OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance
397 Responses
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
I’m not dissing Hager’s book. It had some very valuable material in it and shone some light into some dark places. But a lot of its impact was that it collected events from over a period of five to six years and gathered them in one place. That gave it some real punch. The stories that I, and others, wrote happened individually and were (I suspect) passed over as being a bit beltway and of limited interest.
Appreciated. Yet at the time Slater appeared to be being groomed for family-friendly prime time - the contrived Canon win, endorsement by Hosking, 'personality' piece in the Herald - any dissenting voices seemed rather muted.
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CJM, in reply to
And remember Slaters ‘Canon’ award was given by the Heralds own Deborah Hill-Cone…
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Josie Paganism
Best. Typo. Ever. Madame, you look most fetching in that Freudian slip. :)
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Kevin McCready, in reply to
Fel
Yes but did you report on it or did you report on it. Not accusing, just asking. Draw up the grid. http://pressthink.org/2011/08/why-political-coverage-is-broken/
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National's landslide victory means that the media's reporting of Dirty Politics has had no effect.
That's untrue. National dropped a long way in the polls, almost all after Dirty Politics, and there's a bunch of wasted vote too that's given them extra seats.
The polls weren't wrong this time, a few months back National was really sitting on about 50 to 53% for a long time. That would've been around 66 seats, a long way down that party list.
Not to mention, despite Labour's "positive" message, the campaign ended up being more negative than almost any we've seen. Personal attacks on credibility and the basic institutions of state, rather than policy. That is, historically, not good for the Left.
National party stalwarts, they turned out big time. They're never going to hear that National is creepy and corrupt, they love them, and the media attention on revelations of impropriety meant they couldn't hear anyone else's ideas for government either. National's campaign worked with that nicely.
You know, the "reckless spending commitments" that are less than the holiday highways and also fully costed and budgeted for, and also with notes about which would be dropped if conditions deteriorated. And then three days of news on Dotcom having a, ... meh, so no one heard that.
Face it, the middle class majority are never going to give a fuck about state spying. Even the Nazis didn't send their middle class to the camps (or even the Russian Front), it's just not a real threat to them. Attacking Judith Collins because you don't like her for attacking people she didn't like, that's not a vote winner either. It's just not. When Key says everyone does it, it's a dog whistle, "look, they're doing it now, poor Judith".
National nailed it. Perfect campaign, beautiful responses, glib brush-offs because their voters didn't want to hear excuses and explanations (if you're explaining, you're losing, they know that). Dirty Politics still cost them a bunch of seats.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Off topic. Just spotted Stuart Nash, Josie Paganism lunching together.
What a superb typo!
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CJM, in reply to
auto-correct knows us better than we know ourselves.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
3. It also fails because NZ electorate seats are far from being decided democratically. Counting them under a preferential system
A preferential electoral system that has specific flaws you’d like to share, or is it the entire idea of MMP you find objectionable? ( ETA: And on reflection, under MMP electorate votes aren't counted preferentially. Was your point that you think STV would be fairer or something?)
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Well done Keith - but your list of 'bads' on the part of Collins et al had me wondering and can anyone confirm/deny - didn't the story about Gareth Hughes and the 18 year old student (no charges laid btw) break on Whaleoil???
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Josie McNaught, in reply to
Just spotted Stuart Nash, Josie Paganism lunching together.
Job interview??? -
Before you accidentally defame someone Josie, it was Darren Hughes not Gareth Hughes.
And the story was broken by the media, not Slater.
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Lynn Williams, in reply to
The media in general was pretty selective in what it highlighted about Dirty Politics e.g. loads of attention on Collins and the SIS briefing but not much on the influence of Lusk and Slater on National Party candidate selection and the implications of that for the election, and not much about the smearing of critics of big business and what that means for NZ - especially in light of the secretive negotiations around the TPPA.
Large sections of the media - especially commercial radio - were openly dismissive and repeated key claims over and over like so many stir crazy parrots:
1. politics is a dirty business, everyone uses dirty tricks;
2. look at what Labour did (Mike Williams, Helen Clark etc etc), this is no different, in fact, when you think about it, it's not nearly as bad;
3.. the timing of the publication of the book is itself an example of dirty politics;
4. the author is a left wing activist/conspiracy theorist and therefore inherently biassed;
5. don't bother reading it because it's all lies and you're helping someone make money from crime;
6. the material it's based on was stolen which means the hacker and the author are no better/way worse than those they're pointing the finger at;
7. the left have attack blogs too;
8. Cameron Slater was acting on his own and what he did wasn't nice but given how awful the left is who can blame him for being a bit over-zealous;
9. even if Judith Collins, Cameron Slater, Carrick Graham, Jordan Williams, Jason Ede, Cathy Odgers et al did do all of this that doesn't mean John Key orchestrated it or condoned it or even knew about it;
10. Key is such a good bloke and Cunliffe is so tricky who do you believe folks, the one who gets a text from Ritchie McCaw saying 'yes you can' or the one who's got mates like Hager and Dotcom?It was such a stunningly wrong-headed outcome that - IF the media did in fact do all it could to present the issues in a full, accurate, impartial and balanced manner, and IF it did all it could to identify and investigate further those issues that were of critical national importance - a high proportion of NZers must be verging on brain dead.
I don't think that is the case. Sections of the populace may have been bought off, dumbed down, turned off, diverted away but - without the constant drip feeding of misinformation and outright lies from the populist media - combined with the failure of the quality media to get its teeth into the critical issues - the outcome would have been very different.
Just as it would have been if the true state of the rock star economy's health had been known last week.
To suggest that the fault lies with a complacent / compliant / conservative majority who just didn't want to hear the truth is post hoc rationalisation of a what was a big fat fail. And that's why a lot of people are so very, very pissed off. Well, this person any way.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Judith Collins and Oravida – wrote (lots) about it
Not aimed at you specifically, but at the media generally (so including you):
Yeah, you wrote about it. Late. And with many questions left unanswered.
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Andrew Geddis, in reply to
I don’t see it as an issue of agency or responsibility in a philosophical sense. Even if it’s voters who refused to be persuaded, I think the media still ought to worry that they were powerless to persuade; and if they don’t have that power, then they have no leverage to hold those in power accountable – and we ought to worry about that.
But this assumes we should want the media "to persuade" their audience about news stories. I don't know how comfortable I am with that idea. And (some in) the media did hold those in power "to account" ... see Felix's comment above. It's just that those to whom they must account - the people of New Zealand - didn't follow through on their end of the bargain.
But nobody is saying that dirty politics is anything but dirty. It’s nearly universally decried as unethical behaviour – the only response has been “that’s the way politics is”. That’s a fundamentally toxic and corrosive idea which we ought to fight – even if the election proved it’s a popularly held opinion.
I agree! But you're not simple saying "we should keep on at the bastards and not let them get away with it". You're saying (or, I take you to be saying) "we need to reinvent the entire enterprise of journalism". And I'd like a bit more guidance of what it'll become instead before I sign up to that vision ... because how do I know that the campaigning, crusading, judgmental institution you're wanting to unleash is only going to do things that I like?
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tussock, in reply to
Much of the "Meh" comes directly from the choices the MSM make in the collation, presentation and dissemination of political news.
They're not experts. In anything. Journalists. Other than journalism. They don't know how spying works. If some guy who saw something a while back gives them one story and the Prime Minister who is in charge of the actual spies gives them a different one, we're lucky they even ran both.
Expecting them to figure out that the PM is talking a bunch of crap is actually asking a lot. Because they're not experts in that. All those people you saw who it just confused, the journalists are just like that too. High court judges, senior science researchers, they get a little outside their special field of knowledge and they're not smarter than anyone else.
Neither am I. I've just been suspicious long enough, and read enough history of governments going back centuries, to bet on the random guy who saw something once ahead of the Prime Minister and his spies every time. You can tell the Mr. Random is right, there's so many governments want him taken out because of what he is saying. It's dangerous. It harms relationships. Treasonous. All that. Those guys always turn out to be right, usually post-mortem. -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I generally think the Police should remain reluctant to involve themselves in such matters.
If that’s the case, here’s something to put on the “to do” list for the 51st Parliament. If the Police aren’t interested in enforcing electoral law, amend the relevant sections of the Electoral Act requiring electoral officials to report breeches to the Police for further investigation and prosecution and give the responsibility to someone who will. Though in my more cynical moments, I suspect there's a multi-party consensus that the status quo works just fine.
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Bingo, Keith. All of it.
That the combination of sophisticated polling and focus-grouping (Hi David!)
What's the left wing version of Curia? If there is none, does anyone want to start one? I'm keen.
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Sacha, in reply to
Of course, when you define “its job” in terms of “produced the particular outcome I would like to see happen”, then it hasn’t. But is that the correct definition?
Think I've been pretty clear I'm not talking about an electoral outcome. How would you define the role of journalism in a modern democracy?
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Read the rest of my comment. And what I was responding to. I don't disagree that the Police should investigate and prosecute where there is evidence of the law being broken. I do agree that the Police should be reluctant to get involved in politics.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
What can we actually do about it though?
I'm gonna give these folks another plug;
http://www.actionstation.org.nz/royal_commission_cleanup_politics
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
But this assumes we should want the media “to persuade” their audience about news stories. I don’t know how comfortable I am with that idea.
But neither do you want the media to simply pass on the media releases from whichever party. Media releases are effectively party political advertising. If the party concerned wants their statement verbatim then they should pay for the advertising and it should have the appropriate riders.
What happened all too often in this campaign was the media quoting Key or worse asking Key to submit his very own opinion pieces - with no analysis whatsoever.
For me, especially at election time, I want the media to use their resources to analyse. To use access to experts when needed to examine the things that come out of politicians mouths critically.
What we had was far from that critical, informative media.
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st ephen, in reply to
1. politics is a dirty business, everyone uses dirty tricks;
It was a bad call on the naming of Hager's book: it practically demanded the response "Yes, politics is dirty - ALL politics, ALL parties". Should have called it "Dirty National Party Scumbags", so voters would have kept hearing the media banging on about the National Scumbags revelations, and whether National Scumbags would reduce voter turnout, and what the post- National Scumbags polls are saying and whether a formal inquiry was needed to get to the bottom of the National Scumbags issues.
Damn Hager and his ethics...
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
And remember Slaters ‘Canon’ award was given by the Heralds own Deborah Hill-Cone…
Who in turn was appointed by the CEO of the Newspaper Publishers Association, Rick Neville.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Read the rest of my comment. And what I was responding to. I don’t disagree that the Police should investigate and prosecute where there is evidence of the law being broken. I do agree that the Police should be reluctant to get involved in politics.
That's fair enough, and I didn't mean to imply I thought otherwise. My apologies.
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Media bias and manipulation isn’t a new thing. It’s been well documented academically for about 30 years.
The economic drivers of media are very manipulable.
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