A reality check?

I've written about Voices for Freedom many times in the past. For review, they're a group of anti-vaxxers and “freedom” lovers and generally anti-government agitators. They started back in 2020 during the first year of the pandemic. They claim to have quite a following, though of course, that's unverified.

I am signed up to their email list (under a pseudonym) so I can keep an eye on what they're up to. (Though, from reading my Twitter feed, I can see there are plenty of others who have signed up too. I wonder what proportion of their subscribers are actually people who don't support them, just there “for a nosy”!)

Their postings, of late, have been relatively sporadic, which made me think perhaps they were dying. Then they came out with their latest announcement - they're going into the radio business. They plan to launch a new digital radio service: Reality Check Radio. They have a website and YouTube channel, which I won't link to here, so that we're not further spreading their message.

As you can see from the image, the hosts are:

• Peter Williams - retired, and once well-respected TVNZ news broadcaster, and more recently, Magic Talk radio host, where he aired and promoted anti-vax talking points.
• Rodney Hide - ex ACT party MP and general clown. Well known for denying climate change, and trying to garner a reputation for being a government “perk buster”.
• Chantelle Baker - so-called “alternative media” personality. Anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist who shot to prominence during the parliament protest and subsequent riots back in February/March 2022.
• Paul Brennan - probably the least well-known of the bunch. He has had a career in radio, and was previously part of Sean Plunket's The Platform radio service. I'm informed he had a podcast related to New Zealand's aviation industry before he went down the rabbit hole.

So, they're a motley crew of supposed critical thinkers, who've shown themselves to be anything but.

This new radio service (launch date is as yet unconfirmed) will compete with The Platform, which is Sean Plunket's digital radio venture. (Sean Plunket was awarded our Bent Spoon award last year for his descent down the rabbit hole and for promoting various conspiracy theories.)

Duncan Grieve, from The Spinoff wrote an interesting piece about the emergence of this new radio service, describing it as “for people who find The Platform too woke”.

The VFF Reality Check Radio is run by a recently-registered company, NZ Media Holdings 2023 Limited. The directors are the three women from VFF - Claire Deeks, Alia Bland and Libby Jonson.

With The Platform launching last year, and funded lavishly by the Wright Family Foundation, rumoured to be to the tune of around $2M, I wonder how this new service will be funded. Building professional studios isn't cheap, though one might argue it would be possible to run it from distributed home office studios, as podcasters usually do. Nevertheless, for it to be a sustaining enterprise, it will have to have some revenue. I'm assuming that the hosts won't be doing shows on a regular basis for love. It does seem unlikely that any nationally recognised brand would want to be associated with such odious content (assumed, of course, at this stage) to be advertising with them.

So, it remains to be seen whether there's wide audience demand for this new service, and what the audience numbers will be. I guess that tuning in to the service and listening online requires less commitment than the Voices for Freedom webinars, but still, how much will audiences be entertained by it?

Of most concern about these new services is their lack of accountability. Unlike the established traditional media sources, these new services aren't subject to discipline by the New Zealand Media Council or Broadcasting Standards Authority. If they're hosted on platforms such as YouTube, then their content standards would apply, but they're nothing like the more rigorous standards that the traditional media sources have to adhere to.

It's likely that Reality Check Radio might be hosted on a platform such as Rumble, which is very friendly towards content that's been kicked off other platforms.