Hard News: Dirty Politics
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izogi, in reply to
I caught the end of the panel on Friday and was surprised to hear Denise L’Estrange-Corbet insisting that there was no child poverty in NZ. Her argument was that if poor people only gave up their booze and fags …
I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I switched it on part way through and found that dialogue disturbing, albeit repeating the types of stuff I’ve heard people say elsewhere. You could sort-of tell Jim Mora wasn’t too comfortable with what she was saying (or at least how she was saying it), but he seemed conflicted between challenging it and just letting her blurt stuff out…. which is fairly typical. I still don’t know how he scored a place on Checkpoint.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
L'Estrange daze...
found that dialogue disturbing…
She was sympathetic to WINZ workers ‘having to put up with listening to people moaning all the time’ – what a World view…
(see what I did there?)WORLD styles itself ‘Factory of Ideas and Experiments’. It’s an epithet that sums up its love for the unexpected, the creative and the adventurous.
none of yer hoi polloi then…
I think they’re wannabe ‘WARHOLED’
boom time brats……such ideas, such experiments,
such hubris tempts Nemesis. -
Joe Wylie, in reply to
such hubris tempts Nemesis.
Big black nemesis, parthenogenesis
No one move a muscle as the dead come home -
Radio NZ reports:
Former National Party MP Katherine Rich will not be investigated by the Health Promotion Agency after she was accused of undermining its work. ...
Thirty-three senior health researchers signed a letter to Prime Minister John Key in response, asking for an inquiry into Ms Rich's position with the agency.
One researcher, Professor Boyd Swinburn from Auckland University, said Ms Rich's role in lobbying for processed food and alcohol became clear in the Nicky Hager book, Dirty Politics.
The book suggested the former National MP was involved in a right-wing blogger's attacks on public health researchers and academics. ...
But Ms Rich has denied she has been involved in any campaign to undermine public health, and has refused to resign from the agency.
And the agency's chairperson, Lee Mathias, has now reaffirmed her faith in Ms Rich.
Dr Mathias said she had not read the letter, but had no doubt about Ms Rich's integrity. She described Ms Rich as an active supporter of the agency.
It takes 15 seconds on the Google thing to discover that Ms Mathias was an electorate chair for the National Party from 2008 to 2012. A fact worth knowing, you'd think.
We're not asking for Woodward and Bernstein here. Just journalists who look for news instead of selfies.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
Ms Rich has denied she has been involved in any campaign to undermine public health, and has refused to resign from the agency.
If there was an award for smarm on stilts Rich would be a contender: I found that most things could be survived as long as there was family, friends, and Flying Nun—a good dose of Flying Nun,
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BenWilson, in reply to
What should they be?
...
But what is that idea?<tumbleweeds blow by>
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
It takes 15 seconds on the Google thing to discover that Ms Mathias was an electorate chair for the National Party from 2008 to 2012. A fact worth knowing, you'd think.
We're not asking for Woodward and Bernstein here. Just journalists who look for news instead of selfies.
Two words: regulatory capture.
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Nearly a year ago, I posted about my questions to Clare Curran about the possibility of a Royal Commission into public broadcasting, and she responded that it would only happen in the event of a Hackgate-level scandal. Since then, Dirty Politics has come pretty darn close, if it's not there already.
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I agree with Peter Dunne (minor parties' leaders' debate) that this has been "the dirtiest campaign in memory".
It has been a three year campaign and we are only just uncovering the evidence of it.
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Dismal Soyanz, in reply to
Yeah, nah.
Certainly in terms of the dirt that has been exposed it is probably unprecedented but precious little of it actually relates to the election. It is about the modus operandi of the National government.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking this only occurs during the campaign period.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking this only occurs during the campaign period.
This.
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Trevor Nicholls, in reply to
That's kinda the point I was making. Dunne & the Nats talk of a dirty campaign meaning the *election* campaign. But the really dirty campaign has been the under-the-duvet manipulation of the media and public services that has been going on throughout this government's term of office. Exposing that to public view, which has been more or less current with the official campaign period, is a cleansing operation. Or it should be. Most of NZ seems to prefer BS.
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tussock, in reply to
All that said, I'd be interested to know the view of commenters here from the media as I suspect one of the problems is finding competent 'talent' without bias (and though I think little of the far right, excluding them isn't an option).
Not "from the media" but have opinion to speak, and also bicycle to ride and axe to grind. As it were.
Speaking fluently in media res (heh) is a professional skill. The people who pay for folk to gain and hone that skill are generally very wealthy. When those wealthy people speak their own mind in the media, such as the original anti-MMP campaign, it always backfires. NZers generally don't like being told what to do by rich folk, which goes back a long way and isn't changing even if they're coincidentally accurate.
So they leave it to the professional talkers, who pretend to be not those guys, and do it well. As a person whose livelihood is talking in place of money, talkers like what the money likes. That's how you keep your talking job. Believing what you're saying is not a requirement, just saying it like a professional. The emperors new suit being lovely and all.
There's a few people on the other side, the reality-based community if you like, who can talk too. Elegant, and you've never heard them because there's no real money in that. No sponsorship. No advertising. Those talkers, they're tight with the sponsorship people. Money-voice gets on RNZ, adds get bought. Union-voice gets on RNZ, adds get dropped. Is what it is.
And now, a little group of them from cigarette money (has anyone asked the Māori party what they think of those chaps?) has the National party tied up in knots. Which is interesting, in that National is a bigger tent than that. The wrong people are in the press for the wrong reasons, all the money's hidden and that "nice Mr. Key" persona was all warmed up and then boom: Judith Collins and Cameron Slater getting their frowny face photos on the front pages for a while.
But there's one thing the media won't put up with, won't promote, it's being made to look bad by association. Because add money can't compensate for lost viewers, the viewers are what the adds are buying after all. Whale oil beef hooked, as the man said.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
money
Which is why Mr Dotcom has been such an interesting wild card. Not of 'the right', but plenty of cash. A single card won't make a winning hand, but it's shaken up the pack, so to speak.
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izogi, in reply to
Dunne & the Nats talk of a dirty campaign meaning the *election* campaign.
When Dunne says it he always seems to mean that it's "the left" being dirty (or maybe I have biased perception?), and that's why I have trouble agreeing with him. If National's elite weren't acting in such a questionable way to begin with, this couldn't have come out at all.
The only thing Peter Dunne's really said which I agree with is that there's not a mood for change. So many people seem to be refusing to even look at evidence, and then being proud of it, Steve Barnes' example over here just being a case in point. I don't expect most people to change their vote if they hate the alternatives, but it'd be nice to at least see some acknowledgement that there's a serious problem with oversight, accountability and culture in Ministers' offices, right to the PM and his staff, and demand improvement beyond the PM saying "trust me, I've dealt with it".
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Pardon me but I've been traveling .... so late last week WhaleDump dumped the lot on "the journalists" ....... and what happened? as far as I can tell there's been nary a peep
I so hope that Nicky was one of the journalists
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As mentioned on another thread, they're busy transcribing the irrelevant witterings of Judith Collins' sister. Good job guys! Much easier than real journalism! Is it time for lunch yet?
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Alfie, in reply to
....... and what happened?
Apparently nothing. I was expecting at least one of the Sunday papers to produce a decent article about the Ede/Slater conversations. But nada. It would be good to know which journos were handed the remaining whaledump documents. And which editors decided to back National and ignore them.
Nothing to see here folks... it's all blown over.
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Sacha, in reply to
nary a peep
Is my impression too. Hopefully they're working carefully on stories rather than meekly wating for further lawyering this week.
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Come on people. The “media” are hard at work drawing seriously bizarre analogies. It must take considerable imagination and time to come up with that one.
Someone vying for a Canon?
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Angela Hart, in reply to
Is my impression too. Hopefully they're working carefully on stories rather than meekly wating for further lawyering this week.
Hopefully. Or the power/money has talked.
MSM being partisan is a problem overcome by KDC, he tweets links to you tube material that makes this point and gets their message across.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=internetmana -
Well, there's a big story right here, though so far only Felix Marwick (Newstalk ZB) seems to be onto it ...
https://twitter.com/felixmarwick/status/508715576412217344/photo/1
Ombudsman responding by the end of "next week" (which is now this week, if you follow). It's important, because this is the only official action before polling day, the rest has been kicked for touch.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Come on people. The “media” are hard at work drawing seriously bizarre analogies. It must take considerable imagination and time to come up with that one.
My reaction to that article was the same as what Chopper Read would have thought: "cry me a fucking river!"
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simon g, in reply to
Person not running for office or holding any relevant position, lashes out to defend her sister.
Public interest: zero.
Yes, of course I have read it and chuckled and mocked, but really, it typifies the worst of the reef fish mindset ... "Let's all pile on an easy target and miss the real ones." Only the real ones win. We don't.
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Judith Collins' dog says she was treated "Ruff".
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