One of the impacts of the consolidation of media into Newshub and NZME is that these media platforms now become insular in terms of the voices they promote.
If you look at the Paul Henry Show panel, it’s mainly other people who work at Newshub. The same goes for NZME. Here, Chris Shultz desperately attempts to breath life into an old venture they’ve launched with NZ on Air money ). The interview is with Jeremy Welles (part of the NZME family) and his Mike Hosking puppet show. Shultz pretends it’s new..
The Hauraki host has unveiled a new-look puppet for his WatchMe show Like Mike, a parody that features Wells impersonating the Newstalk ZB and Seven Sharp host with a series of Hosking-style witticisms and cliches.
…truth is the thing has been around for months, but maybe the venture isn’t rating very well so needs some extra promotion.
What we end up with is platforms far less diverse and far more status quo. This is one of the ironies of mainstream media now rushing to be online. Anyone with a basic education left mainstream media years ago because of the braindead content they provide, leaving only the poor and those too frightened to use new technology to source their own content. Trying to get down, funky and rebellious seems ludicrous because no one looks to the stale old NZ Herald for that.
Public Broadcasting has an ethos and philosophy to it, giving large foreign owned corporates public money to provide low level wit seems like a sad joke.
I don’t know anyone dull enough to watch The Civilian. He’s funny when he writes, but goodness that last interview with Bob Jones was painful wasn’t it?
Mainstream media have polluted the public discourse in their traditional transmission points and now they are trying to do the same online.
You want alternative voices in the sports media but now the cross pollination has the same voices in most of the venues.
Having said that there’s something lovely about someone in the stable shitting on one of the other horses – Wells crapping on Hosking.
The sop story this morning is to make it all palsy-wally in the stable, and the Wells’ pieces all funsy and just having a good laugh. Put some sugar in kill the tartness.
With Hosking crapping on the whole country it’s not sugar that’s needed.
It has to be this way because the entire narrative developed by corporations and promoted by them over many decades (in some cases centuries) throughout most of the world is destructive bollocks.
It is only by keeping the general public uninformed/misinformed and consuming crap that fat salaries can be paid to executives and dividends can be paid to shareholders
Since the government is a deeply in bed with corporations (basically acting as their agents), it follows that everything will get worse (be made worse) until the system implodes.
In the meantime, anyone with a brain that still functions normally ( i.e. can think for themselves) can only disengage from the insanity and look upon the victims in bemusement and horror.
The saddest aspect, of course, is that the corporations who are now running the show are in the process of rendering the Earth -once bountiful with all kinds of diverse biological life and having massive cultural diversity – into a toxic, mono-cultural mess, and ultimately into a dead* planet.
*bacteria, jelly fish, and insects etc. will probably persist after corporations have rendered the Earth uninhabitable for most vertebrate species (including humans).
There is a place for mainstream news waterhole that a wide swathe of the public trusts to be objective and provide the most salient news of the day in a concise format. It’s something that a healthy society needs but unfortunately, as you point out, the present waterhole has been polluted to the point where it is undrinkable any more.
The only solution is a advert free well funded independent public television station, (and Radio New Zealand to remove the creeping National Party cronyism in its midst).
It would be good if you could ever watch the like Mike segment, have tried 5 times and after a minute of spinning circles I gave up – and I am on UFB. Am not someone with a short attention span but the feeling that their system is sending out via dial up speeds means that I am not going back for a look.
This week, purely by chance, I tuned into Radio Sport and caught the Farming Show 12- 1pm.
It does not treat farming and the agriculture sector as deities to be worshipped and never criticized.
Jamie McKay can be quite scathing of the industry at times and a few days ago I heard him say he was going to talk to a guest who was a “National sycophant and redneck”.
He might have been just joking, but you would certainly never hear this on Rural News during the Midday Report on National Radio where they routinely feature farming industry people whingeing about how their profits are curtailed because they have to comply with those damned environmental protection laws. (Oh what an injustice it is!)
I remember some years ago when many farmers committed suicide but the saddest thing of all is, one of those farmers was one of our neighbours and he always helped locals out and vice versa. Now, in 2016, its like a repeat situation but I hope the end result won’t be another period of farmer suicides.
Here’s what I’d like to have happen re farmers and farming. I’d like to see a nation wide rolling farmer strike. No food at all. No wine, no meat, no grains, no wool, no chickens, no wowsie, wonder-nibbles of an evening around the indoor, outdoor flow dahlings. And since farming is our foreign exchange earner therefore they , the farmer, have a down-stream industry dependant on farmer endeavours? Bring them out on strike also.
Would that fuck things up or what?
National court farmers by using logical fallacies then ensnare them in debt to foreign banks who work them to death. Literally. While all you fancy city folk tut tut about the beastly farmer daring to live a life. You city people are almost as fucked in the head as farmers. You’re still too dumb to see the reality of the situation. Ask yourselves? I dare you. Ask yourselves, why is it that National can mince about in Britomart with their Calvin Cliens scrunching up their freshly waxed nut sacks, while the stringy trophy blond teeters on her Jimmy Choos, while the farmer rides about some rain soaked , muddy shithole in the far reaches of Southland on a quad bike watching his/her lambs die of the cold knowing that each death is a debt imbedded in death for him/her. I.e. Mortgage.
Why do you think National cup farmer balls while Labour completely ignores the farmer world entirely? C’mon? You can’t all be this fucking stupid surely?
Farmers ! You’re being swindled by National. They’re lying to you. They’re setting you up and they’re laughing all the way to the banks with your money… thank you very much.
Labour? What a pack of fuckers. I actually think Labour are a bigger pack of .. well , I was going to use a short, sharp four letter word for Labour but I fear Scarlett Mod would have a conniption so use your imagination for that one.
Labour are the most abhorrent traitors of all. At least National make no pretence at being lazy, greedy, deviant and deceitful scum.
Labour pretend to be all ” Ooooh ! I say ! Look at us ? We’re all Michael Joseph Savage ! Are we not for the People and Everything?
Well, they’re not. Labour are for themselves. They’re worse than National. They’re liars and they manipulate our hearts and minds by pretending they’re different when they’re not. If Labour were true to their intent? They’d be flat out after Farmer money and welding farmers to their down-stream dependants and they don’t. So fuck Labour! Fuck National but fuck Labour more.
As far as this writer’s concerned, National, Labour and sundry others have consigned this country to the vile and vicious pits of financialised warfare. In short? Their determination to bravely weather past-lies nor champion the truth has led us to despair. Therefore, fuck you all.
Here’s a little story for you. I went to primary school with a small, round, fat little girl . She was clumsy and giggly and always wore pink. She was a little pink kid in polished black shoes. Her dad was a bit pink also. He had red cheeks and wore a woollen cap and always said Gidday and followed that up with a giggle.
When Pig Muldoon and his scum were hatching plans , farmer returns took a dive, how coincidental, and as the weather went bleak, the Farmer, who loved his pink little kid, shot himself in the chest with shitty little .22 . He didn’t quite die there and then so he drowned himself in the house water tank.
You city people? You have no idea.
You country people ? You have no idea either.
You political people ? You know. You know, you fucking liars.
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