With John Campbell leaving Radio NZ, can we now stop pretending RNZ are left wing?
With John Campbell leaving Radio NZ, can we now stop pretending RNZ are left wing?
National MPs have always called Radio NZ ‘Red Radio’ (although to be fair they also call the NZ Herald the communist manifesto), RNZ is ‘Red Radio’ the same way I’m a ‘Blue Blogger’.
Radio NZ banned me for life because I defamed John Key. They then defamed me by claiming I had an early copy if Hager’s Dirty Politics book, a claim the Police manipulated to include me in their illegal search of me.
This is the Radio station that consistently has right wing commentators who are themselves always embroiled in Dirty Politics and who consistently breach standards on air far more damning than mine and they never get banned.
This is a station that had Lizzie Marvelly’s top 5 hated men on Twitter, Sean Plunket, as a host for 14 years for Christ’s sake!
Radio NZ had to be shamed by Willie Jackson into acknowledging they had sidelined Māori content and countered that by just pronouncing Te Reo correctly. More shallow window dressing than Tino rangatiratanga.
Remember the shameful way RNZ lynched Metiria?
The only difference between RNZ and the rest of the media is that RNZ is educated and as such have a depth to their reporting as opposed to a left wing ideology. It’s just when you hear RNZ it sounds different to everything else out there, they sure as Christ aren’t ‘left wing’ anymore than The Spinoff is ‘Left wing’.
The recently announced RNZ and Spinoff content share deal are a great fit because they are both perfect examples of middle class pretension masquerading as an intellectual aesthetic.
RNZ isn’t left wing, it’s elitist with a class snobbery and a misplaced sense of self-importance that imbues everything based in Wellington.
National Party MPs think RNZ is Left wing the way they think libraries are left wing, because you know, reading and stuff.
With John gone, we can stop pretending RNZ are some sort of bastion of Left wing thought, they are an elite bubble that promotes the interests of the elites while claiming to be a public service – like so much that pretends to be a public service in this country.
Indeed, Bombarino, indeed!
I have been a compulsively addicted NatRad listener for donkeys’ years and there has been a steady movement to the right and downward in its reporting and journalism.
The most recent was Kathryn Ryan’s terrible excuse of an interview with retiring Tim Keating. A warm chummy fire-side chat on an old bakelite radio. No attempt to interview NZ’s Pol Pot here…
When she first got the Nine-to-Noon slot, she had come from parliamentary reporting and was quite a penetrating interviewer, especially when dealing with neo-liberal fuckwits. Now she seems to be treading water until retirement.
Guyon Espinner, well known Marxist-Leninist (Sarcasm! Sarcasm!) never lets a Tory get away without a pat on the back and like a good Jack Russell never ever lets go of a bone no matter how irrelevant or discredited it may be. Drama interviewing at its very best…
More appallingly (from my point of view) is the degrading of the standard of English usage and grammar. This is true not only over the air but also on their web page. The usual schoolboy clangers, principle/principal kind of thing, as well as ghastly Americanisms such as “Americanism” and past participles that do not actually exist (snuck, pled etc). And when did railway stations officially become “train stations”? Simple English words are mispronounced by supposedly experienced broadcasters. Ouch!
When I first listened to RNZ back in the late 60s, its standard of English was designed to be exemplary. An example of how to speak good English. Now it simply apes south Auckland argot.
As its irrelevance continues to grow its listening base will reduce until there is little purpose to its existence. Its elite will find themselves washed up on the shore of an island where there is nothing to listen to any more (how’s that for a terminally mixed metaphor!).
To use yet another Americanism…
Sad! 🙁
It was a sad day for creative marketing when Radio New Zealand changed its brand to RNZ National. The name implies what exactly? A banking institution, or maybe a politcal movement? A radio station it is indeed, among other things; a website, a streaming service and potentially a television presence all this and more but no mention of New Zealand or radio? Why?
It’s hardly a left wing moniker, is it? Hell you only have to change one letter to be thinking of an Australian bank, one that rips millions/billions in profits out of New Zealand every year. I cringe every time I hear their presenters recite from the hymm sheet – RNZ NATIONAL. RNZ, ANZ! BNZ? National! National what?
The Parnell Ponytail Puller & his side kick Mr Dildo must be sniggering with shit eating grins every time they hear the ‘RNZ National’ station ID on the radio, or their telescreens.
Could this be a shameful doublethink slow movement away from the creative, in depth explanatory into the slick, faceless corporate model brand, one that leaves this listener at least, with an Orwellian shiver that hints ever so coldly and pointedly to a not so distant future of newspeak journalism with bland 2+2=5 accountability.
Maybe it’s that I’m suffering with a vague thoughtcrime, I might just retire into a memory hole. Let’s hope John Campbell doesn’t.
it does quite the lurch to the right at about 3.45pm weekdays…
Nice article Martyn.
I was wondering what exactly got you spun out into the wilderness…it was another example of “this happened..next”…I have never had any skerrick of explanation until today-even when I asked you outright.I still can’t understand why it happened;just that it did,I’m really tired of getting half-arsed news,once over lightly…
RNZ is “liberal progressive”, that is elitist left wingers.
Its such an odd mix that it does confuse.
They are the Eoli and we – the rest – are the Morlock’.
But as we have woken up to their antics, battle has commenced.