In this week's Midweek Mediawatch Hayden Donnell talks to Bryan Crump about John Key's media blitz, dueling Covid recovery plans -  and some change-making stories from Metro and RNZ.

This week the big commercial radio broadcasters boasted of record-breaking audiences for their big brands when the latest audience figures came out. But at the same their bosses were also urging our MPs to rein in RNZ’s scope to reach new people - particularly younger ones. We ask the spokesperson for their mutual interests why.

A new campaign is urging people with possible symptoms of cancer to get a diagnosis - and never mind the lockdown.  This week two media outlets claimed  'almost half of new cancers' went undetected because of the Covid lockdowns last year - and it could be happening again now. Is it?

Worrying breaches of Auckland’s Level 4 border fired up the media this week - just as the Government prepared to green-light a risky shift to Level 3 in the supercity. Meanwhile the media also channeled South Islanders' irritation over Level 2  - and expats' MIQ misery over the new 'unlucky dip' lottery system.

National's embattled leader surprised the media by spurning some interview opportunities this week - and the public exposure that would have come with them. But while political reporters often criticise the party for a failure to focus on the things that really matter, the same seems true of the news media when National MPs actually do.

Covid complications confuse the media; Collins' snubs startles media - but it cuts both ways; confused claims of Covid-compromised cancer care; Collins' snubs startles media - but it cuts both ways.

Mediawatch's weekly catch-up with Bryan Crump on Nights. This week Hayden Donnell talks to Bryan about media angst over whether ‘elimination’ is still our Covid strategy - and the Herald aiming high for vaccination, but with one big name conspicuously off-message. Also: anti-vaxxers fooling Facebook; and former broadcasters hired as columnists by NBR, whose owner once pledged to purge opinion from the outlet.

As the lockdown in Auckland lengthened, the exposure of one couple’s rule-breaking prompted a predictably intense pile-on. Ironically, that actually helped to keep their names out of the headlines - briefly - and it also fired up long-running arguments about the right to know, privilege and fairness.

Mediawatch looks at how the media zeroed in on our social cohesion this week - as the current lockdown in Auckland became the longest we've had so far. Also: Mediawatch talks to the BBC's Peter Taylor, a reporter with 50 years of experience reporting terrorism and violence - and how it can be overcome

Few journalists on the planet have more experience of reporting terrorism than the BBC’s Peter Taylor. He has spent half a century covering Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles - a consequence of the partition of Ireland 100 years ago. He’s risked his own life meeting face-to-face with terrorists  - and also the terrorised and those working for peace.