Posts by simon g
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
English's comments today have out-satired Steven Price. Breathtaking cynicism, as if taken from a script rejected by The Thick of It or Yes, Minister for being too unsubtle for laughs.
The depressing aspect of all this is that (short-term, at least) his calculation is probably right. He can play "won't ask, won't be told" because a large proportion of the NZ population don't want to know, and much of the NZ media will follow.
I'm feeling a lot less proud of our country right now.
-
On the one hand, I am encouraged and impressed that Wayne Mapp has spoken out, and demonstrated basic human decency, and courage.
On t'other hand, I'm depressed that I am impressed ... since the NZDF hierarchy and their political masters have set the bar so low, that basic human decency is the exception to their rule.
They should never have started digging their amoral hole, but could they now, finally, please stop?
-
OK, "no dead 3 year olds, then?". Come on, it's not hard to see the elephant, even with Keating's dust-throwing.
(the follow-up questions were poor, just listen to them again)
-
Expect next revelation: dead girl was actually 4 years old. Woo hoo, we're off the hook!
The follow-up questions at Keating's press conference were the first sign the tactic was working (short-term, at least): the assembled journalists kind of forgot to say "So General, no dead people then?".
-
Jon Stephenson provides a detailed rebuttal of Keating & co at the Spin-Off website.
-
I'm certainly not going to substitute my "reckons" for proper legal analysis, but it's worth considering how a NZ police investigation would actually happen.
They would presumably be transported to Afghanistan by the NZDF, housed and fed by the NZDF, given security at the scene by the NZDF, etc. (or by approved NZDF allies). For years journalists and politicians have hopped on the Hercules, gone to Afghanistan supposedly on our behalf and brought back nothing more informative than their personal right to say "yeah, been there". Meanwhile a solitary reporter/investigator has achieved far more than any of those embedded visitors, simply because he was more interested in finding harsh truth than lazy confirmation.
Perhaps the NZ police would show the same independence and determination as Jon Stephenson. But given their track record on challenging their political overlords, even in the comfort of home, it's hard to hold out much hope.
-
The fact that Wayne Mapp has now broken the wall of silence does give some (slight) hope that the usual "divert and defame" tactics will not work so well this time. Both Hager and Stephenson have (in entirely separate cases) previously been attacked by the government and its authorities (police or military), and then much later received an acknowledgement and/or apology. But of course the tactic is employed because it works: the vilification makes headlines for days, the vindication makes a paragraph on page 13, years later. The single word "Hager" (often mispronounced, perhaps deliberately) is sufficient to persuade a large chunk of the population that well-documented details can be airily dismissed.
For me, the most depressing aspect of all this is not the politicians, who do more or less what you'd expect, but a succession of NZ military "leaders" who show no leadership at all. They merely follow a simple, amoral, and sadly predictable routine. Every single time.
Perhaps the former Governor-General will now speak up for the values he has proclaimed in countless worthy speeches. Or perhaps not.
-
Before it slips down the media memory hole with John Key's departure, let's just remember who vilified who, and the final, undisputed outcome:
Jon Stephenson was vindicated, John Key chucked muck
It's just something to bear in mind as the smear machine starts up again today, with predictable (and largely unchallenged) attacks on the authors (see most media outlets, next 48 hours).
-
The real villains in this whole mess are ... us. Well, about half of us, anyway.
We had a Prime Minister for 8 years who was resolute in his refusal to do anything substantive about any long-term structural problems. Not just superannuation and the Cullen fund, but everything from property madness to the environment. But the photo-ops were nice, so we embraced emptiness and kicking it down the road, as a path to unprecedented popularity. And much as I'd like to blame the media (there's plenty to blame them for), it's not as though these issues have been ignored. So let's not lie to our grandchildren and say we didn't know.
We're screwed, because we choose to reward the screwers.
-
Often when we have these discussions people think only in terms of investigative journalism (this seems to be the case with Gareth Morgan) or academic documentaries. But public service broadcasting is more than that. It’s seeing ourselves and our culture reflected on screen – this has been NZ On Air’s objective, and with opportunities to do the same thing but without commercial pressures we can deliver even more of that.
Funding can help to get programmes made (if not necessarily shown, or reasonably scheduled). But I despair less at what TVNZ doesn't show (after all, I got interwebs, and can retreat to my liberal island), than what it does show. It's not the absence of quality documentaries so much as the presence of Sensing Murder and the network's ongoing obsession with Bad Brown People (OK, that may not be the official title but it covers Renters and all the other peak-time stuff that appears designed to reinforce prejudices - most nights of the week).
As always with these discussions, Morgan et al make a good case for things they would like to see, but focus on the hypothetical rather than the real, because they never watch what is actually on. It's like the discussions on political coverage: while campaigning for better Sunday mornings, worthy commentators miss the politics that infests everything from Radio Sport to FM breakfasts. And if you say "Never mind Q & A, what about The Bachelor", they say "Oh, I never watch that rubbish". So while battles are fought for the margins, the war is lost.
Not entirely facetiously, I suggest the panel commit first and foremost to watching all the things they would never want to, so they can witness "ourselves and our culture reflected on screen", as experienced by a large chunk of the population. And all MPs should be strapped into chairs with no remote, until they have learned what they have wrought.