http://www.nzherald.co.nz/television/news/article.cfm?c_id=339&objectid=10807022

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Regular watchers of Target, TV3’s answer to Fair Go, will know that hidden camera footage of tradesmen doing various jobs in the ‘Target house’ while the actor/owners are out, has been a regular feature of the programme. My guess is that these segments are the principal, if not  the only reason why people watch the programme.

The tradesmen, you see, aren’t just judged on their workmanship or pricing, but on how they behave when they think they have the house to themselves. And, on that score, Target has certainly been an eye opener. Fossicking through cupboards and drawers and reading owners’ diaries and personal mail are at the lower end of their  invasions of the owners’ privacy. Somewhat more serious is perving over and occasionally sniffing the lady of the house’s bras and panties. And, to cap it all, masturbating.

This week’s programme had that and more. To summarise:  

A cleaner, there to clean the carpet throughout the house and remove a stain in the bedroom does the following:

• Opens all the wardrobes, cupboards and drawers in the bedroom;
• Spots a (conveniently placed?) small plastic laundry basket in the corner; takes out four pairs of women’s panties which he sniffs;
• Spots a (conveniently placed?) sports bag in which he finds and then sniffs more panties and a bra;
• Wanders round the house with the panties before tossing them back in the basket:

[Commercial Break, followed by  item on an unsatisfactory mowing franchise ]

• Cleaner fires up the computer in the lounge;
• Finds owner’s perfume which he sprays on the panties;
• Connects to broadband and begins watching porn;
• Retrieves sprayed panties which he sniffs, then undoes his pants and begins playing with himself;
• Ejaculates in panties which he then puts back in the laundry basket;
• Does some work;
• Watches porn for 18 more minutes before masturbating again;
• Tidies himself up and finishes the job.

[Commercial Break]

There follows a full summary of the story in Part One, including all the ‘disturbing’ visuals. Carly Flynn reports that Target contacted the police and has supplied them with the programme’s footage. They are investigating. The cleaner has been sacked by his employers who also generously refunded the $150 charge for the job. Carly then offers some helpful advice to viewers on how to avoid this sort of outrage happening to you.

Throughout the programme Carly expresses outrage and righteous indignation about the carpet cleaner’s behaviour. It’s hard to disagree with those sentiments.

But what of the motivation of the programme-makers? Are their hands entirely clean?

Well, here’s my cynical but reasonably well-informed view: If all the secretly filmed tradesman did a great job and behaved like saints, the segment would never have made it to air. At the very least they needed to do poor quality  work and preferably over-charge as well.

But the tradesmen have been more accommodating than that. They’ve lounged about when they should have been working, read stuff that was none of their business, skived off during the job, cut corners, done crap and sometimes dangerous work,  done naughty and sometimes very naughty things and generally provided Target (and us) with a peephole view of humanity at its near worst. That’s why the programme rates and the producers and TV3 know that’s why the programme rates. Men behaving badly are Target’s bread and butter.

So behind all this outrage and righteous indignation are less noble motives – ratings and the money that ratings produce. The more shocking and disgusting the activities the tradesmen get up to, the more the programme’s producers really like it. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that when they first saw the carpet cleaner footage, they leapt for joy. Not only was the story guaranteed to rate through the roof, stories about it would  be in the papers, on blogs, in reviews, in letters to the editor and, of course, on Facebook and Twitter.

This was gratuitous, voyeuristic sleaze masquerading as public service television. But, if you watched it, that makes you (and me) willing consumers of gratuitous, voyeuristic sleaze masquerading as public service television. Maybe neither the producers of Target, nor the lovely Carly, nor you or I should be railing against such disgusting TV fodder. After all, they dish it up and we lap it up.

That’s showbiz folks.

[If you want to watch or rewatch the programme, here's the link.  Don’t say we didn't warn you!]

http://ondemand.tv3.co.nz/Target-Season-14-Ep-7/tabid/59/articleID/6513/MCat/21/Default.aspx

Waitakere News

The absence of anyone from Labour on The Nation was explained by Garner at the very start of the show. The programme had invited Labour’s Spokesperson for Economic Development and Associate Finance Spokesperson, David Cunliffe, to discuss more or less the same things that Norman and Peters were discussing on Q & A – the future direction of the economy. Cunliffe was happy to appear but, conscious of the current sensitivities in the parliamentary party over Labour’s leadership, sought an assurance that that topic would not be canvassed in the interview. He received that assurance in writing from Executive Producer Richard Harman and Garner himself. 

Despite those assurances, Cunliffe’s appearance was later vetoed by what Garner called Labour’s ‘top team’ which he defined as ‘David Shearer and the media team’. The reason given was apparently that the ‘top team’ didn’t want anything to distract from Finance Spokesman David Parker so close to the Budget.

But the real reason was the party’s reaction to a ‘positioning’  speech given by Cunliffe to the New Lynn Women’s Branch of the Labour Party on 29 April. Judy and I both considered the speech brilliant, as did many other commentators from both sides of the political divide. As it happens, and if I read it properly, it was the political divide that the speech was actually all about.

The conventional political wisdom these days seems to be that, if it is to win the next election, Labour has to ‘move to the centre’. But if you’re on the left, the only direction in which you can move closer to the centre is to the right. Logic tells you that that can only result in loss of differentiation between you and your political opponents and an at least partial loss of your identity – in this case, what Labour stands for.

There is an inherent dishonesty in this approach which involves pretending to be something you aren’t in order to gain the power to reveal who you really are. But that of course is commonplace in politics.  

Anyway, ‘the top team’ didn’t like Cunliffe’s brilliant speech and he was apparently bawled out by Shearer and others and told the  speech was’ naive and stupid.’ That tends to be the price you pay for idealism. And, according to the extremely  well informed Duncan Garner, the  price may be high for Cunliffe who has been ‘put in his place, somewhere down the bottom of the pecking order’.

This is so utterly stupid that it beggars belief. Cunliffe is not only intellectually brilliant, he is by far Labour’s most accomplished debater in the House and on television and radio.  No-one in the Labour Party can hold a candle to him as a media spokesperson. Stammering and stuttering seem to be the main criteria for that at present.

I’ve written two major posts on Labour in recent months. The first was before the leadership vote and headed Shearer or Cunliffe? Why I’ve changed my mind. The second began, ‘I find myself wondering whether I want to be bothered with the Labour Party any more.’ It was more or less about the sort of things David Cunliffe was talking about in his speech to the Labour ladies of New Lynn.

I’m still wondering.

Finally, given the paranoia that clearly surrounds Cunliffe in the Labour Caucus, I should perhaps add that nothing in this post came from him.

Kathryn Gray

 Cast your mind back, if you will, to a post I wrote on August 16 of last year. It was headed A Shameful Ruling by the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

The story was about Don McDonald, a Wellington beneficiary who had become a thorn in the flesh of the BSA as a result of his numerous complaints to the broadcasting watchdog about inaccurate reporting on radio and television.

The final straw for the Authority was a complaint by Mr McDonald about an item on One News.

In its bulletin of 6 January the network had reported on the discovery of a supernova by a 10-year-old Canadian girl, Kathryn Gray. The report included the following statement:

‘The Canadian Astronomical Society says Kathryn’s supernova was in a galaxy 240 light years from Earth.’

Mr McDonald complained to TVNZ that the statement was inaccurate because ‘a supernova star at such close distance would barbecue the earth.’ He said the distance from the earth to its neighbouring galaxy Andromeda was at least two million light years.

He was right. What’s more, TVNZ agreed that he was right. Kathryn’s supernova was in a galaxy not 240 but 240 million light years from the earth. In other words, a million times further that TVNZ had reported. 

Mr McDonald thought the broadcaster ought to issue a retraction and apology for its mistake but TVNZ disagreed. It thought the distance of the Supernova from earth wasn’t really all that important to the item  which it considered a human interest story about Kathryn’s amazing discovery. It declined to retract or apologise. So off Mr McDonald  went to the BSA with another complaint.

The BSA sided with TVNZ and rejected Mr McDonald’s complaint, saying that the supernova’s distance from the earth was ‘peripheral to the story’.

But it went further. Tired of Mr McDonald’s endless and vexatious complaining, it ordered him to pay TVNZ $50 for its and their trouble. As a ‘form of deterrent’.

I concluded my post:

If there’s a bottom line to this story, it is that the Broadcasting Standards Authority, whose mandate is surely to look after the interests of the consumers of broadcasting rather than the broadcasters themselves, has ordered a beneficiary on the bones of his financial arse to hand over $50 to a multi-million dollar corporation which had its facts wrong.  That stinks.

It did. But that’s not the end of the story. Don McDonald is a battler and decided he would challenge the BSA’s rejection of his complaint against TVNZ and its $50 ‘fine’ in the High Court of New Zealand. The Court’s finding was released yesterday.

Conclusion  

 [37] The appeal against the decision to dismiss the complaint without determination is dismissed. The appeal against an order to pay $50 costs is allowed, and the order quashed.

I’d call that a reasonable finding and a partial victory for Don McDonald. The BSA, it seems to me, was entitled to turn down his complaint about their finding on the Supernova issue, but when an organisation funded out of the public purse, and charged with upholding broadcasting standards (including standards of accuracy), orders an elderly complainant who was actually right, to hand over 50 bucks to TVNZ,  they really have lost the plot.

 Congratulations Don!  It was a matter of principle and you really stuck it to them. 

liberation.typepad.com

I was of course thinking of John Key, billed ‘the fifty million dollar man’ when he first came to the public’s attention as a potential prime minister in the early 2000s. It would be reasonable to assume that Mr Key is worth a lot more now. He could presumably have lived quite comfortably off his parliamentary salary and perks for the last ten years, and certainly for the last six as Leader of the Opposition and Prime Minister. So even if he’d been earning a measly 5% on his investments, he could theoretically have increased his wealth by 50 percent. His $50 million could now be $75 million.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not complaining about Key being rich and I don’t begrudge him the money. What I’m interested in is how such absolute long-term financial security might affect a 51-year-old former investment banker and  foreign exchange trader’s approach to his future career. How might a graduate of the bourses of Singapore, London, Sydney and Wall Street feel about settling down to a long-term career as Prime Minister of New Zealand or, heaven forefend, as Leader of the Opposition?  

In my experience, most first-time candidates for election to Parliament in New Zealand cherish the hope, though they invariably deny it, that they may one day sit behind the big desk. They see politics as a career. They crave not just power, but enduring power.

Helen Clark provides the perfect example. Her involvement in Labour Party politics dates back to 1971 and formally ends in 2008. That’s 37 years. Twenty-seven of those years were spent in Parliament. She was Prime Minister for 9 of those years. Her apprenticeship for the job was twice that long  – 18 years. Helen was a career politician. Politics was her vocation. With the exception of a brief period as a university lecturer, she had no other job.

Is the career politician likely to be more cautious, less prone to risk-taking than someone for whom politics is not their first career choice and who, as in the case of John Key, has experienced the high-stakes, high-risk, high excitement world of a Gordon Gecko?

Certainly caution and conservatism were part of Helen Clark’s personality and her political style. In an interview for my book Helen – Portrait of a Prime Minister  David Lange observed:

 “She was totally meticulous in terms of not rocking the boat. Anything she said that might rock it, she said to herself for years… It’s a view of life. We live in an age where instant gratification is deemed to be a political necessity, where the next public opinion poll is critical, where the three-year electoral cycle is where you either haemorrhage or triumph. And here we’ve got a woman who is almost Chinese in her approach to time.’

Helen was not a risk-taker.

On the other hand, it has struck me in recent weeks that John Key’s approach to the job, or perhaps to his own security in the job, has bordered on the reckless. His attitude to public approval, by definition essential to political survival, appears to be indifference or possibly disdain. He seems unaffected by voter distaste for the sale of state assets, the flogging off of our land to foreign interests, his shonky deal with Sky City to trade 500 new pokie machines for a $350 million convention centre in Auckland, his government’s stated intention to frustrate the will of Parliament by vetoing Sue Moroney’s Paid Parental Leave Bill, if it succeeds….

Though losing the next election for National would be an embarrassment for Key, his wealth and other career options mean that job security is not something that needs concern him. He doesn’t need the job in the same way that the career politician does. And it is that ‘not needing’ that may lead to greater risk-taking in political management and policy making.

That is not an inherently bad thing. Caution and conservatism in a leader can lead to social and political stagnation; risk-taking, perhaps re-defined as boldness, may be necessary for desirable social and political change.

John Key is not a career politician. He’s already indicated that if National loses the next election, he will move on. And the loss will be tempered by the fact that he was without doubt the most popular Prime Minister the country has produced.

So the answer to my original question would seem to be: yes, being fabulously rich and still very much in one’s  prime probably will affect a Prime Minister’s approach to the job.

A further question might be: if Key wins in 2014 will he stand again in 2017?  Will he seek an unprecedented fourth term? I very much doubt it. You see, I have this sneaking suspicion that this prime minister has already had just about enough. He can tick off Multi-Million-Dollar-Man and Prime Minister of New Zealand on his bucket list and move on to fresh fields and challenges. That’s the joy of being fabulously rich, in one’s prime and not a career politician.

The Listener.co.nz

Trotter then advanced his reasons for believing that Shearer had to go. And I think those reasons are sound. Other bloggers from both Right and Left appear to agree.

But this is all just wisdom after the event. Shearer won the leadership of the Labour Party over David Cunliffe on December 13 last year. Six days earlier I had written a post on this site, titled Shearer or Cunliffe? Why I’ve changed my mind.  

If you revisit that post you’ll find that it’s remarkably similar in content to Chris Trotter’s blog, dated 27 April 2012, four-and-a-half  months after Shearer assumed the leadership? And it’s precisely what other bloggers are also now saying?

And yes, I’m blowing my own trumpet. And I’m entitled. Wisdom before the event is a helluva lot more impressive and useful than wisdom after the event.

This morning my co-commentator on The Nation and fellow media trainer Bill Ralston joked about Shearer, ‘He should have had some media training.’ But it was a joke. Media training would have made not an iota of difference to Shearer’s fortunes. He would have proved untrainable.

That sounds harsh, but it is not intended to be. Shearer is simply miscast as the leader of a political party in opposition. To change his image, he would have to change his personality and that, in human terms, could only be a change for the worse. Shearer is genetically challenged as a Leader of the Opposition. The killer instinct and the showbiz gene are both missing. He can be reasonable but he can’t project.

Media training is a waste of time for such politicians. Worse, it’s transparent, an ineffective cover-up job that listeners and viewers can recognise and see through. And that is damaging.

Bill Rowling, whom I mentioned in the earlier blog, was a strong personality who looked weak on television. Attempts to make him more forceful made him look like a weak man trying to appear forceful.

A similar fate was met by the rather wooden Geoffrey Palmer, who was Prime Minister for a year and who, I’m told, received media advice from some Australian gurus in the art. The advice was apparently to be physically more animated and smile more. The effect, however, was to make him look remarkably like the American Eagle on The Muppets.

Media trainers need first and foremost to be skilled diagnosticians. A wrong  diagnosis, followed by inappropriate treatment can be fatal to the patient’s prospects of survival. Sometimes, as in the case of David Shearer, it is kindest to admit that there is no cure and wish them a happy life – perhaps doing something else.

We’re quite well known for our walking and expect to be bailed up several times for a chat with friends and acquaintances. It’s fun.

Less amusing is being harassed by the legions of collectors, fundraisers, proselytisers and raffle-ticket sellers who lie in wait in Three Lamps where, less than coincidentally, there are several banks and the local Post Office. I’m perfectly happy to hand over a few bob for most charities, but I really don’t want to be lectured for 10 minutes on the threat to the rainforests, the plight of the blue-nosed dolphin, the work of Amnesty International in Tibet, the evils of Wall Street, or why I really ought to buy a raffle ticket to support our Paraplegic Olympians .

I’m not a cold-hearted, mean-spirited, penny-pinching scrooge; I’m just sick of being stopped in the bloody street and harangued by total strangers.  

On the other hand, I don’t mind being bailed up by the local alcoholics, drug addicts, deadbeats, beggars and pavement-dwellers, or tossing a dollar or two to the small army of one-note mouth-organ players, two-string ukulele pluckers and the occasional 12-year-old fiddle virtuoso.

Before leaving home, I now collect up half a pocketful of loose change for this very purpose. I do this because I’m selfish. You see, a year or two back I read this article by some guy in some magazine who said that he ALWAYS gave money to people who asked him for it in the street. And he’d discovered how much better it made him feel. Selfish reason perhaps,  but it did no harm and possibly a little good.

Which brings me to this morning. We’ve finished our walk. I’m sitting at a table in front of Dida’s restaurant in Jervois Road. Judy is inside ordering the coffee. There’s a young, affluent looking couple at the next table.  Then this guy, who I’m reasonably sure comes from one of the local halfway houses or rehab centres, stops and asks the young couple, ‘Have you got any money?’ He’s not a pretty sight and he leans rather unnervingly down over their table, rather close. ‘Have you got any money?’ Without making eye contact, the young man says ‘No’ and shakes his head. His partner looks away.

I’m next. ‘Have you got any money?’ I’ve got two single dollars left in my pocket and hand them to him. ‘Aw Jesus, thanks mate. Thanks.’

Two bucks is nothing to me. But it’s a lot to him. And I’m selfish. I feel good.

If I’ve a point to make here, it’s probably got less to do with the fact that the young couple didn’t give this guy any money – they’re under no obligation to do so –  but that the answer they gave to his question ‘Have you got any money?’ was, ‘No.’

That scene is probably repeated in our towns and cities thousands of times every day. Beggars ask, ‘Have you got any money? Got any spare change?’ We answer, ‘No.’

What offends me about this is not that it’s almost certainly untrue that we haven’t got any money, but that it’s such a patent, shameless and cowardly lie. Somehow the very obviousness of the lie is more insulting, more demeaning to the asker than it would be to be told to ‘Go away!’ or ‘Piss off!’ – ‘Here we are drinking our $4 flat whites in our beautiful clothes in the most expensive suburb in New Zealand and asking you to believe that we really, really, really haven’t got any money or spare change. Sorry!’

It’s an esoteric point perhaps and maybe I’m making too much of it. But I’m going to carry on collecting the spare change around the house before Judy and I go out for our walk each morning.  As I said, I’m selfish and it makes me feel good. And who knows what the future holds for any of us . Let’s just call it ‘bread upon the waters’.

Q:        What do you call public service television that almost no-one watches, because almost no-one knows about it?

A:        TVNZ7

Q:        Why aren’t the programmes advertised?

A:        Because they might attract viewers from the commercial channels run by TVNZ.

It appeared to be an inspired plan, to get our state broadcaster to run the two commercial-free channels TVNZ6 and TVNZ7. TVNZ had the infrastructure, the studios, the staff and the know-how. It also had millions of dollars, kindly donated by the Government, to run the channels.

It was in fact an invitation for TVNZ to shoot itself in the foot. 

Our state broadcaster operates with one hand tied behind its back at the best of times. The mixed model that requires it to be mindful of public broadcasting requirements and programming  and at the same time be commercially successful and return a healthy profit to the government, is as daft as claiming someone’s a little bit pregnant. You can be a successful public broadcaster; you can be a successful commercial broadcaster. You can’t do both successfully because their aims and objectives are antipathetic.

Every viewer who switches to TVNZ7 is a viewer who isn’t watching TVOne or TV2. Why on earth would TVNZ  encourage people to switch to it? That would be commercially irresponsible. It’s also a dilemma the network faces every time it puts a public service programme to air, which is why most of them are broadcast in the dead of night or on Sunday mornings. The programmes that make up good public service broadcasting are in the main programmes that networks believe would spell death to the ratings.

I applaud the principle behind Clare Curran’s private member’s bill, intended to save TVNZ7 and force TVNZ to pay for it. But it’s never going to succeed as a public service channel until the divorce is at least decree nisi. Yes, TVNZ could pay to run the channel, but that funding should not be direct; direct funding means control.   The money should be ring-fenced from the annual dividend paid to the government – and that funding should not be direct either. It should be channelled through NZ on Air as is Radio New Zealand’s funding.

Arms length is the only safe place for a government when it comes to broadcasting. The temptation for politicians and ministries to meddle, and the temptation for their opponents to claim political interference is too great. That’s why the NZ on Air model works so well – it distances funding and monitoring from government. (I’m a former Deputy Chair of the Board of NZ on Air, so I’m allowed to be biased!)

The channel itself should be a  totally separate entity, run by a separate organisation. Whether that’s a trust, a government entity or a company is a detail that can be worked out later. What is important now is to remove the channel from the control of TVNZ  altogether – mere editorial independence isn’t enough.

The separate entity could still use TVNZ studios and staff and equipment if need be.  It would hire them, just as private companies do. It would, and should, expect mates’ rates, but it shouldn’t expect to use the facilities for nothing, although perhaps the cost could be absorbed and become a paper addition to TVNZ’s annual dividend.

Our new public service channel could then promote itself and its programming, it could advertise, it could make sure it was prominent in newspaper and magazine listings. In other words, it could become visible to a huge audience that is largely unaware that it exists, or what programmes it broadcasts and when they are available.

TVNZ7 deserves to exist in some form. For goodness sake, do we want to rejoin Mexico as the only country in the OECD without public service television?

But it should not be TVNZ7. It should be PSTV1. That’s the only model that is fair to TVNZ, and it’s the only model that would be fair to us, the public.