A guest post from a Kiwiblog reader:
This question has been debated a lot and on the Right the answer is invariably, yes.
Having followed the media carefully since the election it is my view that it is extremely hard to deny that assertion. Let me share some insight as to how this has occurred.
I am not going to discuss Winston Peters and how his comments are reported. This is newsworthy and would be so irrespective of the political backdrop in my view. Although as always the blending of news and opinion is irritating. There is a world of difference between a politician actually having lost control and a journalistic assertion that he has. If the PM has agreements in place about what his colleagues can and cannot say then by definition he has not lost control when they are followed. Actually journalists I do not give a shot for your deduced conclusions when you have interviewed only your keyboard to reach them.
TV ONE Policy Reporting
For the past month TV One has on a regular basis run stories that follow the same trite formula:
1. Pick a new government policy.
2. Find a perceived loser under the policy.
3. Get them to moan or do it for them.
The bias in this simplistic nonsense is the level of analysis which occurs. The Right believes in prudence. By definition it likes to save and spend carefully rather than borrow and spray.
What journalism does is that it treats the funding of anything as neutral or irrelevant and discusses only the impacts arising from that spending. This inherently favours the Left of politics.
Let me express it this way. Have you ever seen an item which takes a proposal from say a government like the last one which involves copious amounts of borrowed spending and analyses it in terms of the impact of future borrowing, the crimping of the private sector, the impact on tax rates, inflation and so on?
Similarly, have you ever seen reporting on proposals from the new government which sets them in the context of running balanced books, paying down debt and avoiding some of the problems mentioned above?
You just won't see it. All that will be reported is that some group or another is advantaged or not by the end result of what is spent.
Katie Bradford why not actually use your talents to get under the hood?
Journalists Don't Do Logic
In a similar way journalists appear incapable of placing any proposal in the context of wider philosophical principles or values, and have no grasp of logic.
Look at the proposal to remove the smoking ban which doesn't exist yet.
The Right generally places greater emphasis on individual choice and responsibility. That is not nothing. It matters.
It is self-evident that a right-of-centre government will draw the line between paternalistic prohibition of society's evils and freedom to make mistakes in a different place than a left-of-centre government. That is a perfectly reasonable and debateable set of values.
Have you heard anything in the media that implicitly or explicitly acknowledges the right to differ in that way?
Rather in the same way that TV One can't get below the trite and superficial in policy matters the whole sector lacks the wit to see or acknowledge that different perspectives result in different policies and different boundaries. It once again focuses on the immediate, calls it harm and uses it to bludgeon the government.
The clincher here though is the utter unwillingness to see this reversal against the larger backdrop of every policy choice around harm that a government can make.
My point is best explained thus:
1. Government could ban cars and save many lives.
3. Government could require all buildings to survive a force 9.5 earthquake and save lives.
4. Government could put centre barriers on every road in the country and save lives.
When one thinks about that one realises the choice of the new government is but one of an infinite range of choices it could make of fundamentally the same type which reflect its values and philosophies.
As such the journalistic outrage is banal, infantile and I suspect deliberate.
Special mention to Lisa Owen here who in interviewing Dr Shane Reti adopted such a vile tone she should in my view have been invited to express her questions more civilly before he answered.
Hyperbole is Only Wrong if Coming from the Right
I leave you with one last thought.
Imagine the journalistic hysteria if a member of the current government asserted that teaching young people about homosexuality represents the systemic rape and perversion of our children.
Set that alongside the total non-response to Debbie Ngarew-Packer accusing the current government of deliberate systemic genocide of Maori.
This article was first published HERE
6 comments:
I don't think you need to be a rocket scientist to work out that virtually world wide, the media is bought and paid for by the left and their puppet masters. It's incredible to actually realize how many corrupt people there are in governments and their agencies, MSM included. Mind boggling.
Have you noticed yet that the West has turned into a Coen Brothers movie?
Everywhere you look, you see madcap characters disgracing themselves while doing their bit to burn their country down.
It’s a panoramic extravaganza of everything gone wrong, with slapstick overtones, driving toward an apocalyptic climax — civil war, nuclear war, economic collapse, maybe all three.
And all because the people on-screen just can’t stop lying.
In NZ Left and pro maori are one and the same. I was taken aback recently to learn that the business partner of Ma....angi Forbes is married to Jim Mather, chair of RNZ. Little wonder my many emails of complaint about relentless unchallenged pro maori propoganda (of which Forbes is a relentless proponent) had no effect. I have noticed in the Herald whenever there is a letter to the Editor faintly criticising any aspect of maoridom (anything more is not published) within a day or two some stock counter appears invariably under a European name. I often wonder if typical responses re set as homework for Maori Studies students. (I understand there is a maori publication of them.. was mentioned in the rebel book "Imagining Decolonisation".)
Simply cut MSM funding from taxpayers via Government . Simple .
Newsapers are not able to be used for fish and chip wrappers so their real use is prohibited .
Newspapers are a day behind the news and irrelevant.
The internet is available for each different style of public and is completelty oblivious to the rest .
We have a problem with births , deaths and marriages notification but I guess that will sort itself naturally.
The issue is opinion ,misinformation and hubris via the meda which is not required .
Robert Arthur's point about letters and counter letters in the press is very relevant for Seymour's Treaty debate.
the plan is to give the strong impressions that:
1. many - even most ( though never quantified) - people support co-governance
2.many of these " pro CG supporters" are non-Maori.
Gullible and politically uninterested/uninformed people will use this channel to form their opinion. Factual evidence from experts will not interest them.
It is astounding how MSM have changed their tune since the recent democratic vote. For policies and practices of the Ardern/Hipkins government, MSM reported them positively and seldom described opposition arguments fairly. 3-Waters was reported as if it had been a great idea and MSM generally avoided mentioning widespread concern about allowing one race to have a power of veto over everyone's most fundamental resource for life. A race whose spokespeople had already talked about owning water and in future aiming to charge non-Maori for the privilege of using it. A race that that could not claim any cultural expertise relevant to plumbing and modern water infrastructure. We seldom heard any reference to any of these concerns, we seldom heard from any well-informed critics, and we had to visit internet blogs etc in order to be able to understand the issue and arguments. We did so in large numbers and those arguments contributed greatly to the election result. MSM haven't even made much accurate mention of the real reasons for change in government. Instead, they go on about the cost of living that was forced on 'Aotearoa' from overseas.
Move forward to the new government. Every single thing the government does and its coalition leaders say is reported by MSM as some new abomination, opposition people given a full, unchallenged platform to complain.
Waitangi Day protesters were interviewed by Radio NZ and allowed to say ridiculous untruths with absolutely no challenge or correction from the interviewer. Untruths such as that the government was getting rid of Te Tiriti and intending genocide of Maori. We all pay for Radio NZ's existence but it serves only the left. If Radio NZ refuses to provide balanced content that properly represents and serves the population, let's get rid of it.
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