Ben Espinar: Do Crown Owned Entities need the Rainbow Tick?

Correspondence with Airways New Zealand over drag queen DEI posting

Last week, The Platform asked some questions of Airways New Zealand, a Crown owned entity that operates our Air Navigation Services. The dialogue was prompted when the organisation posted promotional content on its social media, announcing proudly their reaccreditation to the ‘Rainbow Tick’ programme.

Rainbow Tick is an organisation operated by the Kahui Tu Kaha charitable trust in Auckland, which enjoys tax free status as a charity and is not beholden to the Official Information Act.

Ben Espiner: Can beer be racist?

There are very few things I’d stick my neck out for in life, beer is one of them.

Cultural and social advisers in New Zealand do some decent work. They can be important in facilitating events and processes in companies or organisations that must be culturally cognisant in their undertakings.

Ben Espiner: Holier Than Thou - Friday 2nd February

What is the future, or fate, of state broadcasters in this country?

It is the first Friday of February, and really the last weekend before we properly get going as a country. When we head into a new year nobody bothers really doing anything in an official capacity until halfway through January, then we have all the anniversary weekends to extend the festival of procrastination, and finally everybody that’s missed out on a moan has one at Waitangi and then we finally crack into it.

Ben Espiner: Holier Than Thou - A very bad look for Wellington Water

A very bad look for Wellington Water.

It’s the end of our first week on air for 2024 and Friday tradition demands that I attempt to wrap the week with at least some degree of thought or insight. This is typically delivered in the form of the on-air segment known as Holier than Thou – the segment where I try in endless vanity to spur on some public accountability from those in roles where it is often utterly vacant.

That segment is now also available here in written form to read at your convenience:

Ben Espinar: Peters vs Media

There is ample evidence of faltering journalistic integrity in our media over the past 6 years

Newly minted Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has elected to drag the issue of media bias firmly back into the limelight less than 24 hours after being sworn in as part of the country’s new coalition Government.

Ben Espinar: Communications Academic Declares War on Dialogue

Another academic has their knickers in a twist. Who’s turn is it to add to the nation’s ever-expanding mountain of contorted scholarly undergarments? That would be Dean’s Chair in Communications at Massey University, Professor Mohan Dutta. 

Professor Dutta last week penned a uniquely deranged opinion piece entitled “The far-right’s cancel culture and communication studies”.

In this piece, he takes aim at writer Karl du Fresne’s criticism of bias in academia, and, like plenty before him, advocates against the free and open discussion of ideas, citing the imagined emergence of a cogent network of far-right conspiratorial mis informants polluting the arena of political discourse.

Ben Espinar: Businesses should keep out of social issues

We the general public have more than enough people lecturing us about politics, we don’t need our broadband providers chiming in as well

Spark attracted criticism recently after the company tweeted its support for a social media post made by transgender activist and young New Zealander of the year Shaneel Lal, calling for the banning and exclusion of ‘TERFS’ from Meta’s new Threads app.

The term TERF, Trans exclusionary radical feminist, was coined by trans activists and rainbow groups to refer, often in a derogatory manner and often in the context of promoting violence or social exclusion, to those who disagree with certain aspects of trans culture, or the actions of transexual public figures.

Ben Espiner: First we tweak democracy - now we tweak journalism

That’s convenient, isn’t it? The pre-existing rules around fairness and balance in journalism that have worked for decades are suddenly in need of some tweaking, right as Stuff’s ‘Fire and Fury’ documentary is due to come before the Media Council for voiding its bowels all over a group of very disillusioned Kiwis and not bothering to speak to them.

Our very own Doctor of Journalism, Greg Treadwell, took leave of his senses this week for just long enough to publish an astonishing piece of writing in Newsroom, which lent itself almost entirely to being a literary back massage for Paula Penfold and her propaganda riddled documentary.

Ben Espiner: Is it 'misinformation' when the Government does it?

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern took her global gallop to Madrid last week for the NATO Leaders Summit, fresh off the back of a widely lauded, star-spangled excursion to the United States.

Over the last few months, Ardern has received praise, both at home and abroad for her charismatic diplomacy and for the global spreading of the New Zealand image. She fraternized with American President Joe Biden, sat in a posh-looking chair in the White House and didn’t ‘reject the premise’ of any of Stephen Colbert’s questions.

Loath to take the world stage for granted, however, Ardern seems to be using her time in the limelight to double down on her concerns over ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’.