DTNZ: Wishart taking media to court over lazy climate reporting

Veteran journalist Ian Wishart is crowdfunding legal action against TVNZ, RNZ, TV3 and the Broadcasting Standards Authority, accusing them of “churnalism”, copying climate press releases without their own fact-checking.

Wishart, editor of Investigate Magazine, has set up a Givealittle Page to raise $35,000 for two High Court challenges. He said trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low, and regulators like the BSA – which is now being disbanded – have contributed to a lack of standards in reporting. A recent Curia poll taken by RCR, showed 51% of people now trust the independent media more.

Ian Wishart: ‘Son, your ego is writing cheques your body can’t cash’

It was memorable advice in the 1986 movie Top Gun, and it’s advice that Labour party alumni Phil Goff and Helen Clark should pay heed to still, as they make calls for NZ to take a “principled stand” on the Iran conflict.

Both those politicians (Clark, then a backbench MP and Goff, a cabinet minister) were members of a government that was publicly promising “New Zealand justice is not for sale, the convicted Rainbow Warrior bombers must serve their allotted sentences”, while behind the scenes we were furiously trying to sell that same justice system to the French, working out a plan to allow the prisoners to be deported swiftly.

Ian Wishart: Are climate activists ignoring the evidence at Mt Maunganui?

As the grief turns to anger over Thursday’s deadly landslide on Mt Maunganui (Mauao), the blame game has well and truly begun.

The landslide’s immediate cause was a 274mm deluge of rain in the 24 hours to 9 am Wednesday, which Met Service had claimed was the highest rainfall in Tauranga since records began in 1910.

Ian Wishart: How is Jacinda Ardern so sure about the impending climate disaster?

Ardern – tipped as a probable candidate for the UN’s top job in the new unauthorised biography, Jacinda: The Untold Stories – was being interviewed by BBC’s Ione Wells at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, when she was asked about how to get urgency across as a leader in the face of public backlash:

Ian Wishart: Major NIWA climate change study gets shredded in OpenAI’s ChatGPT peer-review

Media runs with bad data, again

On 2 July, the NZ Herald republished an opinion piece by Auckland University’s Dr Tim Welch, which, among other things, stated:

“It’s getting hotter. Niwa data shows New Zealand is already experiencing extreme temperatures five times more frequently than historical baselines. Wellington hit 30.3°C and Hamilton 32.9°C in January, both all-time records. Marine heatwaves are persisting around South Island coasts months longer than usual.”

Ian Wishart: Science Minister Reti, NIWA needs an intervention

Last week’s storm damaged more than cars and houses, it ripped away what little credibility the newly merged NIWA MetService had left on climate change.

What do I mean by that?

Ian Wishart: Open Letter to NZ Media on Green MP Benjamin Doyle

Since Friday, social media has been burning up with discussion of the Benjamin Doyle child images scandal.

For those not reading social media, you’ve probably missed it because only two media outlets had published anything on it by Monday morning – the Centrist on Saturday and The Platform.

Ian Wishart: RNZ caught publishing misinformation

State broadcaster RNZ News has been caught publishing blatant climate change misinformation, after their top climate reporter and RNZ’s CEO chose to hide key data from listeners that would have shown her work was faulty.

Eloise Gibson last month published a story, originally headlined “Hamilton’s run of hot days shatters previous record”, which claimed that Hamilton in the previous 11 days had likely just experienced its longest stretch of hot days since temperature records began.

Eliora: Is NIWA Under Political Pressure?

Disputing the existence of previous storms is pretty stupid... or is it?

Recently there has been a verbal stoush between the Government and an investigative journalist. Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Judith Collins believes NIWA (the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) research and statistics. Awkwardly, Ian Wishart says NIWA has left out vital storm statistics. He subsequently informed the minister’s office of a concerning omission in his view. On 14 August, Reality Check Radio (RCR) breakfast host Paul Brennan interviewed Collins to discuss GE field trials and this alleged disparity. Listen here (below):

Ian Bradford: Can We Trust NIWA and Why “The Hottest Day This Century” May Not Be

Ian Wishart and Investigate Magazine have been probing NIWA’s records.

Cyclone Gabrielle  hit the country on the 14th February 2023. The Climate Change Minister said of the cyclones devastating effects: “ This is climate change.” ( From the Guardian 14th Feb 2023).

Let me remind Mr Shaw of the NASA definition of climate change.

“ No weather by itself is evidence of climate change/global warming, as the test is whether the weather adds to a new weather pattern over many years or even millennia.”

Mike Butler: Dotcom shows up shallow reporting

“Human headline” Kim Dotcom’s launch/non-launch of his Internet Party has been “a study in the politics of naivety”, journalist and commentator Sean Plunket wrote this week. Writing in in the Dominion Post under the headline "Internet party amateur and vain", Plunket also noted that it has also a glowing example of the gullibility of certain sections of the New Zealand news media and public.

The Dotcom Party launch was leaked on the Whaleoil blog on Wednesday with the logo and details of funding. Left-wing blogger Martyn Bradbury was named as the candidate for Auckland Central, being paid $8000 a month. (1)

Mike Butler: The UN and the new totalitarians

If you ever wondered about a link between climate change propaganda and the growing influence of the United Nations, Totalitaria by Ian Wishart links government surveillance, Agenda 21, the Earth Charter, national education standards, and church corruption with Satanism in high places.

Wishart is a New Zealand journalist, author and publisher, and the editor of Investigate magazine. He established his credentials as a leading investigative reporter when he uncovered the two key fraudulent transactions in the so-called Winebox affair of the early 1990s.

Mike Butler: The great treaty divide

Investigative journalist Ian Wishart has turned his attention to the treaty industry in his new book “The Great Divide: The story of New Zealand and its Treaty” at a time when a lop-sided advisory panel could enshrine “treatyism” into a written constitution.

Digitised archives, the internet, and Google searches mean written history is no longer controlled by academics, or worse, government agencies that believe they can indoctrinate generations with an authorised view of the past. Wishart has trolled through archives often 200 years old that are freely available online to let the protagonists of the past tell their story in their own words.

Mike Butler: Daylight Robbery in 2011

How South Canterbury Finance was taken down, how finance companies failed, the new round of privatisation, the Air NZ bailout and train set repurchase, KiwiSaver fee rip-offs, and Chinese attempts to buy NZ dairy farms, all feature in an 80-page new section of a revised version of investigative journalist Ian Wishart’s 2001 book “Daylight Robbery”.

A legal notice is posted on the copyright-ISBN number page stressing that the book “contains very serious allegations relating to named individuals” some of which have been made under parliamentary privilege. Readers are urged to remember that some allegations of fraud made in the book remain unproven until a court has ruled upon them.