simply by influencing those conglomerates.

Lastly, you’ve seen examples showing that the manipulation of news is already happening here in New Zealand – and media bias has begun to cultivate a negative perception of vaping in our country.

So, what can you do about it?

The first thing you can do is ensure that you always read news with a critical eye. No matter how positive your feelings about the publisher may be, you can never assume that an article is true or that the author of the article has presented all relevant facts. Ask yourself whether the author is truly an authority on the topic and whether that person has any potential conflicts of interest. Who is the author’s employer? Is that company a subsidiary of a larger conglomerate? Is that conglomerate vulnerable to outside influence?

The second thing that you can do is inform others. Tell your friends and family how important scepticism is when you’re reading online content. Share this article and help people understand how pervasive corporate manipulation is in the mainstream media. Remember that, as vapers, we have to fight an uphill battle when it comes to defending our rights. Most people don’t use nicotine and don’t care about the rights of those who do. Protecting our rights begins with the education of those who don’t smoke or vape.