Posts by Bart Janssen
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Cracker: How Media Made me a Bad Person., in reply to Damian Christie,
I’d like to point out there are some really excellent reporters at the NZ Herald
And elsewhere. That doesn't stop the media being badly tainted by those that are bad. Nor does it help when it seems very much like those reporters that are good end up below the fold while those willing to frame a story get the lead item.
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Cracker: How Media Made me a Bad Person., in reply to Damian Christie,
If it wasn't clear, what I meant by "held up against the competition" was publicly so.
Which is genuinely different. Sadly it is the consequence of working in an industry with the ability to go very public with what in any other workplace would be relatively private.
There is no-one really, other than them media themselves, that can fix such behaviour, be it public or private. But it's worth noting that every time the media do publicly air their spats it normalizes the behaviour.
those working in the media are deliberately stupid, lazy, corrupt or inept, or all of the above
This is something I'm guilty of as well. It isn't fair because in every profession there are people with those traits and most people are guilty of some of those at some time or another. I try not to be deliberately stupid and I don't believe I've been corrupt but it doesn't mean my actions could not have been viewed as such. Again the media are a victim of being public.
BUT over the years my opinion of those in the media has become jaded. The problem is that as I've read or watched news stories where I've actually known the facts or the subject in detail it has become very clear that the reporting of those stories in long or short form has often failed to properly inform the public. Errors of fact, errors of tone, bias. I now view almost every news item delivered by the media with deep suspicion. If the reporting of the stories where I know the facts is wrong then how can I trust the reporting of stories where I don't know the facts.
And when I've known the reporting is wrong it has been hard to not see the failed reporting to be a result of
deliberately stupid, lazy, corrupt or inept
reporters.
Being a better person yourself is a hell of good place to start in any profession, but I guess I'm not sure it will be enough to change the media.
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Why would you want a stage name with a given name as gorgeous as Camille Berthomier?
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Up Front: Neither Deep nor Wide, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Places We Should Probably Put Off Visiting For A While (inc.: most of the Middle East.)
Don't put it off.
Just go with one of the tour groups like Innovative Travel etc. Heck you NEED a guide to get through egyptian airports at the very least, no really, I could never have managed to get us on the plane let alone made sure our luggage came with us, no amount of testosterone can replace one of those guides.
Once you are part of one of those groups you should be fine. Yeah there is the casual sexism of some of the locals but it's no worse than the casual 'isms you are experiencing now the US.
The real reason to not put it off is, it might not be there for long. We were so very very lucky to have gone to Syria when we did, we had a great time and saw amazing things. And that is no longer possible :(.
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When we did Egypt, Jordan Syria it was before the clusterfuck. So Egypt was packed, never were we at a temple with less than a thousand other tourists, it was amazing but draining.
So for us (me my partner and our friend and great travel agent who had organised it all) Jordan came as a relief from the madding crowd. We were also lucky enough to have really good guides, except for the plonker in Petra who, yes was all touchy with the two women and who we deeply offended by eventually telling him to go away and leave us to wander by ourselves.
I loved Jordan ... Aqaba, Wadi rum, Petra, Madaba and Jerash were all amazing enough that I could get past some of the other stuff. We accepted that my role was to be "the man" and I could fake that role as needed.
I'd echo Emma in saying Jordan is absolutely a place to go and see. Perhaps even more so now given the mess that is the mid-east.
I didn't feel as though Jordan was women-free, that may just have been a difference in the time we went. The Jordanians seemed particularly proud of their Queen and her work in promoting education for women and women's rights but that was then.
And as for handing the bill to the man - well we go out to dinner fairly often and my partner has a much better palate for detecting off flavours in wine so she routinely orders the wine that we choose together. Yet about three-quarters of NZ waitstaff will a) hand the wine list to me and b) offer a taste of the wine to me regardless of who actually made the order. So that kind of mindless sexism is alive and thriving in NZ too.
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Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to Chris Waugh,
you’re a much friendlier, more reasonable kind of right wing than our current government
My impression is there is a huge gap between what The National Party sees as the way to make NZ better and what this caucus is happy to do. It is one of the issues with the system that the political party is not necessarily the same thing as the group of politicians who are occupying the seats in the house.
For most governments we've had there has at least been a reasonably clear connection. Which is good because most of the public are voting for the party and the policies of the party.
But we've had times and I tend to think this is one of those periods where those in the house feel they can do whatever the hell they like and to hell with what the party thinks, let alone what the people of the country want ... usually because they think they know what's best for us all.
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Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to martinb,
Disagree dude. They are far right
And I disagree with your disagreement. Seriously The National party are not really very right wing in world terms. Somewhat right leaning for NZ but in Texas they would be considered raving communist/socialist/looney left wing nutjobs.
But what this particular group in power do have is a level of corruption that is unusual in NZ politics. It's fairly rare to see those in power blatantly sell public assets to their mates or subvert normal political channels to give advantage to their mates. That kind of nest feathering is normally associated with extreme right wing politicians although there have been left wing socialist examples as well. So it's easy to see this lot as right wing when The Party is still fairly central or even left of center by world standards.
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Hard News: All John's Friends, in reply to Lilith __,
More of note than what JK is saying is the way he’s framing it: Green as radical left, Labour as Left, National as centre. That line clearly shows the results of their recent polling and the strategy this year.
That’s such BS, though. Labour slid towards the right in the 1980s and remains uneasy about its unionist origins; National has continued to drift rightwards towards wingnut ACT territory. The Greens in general occupy the left where Labour used to be.
It's worse. This is a politician trying to frame the world as binary. Left OR Right.
Yet the problems we face are multifaceted. And we need politicians who can respond to all the facets in more than a simple-minded left or right mode.
One of the really nice things about The Greens over the last couple of years is they have stopped framing issues as Green or not-Green. Instead they have developed policy for each issue taking into account all the relevant factors. In some issues the most important factor is environmental in another issue it might be business or bureaucratic or scientific or social or ...
And ALL those factors need to be considered and debated and represented in our parliament.
The simple-minded binary approach shown by John Key in particular is just insulting to every New Zealander whatever their political leanings.
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Hard News: Cranks, self-seekers and the mayor, in reply to Russell Brown,
They’re lying to their readers.
Which has been true to some degree or another for at least the last couple of years.
The Herald has at various times been a very good informative source of news and information. That doesn't seem to happen very often now.
It seems being a monopoly in the market has led in an unusual direction.
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Hard News: Making it up on smacking, in reply to Moz,
sod all resemblance to its historical use
You mean when it was all those defined as citizens that were allowed to vote and who gladly resorted to poison and assassination if the vote went against their personal wishes all the while happily using the non-citizens as slaves.
Ah history, so glad it's in the past.
There is a lot of wishful thinking about "democracy" and how good it is. Similar to the wishful thinking about the free-market.
Interestingly, technology may make both things quite different in the future, it is technically possible now for the populous to vote on the fly on issues (security issues notwithstanding) and the market is already much free-er than many businesses would like.