RNZ's ads were shared as paid posts on Facebook and as electronic billboards - including in the building Stuff occupies.

OPINION: Stuff recently campaigned on the value of journalism.

It wasn't only our journalism we campaigned on; we cited the importance of the craft, across our wider struggling industry.

We certainly didn't slate our competitors. This week, the privileged and taxpayer-funded Radio New Zealand seems to have done just that:

"If it seems like you can't avoid ads online, we've got news for you", read one advert.

"If it seems quality journalism has disappeared, we've got news for you", Kiwis were assured in another.

And, more pointedly, "if you think you have to pay for premium content, we've got news for you."

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Billboards, bus backs, paid social posts - it was everywhere. RNZ drove its message so hard it even featured in a digital display in Stuff's own lobby. Trolling maybe?

The message was right, but only in part. RNZ doesn't run ads. RNZ doesn't have paid subscriptions for its content.

This, though, is only because it doesn't need to.

You already pay for its content through your taxes, so its journalism doesn't need to be either ad-funded, like ours is, or supplemented through a paid content model like, say, the NZ Herald.

It's simple:

Commercial media make money through ads and subscriptions, which they then use to pay for public interest journalism.

Public media are Government-funded to pay for public interest journalism.

But, like newsrooms the world over, the advertising and subscription revenues commercial media once thrived on no longer sustain the number of journalists we once could. As audiences have shifted from newspapers to websites, so have advertising dollars. But the slice of the pie left for news organisations is tiny after the giant global platforms like Google and Facebook take their share.

In short, funding journalism, especially in regional New Zealand, has become increasingly hard. The pursuit of a new, sustainable business model to support journalism is something that is common across competitors; one galvanising connection that brings us all together.

Until this week. Until RNZ campaigned against those efforts.

In fact, RNZ CEO Paul Thompson has spoken about this shared worry himself in the past.

In 2018, he acknowledged the public media was somewhat protected from the financial crises facing his commercial colleagues.

"In this environment, public service media have a unique responsibility to help their commercial counterparts survive".

Again, last year, in a column on our own site, he opined how the commercial media world was an increasingly tough business.

"It is brutal, unless you are one of those formidably-resourced global platforms - think Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google - that utilise the scale of the internet to generate phenomenal wealth and power. They are called the FANGS for good reason - they rip the throat out of competitors".

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF RNZ has abandoned its industry support and abused its privileged position, writes Stuff editorial director Mark Stevens.

Dial ahead to this week, when the supportive narrative shifted; when RNZ's own advertising campaign effectively attacked the efforts of those "commercial counterparts". But for what? For running ads? For charging for premium content? For tireless efforts just to sustain journalism?

Smell like hypocrisy? Yep - reeks of it.

Then came the double whammy: RNZ didn't pay for its hypocritical advertising on Mediaworks, NZME, The Spinoff, Newsroom, Stuff or any other organisation that actually invests in vital and valuable NZ journalism. Instead, it spent its advertising dollars - your dollars - on perhaps the mother of all the FANGS, Facebook.

Facebook is the same social platform which streamed the Christchurch terror attacks, which doesn't create public interest journalism and which has a questionable moral compass.

RNZ does create amazing journalism, journalism that holds a great place in my heart and the hearts of many other New Zealanders, including our nation's journalists. And we work together to share content and to recruit and retain regional reporters.

So why, then, it chose to abandon its industry support and abuse its privileged position; to attack the efforts of its "commercial counterparts" and to poach audiences they so desperately need is, definitely, hypocritical but also unfathomable.

RNZ's own staff were embarrassed by their employer's campaign. Is this RNZ's second tone-deaf misstep of the year, after being asked by the Government to hit pause on proposed Concert radio changes but pressing ahead anyway?

Plurality of journalistic voices is deemed in the public interest. RNZ is chartered to serve that public interest. It is its purpose to serve an audience, not to compete for audiences; audiences which in one way or another are needed to fund the great journalism created by many organisations and many companies across New Zealand each and every day.