Monday, August 28, 2023

Hypocrisy, cant and fashionably woke opinion masquerading as news

■ The Master Huffer and Puffer is back in business. When Winston Peters spent 11 minutes blustering his way through an interview with Corin Dann on Morning Report this morning, it was if he’d never been away. It was déjà vu, and not in a good way.

One point in particular struck me. Peters got indignant, as only he can, when Dann asked whether NZ First might be prepared to provide confidence and supply from the cross benches in the event of a hung parliament.

“You’re asking me the outcome before the people have spoken,” the Great Populist righteously declaimed. “You have to know [first] what the voters have decided on, and the voters are masters of this matter, not politicians.”

Oh, really? When, I wonder, did Peters come around to the novel view that the voters’ will is paramount?

Could this be the same Winston Peters who decided in 2017 that NZ First would endorse a party that won 37 percent of the party vote over one supported by 44 percent of the voters?

The voters didn’t decide the outcome of the election on that occasion. Peters did, and now he seeks to rewrite history by pretending the voter is supreme. Only Peters would expect to get away with such bare-faced hypocrisy.

We may never know whether he anointed Jacinda Ardern as prime minister in 2017 because she offered him a more generous deal than Bill English did, or whether he was motivated by pure spite toward National, with whom he had a rancorous history. Quite likely it was a bit of both.

What we do know is that Peters disregarded the voters’ preference when he went with Labour, to the astonishment and delight of Ardern and Grant Robertson.

Ardern subsequently became something of a political phenomenon, leading the country through the Christchurch mosque massacres, the Whakaari-White Island eruption and the Covid pandemic with such assurance that voters rewarded her by giving Labour an unprecedented majority in 2020. We know how well that turned out.

NZ First was unceremoniously wiped out in that same election, but the damage had been done. Had Peters not ignored the voters’ clearly expressed preference in 2017, we would have been spared the most harmful government in living memory.

To put it another way, Peters, by going with Labour, is ultimately responsible for everything that has happened in the past three disastrous, chaotic years. Voters have notoriously short memories, so need to be constantly reminded of that.

He now has the effrontery to present himself as Mr Fixit. But putting Peters back in government, in any capacity, would be like calling back the same builder whose dodgy workmanship caused your house to collapse the last time you employed him.

■ Also on Morning Report, Maori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer was extolling the virtue of unity. She claims to want her fellow politicians to focus on a future where we can live in harmony rather than focus on what we don’t have in common (her words).

It’s an appealing sentiment, but it rings resoundingly hollow coming from one of the most divisive figures in Parliament and the co-leader of the only New Zealand political party that, by definition, sets itself apart on the basis of racial identity. Far from cultivating a spirit of accord, Te Pati Maori proudly celebrates its otherness. That seems an odd basis on which to present yourself as a champion of unity.

Ngarewa-Packer railed against the politics of fear and division and twice described the positions taken by her political rivals as “revolting” – not a word calculated to promote the warm, positive vibes she supposedly aspires to.

She didn’t name them but clearly she was referring to National, ACT and presumably NZ First as well. It’s worth pointing out that all those parties have Maori candidates as well as Pakeha, and in the case of National and ACT, representatives of other minorities as well. ACT, which I suspect is the party Ngarewa-Packer most reviles, has three MPs of Maori descent, including leader David Seymour.

By way of contrast, the defining feature of the Maori Party is that all its candidates are (and presumably are required to be) Maori. But can you really exclude 84 percent of the population and present yourself as a unifying force? I suspect that when Ngarewa-Packer affirms the value of unity, she means unity on her terms. If there was an award for cant of the day, she would be runner-up to Peters.

■ You know there’s no real news around when you turn on RNZ at 8am on a Saturday and the lead item is about an Auckland University sociologist no one has ever heard of urging the New Zealand government to protest against the discharge of waste water from the Fukushima nuclear reactor.

Of course there was real news around; it’s just that whoever edited the bulletin decided the opinion of an obscure leftist academic – one who spoke with a North American accent – was the most urgent and compelling story of the morning.

I later googled the academic, one Karly Burch, and found an earlier RNZ news item which quoted her as saying the nuclear waste discharge needed to be viewed “in the context of nuclear imperialism and nuclear colonialism”.

In other words this was a purely political opinion: a fashionably woke one, but no more relevant, coming from a sociologist, than that of a bank teller or a barber. No newspaper – not even a leftist one like The Post – would lead its front page with such a flimsy story.  But this is RNZ, and normal editorial criteria don’t always apply.

The next item wasn’t much better. It quoted Buddy Mikaere, a former member of the Waitangi Tribunal, who was concerned about supposed misinformation in a booklet about co-governance. More than any other news outlet, RNZ loves stories about people’s opinions, just as long as they’re the right sort (Family First not so much). The item included a voice report in which the journalist presented a loaded, politicised interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi as if it were a settled fact.

My impression is that most RNZ reporters do a conscientious job, but as an institution it leans sharply to the left, like all public broadcasters, and ideology inevitably seeps into its news bulletins. This is more likely to happen when there’s a skeleton staff on (I’m told RNZ newsrooms are scarily empty at weekends) and editorial checks and balances are probably not applied as rigorously as they might be during the week.

As a publicly funded news outlet, RNZ has a unique obligation to ensure fairness, accuracy and balance. This becomes even more important at a time when public trust in the media is dangerously frayed.

It’s also worth noting that RNZ recently went through an expensive, high-profile inquiry that resulted in an embarrassing mea culpa for illicit editorial tampering by a rogue journalist who has since been dismissed. Has the organisation learned nothing, or do different standards apply when the influence exerted by biased journalists is deemed to be ideologically acceptable?

22 comments:

  1. In theory the Peters comments are worth making - BUT
    We have Greens. Shaw and Davidson
    Te Paki. Waititi and Ngarewa let alone the party leader father in law of Waititi
    Labour Chippy with the media promoted image - which is a sham and Jackson Davis and co
    ACT. Seymour is bright and the deputy is very smart
    National. No idea what Luxon stands for. Willis made her attitude clear with the housing intensification - "get used to it" I won't go near the Tauranga guy let alone the Van de Molen incident

    So all in all - in the main not a very good line up so of course Peters is in the running

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  2. When you refer to the Maori Party, I think you mean the party president, not the leader. (For the benefit of others, the daughter of the party president, John Tamihere, is married to Rawiri Waititi.)

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  3. I heard the comment you mention by the reporter who presented her version of the Treaty as fact rather than opinion. I was going to say I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but that is not correct. Nothing I hear on RNZ surprises me any more. Our public broadcaster has unfortunately abandoned any sense of objectivity or neutrality (or, at least, some of its journalists have).

    However, the news presenter went on to describe some bravery awards to members of the navy involved in the White Island rescues. She mentioned an award to the 'bowman' of an inflatable, pronouncing 'bowman' as you would an archer, not as someone up the front of a boat. And I have given up counting the number of RNZ news items that fall into the "Man with a wooden leg called Smith" trap. Might be time for RNZ to put some effort into educating its news teams about English as well as Maori.

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  4. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to explain the bit about the man with a wooden leg named Smith.

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    1. Poor punctuation allows the leg to be called Smith rather than the name of the man with the wooden leg.

      The wooden leg is called stick . . .

      Delete
  5. "If there was an award for cant of the day, she would be runner-up to Peters."

    Did you forget to run spellchecker? 😇

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  6. @rouppe - brilliant allusion!

    Something like a decade ago, RNZ used to - and apparently still does nowadays - peddle socially-engineered news items, stitched together by part-time ‘weekends only’ staff.

    It’s been nigh-on three years now since I last listened to RNZ National, in particular its news and current affairs propaganda, but obviously I can rest assured that its vision is still badly clouded by ideology - and desperation.

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  7. The RNZ operator here in NP is unapologetically ideological. A few years back he was campaigning on Facebook for the NZ soccer team to change their colours and stop being called the All Whites as it was racist ...I am not joking . He even got a negative reaction from other devout Labour supporters . He was unswayed . -Paul Peters

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  8. I said a while back that Newspapers used to enjoy a great media monopoly which allowed them to make decent money and to support their news production.

    The question you should ask is whether the idea that newspapers provided great content was ever true. After the second world war, it became self evident that our society decided to impose a consensus politics where the opinions of voters were set by newspapers. The mass society of the 20th century simply doesn't exist anymore.

    No one under 40 watches TV, I certainly don't. They don't listen to radio either, except on job sites or where headphones aren't viable. They listen to podcasts or read their content online or play it through streaming sites. The Mass society and the underylying assumptions of the mass society do not have a context today. The established media of the past does not set narratives simply because you can find counter narratives easily. The legacy media has resorted to all these rearguard actions to save its relevance and to find a way back to its old monopoly.

    The "fact checkers", the disinformation and misinformation propaganda, the crying about troll factories, the new legislation forcing social media companies to pay news websites for their news is the latest, because alternative media will be banned off social media while legacy media will be paid. You can tell they are worried about this because the studies on media trust include sections on news avoidance (because why read trash that hates its audience?).

    It is bleeding in with this current election where the major parties have no policies for any real problems while the legacy media attempts to have the election to the Nats by focusing on crime, tax and ignoring the housing or immigration issue. The sooner the legacy media is bankrupt, the better.

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  9. Winston Peters has said that the discussions with National stalled and they did not seem interested in moving them along. His argument is that the people who voted for him, voted for him to be part of a Government not sit on the cross benches so he was obligated to take up Jacinda's offer.

    I can't speak to veracity of the comments about National, but given the chaos they were in it is not beyond the realms of possibility.

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    1. What chaos were National in post the 2017 election during the negotiations to form a government? They had a stable leadership and 44 % of the vote. They had a stable and experienced set of competent ministers.

      Winston went with Labour because he hated Bill English... Why? Simply because English was party to the motion to expel Winston from the National Party.

      We got the worst government in living memory simply because Winston was carrying a large grudge. All the other rationales put forward by Mr Peters and his apologists are a smoke screen....

      Dont trust Winston ever.. Even when he speaks sense on a topic.... Winston First always and forever... In my humble opinion

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  10. A kindly friend has explained that Phil Gendall, in his comment above, was drawing attention to a common grammatical error. The man, not the wooden leg, is named Smith. I should have spotted that myself. Thanks Bill.

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    1. Karl, if I had a wooden leg I wouldn't be calling it Smith.

      I would want to be on a first name basis with one of my greatest supporters.

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  11. After six years of deliberately dividing New Zealanders by every means possible, Labour have now preposterously adopted "unity" as their election schtick. It appears their wannabe coalition partners including the avowedly racist Maori Party have been encouraged to sing from the same ludicrous song-sheet. If it wasn't for the sad fact that many believers will be happy to delude themselves with this hypocritical nonsense, it would be pure comedy gold, beyond satire.

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  12. All the Peter's apologists appear anytime some draws attention to Winston's hypocrisy.

    He gave us what we have and what he now rallies against.

    He cant be trusted except to look after himself.

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  13. I followed up on Corrin Dann’s interview with Winston Peters and have a different take on it to Karl’s. Corrin Dann persisted with his “Dog with a Bone Gotcha” questions – Jack Tame’s Q & A style. Peters was correct to say that coalition talks can proceed only when the cards dealt by the electorate are finalised.

    All elections bring surprises. If one of the polls turns out to be in the target range, a possible coalition of National 37%, ACT 10% plus NZ First 7% equates to 65 seats. As National needs BOTH parties which of ACT or NZ First holds the balance of power? National could throw a curve ball at all of us and bring in the Greens instead of NZ First.

    I can’t agree with Karl that Peters was the root cause of the mess Labour has put us in. The racial issues and pie in the sky expectations of Maori culture originated with National (John Key) when New Zealand was signed up to the United Nations declaration on indigenous peoples. It is worth repeating that Helen Clark did not support the policy. I can’t see wishy-washy Luxon wanting to change a lot of that. The other problems emanate from Labour’s incompetence.

    This election would be Winston Peters’ last hurrah and I can’t see him wanting to wither away on the cross-benches.

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  14. Winston is no more infallible than any of us, but I'm in general with NZF, because he and Shane and Casey have a basic confidence in race, which is so lacking in NZ. Each of them has consistently spoken of their Maori roots and their European forebears, with respect for both! This is so lacking in public dialogue - the root of all this ugly destructive racism. I think NZF is the LEAST hypocritical party.

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  15. The "man with a wooden leg named Smith" joke was in the Disney film Mary Poppins (1964). If I had time, I would research if it dates from earlier than that. It probably does!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AexVBs09bjA

    I half-heard the RNZ news item at the weekend where the reporter proclaimed that the Second Article of the Treaty accorded sovereignty to Māori . It took a moment for me to realise it was the reporter claiming that, not somebody being interviewed.

    Love your description of the Master Huffer and Puffer. So apt.


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  16. It’s a measure of how removed both National and ACT have become from social conservatives in New Zealand, that NZ First is increasingly considered a viable option.

    I have been a National/ACT supporter for many decades but I’m done with them now. National because they are not the same party they were decades ago, and the idea they do socialism more efficiently than Labour is hardly compelling. ACT because it has no respect for the dignity of human life, the elderly and the unborn in particular. Furthermore, both parties were all-in for the vaccine mandates, and to hell with the New Zealand Bill of Rights, and our guarantee of freedom from medical tyranny.

    Consequently my protest vote is going to Winstone and I hope his party exceeds the 5% threshold. Even if it doesn’t I doubt Luxon et.al have the courage needed to undertake the reforms that are needed in this country. They may scrap three waters and dial back some of the co-governance impetus, and that’s not nothing, but I suspect the present trajectory will continue under their watch.

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  17. Karl, I admire your perseverance with RNZ unlike me & others who have 'let it go'...to Concert in my case. You listen so we don't have to, as they say. I still remember the RNZ moments historically when it all became beyond the pale for me...Ryan's unreasonable& mean tetchyness with Paul Goldsmith one day, David Cormack on The Panel, the most god-awful po-faced women guests on Wallace's Panel incarnation for, I dunno, International Women's Day or some such, I've even given up on Hill. I used to feel warmly towards these folks...now I don't. I feel forsaken...did they leave me or me them? Surely Mora is still listenable...??
    I thought you were joking about not getting the wooden leg gag...haha.
    Fab riposte rouppe!!!
    Winston...well. at least he still makes some sense some of the time, but I've never voted NZF.
    Graham Adams writes a great piece on Hipkins' gaslighting...the nerve & the gall to accuse others of division et al...Ha!!! He don't fool me and he's a hater/wrecker of the 1st water.

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  18. (Karl) "My impression is that most RNZ reporters do a conscientious job, but as an institution it leans sharply to the left"

    I'd say RNZ leans sharply to the establishment woke faction's perversion of the Left - favoured by the professional-managerial class (the Wadestown pseudo-Left, if you like) rather than anything approaching traditional old-school social democracy.

    The establishment woke are more than happy, for instance, to vigorously scapegoat lower income pakeha/europeans (the Left's traditional core support-base) - along with poorer asians & other non-polynesians - into a degraded second-class citizenship ... and RNZ are more than happy to act as their ideological evangelists on this.

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  19. Anon Aug 31 7:51am ... I assume you're critiquing the rather awkward sentence construction in my comment (immediately above) rather than anything Karl's written ? ... What can I say ? I commented at 11:25pm having woken in Castlepoint on the Wairarapa coast that morning & then driven 180km to Porirua over the rest of the day (stopping, incidentally, at Masterton's Ten O'Clock Cookie Bakery & Cafe on the way ... where I informed loved ones that we were now deep into du Fresne Country) ... when you're close to hitting 60 like me, when you're excessively tired & when you only have a couple of braincells left to rub together: it's best not to do social media. But I never learn ... today I had my latest chemo infusion, which often results in mental fatigue, yet here I am foolishly commenting again.

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