Robin Grieve: The Elusive Treaty Principles

NZME, the publisher of the New Zealand Herald, in return for Government funding, has pledged to ‘developing its understanding of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and is working towards embedding them in all aspects of its business’.

The question for the New Zealand Herald and NZME and its shareholders is what does that mean and how is it going to do that?

Point of Order: Leaked report (by the looks of things) led to professor being unhired from post in the PM’s war against terrorism, violence and hate

Yes, the Government today made a big announcement about measures to tackle COVID-19 and flu. But we are confident the mainstream news media will give that an appropriate airing.

Point of Order instead found cause to revisit a Beehive press statement which we buzzed about on June 4. We have done so because we fear the country’s state-subsidised and Treaty-committed mainstream media (apart from the New Zealand Herald) will not be bothering to inform their audiences of what has transpired.

The press statement from the Prime Minister in early June announced the launch of the Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, He Whenua Taurikura.

One of the centre’s two directors is Professor Joanna Kidman.

Garrick Tremain: Media Lapdogs

 Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on media lapdogs! 

Karl du Fresne: On freedom of expression and that $55 million media handout

It seems I’ve achieved the great distinction of being deleted from Reddit. A friend emailed me recently to advise that my Spectator Australia article – ‘NewZealand is being transformed, but not in a good way’ – had been uploaded to Reddit several days previously, but had then been taken down. A notice explained: “Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators”. This was followed by what appeared to be a standard explanatory note: “Moderators remove posts from feeds for a variety of reasons, including keeping communities safe, civil and true to their purpose”.

Who are these moderators? They’re not identified. Neither did the weasel-word explanatory note say exactly what the problem was with my article. I’m left to conclude that the anonymous moderators deemed it “unsafe” – but in what way?

We should be very suspicious of the word “safety” when used in this type of context. It has become another cover for the Stalinist authoritarianism that infects public discourse and seeks to silence and marginalise dissenters.