Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to john Drinnan,
We have a different view of honour among journalists.
I presume this is a response to what I wrote above.
Clearly, we do have a very different view of journalistic integrity, factual accuracy and other matters. I could say more, but it’s probably best to leave it at that.
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Up Front: A Real Character, in reply to Emma Hart,
Yeah, this. And it’s the same with LGBT characters, and non-White characters. If you’ve got more than one, you can show you know they’re different. Just like people.
This also applies to characters on the autism spectrum, who tend to be presented on screen as a grab-bag of symptoms. It’s welcome that they appear in fiction now, but it’d also be nice if they were allowed to be more different.
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Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to izogi,
many of the requests they’re receiving are just massive fishing expeditions from journalists taking a stab that 1% of what they ask about might stumble on something interesting at the taxpayer’s expense of gathering the rest…
Or, more often, journalists getting the bits selected for them by Rodney Hide et al.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Fran O'Sullivan,
Craig – I care a lot and if I err, ensure a correction occurs.
I don’t recall Luke’s beef – but it is interesting that he recollects I did respond to him. This is something I often do as a matter of courtesy.
Sounds like I simply disagreed with his view – he didn’t like thatHi Fran. I think Luke's view was that the way the information was presented was actually incorrect, rather than it being a mere matter of opinion.
Hopefully he can recall a few more details.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to john Drinnan,
Even researchers who quoted the Herald media column were criticised recently for their poor judgment. This blog alone accuses me of stealing credit for stories, (wrongly as I pointed out) from other journalists and doing a job on public funding as part of a pact with my employers at APN.
Thanks for coming and debating the issue, John.
I was really referring to this part of your column last week:
TVNZ news bosses went out of their way to keep Guyon Espiner on Q&A, emails seen under the Official Information Act show.
Espiner resigned as TVNZ political editor and had intended to work in Auckland.
When NZ on Air cut funding to Q&A, TVNZ offered to trim it back from 38 episodes to 36 episodes “and with that can ideally secure Guyon and keep the series within budget – giving him sufficient work to be gainfully employed,” the emails said.
The line “emails seen under the Official Information Act show” is such an odd, passive construction. Why not simply acknowledge that, as was the case earlier on in this developing story, the OIA requests were made and the correspondence published by Tom Frewen? That would have been courteous. I didn’t accuse you of “stealing” a story. That would be silly.
As others have noted, it’s not really appropriate to attribute everything everyone says in a discussion here to “Public Address”. The comments are made by individuals.
To be honest, I think on occasion you have unduly personalised things you’ve written about my work, most notably in the passage quoted by Craig. That was a shitty thing for one journalist to do to another: I’d spent nearly a year developing the show with Brian Holland and to have it implied that the show was commissioned as some sort of political favour was really out of order. (It also came on top of a series of digs about me being a lefty, which extended to an absurd and baseless prediction that I would be approached to stand on the Labour list.)
As I said to you at the time, you only needed to pick up the phone and ask and you’d have been better informed.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Andrew Hedge,
This is not correct. It would be accurate to say that the false figure was ‘probably incorrect by a factor of about 3’. You could also say that the actual audience was about 300% of the figure cited.
Fair call. I actually agonised over how to express that this morning. I think I'll have another go.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to James Blackman,
I really don’t think you can blame Coleman for his interpretation of the figures because even if he DID calculate them incorrectly, the industry people quoting these figs should have known that Nielsens ( to the best of my knowledge) only produce monthlies!
Hi Jim!
But yeah, I think we can blame the office of the Minister of Broadcasting for coming up with a completely bogus to number try and back up a decision.
The odd thing is that, as I said, the daily number seems to be a real one. There aren't that many places it could have come from -- Juliet Jensen told me she'd never heard of it and she's the programmer.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Whether there has been any political interference is neither here nor there.
The question is whether a politically appointed funding agency should be involved in documentaries.
Oh, sod off Drinnan – So, political interference is “neither here nor there” but you’ll keep implying it regardless?
Jesus, would it have killed Drinnan to acknowledge Tom Frewen's work in single-handedly breaking these stories?
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Ana Simkiss,
Seconded here, and so was the tv show. Just imagine, you’ve got an issue about statistics, and one of your guests is …a statistician.
And an informed commentator about television. Now that right there is some top panel talent.
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Hard News: Media Mathematics, in reply to Luke Williamson,
In the end, she hung up on me with the parting shot, “You’re just being pedantic.” Ahhh . . . yes!
This is such a common response from senior journalists.