MEDIAWATCH: Alt Right Billionaire Jim Grenon lays out his demented culture war editorial vision

The horror of Alt Right Billionaire Jim Grenon taking over NZME inches closer and the dearest day in NZ Fourth Estate Journalism will be upon us.

I have argued constantly that Grenon represents and immense danger to NZ.

His alt-Right culture war malice, as evidenced in the alt-Right Hate blog, The Centrist, which he helped set up alongside his support for anti-vaxxers grifter Chantelle Baker all point towards another radicalised Billionaire want8ing to take overt the media.

He’s like Elon Musk but cheaper and Canadian.

Pundits have criticised my presentation of Grenon as a threat by countering that as a shareholder of NZME, Grenon wouldn’t risk a sudden culture war editorial stance for fear of an advertiser or reader boycott.

I disagree.

To gain his initial holding was as little as 9million dollars.

That’s chump change to a billionaire.

Grenon has now gained more shares from Troy Bowker and listen to what Troy has to say…

Media Insider: Outspoken NZME shareholder sells out of media company; Jim Grenon lifts stake to 13%

He believed Grenon would be a “major disruptor” to NZME once he joined the board as a director following the company’s annual shareholders‘ meeting on June 3.

“This will cause short- to medium-term pain to shareholders. I may well invest back into NZME at a much lower price later.”

…r-i-g-h-t.

So I’ve argued that Grenon would want a reader boycott and advertiser pull out to sink the share price so he can buy more to gain a majority holding and then he can print whatever the Christ he likes.

And let’s not pretend he isn’t after editorial control here, as NewsRoom points out…

NZME agitator wants Herald’s ‘political leaning’ measured, maybe by AI

But Grenon, who outlined his financial and editorial concerns about the Herald in two letters to the board in March and April, is clearly not letting his focus on the paper’s journalism fade as he prepares to join that board.

In information posted to the NZX website on Friday for shareholders before the meeting he outlines his business background in Canada, acknowledges he might not “on the surface … have a lot of directly relevant experience that will be helpful for NZME” and then returns to his editorial standards theme.

He said his involvement with the Centrist – which platforms fringe and alternative content on climate change, social and gender issues and the Treaty of Waitangi – had exposed him in detail to the Herald’s journalism.

“One of the things Centrist does is carefully follow what the other NZ news organisations are doing so I have had a thorough immersion into the journalism produced by NZME,” Grenon tells shareholders.

“I believe it is important for the Herald to be a broad church. To ensure it is on course it needs to be able to measure its articles for political leaning, overall. This is now much easier with AI. The same can be said about measuring the quality of the journalism.”

Grenon has been critical of the Herald and Stuff as long ago as during the pandemic, and the Centrist has said publicly that the Herald’s journalism problems were among the reasons for the site/newsletter’s launch.

“The NZ Herald also seems to sometimes accept, without questioning, what we see as blatantly misleading government narrative. This includes 3 Waters and the IRD high net worth project. The Herald, BusinessDesk and other major media sources in New Zealand, inspired us to launch NE and the Centrist.”

The right-tinged Free Speech Union has also publicly declared it first sparked Grenon’s interest in NZME by alerting him to its refusals to publish certain political advocacy advertisements.

Quite how Grenon would expect the Herald newsroom or the creation of an editorial advisory board that he promoted in his campaign to measure “political leaning” in its journalism is unclear. What is also unclear is whether he would expect the Herald to make that measurement of leaning public to readers and customers.

…Grenon is an alt-Right culture war extremist who makes MAGA look reasonable.

We are not comprehending how dangerous a move this is.

Look, NZME is already extremely right wing right, but even Mike Hosking and Heather Duplicity Allen acknowledge that 2 + 2 = 4.

In Alt-Right world, 2 + 2 can = anti vaccine, or climate denial or any crazy hateful anti- trans garbage.

Grenon is a threat to the fourth estate, he isn’t a champion for it and allowing a foreign culture war billionaire to take over our largest media platform is dangerous to our democracy.

No one else is saying this because everyone else is frightened.

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