Free speech in New Zealand is further being choked by a very wealthy, World Economic Forum-sponsored company aiming to control advertising spend in the media.
The New Zealand media – already compromised from taking millions of dollars in government funding in 2020 that came with strings attached – is being commandeered again, this time through a programme which effectively funnels advertisement dollars to ‘approved’ media outlets.
Our country is now at risk of having a controlled media, by way of globalist offshore organisations, which are using their largesse to woo advertisers to only support what they deem to be “credible journalism”.
This programme is peripheral to Jacinda Ardern’s wider efforts to restrict access to unapproved online news in Western liberal nations to fight so-called misinformation and disinformation. The Disinformation Project and FACT Aotearoa are part of the same interlinked fascist movement to control the information eco-system.
Rather than improve the news, GroupM and Internews would prefer to blackmail New Zealand advertisers to push their budgets away from alternative media and instead support the propaganda arm of the Government.
Control the media and you control the people.
Two entities – one an arm of the World Economic Forum (WEF) – have joined forces to “save” New Zealand’s media in a project called Back To News (BTN), which ultimately aims to blackmail and force advertisers away from independent-thinking media outlets and back to the traditional mainstream media, which has recently run out of pandemic-era, government funding.
In order to push “progressive” brands to direct their advertising budgets towards mainstream media, global media company GroupM has teamed up with Internews (a WEF-sponsored non-profit organisation) which itself has a programme called “Ads for News”.
These two overseas-owned organisations have begun to implement a project that will determine which media outlets are deserving of advertising dollars. Presumably those not on their ‘A-list source of truth’, are conspicuous by their absence — therefore effectively black-balled?
GroupM NZ released a media statement outlining their plans as well as identifying some of their ‘pet’ NZ mainstream media outlets.
There is little doubt this is a move by mega wealthy, global power-brokers to make the vehicles of their global agendas more sustainable, while choking out independent competition that refuses to toe the line.
What is GroupM?
GroupM is the media investment arm of WPP, a UK-based communications company that includes in its portfolio large public relations firms and media companies on both sides of the Atlantic. In the suite of companies owned by WPP are advertising agency Ogilvy, which has offices in New Zealand; New York-based Wunderman Thompson, a global marketing communications company; US advertising company VMLY&R, among other firms.
GroupM has teamed up with WEF sponsored Internews, which itself has a programme called “Ads for News”. Its Thailand-based director, Chris Hajecki, says:
“… GroupM and Ads for News has created a diverse inclusion list of trusted news websites, reaching audiences in communities across the country. Now, it is up to progressive brands to take the lead by more sustainably investing media budgets in responsible journalism— ensuring their customers have access to fact-based news to make informed decisions about their lives.”
Does anyone else read this as:
“… GroupM and Ads for News, (shop-fronts for the elite Foundations that fund them), has created a hammer dressed up as a carrot out of legacy news websites that reach audiences already half-cut on the Kool-Aid. Now, it is up to you, big brand advertisers, to join us in the perpetuation of woke cultural extremism. Your non-acceptance of our offer will be considered an attack on your (and, by proxy, ‘our’) customers, and we will therefore gaslight you into the independent media wasteland of our programme” ?
Who is Internews?
Internews is a non-profit organisation domiciled in northern California. Among its donors and supporters are the WEF and the Who’s Who of the global elites, such as the powerful Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, the various Rockefeller foundations, the Open Society Foundations and other globalist power and money brokers. If you want to understand how much the globalist doctrine will influence our mainstream media, then you only need to look at Internews’ donors and sponsors page, which includes the woke Liberal foundations, corporates and individuals all supporting their work.
The “Back to News” programme is wrapped up in double-speak language (as per Chris Hajecki’s quote above) designed to make people believe that GroupM merely wants to help declining news media and improve journalism.
We think its goals are much more sinister. We have seen what the Labour Party’s donation of $55 million to the news media over the last few years has achieved: a docile fourth estate only too prepared to attack anybody that challenges the political Establishment and status quo. The ultimate goal of this globalist venture is to control what New Zealanders have access to, share and consume, in terms of information.
Internews is the worlds largest media non-profit organisation and operates in 50 countries. Together with GroupM, their overall goal can be discerned from GlobalM’s Sydney based Chief Investment Officer, Melissa Hey, who is quoted in the StopPress article as saying:
“We’ve all seen as consumers and as an industry the damage that can be done to society when mis-information spreads. The War in Ukraine, local and global election cycles and the pandemic have all shown the importance of supporting credible, fact-based journalism.”
Essentially, a narrative that doesn’t agree with the US funding of Ukraine’s unwinnable war against Russia is misinformation. Or you could go one step further and think that any media outlet that questions climate alarmism or challenges gender or critical race theory is going to be targeted by this group. Shame or humiliate companies spending their budgets with them causing them to withdraw their ad spend perhaps?
She goes on to say:
“Supporting responsible journalism is one of the key pillars of GroupM’s Responsible Investment Framework which governs our approach to Investment. Through it we are continually working to ensure that our clients advertising dollars are invested effectively and responsibly.” 
In February this year, a media panel included Newshub reporter Michael Morrah, New Zealand Herald’s Shayne Currie, and Stuff Digital’s Nadia Tolich to showcase the importance of trusted journalism, after which a list of media was drawn up for approval.
We already have serious problems in New Zealand with the media. In the Auckland University of Technology’s Research Centre for Journalism, Media & Democracy report on “Trust in the News in Aotearoa New Zealand 2023”, 58 percent of New Zealanders have no trust in the mainstream news.
Rather than improve the news, it appears GroupM and Internews would prefer to blackmail New Zealand advertisers to push their budgets away from alternative media and instead support the propaganda arm of the Government.
The future of access to free information in New Zealand is facing very dark days indeed.
