Posts by Peter Calder
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Table Talk
-
Hard News: When A City Falls, in reply to Carol Stewart,
This made me laugh for a couple of days. But I don't get the "Professor as seen by post-doc" (the one to the right of the elevated donkey) Can anyone assist?
-
Uh, zero publicity about the screening?
Yep, it sure wasn't in your face the way Arthur Christmas or whatever will be. The budget for publicity for Hollywood films regularly exceeds the production budget these days, certainly in the case of films that have giveaway toys in McDonalds or whatever. By contrast most NZ films have virtually nothing - particularly the below-the-radar, small-scale movies like this or Hook, Line and Sinker or Rest for the Wicked (for which the publicity was done by one of the actors!). When A City Falls actually had a media screening and an experienced publicist attached. Many films just send a dvd screener out and hope for the best.
I'm guessing that underneath Russell's "why were there only five people there?" comment is a kind of despair that really good local work is often ignored because people don't find it and they don't find it because they don't go looking for it. It's not going to hit you in the face with a hoarding or a full-page newspaper ad because they don't have the money for that. The way i see it, if we believe in buying NZ-made at the supermarket and the fruit and vege shop, can't we make a bit of an effort to chuck some money in the direction of our local artists too? -
Thanks for these, Jackson. Took me back to 1970-71 when the crowd was that big every ?Thursday for Forum, when speakers used to rant about all sorts of things. Back in those days there was a custodian of the Students' Association called Vaughan Preece (sp?) who ran the place as his personal fiefdom, even though he was only an employee. No one could do anything unless Vaughan said OK and he had elevated passive aggression to high art. I vividly remember Dave Neumegen (later Arif Usmani or Auntie Uncle from the Aunties) campaigning for AUSA President in a Superman uniform. He was asked what he was going to do about Vaughan Preece and he said (loudly, over a very powerful PA, so that it would have been audible in Albert Park), "Vaughan Preece is a c**t." This was in the day where swearing in public got you arrested and I was stunned at his audacity and transgressiveness and thought "We're not in Hamilton any more".
-
The media bias in the Herald against Labour – or the Greens or anyone who isn’t part of the “we love John Key” Glee Club really – is amazing.
What’s amazing to me is that supporters of any political party have always alleged that the Herald is conspiring against them and in bed with their enemies. I am not going in to bat for the Herald here – I have not been on the staff for more than 10 years, although they continue to pay my invoices (even when I engage, one-to-one, by email and in person with various people high up the organisation to sharply criticise their approach to something, they have shown no inclination to dispense with my services, which is not really exemplary behaviour for a repressive media oligarchy dedicated to protecting the status quo ).
To get back to the main point: everyone sees what they want to see. I did features for many years, exploring complicated and contentious issues and was routinely contacted after publication by both sides of a bitter argument, congratulating me on having vindicated their point of view and utterly destroyed their opponents. I suspect most feature writers have had the same experience.
For several years I worked in the belly of the beast, attending morning and afternoon news conferences, and I think the notion that there is an explicit or even implicit bias towards any party is laughable. I suspect a lot of journos hate Winston Peters, but if they do it’s because he’s a prick not because they oppose NZF.
Of course there is a structural bias that all news media have because they are part of society’s corporate elite and that is a much deeper and wider question which journalists for the most part – and I am not singling out the Herald here; quite the contrary – are either unaware of or disinclined to confront. Ditto celebrity-obsession; presidential-style politics; soundbite coverage: if you think it’s a Herald problem you ain’t been watching TV or reading the quality press in the UK for about 10 years.
The days when the Herald was a Federated Farmers/National Party in-house journal and thought Labour and the unions were in an unholy alliance with the Kremlin have passed, I’m sorry to say. You need to look for a somewhat more sophisticated analysis than bleating “the Herald is anti-[insert name of your favourite party here]”. It just doesn’t bear scrutiny … -
Hard News: Presentation and Reality, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Peter, depends where you are.
Doh! Sorry. I am in central Auckland (Auckland Central too but happy to travel)
-
Does anyone know where one can easily locate a list of where candidates are holding "meet the people" meetings in local halls etc? Or did they stop doing that when that interweb thing was invented
-
Roland: I hear your rage, but wherever did you get the idea that the Rugby World Cup was a sporting event?
-
Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Gareth Ward,
Every person I know that has partaken in the hospitality offerings of North Wharf has had a terrible experience. Every one.
Make that everyone plus one, Gareth. In two words: A. Palling
-
I hesitate to say a bad word about Sir Peter Gluckman because I so approve of his recent agitation for increasing spending on (poor, brown) mothers and young children so we won't have to spend money on putting the kids in jail about 19 years later but he and Winston have much in common in terms of pomposity and incredulity that anyone would want to question their wisdom. I vividly remember interviewing a representative of the Wellcome Trust, a research funder with a direct connection to a pharmaceuticals company which has now merged with Glaxo Smith Kline. I asked the [extraordinarily obvious] question about what problems might be implied by the model in which drug companies funded scientific research and Gluckman, who was in the room, gave me a vigorous dressing-down for having been so rude to someone who had come all this way to talk to a worm like me etc etc. I had the flu, so - to my endless regret - I lacked the presence of mind or balls or both to tell him to f**k off and let me do my job ...