Bob McCoskrie: No, I don’t trust the news either

On Sunday night as I drifted off to sleep, I set my alarm beside my bed and just caught the news bulletin on Sunday night. I was shocked to hear this report.

Now of course I could figure out that the reference to immigrants being hardened criminals was based on some of the people that were coming in illegally over the border and committing serious crimes including the recent horrific murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.

But I was shocked. “If I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath.” Really?

So this was the media coverage which greeted the nation.

The Hill – ‘Blood bath’ remarks give Trump a new firestorm to rally around

The rabid left wing Guardian – Trump predicts ‘bloodbath’ if he loses election and claims ‘Biden beat Obama’

NBC News

CBS News

Rolling Stone

Bloodbath bloodbath

Is that what he said – and if so, was their context to it? Well, of course, there was

Here’s the fuller comments

Hmm – that was convenient – stopped the comments when he hadn’t finished

Let’s check another source

So Trump was addressing America’s trade war with China and told the crowd that only his policies could save American car manufacturers. He said there would be a bloodbath” in the automobile industry if he lost the election.

Except that’s not how it was reported.

Australian commentator James McPherson wrote about this and said – As Winston Churchill once quipped, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

So let me remind you of the Newstalk ZB news item again

It completely misses out context.

Is that disinformation, misinformation, or malinformation. I’ll check.

Now of course the left wing media NEVER use the term bloodbath. Nope – NEVER. Repeat after me. NEVER.

You know – I wish the media would give me the news – with context – without spinning it to make their friends look good and their foes look bad – and allow me to come to a conclusion. Not be told how to think. It’s a pretty simple wish – but one that the mainstream media seem unable or unwilling to respect.

Now – interestingly enough, the media played the same trick here in New Zealand on the same day.

Deputy Prime Minister and NZ First leader Winston Peters did his state of the nation in his role as NZ First leader. It was an hour speech. But there was only one headline. From every supposedly independent news source.

From the top left – NZ Herald Winston Peters compares co-governance to Nazi Germany

Stuff – Winston Peters compares co-governance to Nazi Germany

Bottom right – Winston Peters compares co-governance to Nazi Germany in speech

1News – Peters compares previous govt policies to Nazi Germany in fiery speech

Newshub – “The horrors of history” Peters compares co-governance to Nazi Germany

Apparently that was the only sentence worth reporting.

But what did he really say – what was the context. I’m glad you asked. Let’s check

So Winston claimed that without the handbrake of New Zealand First which failed to get back into Parliament in 2020, the country went downhill under a majority Labour government. Based on the vote in 2023, it seems that the overwhelming majority agree. He claimed that race-based theories emerged, and said “Some people’s DNA made them, sadly, according to these people and condoned by their cultural fellow travellers, their DNA made them somehow better than others. I’ve seen that sort of philosophy before. I saw it in Nazi Germany. We all did. We’ve seen it elsewhere around the world in the horrors of history. But here right in our country and tolerated, by people whose job was to keep the system honest, this happened.”

Now Winston was responding to this commentary and policy from Te Pati Maori

Here’s disgraced Green MP Golriz Ghahraman ready to fight Nazis – you know, women who believe that only women can be women.

And here’s the NZ Herald quoting researchers who claim there’s an emerging neo-Nazi traditional Catholic movement in NZ

And let me show you another short clip from Q&A on September 10 last year with Te Pati Maori co-leader Rawiri WaititI

Oh! So the left wing Maori party can compare the right wing parties to Nazis. That’s all ok, apparently.

Did you hear about those appalling comments? Probably not.

In 2022, a Charities Services investigation into hundreds of thousands of charitable dollars donated for John Tamihere’s political campaigning resulted in an allegation of “serious wrongdoing” and the issuing of a formal warning notice to Waipareira. John Tamihere hosted a Facebook Live broadcast from Waipareira and Māori Party facebook pages where he alleged media scrutiny of the charities was “racist” and a “pogrom”. A Pogrom refers to an organised massacre of a particular ethnic group, in this case Tamihere is comparing reporting of an investigation into alleged misuse of charitable funds to the Jews facing persecution from Nazi Germany.

Did you hear about those appalling comments? Probably not.

Te Pati Maori labelled getting rid of the Maori Health Authority as genocide, and Labour called the use of urgency as a dictatorship with comparisons to Putin.

Now I think PM Luxon probably gave the best response to all of this rhetoric

Here’s my point. In both the media coverage of Trump’s comments and Winston’s comments, they were misrepresented. They weren’t given with appropriate context.

In my view they were made to look worse than they were. Why? Because the mainstream media leans left, and both these candidates are right leaning.

If the media were consistently calling out both sides for the rhetoric in the same way, I’d support them.

But they’re not. And sadly, they’re paying the price. Because like you, I don’t trust them like I used to,

Only they can fix that. But it seems they don’t want to.

Bob McCoskrie is the National Director of Family First New Zealand, he has a Masters of Commerce with Honours from the University of Auckland and a Diploma of Teaching from the Auckland College of Education. He posts regularly on McBlog - Where this article was sourced.