Claire Charters on Legal Myth-takes and the Crown’s claim to sovereignty over Aotearoa/New Zealand: What are the implications for New Zealand’s constitution today?
You can hear the lecture here.
Tenancy law investigation wins 2022 Jesson journalism award
An investigation which exposed the failure of New Zealand’s regulation of rental housing has won this year’s Bruce Jesson Emerging Journalism Award.
Massey University journalism students Mary Argue, James Pocock and Lucy Revill found that many Wellington tenants living in clearly mouldy and sub-standard housing were unable to win cases against their landlords in the Tenancy Tribunal.
Claire Charters to deliver 2022 Jesson lecture
A senior legal expert is calling for a fundamental rethink of New Zealand’s constitution in the light of the “illegitimacy” of the British Crown’s claim to sovereignty over this country.
Associate Professor Claire Charters chaired the working group that produced the 2019 report He Puapua on possible strategies to implement Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
She will give this year’s Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture on Tuesday 18 October on the topic: “Legal Myth-takes and the Crown’s claim to sovereignty over Aotearoa/New Zealand: What are the implications for New Zealand’s constitution today?”
She will critically examine various legal narratives that attempt to explain, or refute, the Crown’s claim to sovereignty over Aotearoa/New Zealand under tikanga Māori, British and international law.
Exposing the conflicts between these narratives and the legal myths on which many of them rely, she will then consider their implications for New Zealand’s constitution today.
She will argue that redressing the basic illegality and illegitimacy of the Crown’s historical claim to sovereignty might require a fundamental rethinking of New Zealand’s constitution, and will offer some ideas inspired by international law and comparative constitutions.
Claire Charters is director of the Aotearoa New Zealand Centre for Indigenous Peoples and the Law in the law school at the University of Auckland and is a Royal Society of New Zealand Discovery Fellow (2019-24) investigating constitutional transformation to realise Māori aspirations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, drawing on lessons from around the globe including North and South America, the Pacific, Asia, Africa and northern Europe.
She has links to Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngā Puhi and Tainui and grew up in Rotorua, attending Rotorua Girls’ High School.
She has degrees from Otago, New York and Cambridge Universities and wrote her doctoral thesis at Cambridge on the legitimacy of indigenous peoples’ norms under international law.
From 2010 to 2013 she worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She was an adviser to the president of the United Nations General Assembly in 2016-17 and served as a trustee on the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples from 2014 to 2020.
The Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture has been delivered annually since the year 2000 in memory of the journalist and politician Bruce Jesson (1944-1999), whose books published over several decades analysed the capture of wealth and power in New Zealand by a small elite.
Claire Charters will deliver her lecture in the Old Government House lecture theatre on the main Princes St campus of the University of Auckland at 6pm on Tuesday 18 October. The event is free and open to the public.
You can register here.
Unique journalism award open for applications
A unique award fostering critical journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand is now open for applications.
The Bruce Jesson Journalism Award, unlike any other journalism award in this country, provides up to $4000 up-front to fund the time and resources required to produce journalistic work.
The work can be in any format but must be “critical, informed, analytical and creative journalism or writing which will contribute to public debate in New Zealand on an important issue or issues”.
The award, established in 2004, has helped some of the country’s leading freelance journalists such as Nicky Hager, Rebecca Macfie and Max Rashbrooke to write books and articles on critical social issues.
Last year’s award, for the first time, went to a mainstream media organisation with a grant to Stuff’s Northland reporter Denise Piper and photographer Jason Dorday to part-fund an investigation into whether we are doing enough to save our kauri trees from kauri dieback. Bruce Jesson Foundation co-chairs Maria Armoudian and Simon Collins said the grant reflected the dramatic changes that the internet has brought to the news media, forcing even commercial media to rely increasingly on public and donated funds to keep serious public journalism alive.
The foundation, founded in memory of Auckland journalist and writer Bruce Jesson who died in 1999, also offers an award of up to $1000 for published work by a New Zealand journalism student nominated by a journalism programme leader. This work must also be “critical, informed, analytical and creative journalism or writing which will contribute to public debate in New Zealand on an important issue or issues”. The increased value of this prize is possible thanks to the support of a gift from the Grace Memorial Trust in memory of Diana Unwin.
Applications for both of this year’s awards are now open and close on Friday 2 September.
Full criteria and details on how to apply are available on the Bruce Jesson Foundation website here & here.
Dr Maria Armoudian, co-chair: 027 777 9974
Simon Collins, co-chair: 021 901 036
2021 Senior Journalism Grant
The Bruce Jesson Foundation will part-fund a Stuff investigation into saving our kauri forests – a recognition that mainstream commercial media now need support to fund important public-interest journalism.
The planned five-part series by Stuff Northland reporter Denise Piper and photographer Jason Dorday will investigate whether we are doing enough to save the taonga of our kauri trees from kauri dieback.
The Bruce Jesson Foundation, founded in honour of journalist and politician Bruce Jesson who died in 1999, has given its annual senior journalism award for 2021 to fund $3500 in travel and accommodation costs for Piper and Dorday to visit endangered kauri forests and interview key experts.
Stuff will fund the two journalists’ salaries for the time they devote to the project, the costs of their equipment and production of their stories.
Bruce Jesson Foundation co-chairs Dr Maria Armoudian and Simon Collins said the foundation’s decision to back a project proposed by fulltime employees of a major corporate for the first time reflected dramatic changes in the economics of news media since the foundation was established in 2001.
“All our previous senior awards have been to freelancers who genuinely could not have done the work without our help,” they said.
“The original idea of the award was to honour Bruce Jesson by supporting journalists like him who wanted to investigate issues that would not be funded by the mainstream media. We expected awards to go to ’fringe’ journalists like Bruce himself, not to employees of the mainstream commercial media. To date that is exactly what we have done.
“But in the past two decades, the advertising that once funded our commercial news media has been largely lost to internet-based, non-news platforms such as Trade Me, Google and Facebook.
“The media companies are seeking to negotiate with Google and Facebook to recover some of that revenue, on the basis that the online platforms derive much of their revenue from links to the media companies’ free online content. But that will only be a partial solution.
“The government is also helping by providing $55m through NZ On Air over the next three years to fund journalism projects that ‘fill a public interest service and would otherwise be at risk or not produced without this fund’s support’.
“But it would be unthinkable for any democracy to leave the funding of public interest journalism solely to the government, which may be unlikely to fund projects critical of the government, or to commercial organisations, which may be unlikely to fund projects that won’t get enough ‘clicks’ to attract advertisers.
“Although we are tiny, with only up to $4000 available each year, we at the Bruce Jesson Foundation believe that our role is to offer another option for ‘critical, informed, analytical and creative’ journalism which neither the government nor commercial organisations are willing to fund.”
Armoudian and Collins said it was particularly pleasing that the foundation’s first award to journalists employed by a mainstream media company was going to Stuff, which has recently been bought out of corporate ownership and has adopted a charter and a “mission” “to help make Aotearoa a better place through independent journalism and innovative services that connect people and communities and underpin democracy”.
Every Stuff story online now includes a request for donations because “the way journalism is funded is changing and we need your help to sustain local newsrooms”.
“However, we have now decided that our awards will be open to journalists employed in any mainstream media company as well as to freelancers and anyone else proposing “critical, informed, analytical and creative” journalism on issues of public interest which can’t be funded from other sources,” Armoudian and Collins said.
The Foundation’s annual award of up to $1500 for published work by a student journalist is not being made this year.
The Bruce Jesson Foundation acknowledges the support from a gift by the Grace Memorial Trust in memory of Diana Unwin.
Unique journalism award open for applications
A unique award fostering critical journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand is now open for applications.
The Bruce Jesson Journalism Award, unlike any other journalism award in this country, provides up to $4000 up-front to fund the time and resources required to produce journalistic work.
The work can be in any format but must be “critical, informed, analytical and creative journalism or writing which will contribute to public debate in New Zealand on an important issue or issues”.
The Bruce Jesson Foundation, founded in memory of Auckland journalist and writer Bruce Jesson who died in 1999, also offers an award of up to $1500 for published work by a New Zealand journalism student nominated by a journalism programme leader. This work must also be “critical, informed, analytical and creative journalism or writing which will contribute to public debate in New Zealand on an important issue or issues”. The increased value of this prize is possible thanks to the support of a gift from the Grace Memorial Trust in memory of Diana Unwin.
Applications for both of this year’s awards are now open and close on Friday 17 September.
Full criteria and details on how to apply are available here.
‘The Value of Trust in Journalism’ – Sinead Boucher’s 2020 Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture
University of Auckland, December 1, 2020
Above is a link to an audio recording and a transcript is available here.
Sinead Boucher to deliver 2020 Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture
Sinead Boucher, the journalist who bought Stuff, New Zealand’s biggest media company1, for $1 will deliver this year’s Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture.
Quality journalism has long sat at the heart of the democratic process – with a commitment to uncover the facts, and hold the powerful to account. Yet in a society increasingly plagued by misinformation and conspiracy theories, public trust in news organisations is under threat like never before.
In the wake of the US and NZ elections, this lecture will explore the importance of public trust in journalism. What can news organisations be doing to rebuild public trust? Is it possible in a world where social media platforms continue to grow, unchecked, fuelling greater division and social unrest? And, as the media landscape continues to undergo rapid and significant change, what learnings can the Stuff experience offer for those seeking to build a sustainable future for journalism, and find innovative ways to fund it?
Sinead Boucher was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Stuff in August 2017 and in 2020 completed a management buyout from Nine Entertainment Ltd, famously for a dollar. Prior to becoming CEO, Sinead was NZ Group Executive Editor for four years, responsible for NZ’s largest newsroom, a stable of newspapers and magazines, and the Stuff website. She started her career as a reporter for The Press in Christchurch and was a journalist at the Financial Times and Reuters in London before returning to New Zealand, where she became Stuff’s first digital editor. Under her watch, Stuff has grown to record audience numbers driven by the organisation’s reputation for award-winning journalism.
She will deliver the 2020 Bruce Jesson Lecture in Lecture Theatre B10, General Library Basement (Building 109), 5 Alfred Street, Auckland, at 6pm on Tuesday 1st December.
The lecture is free and open to all, but registration is encouraged. A collection will be taken to sustain the Bruce Jesson Foundation.
Entries Open for 2020 Jesson Journalism Awards
The Bruce Jesson Foundation is offering up to $4000 this year to fund a piece of critical journalism that will contribute to serious public debate in an era of “fake news” and up to $1500 for its Emerging Journalism Prize to recognise outstanding recent work. The increased value of this prize is possible thanks to the support of a gift from the Grace Memorial Trust in memory of Diana Unwin.
The Foundation’s annual grants aim to fund “critical, informed, analytical and creative journalism or writing which will contribute to public debate in New Zealand on an important issue or issues”.
Acting chair Simon Collins said applications for this year’s grant are now open, and close on Monday 14th September.
“Unlike other journalism awards, ours aim to pay upfront for journalism that would not be done otherwise,” he said.
“We are willing to pay for travel and other research costs, and for the time someone will need to produce a piece of serious journalism which is not ‘fake news’.
“Social media and the internet have made it possible for anyone in the world to produce journalism that contributes to public debate, but most people need to earn a living and don’t have the time to produce journalism that will uncover new facts or to do the research necessary to present a new, in-depth perspective on an important issue.
“We are not looking just for paid, professional journalists, because they are already paid to produce well-researched journalism.
“Rather, we are looking especially for people like Bruce Jesson, who produced critical books and articles analysing NZ society from the margins, driven by his passion to understand the world and to change it.”
Previous grants have part-funded books on inequality, on New Zealand’s role in the US “war on terror”, and on the abdication of corporate and political responsibility that led to the deaths of 29 miners at Pike River.
They have helped to finance Jon Stephenson’s award-winning reporting from Iraq, a documentary on New Zealand’s climate change policies, investigative articles on rest homes, and a report on how the welfare system treats beneficiaries in domestic relationships.
The foundation is also calling for nominations from tutors in NZ journalism courses for the $1500 Emerging Journalism Prize for “outstanding recent work by New Zealand print journalism students”.
This work must have been published, in any form, between the closing date for last year’s awards, 31 October 2019, and this year’s closing date, 14 September 2020.
Applications and nominations can be submitted online through the Foundation website or to the Secretary, Bruce Jesson Foundation, c/- Politics & International Relations, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142