In brief

• An RNZ story on the death of a young gender-confused anorexic is republished by major NZ news sites and goes viral on social media.
• Transgender activists alienate many by criticising the parents of the dead 17-year-old girl.
• The trans lobby’s power to stamp out criticism has been neutered.
• The legacy media may be forced to widen its coverage of contentious topics.

When film-maker David Farrier read Ruth Hill’s devastating exposé on RNZ’s website of the brief life of “Vanessa”, a 17-year-old gender-confused anorexic who died of starvation alone in a motel room, his reaction was anger and disbelief. He expressed his feelings to Hill in a brief email.

His anger was not, however, directed at the Dean at Vanessa’s school who undermined her parents’ wishes to discourage her from adopting an identity as a boy — a stance which followed advice from her psychiatrist, who thought she was transitioning as a way of deflecting attention from her anorexia.

Nor was it directed at the shocking behaviour by police at the young woman’s deathbed where they corrected the parents when they referred to their dead daughter as “Vanessa”, rather than her boy’s name, “V”.

Farrier was angry because Hill, in his opinion, had used “parental grief as a vessel” for a “disturbing attack on trans people in New Zealand”.

In one short letter, Farrier laid bare just how callous trans advocates can be — and exposed the yawning gulf between them and normal people whose profound sympathy and understanding for the parents’ anguish has not been warped by a cruel and unnatural ideology.

In that way, Hill’s article has unintentionally functioned as something of a trap for trans activists in provoking them to reveal just how inhumane their zealotry is. If there is any occasion they should have decided to keep their mouths shut, this was it. It seems obvious that if you want to attack anyone for what you and a few of your fellow ideological travellers see as doctrinal error, you really shouldn’t make your target the grieving parents of a child who died alone of starvation in a motel room.

That dismal roster of trans activists includes Paul Thistoll, who complained to RNZ about “an act of posthumous violence” because Vanessa’s parents “deadnamed” their child and used female pronouns. He was completely oblivious to the cruel irony of accusing the parents of “deadnaming” their child whose dead body was lying in front of them.

It is also extraordinary that Madeleine Chapman, The Spinoff’s editor, argued that continuing the charade of a girl being a boy was important for lending her “dignity” in death — even when her body was clearly that of a young woman.

What is also significant is that Farrier railed against RNZ for having the temerity to publish Hill’s article. He ended his letter: “I am shocked. I was stunned it was allowed to be published.”

Of course he was shocked. The trans activists’ policy of “No Debate” has now been blown out of the water. Ruth Hill was interviewed on RNZ’s Morning Report about her story, which amplified its reach, and the text was republished in quick succession by the nation’s biggest news sites — the NZ Herald, Stuff, Newstalk ZB and TVNZ’s 1News website.

Gender-critical feminist Fern Hickson from Resist Gender Education, who facilitated the publication of Vanessa’s story, has been interviewed on The Platform and the story has gone viral on social media.

This is a devastating turn of events for New Zealand’s trans lobby, which has successfully maintained a “No Debate” policy for many years. They have achieved this largely by intimidating and hounding anyone who dared to criticise their ideology — publicly branding them “transphobic” and “bigoted” and attempting to have them sacked from their jobs for heresy.

It came as no surprise therefore that Thistoll initially demanded RNZ retract Hill’s article and discipline or sack her — before going completely troppo and demanding the Media and Communications minister, Paul Goldsmith, set up an inquiry led by a King’s Counsel into RNZ and Hill for “journalistic fraud”.

The flipside of the lobbyists effectively banning criticism for years was that it also encouraged only positive stories about trans people to be published — which the legacy media and state funding agencies such as NZ on Air embraced enthusiastically. In fact, in just one funding round at the end of 2021, NZ on Air handed out nearly $2 million for two programmes with trans themes, including Trans & Pregnant, the preposterous story of a “man” having a baby, which was shown on TVNZ late last year.

It has been, until now, a very successful campaign — enforced by lobby group Rainbow Tick (now called Toitū Takatāpui), which still numbers NZME, the Herald’s publisher, among the paid-up clients advertised on its website. That connection may not last for much longer, however, given that Barbara Chapman, who is a devoted promoter of LGBTQ+ causes, has been replaced as chair by former National Cabinet minister Steven Joyce.

Rainbow Tick for some time touted its annual accreditation process as “risk mitigation” against being “seen to be discriminatory or insensitive” towards those belonging to the LGBTQ+ community, which can lead to “fast, negative and often costly consequences”.

Although it was not spelled out explicitly, no organisation could be unaware that the “fast, negative and often costly consequences” cited could include ruinous consumer boycotts if they offended activists. As the Rainbow Tick website coyly put it: “People are increasingly considering the implications of their purchasing power.”

Many people saw that as a veiled threat that could be translated as: “Nice business you’ve got there. It would be a real shame if anything happened to it…”

But it appears its reign of terror has ended.

Clearly the several major news sites which republished the RNZ article are no longer scared of an advertisers’ boycott or campaigns to drive away subscribers or readers. The fact is, the tide has turned slowly but surely against the trans zealots.

No one sensed this better than Donald Trump, whose campaign for the US presidency last year was boosted at the last minute by an advertising campaign costing tens of millions that said simply: “Kamala Harris is for they / them. Trump is for you.”

As President, one of his first executive orders was to recognise male and female as the only two sexes, which “are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality”.

That the tide would turn has been inevitable since the Cass Review, written by eminent UK paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, was published a year ago, with her recommendations leading to puberty blockers being banned in the UK to treat gender dysphoria in under-18s and restricted elsewhere. And its retreat was reinforced in April by the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that “the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex”.

Last week, the US Supreme Court upheld state bans which prohibit healthcare providers from administering hormones and puberty blockers to minors, or performing experimental medical procedures on children for “gender-affirming care”.

Nevertheless, why New Zealand’s legacy media decided to become brave all at once by republishing Hill’s story is an intriguing question. After all, its journalists managed to largely ignore the Cass Report and devoted very little time and space to the UK Supreme Court decision. They totally ignored the publication of the damning WPATH Files last year too.

It also took more than a year to find a journalist willing to take on Vanessa’s story. Then once Ruth Hill had written her article, suddenly all the major news outlets decided to republish.

Perhaps once the story appeared, other editors decided Vanessa’s story was so moving and harrowing that even trans zealots would see that and back away for once. Or maybe editors colluded in republishing it, on the grounds that there would be safety in numbers.

The other possibility is what some have called “the Grenon effect”. Ever since the Auckland-based billionaire bought a 9.3 per cent share in NZME in early March and declared he intended to shake up its board and raise the standard of the Herald’s journalism, legacy journalists have been in a flap.

They suddenly found they cared deeply about the Herald’s “editorial independence” — despite their unwavering defence of NZME accepting more than $6.8 million from the Public Interest Journalism Fund that required the Treaty to be promoted as a “partnership”, with all that implied for limiting critical discussion of the Ardern-Hipkins government’s extensive programme of co-governance.

Specifically, legacy journalists were concerned that if Grenon became chairman of the board he would tilt the Herald’s journalism more firmly towards the political centre-right.

However, it is not only that possibility that apparently alarmed them. It is also that the revamped board (on which Grenon has a seat) and the proposed editorial board might expand the way in which contentious topics are covered by the Herald. In short, they might throw open what political scientists call the Overton Window, which can be defined as the range of political ideas acceptable to the public.

Grenon set up the Centrist website to provide a wider range of views than the legacy media allows — including those that “might be too hot for the mainstream media to handle”.

Editors and journalists have cited this publication as a likely indicator of his plans for the Herald. However, Grenon has stated that the Centrist serves a different purpose and that he supports the Herald being a broad church.

In May, co-editor of Newsroom Tim Murphy described the Centrist as platforming “fringe and alternative content on climate change, social and gender issues and the Treaty of Waitangi”. The use of the words “fringe” and “alternative” was significant.

For a long time now, the legacy media has had a shared understanding of how certain topics should be handled. The only acceptable view of climate change, for instance, has been that everyone must accept personal responsibility for their emission of greenhouse gases, and anyone who even faintly questions the theory that humans are largely responsible for rising temperatures is a heretic and can be dismissed as a “climate-change denier”.

Similarly, questioning the tenets of Treaty of Waitangi revisionism has regularly been seen as “racist”, just as criticism of trans ideology has been deemed “transphobic”.

If the NZ Herald casts off these ideological shackles and is open to reflecting more expansive points of view, will the rest of the media be left stranded and risk losing income as a revitalised Herald scoops up their audiences?

TVNZ certainly seems to be newly aware of the dangers of presenting only narrow or slanted points of view. Speaking to the Herald in the weekend, CEO Jodi O’Donnell referred to rebuilding viewers’ trust by providing entire, unedited versions of interviews:

“Giving them options for what they want to watch on their terms I think will be a critical part of [re-establishing] trust in media.”

Graham Adams is a freelance editor, journalist and columnist. He lives on Auckland’s North Shore.

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