As if to prove my point about the overlap between
political activism and an ostensibly independent media (‘Boat People’, 30 June,
2015), we now have the story of a pair of Maori TV journalists, Ruwani Perera
and Jacob Bryant, turning up on a protest boat in the Mediterranean. Ostensibly,
they are there to report but, in fact, they are part of an elaborate propaganda
effort promoted by Kiaora Gaza, through Maori TV’s Native Affairs.
As
it happened, the story was already out, before the event was over. As recounted
by Martyn Bradbury on his DailyBlog the ‘peace flotilla’
(actually reduced to one vessel by the end; three of the four having turned
back) is ‘trying to break the violent and brutal blockade of Gaza’, and protest
at a ‘great cultural genocide’.
