MEDIAWATCH: Stuff Middle Class docudrama winning is a sad indictment of journalistic standards in NZ
What an appalling journalistic decision to award Stuff’s Middle Class Docudrama ‘Fire and Fury‘ with best Documentary at the Voyager Media Awards this year.
Fire and Fury had genuine journalistic issues that they utterly avoided because of tribal justifications that glossed over major criticisms of their coverage.
Fire and Fury told the middle class narrative that their middle class readers wanted (and pay for).
It’s similar to the appalling Mister Organ where David Farrier unleashed all the journalistic integrity of your average feeding frenzy school of piranha, yet was lauded by the Twitter precious.
David doorstops family members of Organ for Christ’s sakes! He turns up at their door at night with cameras and tape running without their permission!
The only time you doorstop someone as a journalist is to catch a politician who has been involved in a scandal and is refusing interviews, a priest accused of child abuse who is refusing interviews and corrupt police who are refusing interviews, you don’t doorstop people for your personal documentary where you are attempting to slag their family member!
How is that level of gutter journalism acceptable for a documentary that ultimately is little more than a $750 000 state funded vendetta?
Likewise this awful Fire and Fury docudrama!
Before I kick off on Fire and Fury, shout out to the nights true winners, John Campbell and Moana Maniapoto
Both have generated thoughtful and intelligent critiques of our system and provided light rather than generate heat.
We need more broadcasters like them!
The appalling decision by the Media Council to whitewash Stuffs Fire and Fury docudrama last year is a disgraceful abuse of process and a slap in the face of actual journalism.
I agree with the Media Council that the makers of Stuff’s middle class docudrama ‘Fire + Fury’, didn’t have an obligation to interview the various fear grifters and bad faith extremists to give ‘balance’, but where the Media Council are totally wrong is in terms of the blinkered coverage of the protest itself by the docudrama!
Were there bad faith actors manipulating people’s fears and anger?
Of course there were!
But where is the focus on Mallard’s behaviour that whipped this up to the violence it eventually erupted into?
We escalated this because we got scared, journalists like the ones that made Stuff’s docudrama were personally frightened. The focus is only on those voices on the right who whipped this up but NOT on Trevor Mallard who escalated it!
THAT’S WHERE THE LACK OF BALANCE IS!
Of course Fire + Fury shouldn’t platform these lunatics, but you can’t focus only on their contribution while ignoring the ferociously stupid blunders of Mallard!!!!
On the Thursday after the Wednesday attempt to push into Parliament, the movement had fractured and collapsed because of massive infighting between the leaders. AT THE VERY MOMENT THE PROTEST WAS FADING Mallard threw a temper tantrum and ordered the cops in while inadvertently streaming a live 10 hour recruitment video to the entire fucking country!
When that blows up and brings every angry lonely frustrated person with pain to Parliament, Mallard then turns on the sprinklers and plays loud music!
We wound those people up for 3 weeks and then screamed ‘Nazi’ when they finally react?
This is why Fire + Fury should have been sanctioned by the Media Council, not because they didn’t interview these fringe fear grifters, but because they refused to balance the docudrama with any focus of accountability on Mallard’s response and tactical failures!
What has been the impact of Fire + Fury?
On one hand it has exposed the attempts by Qanon antivax lunatics to infiltrate our local democracy (which saw barely a dozen of them elected so it’s questionable how much of an actual threat they posed in the first place) but on the other hand it led to knee jerk reactions like the arrest of the CounterSpin Due who are now turning their prosecution into a show trial that will dangerously recruit more people!
Fire + Fury is guilty of imbalance, not because they refused to platform these fear grifters and crypto-fascists, but because they utterly refused to look at the contributing factors that led to the violence at the Dumb Lives Matter Parliament Lawn protests.
Fire + Fury lets our side off the hook for radicalising this to where we are now and if we are blinding ourselves to how we contributed to theism then any draconian crackdown is acceptable because they are 100% to blame.
If middle class virtue signalling is journalism now, we are in real trouble.
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It’s entirely fitting that this state funded circle jerk propaganda piece wins doco of the year.
And all that it implies for New Zealand journalism.
Good decision.
Indeed. How would anyone know that certain people are such terrible villains if they’re not even interviewed?
The local press is now dominated by absolute monopolies. There used to be competing metropolitan dailies in every area. Why did the regulators allow Murdoch, Packer, Fairfax and O’Reilly to leave every city with only one newspaper?
Why did regulators allow only two companies to own all of the network stations in all 16 TV markets? Why were the local affiliate stations all denied licences, ensuring that local news bulletins would cease to exist? Why do none of the R.N.Z. local stations still exist?
The only way to know what is actually going on is to read the foreign press.
Ouch!
Nicely put.
Did anyone watch it, out outside of the usual circle-jerk set?
And just to hand – stuff found to have run a biased story on the safety of puberty blockers in the pursuit of gender woo utopia.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/about-stuff/complaints-and-corrections/300888684/nz-media-council-finds-stuff-story-about-puberty-blockers-unbalanced
“ A majority of the NZ Media Council has found a Stuff story titled “Puberty blockers still considered safe and reversible, health ministry says” was unbalanced.
Two council members dissented.
The story was prompted by changes to wording on the Ministry of Health website about the use of puberty blockers. The story quoted a Ministry statement responding to claims from anti-trans and conservative groups that the changed wording meant the Ministry had altered its position. These groups were not named.
The story also quoted a spokesperson from Gender Minorities Aotearoa, who said puberty blockers had been safely used for decades.”
Stuff of course is unapologetic about its misinformation.
What a bunch of biased, woke wankers trying to justify their shite article by claiming misinformation yet again.
I’m a fully grown man who would struggle to get testosterone replacement therapy in this country because of the so-called dangers which by-the-way, are exaggerated through basing that decision on the health problems experienced by people taking super-human doses.
A fully grown consenting person who would take the risk can’t get that treatment yet, I could take my confused kid into a doctor and get them put on hormone blockers when we have no real long-term evidence of safety.
This country is fast turning into a shit-hole.
Unfortunately most commercial scribes are too busy keeping their jobs, and competing with each other, and showing off to each other, to be bothering about truth, let alone any sort of indepth analysis. This is one of the reasons why we don’t read or watch them any more.
Misrepresenting this massively dislocating Parliamentary protest may be a simple lack of integrity or of talent, or a shameful attempt to rewrite history, or pandering to the craven politicians hiding in the Beehive, who knows. But Ardern misleading, and saying that the IPCA inquiry would cover the behaviour of the occupants of the Beehive when we all knew damn well that it wouldn’t, was surely the first clue as to how things were going to pan out, and how fickle they all assume the voters and sometime readers and watchers to be. We saw exactly this same blatantly dishonest scenario regarding the events at Albert Park, 25/3/23, when the politicians and journos all warbled from the same unrealistic comic book.
Excising the role of that grubby little vermin Mallard in escalating the Parliamentary protest, has to be seen as another undermining of the freedom of speech and freedom of expression essential to democracy but an anathema to would-be power brokers and villains. Mallard’s not worth bothering about, but what further infringements to our sovereignty we cede to the UNO, most certainly is, which is why we must watch the dodgy buggers in the Beehive like hawks, because we can no longer rely on the MSM to do so.
“How is that level of gutter journalism [door stopping] acceptable for a documentary that ultimately is little more than a $750 000 state funded vendetta?”
Yet you happily hosted a door stopping ambush journalist on this site for several years, I refer to Bryan Bruce who attempted the same in his hit job on David Bain, a documentary presumably also the recipient of public funding. i.
I have to register my disappointment, Martyn, at your endorsement of Paula Penfold’s decision not to interview the “fear grifters” for her “Fire & Fury” documentary.
In my view, if you make your whole story about “fear grifters” – and then interview none – you have failed in your duty as a journalist.
Getting a response from people you have put at the heart of a story used to be one of the core principles of responsible journalism.
I do, however, agree with you in respect of Mallard’s role in the whole event. It’s downplaying was equally reprehensible.