Karl du Fresne: Howling at the Moon

There’s a crisis in the news media and the media are blaming it on everyone except themselves. Culpability is being deflected elsewhere – mainly to the hapless Minister of Communications, Melissa Lee, and the big social media platforms that are accused of hoovering up advertising revenue that would otherwise go to traditional mainstream media companies.

But while it has been clear for a long time that Lee is out of her depth, she’s not responsible for the media’s collapse and it’s not exactly clear what her media tormentors expect her to do about it. Bail it out with government money, presumably. But the proposition that the government should prop up news media that are openly hostile to it makes about as much sense as Israel providing arms and ammunition to Hamas. In any case, why should the long-suffering taxpayer be made to pay for the media’s manifest failings?

David Lillis: In Response to Stuff Limited

Catching up with the News

Like many New Zealanders, I catch up on New Zealand news through daily reading of Stuff online. Stuff’s website tells us that Stuff is the flagship website of Stuff Limited, New Zealand's leading media organization (Stuff, 2023).

Normally I enjoy articles and editorials by Andrea Vance. So - I was interested to read her recent piece in Stuff - Could the Treaty of Waitangi become the next casualty of populism? (Vance, 2023). Her article discusses the Act Party’s and Leader, David Seymour’s, position on co-governance and related issues. Andrea makes several bold assertions into the public domain, of course, that each deserves a response. Here, Andrea’s assertions are given in italics and my responses follow directly.

Derek Mackie: TVOne News abandons any pretence at balanced reporting

I usually try my best to miss the TVNZ One News bulletin because it invariably annoys the hell out of me and I start arguing with the TV. This is when my wife tells me to go away and don’t come back until I can think of something positive and uplifting to say. Sometimes, the best I can dream up, desperate as it is, is to point out that things could be much worse if we had a Greens majority government. This doesn’t impress her much. 

Anyway, last night I inadvertently wandered into the lounge and saw the pink-haired lady telling everyone at home what the Covid rules were and how important it was that we ALL follow them. There was nothing new in what she was telling us. In fact, it’s the same warnings that we get ad nauseum from the media news channels every evening in lockdown. 

That got me thinking. Why give Siouxsie Wiles her own personal slot on the 6 o’clock news when Wendy or Simon could just as easily have told us the same thing? I was about to give the 43” a piece of my mind when I got a very hard stare from the sofa. So, I decided to retire to the cupboard under the stairs and take out my frustration on the computer. 

Matt Ridley: Good news is gradual, bad news sudden

‘Deadly new epidemic called Disease X could kill millions, scientists warn,” read one headline at the weekend. “WHO issues global alert for potential pandemic,” read another. Apparently frustrated by the way real infectious diseases keep failing to wipe us out, it seems that the nannies at the World Health Organisation have decided to invent a fictitious one.

Disease X is going to be a virus that jumps unexpectedly from an animal species, as happens from time to time, or perhaps a man-made pathogen from a dictator’s biological warfare laboratory. To be alert for such things is sensible, especially after what has happened in Salisbury, but to imply that the risk is high is irresponsible.