MEDIAWATCH: Facebook scam & Stuff’s hysteria highlights Public Interest Journalism Fund failure

I think this is what passes as satire at Stuff…

Here’s how your tax dollars are being ‘hosed away’

I’m shocked, shocked to be the bearer of explosive revelations about the wasteful spending of your tax dollars.

How wasteful? Pointless hosing away of public money on a scale that puts John Key’s flags in the shade and gives Jacinda Ardern’s footbridge a run for its money, that’s how wasteful.

But first, have you heard the news about the news? The news that the Government is paying journalists millions of dollars for their silence, or preferably for their fawning obsequiousness. Oh, it’s all over the Internet, so it must be true. Piles of cash are being literally shovelled into the wheelbarrows of self-serving hacks in a direct quid pro quo for them only writing soft-soap puff pieces about the prime minister. It’s a story that no freedom-loving Kiwi can afford to miss.

Haven’t heard this yet? Don’t worry, you will. This story is coming your way and, like Delta or a reboot of Celebrity Treasure Island that nobody asked for, it will find you. It will pop up in your Facebook feed. You will hear it on the shop floor. By the watercooler. Over the teacups. “Journalists being bought off, the iron fist of the state crushing freedom of expression, it’s such a dreadful to-do don’t you think? More tea, Vicar?”

…the Right have attempted to paint this up as Labour Party stooges pretending to be journalists writing news to appease Comrade Jacinda which is disgraceful bullshit, but equally the corporate mainstream media alongside NZ on Air can’t pretend this is actual journalism either!

Paying media to cover local journalism is what the fucking media should be doing in the first place and the diversity requirements are just woke box ticking for public funding requirements.

This is not journalism, it’s social engineering for agreed woke Wellington middle class virtue signals.

By playing to middle class virtue signals, the Government avoid the heavy lifting to rebuild the shattered free market monstrosity they have now!

What the Government should be doing is reforming the market by hitting Facebook and Google up for a Journalism tax which is funded to accredited media for them to decide the journalistic focus, not targeted niche woke knee jerks or local journalism which should be their existing obligation.

Instead of hard balling Facebook like France has done, we get this…

Facebook ‘support’ for NZ media won’t include paying for content

Meta, formerly Facebook, has said it won’t be paying New Zealand news publishers for their content and has instead offered to run training programmes to “support” the local media industry.

…they are getting away with this because the Broadcasting Minister is hopeless and thinks paying corporate media for diversity will miraculously solve Google & Facebook taking advertising revenue.

Re-create the market properly by taxing Facebook and Google for journalism that the big players use while obligating public service broadcasters to meet the needs of diversity.

Freed of actually having to reform the media market, NZ on Air isn’t funding journalism, it’s funding woke social engineering.

The echo chamber of elite opinion that has Newsroom sharing content with RNZ, sharing content with the Spin-off, sharing content with Stuff, sharing content with Newshub – the same echo chamber repeating the same values.

Spin-off is nothing more than a social engineering Government propaganda platform for middle class millennials masquerading as ‘journalism’.

The SpinOff is Wellington’s megaphone in Auckland and its ‘journalism’ consisted of framing a Labour Party Staffer for rape from someone who doctored evidence.

This grotesque wound of ‘journalism’ didn’t stop SpinOff drowning in taxpayer dollars because the way NZ on Air works means a select few elite opinion platforms get all the cash to ensure their elite opinion circle jerk shuts out all else.

This woke cavalcade of poorly viewed taxpayer funded content created with all the same intellectual rigor of your average suburban Wellington mommy blogger trigger thresholds has produced an editorial team who are in a daily struggle session to prove who hates heteronormative white cis males the most.

$6million dollars so white people can feel guilty and virtue signaling their therapy learnings just seems so fucking Wellington, am I right?

Apparently Stuff could take $300k for a ‘cultural competency course’ which obviously didn’t cover goading Martin Devlin into a suicide.

The Right mistake all of this as funding Labour Party propaganda when in fact it’s socially engineered extreme identity politics that is winning so that Labour don’t have to actually reform the broken media market.

Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.