MEDIAWATCH: The problem with Purity of Identity as a media lens in NZ newsrooms

I don’t even know what to say anymore.

With 60% of our newsrooms now female, the lens of woke identity seems to be all that matters.

Today’s latest example however takes that lens of woke identity and has instead manufactured our first ‘Purity of Identity’ journalism.

I’ve argued and have used example after example of how the woke newsrooms covered Carmel Sepuloni’s rise as Deputy.

I’ve noted how every single one of them glossed over her appalling record as Minister for Welfare to instead sing praises of her win from purely an identity perspective.

Read The Spinoff, Stuffs and NZ Heralds review of her appointment and it’s all identity politics soaked ‘you go girl’ feminism that champions her being the first Pacific Island Deputy.

There is no reflection whatsoever on her time as Minister presiding over the very weak and vulnerable that those woke newsrooms profess to care about, because when we do that, the gloss strips away very quickly.

Now let me be clear, I love our Pacific Community, and they should celebrate a Pacific Island appointee after the decades and decades of loyalty they’ve shown the Labour Party, but by only viewing her appointment through the middle class identity politics lens, The Spinoff, Stuff and NZ Herald have miss the real story an do their readers a terrible disservice.

For the woke, diversity and representation are the only currency, meritocracy is a heteronormative white male privilege and nothing matters more than identity.

Which is deeply problematic because a critical analysis of Carmel Sepuloni’s time as Social Welfare Minister highlights how shallow The Spinoff, Stuff and NZ Heralds ‘journalism’ is.

The Minister refused to implement any single one of the 42 key recommendations from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group…

Govt yet to fully implement a single key WEAG recommendation nearly three years on: new research

How is it in a column that is so focused on her family that Stuff completely miss this out…

Mother of Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni admits $100K benefit fraud

The mother of Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni and her partner have admitted 23 benefit fraud charges totalling nearly $100,000.

Beverley Anne Sepuloni and partner Michael Charles Rangi entered guilty pleas to the charges, committed over more than a decade until last year, when they appeared before Judge Allan Roberts in the New Plymouth District Court today.

…Stuff miss it out because “Purity of Identity” journalism demands that not only do you put Identity above all, you expunge that Identity of any stereotype that can be used negatively against the person being profiled.

So Carmel’s mother being bashed by MSD for their bullshit relationship Fraud trap is completely ignored by the woke as that could be construed as a negative stereotype when it reality it actually gives real insight into Carmel’s reluctance to do anything meaningful on welfare reform!

Firstly, Carmel’s mother should never have been humiliated by this prosecution in the first place because it is spiteful and malicious to use relationships as a welfare trap to make money off beneficiaries.

It is obscene!

Secondly, it reeks of a MSD hit job. What better way to undermine a new welfare Minister than busting their mum for fraud?

Thirdly, many critics of Carmel point to her Mum getting set up for Fraud as a reason she has been so hands off on dumping the relationship fraud trap MSD rely on to make money off.

But none of that is even discussed by Stuff.

To hide Carmel’s poor results as Minister to cheerlead for her identity is one thing, but to censor parts of her history as to not trigger offence which actually provide enormous insight into why Welfare reform has been so stubbornly slow is not Journalism, it’s a Wellington Mommy Blogger vegan knitting circle using wool donated by transitioning sheep.

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