TDB Political & Media Awards 2018 Part 3

Let’s wrap this up already – it’s almost Christmas and this trilogy is dragging on like the Lord of the bloody Rings, but it’s not a total flop like Mortal Engines. God, that movie is dreadful isn’t it? When the Weta Digital special effects department can’t paper over the crap plot you know you are fucked. Who thought a movie about cities on wheels was a starter for 10? It’s as much a hot mess as the Golden Compass yet losing more money.

I digress.

This was part 1, this was is Part 2, here is the final in the trilogy…

The Spinoff worst public broadcasting Award 2018

We. Will. Not. Smile! That’s what the heteronormative patriarchy wants!

Oh dear…

Spinoff TV loses nearly 90 per cent of audience after ‘graveyard’ slot shift

The Spinoff has lost nearly 90 per cent of its audience after moving to Friday’s 10.45pm “graveyard slot” on Three.

The quirky current affairs show debuted in its new slot on Friday but its audience did not follow, with its target audience plummeted from 37,000 to a meagre 4000.

The show, which was publicly funded by New Zealand on Air to the tune of $700,000, previously held Friday’s prime 9.45pm slot which has traditionally been home to comedy shows like Funny Girls and Jono and Ben.

It was pushed back after losing nearly half its viewership just three weeks in, when its target audience (viewers aged 25-54) dropped from 73,000 to just 35,000. It has been replaced with low-budget clip show Fail Army.

…apparently Spinoff being hot with woke twitter was enough of a reason for NZ on Air to shit gold bullion straight into Toby Manhire’s mouth, but that wasn’t the most expensive blunder this year, Alison Mau’s Suffrage 2018 ‘What Women Want’ received $200 000 and to date has had 2 428 views,  which at $80 a viewer seems a tad expensive.  The problem was most creators of content in NZ seem to think recording something and then dumping it on line was a ‘social media strategy’, when it simply was not. Could we please get some media that actually engages people rather than further alienates them, we’ve got the Green Party for that. Public Broadcasting needs to bring people together, not disperse them even further – crazy idea I know.

 

 

Worst Political fuck up 2018 – Meth testing State houses

Let me see if I can get this completely straight.

$120 million needlessly pissed against the wall on decontamination that was never a threat.

2400 state tenants thrown onto the streets at the height of a housing and homelessness crisis.

The demonisation of state tenants by National to sell state housing privatisation.

The mainstream media gleefully bashing dirty filthy beneficiaries to sell newspapers.

The fact state tenants had to have all their possessions destroyed because of the so called ‘contamination’.

Tens of thousands of dollars in debt HNZ forced upon state tenants in the flawed Tenancy Tribunal and the open question of how many children were stolen from state tenants by state services because of meth hysteria.

All of that and yet NO ONE was held to account despite Housing NZ being told years ago that they were misapplying their own policy.

How the flying fuck can $120 million be wasted and thousands of lives made homeless  in the middle of  a housing crisis and NO ONE be held accountable? It’s like turning up at the Nuremberg Trials and being told, ‘Oh, hey everyone, so we’ve made a bit of a captains call here and decided to hold no one to account. Soz, not soz.”

 

 

Best Burn 2018 – Winston  Peters

 

Best Māori MP – Willie Jackson

Behind every Māori situation inside the Government, there was Willie Jackson holding things together. Māori helped elect this Government and Willie was a huge part in getting that Party vote in for Labour, so far Grant Robertson has given him sweet bugger all to show Māori for that level of trust. He’s one of the few who can front foot it in the media and he should be the prime candidate to replace Kelvin as Deputy if Kelvin steps aside. The best media moment this year came when Willie was allowed to fight Judith Collins directly on The AM Show, they have the very capable and respectable Michael Wood doing it now, but when Willie appeared it was a joy watching Judith appear frightened for once.  She looked like Trump in a library.

 

 

Clare Curran memorial coffee date for best smokescreen 2018 – NZDF

So, the man who allegedly oversaw a war crime cover up steps down and you would imagine that the NZ media would finally stop with their Clare Curran coffee date fetish and be forced to examine and question civilian deaths the NZDF covered up.

Did they do that?

No way.

The media spent more time on Curran’s coffee date with Carol Hirshfeld than a war crime, hell, the media spent more time on Curran than the issue of Middlemore Hospital rotting…

 

… this is insanity. Our fourth estate have completely failed us. The only way this war crime gets covered now is if it appears on Married At First Sight and admits cheating while going on a coffee date with Clare Curran!!!

 

 

Best Journalist – Kirsty Johnston

Sometimes a journalist becomes something more than  someone who holds the powerful to account, they become a healer, counsellor, bastion and priest. Kirsty’s work this year on the jaw dropping ineptitude of rape case progression has been soul destroying to read, and simply unimaginable to cover. The fury, anger and exhaustion of covering an issue like this alongside the exit point it creates in so many other survivors and victims means Kirsty must wade through the worst crimes men commit. It would be impossible to look at half the population the same ever again. A career highlight for her this year must surly be the release of Ashley Peacock whom she championed for years. Her work is gruelling and the amount of shit she must endure is cruel. We are a better society for her  tenacity and dedication.

 

 

Best Columnist 2018 – Rachel Stewart 

Right Wing Hate Monster and lamb strangler, Damien Grant’s take on Rachel Stewart 

This was a weird year. Rachel Stewart is one of this country’s most important political and environmental voices. Her relentless courage in standing up to the corporate farming lobby and their pollution has made her the most powerful enemies, seen her threatened with rape and even had some arsehole leave a severed horses penis in her letterbox as a threat, yet none of that prepared her for the fury of the woke when she challenged Trans militancy and aggression online and in a column. She ended up looking like a bacon and bourbon vendor at Mecca, the vitriol and hate her work inspired was jaw dropping in its maliciousness and cruel in its spite, yet through it all Rachel refused to be frightened. In a day and age where woke social media pile ons self censor more then Fox News at an evolution conference, Rachel has reminded us all what real columnists need beyond word craft, they need courage.

 

 

The Kim Dotcom ‘I told you so Award’ 2018 

Well, well, well – Kim Dotcom was right – here is the mass surveillance…

New oversight report critical of spies and highlights legal ‘gap’ in GCSB practices
Our spies have been pushing the boundaries of a new law meant to provide greater detail and oversight, according to their oversight body.

Concerns include the possibility the powerful electronic spying agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, is scooping up information including that which belongs to New Zealanders without the proper legal authorisation.

Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Cheryl Gwyn issued a report today harshly critical in many regards as to how the GCSB and NZ Security Intelligence Service are meeting the demands of the Intelligence and Security Act.

…and when the GCSB and SIS weren’t avoiding scrutiny, it turned out that every State Agency in the country were spying on everyone for everything.

The New Zealand State has managed to make the East German Stasi look like that uninterested person you follow on Twitter whom you keep liking and retweeting but who refuses to follow you or like your tweets.

Kim Dotcom has become that ex-boyfriend that New Zealand broke up with. The break up was really nasty and lots of mean things said and Kim made a whole lot of criticisms about us that we totally denied at the time and yet everything he said has turned out to be true.

Which of course just makes us refuse to accept and acknowledge them even more.

While it seems churlish to boil down the truth of mass surveillance to a teenage relationship that has gone bitter, it’s probably the last possible metaphor for the sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind to grasp. If this fails, we’re just one martial law declaration under President Judith Collins away from 1984.

 

 

The Friends Don’t Let Friends Read The Stuff Comments Section Award for Self-Censorship 

Look, just save yourself the aggro and don’t read Mike Hosking. What is the point of slamming your brain in a door repeatedly? When was the last time he brought any genuine insight to any issue? He rages against bike lanes, children, speed limits, safety belts, reading, liberalism, gravity and basic facts in history. While we should always open ourselves up to differing opinions, there’s just a point where you have to accept someone is a dick.

Mike’s a dick.

 

 

Best Propaganda – Dairy Industry

The Dairy propaganda adverts on TV are hilarious. So terrified are Fonterra that the rest of the country is getting sick to death of them stealing and polluting our water, they are desperately pumping these farcical adverts out to try and distract Kiwis from the wholesale abuse of their industry.

Richie McCaw wanders around a Farm in the early morning and marvels at the pristine goodness of these human beings as if Jesus himself had personally popped down to the milking shed to milk a herd before feeding 5000 with a block of cheese.

Indeed the most recent advert actually goes as incredibly far as suggesting milk is some kind of miracle drug that can help paralysed teenagers walk again.

You have to see it to believe it…

…that’s right folks, Dairy doesn’t shit into our rivers or steal our water! They didn’t get National to privatise 49% of our state owned energy assets to create an irrigation slush fund worth $400million to convert as many square inches of NZ into intensified dairy farms! No, they create a miracle juice that helps the sick and needy! This is propaganda that would make Goebbels choke.

 

 

Worst Propaganda – Taxpayers Union

Jordan Williams and the Taxpayers Union are to the truth what a raw dogging Donald Trump is to diplomacy and STD prevention. These scumbags troll out bullshit with the same sort of unending pain and thin consistency of explosive diarrhoea. If you were in a  room with the Taxpayers Union,  Osama Bin Laden and Charlie Manson with a gun and two bullets, you’d shoot the Taxpayers Union twice, just to be sure they were dead.

 

 

Best Witch Hunt 2018

Cough.

Soooooooooooo.

(Crickets chirping).

How about that ‘paedophile ring’ then?

Anihera Black allegations: Police find no evidence of paedophile ring
There’s no evidence of a paedophile ring in Tauranga and the woman who made the allegation – and serious claims against her dead husband – is refusing to speak.

Detective Inspector Mark Loper said police had spent weeks investigating claims by Anihera Zhou Black that her former husband Te Awanuiārangi Black was a member of a Tauranga paedophile ring.

Loper said: “Police have been contacted by one person since the allegations were made.”

…plenty of media attention for the allegation and accusation, not so much attention on the no evidence part.

I started feeling deeply uneasy about this Black case the moment I read this…

Back in the Tauranga hotel, Zhou Black is weeping as she is asked by Stuffto provide evidence for each of the eight names she has provided Stuff alleged to be part of a paedophile ring.

Tiaki-Turi joins the interview by phone. She acts as Zhou Black’s spiritual adviser or matakite – someone considered to possess a supernatural ability to see visions of the future.

Zhou Black is asked why an academic appears on her child-sex ring list.

“He’s a very wealthy man … He knew Awa through that time. I don’t know how long,” she says.

No victim had identified the academic.

“Got anything to add, sis?” Zhou Black asks Tiaki-Turi.

“Um, it’s just a connection that he has with a lot of the people associated to Awa,” Tiaki-Turi offers.

“He’s more a person of interest,” Zhou Black adds.

“He was my Facebook friend up until three days ago and then he has blocked me.”

…a Facebook blocking is evidence of being a member of a Paedophile ring???

Is anyone else reading this?

I had figuratively compared what was going on in this case to the Salam Witch trials of the late 1600s because that was the last time we allowed allegation to be the evidential threshold, but it’s actually literal here when you consider the role of a person who claims to have supernatural powers being the accuser.

I’m sorry, but someone with psychic powers using those powers to claim insight to crimes?

Sexual assault is a blight on our culture and the lack of justice around the many who suffer it is an obscenity but people claiming magical powers to hunt down the guilty can’t be the solution to that problem can it?

 

Issue of the Year – Climate Change 

The fucking planet is melting, it’s far worse than we ever knew and it already poses a threat to our collective existence yet the triviality of micro-aggression policing that seems to dominate the focus of most media seems terribly farcical at times. I feel that we are on the Titanic speeding towards the iceberg while the argument is about something someone posted on fucking twitter. Kill me now God.

.

 

 

So that’s it. That’s the year. Somehow we managed to hate each other with more passion than the actual enemies of democracy.

For me the defining line of politics, class and power is not defined by being straight, gay, bi, trans, white, black, brown, yellow, Christian, Male, Female, non-binary, Muslim, Atheist, Buddhist or Hindu.

It is defined between the 1% and their 9% enablers who hold all the wealth vs the 90% of the rest of us who don’t. Class when defined like this is the ultimate solidarity and the means to a democratic majority.

In late stage neoliberal capitalism with a looming environmental crisis which poses a literal existential threat to our species, the sooner we can find the common cause of us all being slaves under a neoliberal structure that is killing us and the biosphere, the sooner we can keep the democratic majority to change that system so true agency can be shared by everyone, not just the privileged few.

The last word for 2018 is to that hate monster of the right, Damien Grant, who sums up my existential angst far better than I ever could…