Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Hot Media

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  • andrew llewellyn,

    Ha ha! Sunday Star Times pay their columnists to surf porn? Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon.

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • philipmatthews,

    On topic -- sorta. I urge everyone to check out the first ep of the TVNZ 6 arts show New Artland which is on the Ondemand site at present. Superb stuff, I thought. How often do we get Ronnie van Hout, Chris Knox and Bob Parker all in the same story ...

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2007 • 656 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Curtis,

    You forget that Mann ( of Discredited Hockey Stick fame) made a complaint to the Press council about an article in NZ Herald from sceptic Professor de Freitas..

    Whats good for the goose ..?

    BTW the study referred to by Dave Hansford is here
    http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978.
    The only articles looked at where the big four of US print media
    NY Times, Wapo, LA Times, Wall St Journal.
    So its not as random as claimed AND was 4 years ago.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Curtis,

    Follow up to the "balance" study some specific articles are from 1993 !!
    eg
    Another front-page Los Angeles Times article (2/8/93), "An Early Warning of Warming: If the 'Greenhouse Effect' Exists, the Arctic Will Be the First to Experience It," provides another example of balance as bias.

    WTF .
    So in 1993 even in the IPCC only gave a less than 60% probability Climate change was caused by humans.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 314 posts Report Reply

  • Shep Cheyenne,

    Leyland & de Freitas

    http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=12&Itemid=45

    Is the Listner seriouls taking a postion against the exsitence of Global warming?

    Since Oct 2007 • 927 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    I actually work for a company where people are required to (occasionally) look at porn - it's handled very carefully with signed releases, permission slips from managers and closed doors .... largely to avoid sexual harassment lawsuits ....

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • Tony Kennedy,

    Does John Key have a cat?

    That link on the right caught my attention :-)

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 225 posts Report Reply

  • George Darroch,

    As Renowden say, when reading the Listener, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, such are the number of statements contradicted by the available evidence presented as facts.

    The exchange in the comments section, where this story emerges, is also very interesting.

    WLG • Since Nov 2006 • 2264 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Withers,

    Re the Sunday Star Times magazine rip-out: Is THAT what all the fuss was about? There wasn't a dirty word in the piece and - frankly - I found it hard to tell what was actually going on, the words being so heavily redacted. Maybe I'm an innocent soul. In any case, I'm not sure exactly what it would be that was supposed to offend me. I had imagined a steamy explicit excerpt, not a txters flower garden of impenetrable (to me) obscurity.

    As for the "Media 7" show last night: Excellent yet again. not a boring or irrelevant moment in the piece, except perhaps in a "meta-boring" form while discussing the irrelevant live crosses on news broadcasts. :-)

    Simon Wilson is likely correct when he said that the furious debates in the blogosphere likely will have zero impact on the election's outcome. Conventional media are still undeniably king of the mind-share hill as far as political matters are concerned. Bloggers will have impact only and solely to the extent that the "old" media allow them to by covering anything they say. To that end, I think the "old" media have caught on and will - as a matter of policy - NOT give any light or air to anything bloggers have to say unless the police are involved or the matter concerned has a sexual angle or the views expressed line up with those of the editors concerned and they want them aired by proxy.

    Let's see what happens. "Probably" isn't certainty. Anything can happen....but will it?

    Auckland • Since Mar 2008 • 312 posts Report Reply

  • andrew llewellyn,

    I actually work for a company where people are required to (occasionally) look at porn

    Heh - same, I worked at Internal Affairs when the film censors were just starting to consider how to handle online porn. Early 90s I think.

    Some of the techies had the time of their lives tracking down some requests from the curious censors.

    No wussy releases or permission slips for them :)

    Since Nov 2006 • 2075 posts Report Reply

  • Peter Martin,

    Yes, well Poneke got very indignant that a blogger might have influenced a BBC article into being amended and saw it as an attack on journalism. The author did respond with

    Among my e-mail exchanges was one with an environmental campaigner who published our e-mails implying that we had changed our article as a result of her threat to publicly criticise our report. We didn’t change it for that reason. We changed it to improve the piece. But we’ve stirred the wrath of some of our readers as a result.

    The main criticism was not about the revised version of the story itself, which contains the same facts as the original plus extra background - but that we changed the report apparently under pressure and did not signal the changes.

    In the Listeners case, there seems to be actual blood on the floor. And while Poneke gives every indication of being a climate change sceptic, I trust he will again assume the high ground and we will see if bloggers can make a difference.

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 187 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Another really good episode. Could see the sweat on all of you, but really it seemed to me like that just meant you were all warmed up already, cause it just flowed nicely. Either that or the editors deserve to be hooking into Russ's grog cabinet this week.

    Cracked me up when Ben suggested that we could all be Wisharts....Thanks Ben.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Richard Busby,

    Oh dear. OnDemand displays a lovely "This video is for New Zealand viewers only" message, despite me being a genuine Kiwi sitting in an office in central Wellington.

    Filtering based on IP is inaccurate at best - just because I'm on a VPN via the US, doesn't mean I'm not a New Zealander. TVNZ could at least say something honest, like "we're not prepared to stump up for the internantional bandwidth" rather than claiming that I'm not a New Zealander.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2008 • 2 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Simon Wilson is likely correct when he said that the furious debates in the blogosphere likely will have zero impact on the election's outcome.

    I agree only to the extent that the blogosphere will probably not influence 'the people' directly. But it's influence seems to be mainly on the MSM. As in, everyone wonky reads it. It's a really cheap, really massive focus group.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Thomas,

    RE: the Listener
    god how depressing. as reliable NZ news sources go, i'm down to national radio and tvnz7.

    on the other hand, what a great time to start Media7! so much material to work with. The show last night was excellent again. I'm impressed with the consistency in the first three outings.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 317 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    Ondemand just tells me "sorry this content isn't available for you to view" - doesn't even try to suggest I'm not a kiwi

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • Robyn Gallagher,

    Reading the scan of Emily Simpson's ripped-out SST magazine editorial, it was interesting to see her general opinion of blogs is that they are quite boring and irrelevant:

    Now... Blog. Was ever a word more heavy with the promise of tedium, more swollen with delusions of relevance. The blow-by-blow, the two cents worth, the family pet."

    I've just been reading "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky, an excellent book about how the internet is bringing people together in ways never seen before.

    In an early chapter, Shirky explains that before blogging and other online expression came along, we were used to only reading stuff that people had written for us to read, be it newspaper or magazine articles, a letter from a friend or business, a note from a flatmate or an official document.

    But now the internet is full of publicly available stuff that people have written but is not intended for you to read. It's not private or confidential - it just wasn't written with you in mind.

    We are no more the intended audience of some teenager's account of an awesome party on her Bebo blog than we are the intended audience of that same teen when you overhear her at the mall telling a friend about that party.

    Just because you can find some writing on the internet, it doesn't mean that it will be relevant to you. And if you keep that in mind, then you'll stop looking for relevance in intentionally irrelevant online writing and instead find stuff that appeals to you.

    (Perhaps it was good that Simpson's editorial was ripped?!)

    Since Nov 2006 • 1946 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes,

    Another really good episode. Could see the sweat on all of you

    EEEWWW, Cant wait for HDTV, will we be able to see said sweat actually seeping from the pores?

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    EEEWWW, Cant wait for HDTV, will we be able to see said sweat actually seeping from the pores?

    Happily -- in this context anyway -- it's likely to be a while before TVNZ 7 goes HD - there's just not enough bandwidth at the moment. It's not even being upconverted.

    Also, the last issue of OnFilm covered HD camera systems, but they're pricey and there's no much experience in using them, so I don't think independent producers will be shooting HD as a matter of course for five years yet. It may end up with TVNZ buying the gear and hiring it out at affordable rates.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • cindy baxter,

    Re: THE LISTENER

    By the look of The Listener's headline headline covering the "viewpoint" two page spread, it seems not even the subs there know what's going on.

    "The latest UN Climate Change Conference canvassed many opinions..." - gives the impression that the Bali conference was debating whether climate change is real or not.

    It wasn't. All govts there accepted the IPCC's 4th assessment report. The debate was around how to tackle climate change.

    RE: MICHAEL MANN'S HOCKEY STICK:

    actually the "hockey stick" wasn't discredited. There have been a number of other studies producing pretty much the same result as Mann. The IPCC examined - and accepted - these findings - they are included in the 4th assessment report. Mann was absolutely right to take this to the Press Council.

    The only study which purported to discredit Mann and others was written by two darlings of the climate sceptic industry, Sallie Baliunas ans Willie soon. It was funded by the American Petroleum Institute and published by NZ sceptic Chris de Freitas in "Climate Research" where he was an editor.

    The publication of what was termed a "poor paper" subsequently caused a number of editors at Climate Research to resign. There's a good summary of the sorry tale here (scroll down to page 13) .

    De Freitas is no longer an Editor at Climate Research. Maybe his tenure was up - who knows. He's never said.

    The Baliunas/Soon paper has since been __thoroughly__ taken apart.

    auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 102 posts Report Reply

  • Shep Cheyenne,

    "gives the impression that the Bali conference was debating whether climate change is real or not."


    I can't understand how they get that impression.

    Are they guided by this biased group NZCSC to obsfucate the facts or are they fundys themselves in their blinkered willful ignorance.

    Because dollars count more than sense, here is a link to the $100 Million USD garanted to projects that mention Climate Change in their name.

    http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2007/cop13/eng/03.pdf

    Since Oct 2007 • 927 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    There's an easier link to the Chronicle of Higher Education story about the Soon-Baliunas paper here.

    It is fascinating.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Litterick,

    I'm confused. The Sunday Star Times decides its conservative readers might be offended by words like * * * * and * * * *, so rips out the offending editorial yet still publishes the feature about the woman who, when she is not having sex with strangers, works in PR.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1000 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Robyn, I was just thinking the same thing. On the one hand the MSM is 'relevant'. On the other it's totally banal and boring a lot of the time because of the very insistence on relevance. It's one-size-fits-all. The small shop tailors to a small clientèle. But there are a lot of small shops, so it would be wrong to suggest they have no impact. En masse, they have a huge effect on the goods available, and shopping trends. For many items, they are the only way you can get them.

    For so long before blogs I felt like I was eating the McDonalds of news. Now I can do a cafe crawl every morning, and sample sweet PA, bitter Farrar, hard hitting Savant,bumout Frog or even sordid Wishart if I'm bored, and a thousand other blends. Sometimes my own particular tastes might even find their way into the food. You could never say that of drinking at Starbucks, no matter how much milk they pour through their unfortunate customers.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Shep Cheyenne,

    I do hold issue with this sentence:

    "When the two researchers finished writing their report lastyear, they sent it halfway around the world to Chris deFreitas, an associate professor in the school of geography andenvironmental science at the University of Auckland, in NewZealand."

    Halfway around the world - hmm - <biting tonge>

    Since Oct 2007 • 927 posts Report Reply

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