A manufactured feeding frenzy over Cunliffe’s Best Start distracts from inequality better than a manufactured flag debate does. The nonsense that Cunliffe misled anyone is just that, nonsense. Watching the speech live, I didn’t think there would be a double dipping of the $60 per week bonus and paid parental leave, indeed that was the first howling David Farrar made against the policy, that it would lead to double dipping, that it won’t means the mainstream media narrative is now that Cunliffe is a liar and somehow ‘tricky’.
When you compare this supposed ‘lie’ to the manner in which Key can blatantly speak falsehoods to a media who just shrug and accept it, the double standards start to appear enormous.
This is a manufactured feeding frenzy and it shows just how far right the mainstream media have drifted, let’s not forget Patrick Gower was the journalist who manufactured the so called leadership challenge that had Cunliffe punished when there was no such leadership challenge. With Espiner on Radio NZ, Henry on TV3 and Hosking on TVNZ, the hard white right rich male punditry view of NZ is now the new median point on any political discussion, the debate is held where hard right opinion is the norm and everything else is alien, it’s a resetting of the parameters of the discussion to favour the Government.
Normally this would be a source of sadness, but with the internet and social media to combat that bias, the mainstream media are simply making themselves less and less relevant by appointing more and more right wing opinion. This election will be fought online, the revolution will not be televised on Seven Sharp, the Paul Henry Show or heard on Radio NZ.
I know you said this was going to happen but I’ve been astonished by just how far the media is prepared to push this. This story was number one on stuff.co.nz yesterday and it was such a blatant distortion of the situation that all pretense at real journalism had clearly been abandoned.
Children are starving in this country and our journalists are doing the work of Nationals PR people – I don’t know how they sleep at night
Why would anyone bother with the MSM these days? There’s so much better coverage on the issues of the day elsewhere, here for example.
You can only glean so much from a sound bite and taken out of context, it can destroy you. No wonder politicians are so careful with words.
Dead right Martyn. Someone has deep enough pockets to pay for dirty tactics, in an attempt to discredit a challenger! The sordid American way it seems, is beginning to furtively creep into our political scene.
Since David Cunliffe announced part of Labour’s social policies, various media sources have virtually torn the Labour leader to shreds, with their biased, disparaging comments. This hasn’t been once or twice, but it’s ongoing every day. Just check out NZH and Fairfax, amongst others, for evidence of this fact!
The right have got the knives out alright, using mainstream media to issue misinformation on their behalf, slashing Cunliffe’s credibility at every opportunity available!
It’s got Key’s nasty, vindictive, grubby paws all over it!
I do so enjoy the paranoid conspiracy theories of leftists.
Even if this was true, (which it isn’t by the way), it makes it doubly important that people like Cunliffe are all over the issues they release policy on. His mistakes made him look amateurish. As a right winger I can see why this is pounced upon.
*pssst!* Gosman. Look behind you. A “leftist” is secretly conspiring.
How’s this for paranoid. Cunliffe had better be very, very careful. Double and triple careful. He must also check, a triple check and make sure his notes/papers do not leave his sight. And at all times watch his back. They’ll have him tripping up in public soon ala Julia Gillard. If he doesn’t do this more stuff ups will occur to make him look amateurish. He might think he hadn’t checked properly if errors occur but he probably had. Having friends amongst people who know how to manipulate spy, steal, hack and who have no conscience will be a big help to the Nats in this election. If I were Cunliffe I wouldn’t watch too much TV either. Subliminal messages and all that. It will allow JK to run the ‘clever’ punch line just at the right time. And the public will think he is soooo clever. Pretty paranoid huh?
I was at the Cunliffe’s state of the nation and a good chunk of the media who were there were acting like prats. Most were talking to their mates or other pointless distractions , over in Gowers world – that prig was walking getting in the way or barging into people. They weren’t there to cover the story – they were there to push their own narrative. Which is as Boomer says, is White, Male and Privileged.
Interesting that you ignore Campbell Live, its ok to be biased so long as your left wing?
And to call Espiner right wing is just nuts – he doesnt even vote! I suppose being as left wing as you are, even a moderate appears right wing. Pity really
Which can be compared with rabid right wingers seeing anything at all to the left of them as far left, so we are about equal then, eh?
Has anyone tried to keep a count of the number of times, John Key has uttered the words, far left?
John Key
Who is that?
Oh I forgot that is just another brain fade!
SDM – Campbell is not really “left” at all, he simply likes to present a little bit more of a balance, and some individual stories from people that suffer injustices of various kinds.
So him being a journalist, he is a bit of a bizarre mixture, being somewhat opportunistic to exploit emotive stories, but also still letting his heart speak at least a little.
And when you look at the whole media landscape and the staff and players in it, he is rather RARE, same as Wallace Chapman is amongst the mostly rather right leaning talk back hosts and journalists on Radio Live. Let us not look at ZB and other stations, it gets worse there.
Even Radio NZ is now rather right of centre, with their commenting and reporting. They cater almost exclusively to the listeners from the well to do middle to upper middle class backgrounds, most white, European and securely employed.
Television is the same, and the media is dominated by the private corporates, that is absolutely so in the print media area, in radio, and overall also for television. I fear the internet and online media services will also increasingly be dominated by commercially focused, advertising and right leaning players.
Soon we will have more pay-walls and access to anything of substance limited to those that can afford to pay monthly, yearly or item for item charged fees.
Espiner is more right than anything else, and the claim by many in the media, that they are “independent”, because they do not belong to any party, that is also BS. You do not need to be a party member to be biased!
Marc, Campbell is psycophantically left wing! Did you see his pathetic excuse for an interview with Len brown?
It seems to me that all left wing bloggers think the MSM is right wing and all the right wing bloggers think the MSM is left wing. Perhaps on balance they have it about correct.
Strange crew media in NZ these days, they have the maturity of kindergarten children and journalistic abilities of 5-6 year olds.
Financial and political journalists in NZ are non existent, all are basically cheerleaders for John Key and Planet Key.
National Policy for the next election “Greed is Good”.
What we have are the essential elements of totalitarian regime. The media takeover, theft of state assets, vast increases in spying budgets. Paul Henry’s cultivated ‘bad – boy’ persona is strikingly like that of the pre-war Mussolini. I guess we’ll still have Al Jazeera – most of the honest journos in NZ are working for them now. But increasingly I feel that NZ has taken a very dark path, and that civil disobedience or worse will be necessary to restore it.
The ‘manufactured Cunliffe feeding frenzy’ is exactly like the manufactured crisis in manufacturing, the manufactured increasing income…i.e. not happening! Cunliffe is slippery, and his behaviour over the past week or so proves it.
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