Consequently we have to settle for opportunities offered
by editors like Muriel at Breaking Views and a few others around the country
who at least accept that a good newspaper must provide its readers with a
balance of opinions from a variety of writers covering world and local events.
For that opportunity, which is becoming a rare feature of media outlets in New Zealand and throughout the western world, l and others like me can only say a big Thank You.
We are indebted to them for allowing us to present our
opinions alongside those of different political and philosophical persuasion.
Everybody benefits.
It is no secret that the MSM in western countries, with
only a few exceptions, provides limited “right of centre“ coverage of world
events and when it does, the commentary is either - severely edited until it no
longer makes sense, is banned or published with an attached warning that the
message should be read with scepticism because it contains either unverifiable
statements, is fake news or disinformation.
Readers will be familiar with that type of criticism
sometimes being attached to my commentaries in the past even if they make it
past the cutting room floor.
I am not complaining because that appears to be the price
one pays for being outspoken in a world where democracy itself is under threat.
“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” is one of the ground rules for being prepared to stick your head above the parapet.
So, what evidence do l have that this one sided
presentation of the news is having an effect on the type of democracy that our
forebears were prepared to die for?
You need look no further than the latest report out of
the USA that clearly establishes the corruption of a governing party (the
Democrats) both while in power and during the time they occupied the opposition
seats in Congress - ie: during the whole of the Trump Presidency and during the
first two and a half years of the Biden administration.
Most readers, irrespective of political persuasion, will
be familiar with the attempts made to have Trump removed from office and, since
the end of his Presidency, sent to jail. They may well succeed with the latter
through misuse of the courts and false testimony (much of it historical,
unsubstantiated lies) ) which have appeared almost on a daily basis.
But the latest revelations from independent Inquiries may
change the former President’s future political prospects dramatically and will
more than likely prove rather embarrassing for his political opponents - they
may even have the opposite effect on the outcome of the next presidential
election than they were supposed to have.
I’m talking about the US Special Counsel Durham’s report
that is a sensational expose’ of corrupt Democratic leadership practices that
can’t be denied.
Most of the current Biden administration, senior democrat
members of the Senate and House of Representatives, past heads of the FBI and
the CIA and the Presidents own family are implicated in an attempt to prevent
the course of justice and access to the truth.
There is much more to come and l will be interested to
see whether the findings of the Durham investigation is given the same coverage
as the former President’s battles in court. So far the US MSM has only
reluctantly commented on the emergence of this report.
At least this is a start given that for the last six and
a half years, they have studiously limited their coverage to the stories that
see Trump in a poor light. Most of Durham report exposes the truth about
corrupt Democrat administrations and contrasts that with the Trump Presidency
that was constantly portrayed by partisan hacks as the worst in history while,
in reality, being one of the best.
Great to see the change.
Watch this space.
Clive Bibby is a commentator, consultant, farmer and
community leader, who lives in Tolaga Bay.
9 comments:
Clive, sadly it is even worse in New Zealand.
The USA and the UK have at least left and right leaning news agencies, New Zealand just has a left leaning MSM and they lean very, very left.
Combine that left lean with the PJIF and you have an MSM about to capsize.
Dear Clive Bibby.
You have posted an interesting article, to which you rightly note that MSM America will not publish, as it would be against their "anti Trump" programe.
The same can be said for the NZ MSM, as they tend to follow their American counterparts. TVNZ seem to have an "anti on Trump", having amid their staff a staff member who reported from America and had a "obvious anti Trump" mentality.
The sad downside to the Durham Report, is that there will be limited Legal actions against the perpetrators. This is self evident, from the Mueller Report. Both groups, expensive, long term in deliberation, multi page reports, that will be "filed" for later reading.
Are you aware that in 2016,that many Republican Party Politicians, and financial backers did not want Trump as the candidate, then, just as they do not want Trump in 2024.
We "wait with baited breath" to see what occurs across the coming months.
Stuff reported to the gullible endlessly about every twist and turn of the so called Russian Collusion. Hardly a day went by that they felt it their duty to embellish the fabricated framing of President Trump. Incidentally, how he was able to achieve so much during his four year tenure speaks volumes of his tenacity. Finally, special council Durham exposed a litany of treasonable actions commencing with Hillary Clinton hatching a plan to interfere with the presidential elections. This damning report exposed the criminal behaviour of how politically weaponised FBI were, egged on by the Democrat elites to attack a sitting President with fabricated lies. It made the Watergate scandal look like a bunch of school girls caught smoking behind the bike sheds.
So how did Stuff report this? “Durham FBI probe delivers underwhelming results” Really?
So much for fair and impartial reporting.
By definition the Main Stream Media is that read/viewed by a majority of New Zealanders. Journalism, like any other profession or trade, is imperfect, but New Zealanders are quite capable of sifting through what they take from the MSM and drawing their own conclusions and judgement. To imply that they are unable to do so is, really, insulting.
Clive Bibby devotes half his piece to the U S ‘Durham Report’, which has just been made public. It’s a complete fizzer, of minor relevance in the U S, and of zero so here. For him to claim that the Democrats are “corrupt” can be seen as also an insult to the American voting public, which gave Clinton a 2.9 million majority (to be over-ridden by the undemocratic Electoral College) in 2016, and Biden a 7 million majority over Trump. And no mention anywhere of the insurrection inspired by Trump when Congress was stormed by a lynch mob. What bigger threat to democracy?
Clive has been an enthusiastic supporter of Trump from the start, claiming that he is ‘one of the ‘best’ presidents in U S history. Now even leading Republicans have gone off him, as has Murdoch’s N Y Post, the sixth most read paper in the country, originally an enthusiastic Trump endorser. Personally, I consider Trump as a thoroughly horrible man and disastrous president. He, like any other citizen, is now at last being subject to due legal process, not the “misuse of the courts and false testimony (much of it historical, unsubstantiated lies)”. This is just the start.
The New Zealand MSM hasn’t promoted this far-right extremism, and why should? In the meantime, I’m one who celebrates having been born in one of the oldest and most, if obviously imperfect, democracies in the world. Later this year we will have an election where we can all cast a vote in secret ballot. Possibly our individual vote won’t accord with the majority, and we have a government we don’t like. We can then criticize it by letters to the editor or representations on right of left-wing blogs, and generally moan to our heart’s content, if that makes us feel good.
I haven’t insulted anyone - least of all the readers of this and other columns printed in MSM outlets. I feel for them being denied all the information they need in order to make up their own mind. This isn’t what you should get when we have an open society eager to learn the truth but, unfortunately, it is not, with few exceptions, what we current have to accept as honest journalism.
I’m just observing that it depends on which paper you are reading or the channel you are watching as to the quality of the information you are receiving. I say that the MSM throughout the western world is decidedly left leaning and they deliberately either edit the stuff they don’t want you to read or watch and/or ignore it completely. So much for the integrity of the “free press”.
It just so happens that the special counsel report Ewan MacGregor refers to as a “fizzer” will more than likely be influential in the outcome of the 2024 US general election. I know Ewan well enough to suggest he realises he is continuing to support one corrupt regime that will be exposed for what it is and there is little he or anyone else can do about it.
Go figure.
Oh and by the way, l referred only to some members of the Democratic Party in the US Congress and the Senate, plus some past leaders of the FBI and CIA and certainly a host of both the Biden and Clinton families as being corrupt.
Too bad if Ewan thinks these crooks are squeaky clean. We’ll see.
Ewan McGregor has demonstrated on numerous occasions that he is a dedicated follower of MSM as is a large group around the world. He is a little spooked by this platform’s enlightened contributors which are worlds apart from his regular diet of comforting propaganda that he subscribes to. Welcome aboard Ewan, I know this is very frightening for you but it may open your eyes to the truth you have been denied for apparently a very long time.
Well Rob Beechey, I read Breaking News regularly because it contains much that is well-reasoned and authoritative, a description that doesn’t apply to the above column. I am not ‘spooked’ by this newsletter; in fact, I have made modest financial contributions to it. I don’t, however, appreciate so much moaning. I am not ‘a dedicated follower of MSM’, but endeavour to dedicate myself to hearing all opinions. Your last sentence I find insulting.
Actually Ewan is the one with MSM’s problem - he believes and sycophantically parrots almost everything they say.
Far from being an objective reader of all comments from all sources, he, like Michael Bassett’s hapless Cambridge based (not the University) economic “authority” presents as one of the most bigoted supporters of the left wing politics that has ever infiltrated the printed columns of the Fourth estate.
He, like so many of his type, is a sad joke.
Well, that comment is a tit unworthy of a tat, so there won't be one.
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