Alistair Boyce: The ‘RECKONING’…its “napalm in the morning”

In April ’22 on a forlorn post parliamentary occupation afternoon I looked up from my workbench as a dapper and wizened gunslinger, not unknown to me or anyone else, walked through to the designated outside leaner and settled in.

I had been waiting a long time for him even though it felt like he had never gone away. We had much to discuss, there were things I needed to say and things I needed to hear. But most of all I needed to see the look in his eyes. His eyes were wild, open, thinking and full of intent. And I knew he was back, and not a moment too soon. 

Garrick Tremain: Media Negligence

I have been observing the main stream media for the past 60 years - closely for the past 35.  

I have watched it go into hiding over the past 5 years, having sold its soul, its reason for being, and its responsibilities in exchange for the bribes offered by a government more evil and corrupt than previously imaginable in New Zealand.  

With this ill-gotten largesse investigative journalism seems to have all but vanished.

Karl du Fresne: No one should be surprised by a backlash against the news media

One of the least surprising things I’ve read lately is that journalists have been getting a hard time from protesters. I mean, who’d have thought?

Bryce Edwards reported that broadcaster Mihingarangi Forbes tweeted last week: “As a journo I have always felt safe at protests, most understand we have a job to do but the ‘Freedom and Choice’ protests feel different. ‘F*ck the Media’ is the new catch phrase. It's dangerous.”

NewstalkZB political reporter Jason Walls struck a similar tone in an article headlined: Attacks on the media are escalating and look like they’ll only get worse. Noting that there had been “a stark and worrying change in the level of animosity directed at journalists”, Walls wrote that a 1News cameraman had been attacked at an anti-vaccination event in Greymouth and a Newshub reporter was heckled.

Frank Newman: Media bias

Nothing like a survey to prove what we all know to be true: The media is biased.

A group called MediaBias has released the results of media monitoring for the period Oct 1 2019 to Aug 31 2021.

They say, "MediaBias is a service offered as a public good, that measures political bias in the New Zealand media, using a machine learning model that evaluates the sentiment of sentences from news articles and blog posts containing the names of Members of Parliament (MPs) and political parties."