Fake News, Heather Du Plessis-Allan and 30 New Zealand editors letter to the Commerce Commission
There’s still a lot of noise about Fake News. Mainstream media pundits have rushed to hoist up fake news on Facebook as evidence that we need them and their ‘factualness’.
I think a lot of that noise is the elitist howl of fury from a mainstream media who stopped being a legitimate Fourth Estate a long time ago.
Let’s take this week of real news shall we?
On the NZ Herald there was breathless news that Mike Hosking uses a vacuum cleaner to clean his studio with and that some of his colleagues played a prank on him by hiding the aforementioned vacuum cleaner.
What jokes! What japes! What the fuck?
Mike fucking Hosking vacuum cleaning his work space is news is it? That’s ‘real’ news is it?
What about this headline from yesterday, “Nicky Watson ‘deeply regrets’ her breast implants and is getting them removed” – is that fake news?
Stuff.co.nz is far worse. They have an awful section called ‘Stuff Nation’ where the worst human beings in the world manage to take their sociopathic comments into a fully fledged 25000 word monstrosity that the Stuff Editors just shit out with all the fact checking quality control of a drunk soiling themselves in public.
On it’s own, that’s fine, but of late, Stuff have been creeping up these unfiltered brainfarts into the news section of their webpage WITHOUT warning readers that it’s not a news story at all, it’s just some local crazy filling Stuff’s never ending hunger for new content.
That’s not fake news I suppose?
Look at the news today that Heather Du Plessis-Allan was ‘quitting’ TV. The story on stuff is almost the exact same as the story from the Herald – which is really weird right? What are the chances that both news stories would be a weakly timid examination of Du Plessis-Allan’s role in one of the worst executed Current Affairs Show ever hosted in NZ? Both pieces suggest she ‘quit’ when quite frankly I can’t see where the hell she would have worked in with whatever else they are cooking up because let’s all be honest, it was a fucking stupid decision to kill off Campbell Live and place this turd sandwich into our homes weeknights at 7pm in the first place!
No examination of what a mistake that was, no examination on the role of the Fourth Estate and what killing off Campbell Live for political reasons has done to our Democracy, no examination of why TV is failing us with quality current affairs that brings the public to the debate, no examination of how the lack of that allows things like Brexit and Trump winning, no examination other than Heather will love to be with her family and one reporter even asked if she was going to have babies which seems wildly sexist.
Which brings me to this hilarious piece of satire by 30 of our Editors begging the Commerce Commission to stop actually regulating our media landscape.
Look, let’s be honest, we were all shocked when it turned out that the Commerce Commission was actually going to do its job of regulating our economy and ruled against the mega merger of NZ Herald and Fairfax. We were even more shocked when the Commerce Commission cited the threat a Newspaper Monopoly would have on our Democracy as one of their main concerns.
We were all like, “Who is this Commerce Commission, and can they run the rest of the Government by any chance’?, so the letter by NZ Editors begging for their corporate overlords to be able to merge by claiming they honestly are representative of the people and allow diverse voices in to the debate couldn’t be funnier if they had asked The Civilian to write it.
A group of mainly rich white men demanding they are diverse, so n threat to diversity then.
You can’t make this shit up.
Who is the diverse voice at the Herald? Rachel Stewart is the only reason I read the Herald opinion section for. The Herald on Sunday was supposed to have a right wing and left wing opinion, but after securing Rodney bloody Hide, they never bother getting regular left wing opinion.
The opinion allowed in the NZ Newspaper media are about as diverse as your average Trump rally.
I think the Commerce Commission made their decision actually as news consumers. You can not have read the newspapers online over the last 2 years and not noticed a horrific decline in what is actual news. These monoliths are after clicks now, and they don’t care what it takes to get those clicks. Commerce Commission members would have seen the appalling decline in actual news and decided a merger creating a Monopoly would be even worse than the current state.
Signing letters from a membership that actually backs up how little diversity there really is seems to miss the mark somewhat.
The Daily Blog is live streaming this years Media Ownership report on Friday, it is a must see for those trying to decipher how media ownership is choking off our democracy.
Its not the presenters I dislike, it is the amount of shit they are required to talk that is unappealing
Yep, it’s a desolate wasteland in our so-called media:
One headline caught my eye however, but not for the reasons the Herald want their readers to believe.
26/11/16 – “First home buyers in? Auction clearances down” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11755007
It’s not written as such but in reality it goes like this; As Auckland’s Ponzi scheme begins to stall the Herald are now advertising to first home buyers to take the leap and go into 2 lifetimes worth of debt. Why, well a distinct lack of buyers and confidence is threatening the very existence of property bubble and suckers are badly needed to fill the void that greed inc, namely investors vacated, for whatever reason.
I can confirm accurately that in this tempest of building fever and cranes dotting the skyline, some construction companies are teetering on the edge.
As crazy as this sounds it’s true. Because most of the construction is been encouraged by misinformation from our government as well as greed, the result is it is sapping all resources to do the job, (a trend worldwide with cheap money and greed awash). Additionally and again because greed, suppliers are upping prices massively between the time buyers sign on the dotted line and the time the house is actually completed, now almost universally delayed by months.
Those stories of developers asking for more than originally agreed to is because they are getting burnt, badly. Agreed prices today do not equal costs at completion sometime next year or the year after.
Its stating the bloody obvious but our property market is in a very bad place and there is a very worrying storm brewing. There could be a collapse sometime between signing and taking possession. Do you want to take that risk?
But loyal as ever the Herald know it and also know, I wager, that the fate of their beloved National Party is linked to it. Hence recklessly encouraging those with the least money to get on board now!
Oh and Nicky Watson is going to get her breast implants removed. God our media is absolutely shit!
Spot on!!!
I read the so-called “open letter”…
What a load of self-serving drivel.
I suppose the irony of the above statement has completely escaped the 30 signatories to the “open letter”?!
The author of the “open letter” denies that “an NZME and Fairfax Media merger would result in a lessening of diverse editorial views”.
Those words followed the author lauding “a highly unusual show of unanimity” by 30 signatories.
No lessening of diverse editorial views then? Not with 30 editors all agreeing to sign one document?
Were there any dissenting views by NZME or Fairfax editors, and if so, will they be published?
Editors may know their editorial stuff. I suspect the Commerce Commission knows their commercial stuff.
But this is the bit that took my breath away;
Really? So newspaper editors are now making comment on business decisions that up to now have been the responsibility of the CEO and shareholders?
I find that a bit hard to swallow.
Especially when newspapers do not, as a rule, post news stories of their own commercial issues. Especially where mass redundancies have resulted.
Which begs the question; would those 30 signatories have signed an “open letter” opposing any mergers? If so, what would have been the consequences for their ongoing employment status?
Because I’ll bet anything that the contracts of each editors contains clauses that restrict disclosures which might be commercially sensitive or embarrassing to their own media companies.
The towering pachyderm in the room is the fact that you,Martyn,and John Campbell are the only two journalists in a population of 4-5 million who espouse any liberal values…if that is not supression I dont know what is…and why are you not allowed on national radio?
The architects of public opinion are revolting and engaged in revolting against their own narrow view of the world but in the wrong direction; working toward smaller dissenting views rather than greater, just think about how much national propaganda we are served up compared to opposition party views we get and the negative slant place on Them!
I just don’t bother with this fake, fabricated and manipulatitive news anymore – wish the rest of NZ would do the same. Let’s start with clean slate in 2017. Better broadcasting please!
I read the open letter. All I could think of was what a load of self-self, pious bollocks. All thirty of those people are so far out of touch with reality that LSD couldn’t give them a bigger ‘high’.