Posts by George Darroch
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This really has come down to hating people on the telly.
Oh rubbish.
Speaking of which.
Anyway, do feel free to be indignant when someone else (on Kiwiblog, perhaps) complains about the salary attached to a job of which you approve.
Rubbish collectors are paid a fraction of their worth. Again, I borrow from Giovanni.
And some people are paid far too much. Disliking that is not equivalent to disliking them as people, although there is a convergence when they appear to do a bad job (just as a collector who consistently spilled rubbish on my lawn could be considered to be bad at their job).
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Really the narrowness of what can be questioned is quite amazing.
I've actually been educated by this thread, in a general sense. I don't mean it personally, because it's as widespread as anything - but there are norms about "what is", and questioning those norms is seen as outrageous.
Again, I say that I respect people who produce content day in and day out under deadline. It's hard work. But that doesn't mean we can't question the entire model under which they produce that content.
It seems however like discussions in NZ have so far happened in a discursive space in which only tinkering around the margin is considered an acceptable thing.
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If we've seriously got to that point in the argument, the bit where we just start slagging newsreaders, then I'm out.
I'm sorry, but Television New Zealand is entirely owned by me. And the other citizens of New Zealand.
The last Government decided that it would not interfere in the operations of the organisation, and the one before that too. But as Giovanni and I have said in this thread, there is nothing that says that this is how it has to be, other than the argument that "this is how it is". I remember the argument before that, the one that National and Labour politicians made, and that was "this is how it has to be" (there is no alternative). Given the results of that decision, twenty years later, I think we've got every right to question the model we've been given. It does not deliver.
An argument can be made that certain salaries may have to be paid in order to secure quality. But that argument must be made on its own merits.
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Jeremy, you're being a dick again too.
There's nothing dickish about not liking great amounts of social inequality. In fact, I think that earning ten times your fellow Kiwi is pretty dickish, actually.
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Oh, and I hate Google's new Caffiene Search Engine. The previous posting shows up already in a search for ' Foucault + "does it cost" '
I want things that have proven themselves with the stability of time, not instant emphemera. Google results turn up things I have written too often already!
Edit: here's the passage I was looking for, for context.
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Mary Wilson and Geoff Robinson cost us money. In theory, Paul Henry and all those dreadful newsreader people make us money. Crazy, I know.
Meanwhile, the news media is reporting on Tim Groser's unexceptional use of the hotel minibar, because that's so much easier than reporting on what he's doing in climate change and trade negotiations. Bah.
To quote Foucault: "what does it cost" for us to learn more about Groser's taste in beverages than our position in international negotiations on the future of our climate?
Not simply, how many dollars no longer accrue to the Government's coffers. But what do we forgo as a society when particular forms of knowledge are prioritised and deprioritised?
Or is the logic of neo-liberalism, that everything should be counted for dollars, so pervasive that it holds sway even over New Zealand's so-called liberal-left?
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Couldn't that mean we finally get RNZ but with pictures?
I think that's a more reasonable suggestion, and one that might be worth seeding in the minds of progressive politicians. Fund RNZ to allow them to provide a greater spectrum of formats, including "television". It already happens, to an extent, as all outlets try to increase their presence on the internet through sound, pictures, and words, no matter what they bill themselves as.
Thoughts?
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it's not outlandish to think that the next Labour government - if enough pressure is put on it by the likes of, you know, us - could decide
That's plenty outlandish. I don't think there is a single member of Parliament who wears red with the guts to stand up in a caucus meeting and fight that against whatever toads have risen to the top by the next time they form a Government. The membership of the NZLP would support it, but the NZLP is not a democracy.
Any change will be minimal. And that in turn will be in part because the public discourse on what are policies worth discussing and considering is so limited.
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I don't friggin watch it. DC can think as he likes about PH. RB can too.It's a democracy isn't it?
You can't watch what isn't there.
Television and papers aren't a democracy. They exist not for the pleasure of their watchers, but for the pleasure of their advertisers.
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We're still pitifully served by the state television broadcaster, to say nothing of the only available newspapers, and that hurts us.
Giovanni is absolutely right. The state of "public discourse" in New Zealand is abysmal, and it hurts New Zealanders on every level. We're very much used to it by now, so it's like water for fish, but that doesn't make it any better.