This morning I received the following email from Radio New Zealand Communications Manager John Barr:
Hi Brian
Your latest blog post re political interference at Radio New Zealand appears to be based on John Drinnan’s Media column in Friday’s Herald. Radio New Zealand has requested a retraction from the Herald and John Drinnan.
Radio New Zealand provided the following written response to a question from John Drinnan on February 16th in relation to this story. The response was ignored and Drinnan’s subsequent piece suggests political interference in Radio New Zealand programming decisions. This implication is repeated in your blog post. Any suggestion that Radio New Zealand CEO Peter Cavanagh instructed anyone to interview Mr Brownlee is wrong.
I would appreciate it if you could correct this perception.
Radio New Zealand Response to John Drinnan Question of February 16th
Re The Panel and Mr Brownlee
As I understand it Gerry Brownlee was listening to The Panel segment discussing the Christchurch recovery effort and phoned in to contribute to the discussion. He wasn’t immediately able to get through to the programme producers however and was subsequently put through to the CEO via Reception. I can confirm that all communication to the programme was via Reception.
After a brief conversation with Mr Brownlee, the CEO spoke to the manager responsible for the programme and let him know that the Minister was available and keen to make some comments in relation to the Panel discussion but had been unable to speak with any of the production staff. The manager spoke to one the programme’s producers who advised they would be happy to have a chat with Mr. Brownlee before the programme finished. It is absolutely clear that at no time was there any instruction from the CEO to anyone that Mr. Brownlee should be interviewed. Mr Cavanagh did not arrange for him to be put on the programme.
Good heavens, the idea that Cabinet Ministers could ring up the Director General of the NZBC, as it then was, and throw their weight around, was already pretty well gone when I was an interviewer on the current affairs show Gallery in the late sixties and early seventies. If the Minister of Broadcasting himself wanted to issue a direction to the Corporation, he had to table the fact in Parliament. And it happened rarely.
One might have thought that 43 years later, the notion that it was OK for government ministers to interfere in the editorial affairs of public radio or television would be considered laughable. But apparently not.
Gerry Brownlee evidently thought that his status as a Cabinet Minister entitled him to ring up Radio New Zealand and demand a right of reply to comments made on Jim Mora’s Afternoons programme some weeks ago by Christchurch MP Lianne Dalziel. The topic under discussion was of course the Government’s handling of the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes and Dalziel was predictably unimpressed. Brownlee is the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister and seems to have considered that his portfolio gave him the right to demand an instant right of reply on the programme.
The production team disagreed. As a regular contributor on the show, I can tell you that Afternoons is a tightly scheduled programme. It isn’t easy to slot in an additional item. More importantly, Afternoons would almost certainly have been conscious of the significance of acceding to what amounted to a demand from a Government minister for immediate air time during a live broadcast. Brownlee was told that the programme could not fit him in. Read the rest of this entry »
I probably should have commented on this story earlier, but the repossession of Q and Livy’s car, sold to them by an unlicensed dealer on Trade Me with a $7,000 debt owing to Pacific Dawn Finance, rather took precedence over everything else.
But this story is important. It strongly suggests improper editorial interference by TVNZ management in its high-profile consumer protection programme Fair Go.
The issue was brought to light by Labour Broadcasting spokeswoman Clare Curran when TVNZ management appeared before Parliament’s Commerce Committee.
Curran asked: ‘How can you explain reports that TVNZ’s Head of Programming called a meeting of Fair Go staff, including all reporters, together in the last couple of weeks and instructed them not to produce programmes that would upset advertisers?’
TV1 and TV2 head, Jeff Latch, said he had been invited ‘as a guest’ to the meeting. He went on:
‘The key points I made at that meeting were the fact that the heart of Fair Go for the last 20 plus years that it’s been on New Zealand television, is that it represents the underdog and the small guy and stands up for them and that’s what’s made it a special programme for New Zealanders for a large period of time.
‘I also made the observation that we operate in a commercial environment and that Fair Go like all our programs needed to exercise care in terms of the way they handle stories, they need to make sure they’re always balanced because in a commercial environment a story that is not balanced could be something that we would not want to run on this network.”
‘It wasn’t an instruction per se. I asked them to contemplate and think about when you’re looking at stories it’s very important that they’re balanced and we actually show both sides of the story and I think Fair Go does.’
On 8 July of last year, our son Q and his wife Liv bought a 1998 Toyota Caldina from a seller on Trade Me for $3,600. They were satisfied with the sale and the car and Q gave this positive feedback to the seller: ‘The car was exactly as described in the ad. All sorted out in good time. Great trade. Thanks.’
Yesterday a repo man from Pacific Dawn Finance (formerly a division of South Canterbury Finance) arrived at the kids’ house to repossess the car. Q was out of town and Liv was alone in the house with our small grandson and our granddaughter, who is one year old today.
The repo man was extremely kind and helpful. He explained that around $7,000 was owed on the vehicle by a previous owner. He knew how upsetting this must be and offered to make Liv a cup of tea.
Liv rang Judy and me in great distress. I spoke to the repo man and asked if it would be possible to defer the repossession for 24 hours, so that Liv could at least make arrangements to borrow another vehicle to take our grandson to kindy and generally get around. He reluctantly agreed.
In this morning’s Herald Paul Holmes offered a reply to the criticism of his column on Waitangi Day. It read:
‘Not that I’ve felt too much respite this week. But if you dish it out, I’ve always said, then you’ve got to be able to take it. But, my gosh. How dare I suggest there is anything negative about the way we commemorate Waitangi Day or suggest that the annual agitation there is putting many people off caring two hoots about it. From the reaction of some you’d think I’d called for the annihilation of a people.
‘But let me tell you this. While the objections to what I said have been strident, so has the support for what I wrote been immense. I’ve never had such reaction to a column nor had so much unsought support or affirmation. And I would suggest that what I wrote is what most people think but don’t dare say.’
There’s a degree of revisionism in the sentence: ‘How dare I suggest there is anything negativeabout the way we commemorate Waitangi Day or suggest that the annual agitation there is putting many people off caring two hoots about it.’ This implies some esoteric quibble with ‘the way we commemorate Waitangi Day.’ But the original was rather more strident:
‘Waitangi Day produced its usual hatred, rudeness, and violence against a clearly elected Prime Minister from a group of hateful, hate-fuelled weirdos who seem to exist in a perfect world of benefit provision. This enables them to blissfully continue to believe that New Zealand is the centre of the world, no one has to have a job and the Treaty is all that matters…
‘Well, it’s a bullshit day, Waitangi. It’s a day of lies. It is loony Maori fringe self-denial day. It’s a day when everything is addressed, except the real stuff. Never mind the child stats, never mind the national truancy stats, never mind the hopeless failure of Maori to educate their children and stop them bashing their babies. No, it’s all the Pakeha’s fault. It’s all about hating whitey. Believe me, that’s what it looked like the other day…
‘No, if Maori want Waitangi Day for themselves, let them have it. Let them go and raid a bit more kai moana than they need for the big, and feed themselves silly, speak of the injustices heaped upon them by the greedy Pakeha and work out new ways of bamboozling the Pakeha to come up with a few more millions.’ Read the rest of this entry »
David Shearer shuns Labour Luvvie. I spotted this intriguing headline in this morning’s Herald. What could it mean? Who was ‘Labour luvvie’ and why had David Shearer shunned him or her: I just had to read on:
‘David Shearer needs media help and he’s getting it – but not from former Labour love Brian Edwards.
‘Edwards was paid to media-train Helen Clark and her ministers, and even got the SOS call from Phil Goff during the election after a couple of years in the wilderness.
‘However, he’s been left out in the cold by the dynamic new Labour leader and his chief of staff, Stuart Nash. Sources tell me Sean Plunket was considered for media advice, but Nash told The Diary there will be “no external media training”.’
OMG, imagine my consternation! I was ‘Labour Luvvie’. I am ‘Labour luvvie’. And I have been ‘shunned’ by David Shearer – ‘shunned’ by a man I didn’t even know I was dating. ‘Left out in the cold’ by the ‘dynamic new Labour leader’ and his chief of staff, Stuart Nash.
Can you understand the humiliation? To be ‘left out in the cold’ by someone you spoke to once outside a cafe in Herne Bay, without even the chance to mail a billet doux or plight your troth.
And the ultimate insult – to learn that he’s getting what he needs, but not from you!
Could this all really be true? Of course, it was in the Herald. And the writer was not just some anonymous hack, but tabloid intellectual and rapier wit Rachel Glucina whom I’ve long since forgiven for calling me ‘irrelevant’.
Still, I refuse to give up hope. Someone else is bound to come along yearning for a luvvie. I may not even have long to wait.
It’s a truism of column writing for the tabloid press that, if you want to attract a decent-sized readership, you can’t afford to be too rational or too even-handed. Writing in a considered way or seeing both sides of an issue is likely to lose you not only your audience but the job as well. What your editor wants is stuff that will stir readers up and have them reaching for their pens or laptops – outrage!
Given that brief, it’s difficult for the tabloid columnist to go too far. Michael Laws, who appears to view himself as the only pure-bred in a society of ferals, might seem to be an exception, but in fact represents the finest qualities of the breed.
One might have thought that Paul Holmes was a different kettle of fish. He is after all hugely intelligent, extraordinarily well-read, a talented writer in my estimation, and an award-winning columnist.
His column in last Saturday’s Weekend Herald, headed Waitangi Day a complete waste, reveals none of that. It is an appalling piece of offensive, unintelligent, uninformed racist claptrap that makes his 2003 ‘cheeky darkie’ reference to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan seem innocuous. Read the rest of this entry »
I read that the punters were dissatisfied with the Sonny Bill Williams/Clarence Tillman III fight for the New Zealand Heavyweight Boxing Championship. There were apparently two reasons for their dissatisfaction: that neither boxer merited being in contention for the Championship at all; and that the fight was over in 2 minutes 54 seconds. I can’t judge the validity of their first complaint. But I do understand their annoyance at the brevity of the bout. After all, if you’ve paid up to $100 to be ringside or almost $40 to watch the match on Sky, you’re surely entitled to see two men beating the crap out of one another for at least 20 minutes.
As for Sonny Bill, even I can see that he’s a brilliant footie player, but ‘brilliant’ is not a term you can apply to anyone interested in a career in professional boxing. Read the rest of this entry »
A great deal has already been written about the pressure brought by the La Leche League, the New Zealand College of Midwives and Plunket to have a 2-second clip of Piri Weepu bottle-feeding his baby daughter Taylor removed from an anti-smoking TV ad produced by the Health Sponsorship Council.
Though unconnected, the Weepu story followed close on the heels of widespread protest against Facebook which had effectively banned a photograph of a Sydney mother breastfeeding her baby from one breast while expressing milk with a pump from the other.
Both stories were about censorship. Facebook had censored the photograph of the Sydney woman because it breached its rule that a woman’s breast could only be shown if she were using it to feed a baby; any other depiction of a naked female breast was regarded as a gratuitous display.
The La Leche League, the New Zealand Colleague of Midwives and Plunket had used their influence to persuade the Health Sponsorship Council to censor a 2-second film clip of Weepu bottle-feeding his baby because, they argued, it would damage their message that ‘breast is best’. La Leche League director Alison Stanton observed, ‘It’s really important that those messages are consistent across the board.’ Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not really sure why I’m telling you this. It’s kinda personal really, but I’m a generous fellow and like to pass on wisdom that has been passed on to me.
Michael, a friend of ours who is a well-known actor, was appearing in a stage production of Sweeney Todd. The part required him to have lank, unkempt, greasy-looking hair. So he stopped shampooing or moisturising his golden locks and limited his toilette to simply letting the shower water run over his head.
The initial effect was that his hair did indeed fit the part – lank, unkempt and thoroughly unattractive. After a few weeks, however, the original sheen returned and, to his astonishment, his hair looked even better than it had before. It was soft, silky and luminescent. (I may be slightly exaggerating to make the point.)
When the production was over, he continued to wash his hair only in water, eschewing shampoo and conditioner. And he’s never looked back. Read the rest of this entry »
While I have absolutely no doubt that the Occupy protestors against global corporate greed and the ever-increasing gap between the world’s rich and poor are correct in their analysis and that their anger is justified, I’m less impressed by their methods.
The logic of tent-squatting in civic squares eludes me. It serves merely to annoy and alienate the general public, whose support the squatters presumably want.
More importantly, it cannot achieve its aim which is to remedy entrenched global injustice through small scale local action. If you were to ask the protestors what they actually want New Zealanders to do, other than joining them in their protest, I doubt that you would get a coherent answer. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s the tape that’s caused all the fuss. Fairfax has confirmed that it’s the real thing.
After listening to it, you might well decide that it is truly a storm in a teacup. But – it got Winston Peters and his motley crew into Parliament, so the PM may now be wishing he’d released it on the spot!
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post highly critical of the Heraldfor its coverage of the Carterton balloon tragedy in which 11 people lost their lives. The tabloid had interviewed a clinical psychologist, one Barry Kirker, who speculated not only on what would have been going through the minds of the victims as they faced certain death but on how their friends and loved ones might be feeling as well.
The children who gave their parents a ride on the ill-fated balloon would, he said, ‘be consumed with feelings of guilt and regret despite others telling them it was not their fault. They would also be thinking that other family members would be blaming them for their parents’ deaths, even though that wouldn’t be true at all.’
Mr Kirker’s speculations also included the observation that ‘the scenario was similar to that of the 9/11 victims, and the terror attacks might have put the thought to jump in Chrisjan Jordaan’s and Alexis Still’s minds.’
And, in case Herald readers were wondering who jumped first:
‘Mr Kirker said it would usually be the man who would take the lead in that situation and would suggest jumping from the basket to the woman.’
I expressed myself disgusted with the rank insensitivity of this piece of crass sensationalism. Most followers of this site agreed. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve just discovered this UK comedy show on You Tube. Haven’t stopped laughing since. It’s called Mock The Week. Can we have this on NZ TV please! Here’s a brief sample:
I suddenly had this yen for luncheon sausage. It was the sort of yen I still occasionally get for a cigarette after a quarter of a century of not smoking. You’re suddenly taken unawares by some distant need, some powerful repressed impulse that has fought its way up from the depths of your subconscious to confront you. ‘God, I’d love a cigarette.’ ‘I could kill for a piece of luncheon sausage.’
The cigarette yen is no problem. I used to know a very charming, urbane share broker called Alfie Des Tombe who could smoke just three cigarettes after dinner each night and that was that. I envied him but I could never be like him. I know that if I smoked one cigarette tonight, I’d hate the taste, probably choke on the smoke and feel quite nauseous. But within a week I’d be back to 20 a day. Where cigarettes are concerned I’m an addict and I’m not going to tempt fate.
As for the luncheon sausage yen, I really don’t know where it came from. Making kids’ lunches maybe in another life. When they’d gone, the last piece, doused with HP sauce, rolled into a tube and down the hatch. Or maybe in a white bread sandwich with a little salt and some hot English mustard. Divine!
Health professionals in Auckland have proposed that smoking be banned in all outdoor public places in the city. At least I think that’s what they’ve proposed. The front-page story in this morning’s Herald isn’t entirely clear on whether the ban is intended to be universal within the Auckland City boundaries or restricted to certain public spaces.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether banning smoking in any outdoor public space can be justified in what we like to call ‘a free society’, a limited ban (on virtually anything) invites public confusion and is therefore much more difficult to enforce. A total ban, on the other hand, leaves no room for confusion or the excuse, ‘I didn’t realise you couldn’t smoke here.’
As I write this, a poll on the Herald’s website reports:
Excellent and sensible idea – 43%
Good in theory - 27%
Not a fan but would go along with it – 4%
Outrageous, a step too far – 26%
That’s 74% of respondents variously in favour and 26% adamantly against. An unscientific poll of course, but indicative at least of majority support for banning smoking outdoors as well as indoors in public spaces.
So yes, if there were such a law, you would essentially only be able to smoke in private indoor locations, including your home and garden, other people’s homes and gardens with their agreement, and (I’m guessing here) other privately owned indoor premises with the agreement of everyone who ever used the premises.
Put even more simply, you would not be able to smoke in any outdoor location where you might come into contact with another member of the general public – on the street, in the park, on the beach, in children’s playgrounds, tramping, climbing, jogging, playing or just plain walking. Read the rest of this entry »
I rarely find myself in agreement with Garth McVicar or his ‘Sensible Sentencing’ Trust. I’m a liberal in the area of law and order and not a great believer in the value of lengthy prison sentences. But on the issue of Judge Jocelyn Munro’s remark to the 16-year-old who attacked and raped a 5-year-old girl, that he ‘looked smart’ when he appeared before her in the Youth Court, I find myself in near-agreement with Mr McVicar. I wasn’t, as he declared himself, ‘disgusted’ by the judge’s remark, but I thought it displayed extraordinary lack of understanding or empathy towards the feelings of the little girl’s parents.
I hadn’t intended to deal with the issue on this site. The nation’s ‘outrage’ about the crime and the judge’s remark have been well canvassed in other forums. But the defences of the judge’s remarks by her colleagues in the law, published in the press this morning, struck me as so inadequate that I need to respond. Read the rest of this entry »
Josie Pagani, Labour’s candidate for Rangitiki in the last election and, incidentally, my researcher for two years on Top of the Morning, has penned an interesting opinion piece in today’s Heraldwhich the paper has headed “Workers lose faith in party with glum message”. Her theme is essentially that making people feel miserable about their lives is not a good way of getting them to vote for you. Helen Clark sometimes used the term ‘”shroud waving” to convey a similar message.
I think Josie has a point, though it’s difficult for an opposition Labour Party during an election to avoid talking about poverty, unemployment, kids going to school without breakfast, the minimum wage and the appalling and widening gap between rich and poor in this country.
Josie’s column led me to thinking of some other reasons why Labour did so poorly in the election. Some can be summarised in just a few words:
The extreme improbability of any political party in New Zealand being voted out after just one term in office;
The nation’s love affair with John Key, without doubt the greatest exponent of the photo opportunity and ‘skinetics’ in the history of New Zealand politics;
The relative lack of voter enthusiasm for Phil Goff;
Earthquakes, mining and shipping disasters which, in media terms, disadvantage those not in power and unable to influence events;
The Rugby World Cup, a convenient distraction for National shortly before the election;
The general euphoria that winning the Cup produced;
Widespread voter disengagement from politics, particularly on the Left.
The self-fulfilling nature of three years of polls branding Key and National sure-fire winners and Goff and Labour sure-fire losers.
Labour’s courage in advancing policies that made long-term economic sense, but were highly unattractive to voters in the short term: a capital gains tax and raising the age of eligibility for the pension. Read the rest of this entry »
NZ News.Yahoo.com
I’m not really sure why I’m telling you this. It’s kinda personal really, but I’m a generous fellow and like to pass on wisdom that has been passed on to me.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote 
I rarely find myself in agreement with Garth McVicar or his ‘Sensible Sentencing’ Trust. I’m a liberal in the area of law and order and not a great believer in the value of lengthy prison sentences. But on the issue of Judge Jocelyn Munro’s remark to the 16-year-old who attacked and raped a 5-year-old girl, that he ‘looked smart’ when he appeared before her in the Youth Court, I find myself in near-agreement with Mr McVicar. I wasn’t, as he declared himself, ‘disgusted’ by the judge’s remark, but I thought it displayed extraordinary lack of understanding or empathy towards the feelings of the little girl’s parents.