A look at our national and local media bias.

Australian TV flop Paul Henry

It’s a strange world we live in…we, well some of us, try really hard to be democratic, but the Main Stream Media [MSM] gives clear examples of opposite styles of behaviour almost every day. TV and the National MSM dailies are just populist and are in the process of becoming nothing more than, if you will excuse the language, ‘bullshit’ rags. No wonder the young don’t bother to read them. For example:

We have TV 3’s Paul Henry supposedly offering a balanced view of events, when all know [especially Australian TV and TV One] just how rude, foul mouthed, sexist and simply ignorant he is…they both sacked him…but John Key loves him…so TV 3 hired him [Well they had to do something for the gift of a forty million dollar interest free loan, that got them out of their financial dilemma].  

Mike Hoskin and his good buddy.

TV One, that once proud state TV channel has now become absolutely overrun by terrible low quality commercial advertising and overseas produced rubbish programmes that few, if anybody actually bothers to watch. It like TV3 hires well known failures to front what once were informative and factual news programmes. Now we get Seven Sharp! A programme all about its ‘presenter’ and his ‘female fall-guy’ and very little about honest news analysis, that is thought provoking or even stimulating and educational. Seriously folks could you take anything said by Mike Hoskins as intelligent…or even seriously.

The only Television channel that could be considered as informative and one that tells the truth is ‘Maori TV’ their interviewer / presenter of ‘Native Affairs’ 

Mihirangi Forbes.

Mihirangi Forbes is without doubt the master of the intelligent, transparent and balanced interview, she makes both Henry and Hoskins look like rank amateurs [which they are, which has been proven by the number of times they’ve been sacked or dumped].

She scares the pants off the PM and most of his cabinet lackeys, so they avoid being interviewed by her. In fact if Key comes up against an interviewer that he hasn’t written the questions for…he is absolutely hopeless. His most loved interviewer is without doubt Paddy Gower of TV3 infamy…who is on the same level as the NZ Herald [The National Parties mouth organ].

The print media is hardly worthy of that title…our overseas owned media is simply a pale representation of News Media in days past, when journalists were actually journalists both in educational terms and in actual reporting and investigative abilities. Name a journalist you know what fits the term ‘Investigative’ these days.

Investigation, for our MSM these days means listening to bloggers like Cameron Slater [Whale-oil] David Farrar [Kiwi Blog] Jason Ede [who has disappeared into a National Party PR Company run by a ex-Nat MP.  Big-time [for a price] image maker Simon Lusk, Cactus Kate, and other members of the Nats sleaze team as revealed by Nicky Hagar’s best seller ‘Dirty Politics’.

A local example of clap-trap media behaviour took place here in PN last Wednesday [25^th Jan]. At seven pm in the public library, the local Fairfax newspaper, The Manawatu Standard hosted a public meeting of four of the nine mayoral candidates standing in a mayoral by-election. Now you may well ask why only four? After all there are nine candidates…it would seem highly unfair to allow only four to gets the chance for one last meeting with the public. It is also doubly unfair when you consider that the voting system being used is STV. Is this yet again dirty politics in action…did Jason Ede, or Simon Lusk come up with this idea…or was it Steven Joyce, it has a sort of a Steven Joyce feel about it.

Now you may well ask how were these lucky four selected…well according to the editor it went like this.

1.     They [MS] ran a poll [of around 400 of which 120 answered, but we do know that it was only to landlines [and we all know that these days hundreds of thousands cannot afford landlines], and according to one source, only four replies were from young voters [18 – 24].   

2.     The top scoring candidates [4] got to appear at the Manawatu Standards Rate payer funded library presentation at which the paper pushed its community worthiness. [Or could it be that Fairfax made a solid donation to the council for the hire of the library and the extra work of the poorly paid staff? According to staff, Fairfax did not, but according to some councillor candidates they have paid. My inquiries would suggest they paid nothing…so much for community spirit…

3.     Now we all [at least some] know the STV allows electors to rank candidates in order of preference. So a poll basically using a first past the post system is hardly worth the name at predicting an election outcome. And to back up this fact, the Manawatu Standard has a really, really bad and non-noteworthy predictability record based on recent predictions, for example they predicted that Labour lose PN, but they were wrong yet again in that regard..

Deeply embedded National Party undertones exist in our local paper and is clearly visible by its editorials and reports as well as its strange use of well-known right-wing so-called columnists, Act’s [Karl du Fresne] and National’s [Liam Hehir].

Karl du Fresne.

 Karl du Fresne is a well versed believer in ‘Voodoo or supply side economics’, he simply hates government controls of any sort but especially ones that protect the public from being ripped off unless the ones being ripped off are members of the 1% club. I don’t doubt that Thatcher and Reagan were his heroes a few years ago. But now that the Act Party only consists of one member who owes his all to the PM who gifted him a seat in Parliament thereby paying him [and this must really bug Mr du Fresne] over five hundred thousand dollars plus over three years…of TAX-Payers money! Yet Karl has not said one word about this misuse of public funds…how hypocritical can one become?

Liam Hehir, is a slightly different kettle of fish, he could be considered a sort of a ‘Toy-Boy’ who likes to play with the big boys, you see he is a lawyer [mainly dealing in property transactions as I

Liam Hehir

understand it], he was really selected by the Fairfax media hit men because firstly, he was probably cheap, if not free, and they knew he would preach the party line. They could well have known too that he once had connections to the now defunct Alliance party…a left wing party. Regardless of how he was purchased his input into the value of the Manawatu Standard was a complete flop. He spends all his allotted space telling the Labour Party what it needs to do to become more Right-wing than the National Party…He simply adores John Key’s style of selling off state assets, especially state houses and such like, and his feeling or compassion for those employed on starvation wage rates is a well-known joke around town. In fact he makes the middle class look radical…