Simon O'Connor: More biased voices wanted

Stuff is calling for kiwis to share views on what's happening in Israel and Gaza, but don't expect there to be any balance.

The Stuff headline (below) can be best described as a lie. To date, Stuff has shown little interest in presenting a range of views on this complicated conflict, and this call made at the start of the week will be no different. I would anticipate a careful selection of ‘voices’ that reinforce the single narrative Stuff has been pushing for months now. More worryingly, it will probably enable the usual tropes, slurs, and half-truths to be repeated. What we are witnessing is not reporting but propaganda.

Matua Kahurangi: Stuff sinks to new low as convicted thief Golriz Ghahraman becomes their voice on Iran

Stuff has just confirmed what many Kiwis already suspected. The line between journalism and activist propaganda has all but disappeared. In its latest farce, Lloyd Burr and the Stuff editorial team have handed a megaphone to none other than Golriz Ghahraman, the disgraced former Green Party MP and convicted serial shoplifter, to lecture New Zealanders on the state of democracy in Iran.

DTNZ: Trade Me and legacy media outlet Stuff announce merger in major digital media shakeup

Legacy mainstream media outlet Stuff and auction site Trade Me have agreed to a merger in which Trade Me will take a 50% stake in Stuff Digital, the division behind stuff.co.nz and ThreeNews, while Stuff’s newspapers, events, and Neighbourly are excluded from the deal.

JC: Why Do the Left Not Learn

The question is something of a conundrum. I am referring specifically to their behaviour and strategy. From their perspective politics is littered with examples of how these two things hurt them in all sorts of ways. They seem to have become obsessed with the nasty side of politics. They have a propensity to go after the person and not the policy. This fanaticism extends, unsurprisingly, to their comrades in the media who seem to think, irrationally, this is a good idea.

David Farrar: Stuff refusing to run ads on the Treaty

Hobson’s Pledge reports:

We attempted to book the Sunday Star Times, The Post, the Christchurch Press, and The Southland Times. It would have been a tidy sum of money for the financially beleaguered media outlet…

Our ad was very simple. Just words on a page communicating what is at the heart of the debate – equal rights. Vote for the Bill for equal rights. Say no to the Bill, say no to equal rights.

Ele Ludemann: Free speech loss

Stuff refused to publish this advertisement from Hobson’s Pledge:

Stuart Smith: ECAN and the Blythe River

As local MP I have had a lot of complaints about the inaccuracies in ECan’s report which led me to write to them seeking an explanation.

What is particularly alarming is ECan’s dismissive response to these legitimate grievances. Instead of engaging in meaningful dialogue and addressing the substantive issues raised, ECan has chosen to cling to hollow assurances of being “Honest Brokers” and championing the accuracy and integrity of its science reports. Such platitudes ring hollow in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Sir Bob Jones: Reefton - The new Paris

In an at times ridiculously over the top article by an Annamarie Quill, the Stuff website recently waxed worshipfully about the virtues of the West Coast town of Reefton.

First, it had the cheapest houses in New Zealand. There’s an age-old reason for that being few people want to live there, notwithstanding its vaunted trout-fishing, potential gold mining resources and the discovery of a rare mineral, antimony, yet to be mined but apparently in hot demand.

Peter Dunne: Media students and jobs

There has been a positive but restrained response to the deal announced between Stuff and Warner Brothers Discovery to “save” TV3’s six o’clock nightly news bulletin, currently screened under the Newshub label. According to Stuff, the deal will mean that around 40 of the jobs involved can also be saved.

Cam Slater: Death Spiral or Flat Spin?

Political journalists and commentators are often prone to examples of exaggeration. Tova O’Brien is one of the worst, but it is understandable when you work for a niche publication that is so close to failing that its staff resort to calamitous exaggerated headlines to attract readers to their dross.

Sir Bob Jones: Is Stuff stuffed?

Reading Stuff’s principal newspaper, Wellington’s The Post, I now treat as a daily entertainment for its blunders.

Worldwide, newspapers are going over like ninepins, sustained only because they’re a life-long habit by older generations. Most people under 35 have never as much held a copy, glued as they are to their brain-rotting, ironically so-called smart phones and their diverse idiotic but plainly addictive offerings.

The problem for print media relying on that aging demographic is the buggers keep dying off.

Point of Order: Yes, voters supported the scrapping of the Māori Health Authority......

.....but Stuff reminds us of the Waitangi Tribunal’s role…

Reinforcing the credence of an article posted here last week, Stuff yet again has been promoting the notion that “The Treaty” should over-ride the country’s democratic governance arrangements.

In the article published on Point of Order under the headline Media chiefs struggle to understand democracy, Graham Adams noted that New Zealand is about to be immersed in a highly charged debate about the “principles” of the Treaty of Waitangi and its status in New Zealand’s political life.

Graham Adams: Media chiefs struggle to understand democracy

News outlets compromised in the Treaty principles debate.

Listening to Sinead Boucher speak last week at a parliamentary hearing on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, it was easy to be captivated momentarily by her rhetoric about democracies requiring a strong and free media.

Addressing the select committee MPs, she said: “A strong, independent news media is essential… As elected representatives in a democracy, I know you really understand the necessity for a strong, free press… that helps inform and educate New Zealanders on the issues that are really important to them.”

Then you remember suddenly she is talking about Stuff.

Karl du Fresne: I defended the media then; I wouldn't now

In his media column in the New Zealand Herald today, Shayne Currie reports that media organisations are having to think about security arrangements for journalists covering the election campaign. TVNZ went to the extent of hiring security staff for its news team at the National and Labour campaign launches, both of which were disrupted by protesters. Currie quotes TVNZ executive editor Phil O’Sullivan as saying: “Globally we’ve seen an increase in anti-media sentiment. We’re now seeing this in New Zealand too, with an increase in abuse directed towards our reporters while out in the field, and threatening behaviour in online spaces disproportionately impacting our female reporters.”

Karl du Fresne: The Family First advertisement you didn't see

Too hot to handle: the Family First ad that six papers refused to publish.

Last Wednesday, Family First launched a campaign of resistance against the pernicious spread of gender identity ideology. The “What is a Woman?” campaign invites people to sign a petition that defines a woman as an adult human female – a proposition so self-evident that the necessity of affirming it would have been considered laughable only a few years ago.

Bruce Moon: Should these books be burnt?

“The first reaction to truth is hatred.” Tertullian, ca160-225AD

In “Stuff” for 2nd July 2023 there appears a piece by one Gabrielle McCullough, entitled “Racist Propaganda; The undercover campaign to infiltrate school libraries.” Wow! “Undercover”? That’s good, since the weapons used in this alleged “campaign” were actually books!! Hard covers or soft??

These books were published by independent publisher, Tross, of Khandallah, Wellington. Librarian Julia Smith at one school was “shocked” to find that a teacher had bought a couple of Tross books which were already on her library shelves. As the Stuff article continues:

Karl du Fresne: Meanwhile, down a blind alley ...

That worked out well, didn’t it?

Just six months ago, Stuff announced the appointment of Caitlin Cherry as editor of what was then The Dominion Post.

Both she and her new employer made rapturous noises. “We’re thrilled to have Caitlin leading our newsroom in the capital,” cooed Stuff’s Joanna Norris at the time. “She is a fierce advocate for the city and as a lifelong Wellingtonian, she is inherently aware of all that is newsworthy in the city and region.”

Karl du Fresne: The slow-motion suicide continues

A friend emailed me to ask what I thought of the announcement that the Dominion Post would henceforth be known simply as the Post.

I replied that what they choose to call the paper no longer matters, since it long ago ceased to bear any recognisable trace of its respected precursor titles. The name change simply confirms that Stuff’s owner, Sinead Boucher (and I’m guessing it would have been her decision, even if Dominion Post editor Caitlin Cherry announced it) has little knowledge of, and even less regard for, the heritage of the company she owns.

Graham Adams: It’s open season on white men

Tusiata Avia’s provocative poem opens the door wide to more robust opinions being expressed in public — but only if you’re brown.

Poet Tusiata Avia — with the help of Stuff’s editors — and Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi have exposed the double standards of what is considered to be acceptable speech in New Zealand.

After Waititi recently posted an image of Captain James Cook being killed in Hawaii in 1779, Avia extended the celebration of his murder to killing his descendants.

Waititi wrote on his Facebook page on Valentine’s Day:

Cam Slater: A Ferry Breaks Down and Curious Coincidences

Today there is another protest against the Government in Wellington, and what do you know there are several curious coincidences all happening at the same time.

First up is Stuff’s egregious and shameless attack against a media personality who also happens to have a bigger audience than them. Shortly after the media attack the first curious coincidence occurs, Facebook moves to shut down Chantelle Baker‘s Facebook page just days before the protest