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Body image and the media | Nov 04, 2009 11:30

Just a quick note to say that in this week's Media7 show we're looking at the media and body image. It's been a hot topic across the Tasman, where Australia's Next Top Model host Sarah Murdoch appeared on the cover of the Australian Women's Weekly without being Photoshopped – but with the benefit, of course, of professional lighting, makeup and god's own cheekbones.

Murdoch was also part of the oddly glamorous launch of a report from a government advisory board on body image and the media.

The issue has been all over the media lately – witness the flap over Ralph Lauren's response to being picked up by bloggers over a painfully Photoshopped picture of a model who, it turns out, had already been fired being, allegedly, too fat. But why are both sides always talking about weight? What about the other ways in which we're different from the perfect people we see in the media?

Ill be joined for the discussion by new Next editor Christina Wickstead, Joe Cotton and Tracey Barnett.

And then later in the show, I'll talk to Bill Francis as he prepares to step back from a 45-year in talk radio.

Short notice I know, but we can still accommodate you if you'd like to join us for the recording at TVNZ tonight – just click "Reply" and let me know. We'd need you to arrive between 5pm and 5.30.

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Right This Time? | Nov 03, 2009 10:39

Someone in the loop ticked me off yesterday for an unduly flip assessment of reform prospects for foreshore and seabed rights, based on the Maori Party's strike rate so far. Well, fair enough: I do want a lasting solution, and I believe that such a solution is more achievable now than it was first time around.

After reading IrishBill's post on The Standard this morning, hailing the restoration of "the right to a day in court" and musing that such a view "puts me in the odd position of agreeing with the Act party … at the time," I thought I'd remind myself what people did say in 2003.

I actually knew the answer, in Act's case: they were all over the place. Stephen Franks wanted Ngati Apa set aside, and urged his caucus colleagues to offer their votes to Labour if the government agreed to legislate over the decision. Richard Prebble implied that the government could simply declare that "no claim will be considered" for the foreshore and seabed (the following year, he told Parliament he was "upholding the rights of all citizens to go to court" and slated the government for passing "legislation that racially discriminates"). Ken Shirley had another take altogether.

On successive days, National issued statements declaring that "The Government must legislate to confirm Crown ownership of beaches foreshore and seabed. This is what National would do," then that it was campaigning "to ensure that the remaining foreshore and seabed was safeguarded for all, regardless of race, by means of legislation to preserve exclusive Crown title." Clearly, that word "remaining" was very significant.

I looked at the merry dance here at the time.

In July 2003, the Greens' Metiria Turei said this:

"One suggestion is that the Government is considering guaranteeing public access to the foreshore across Maori land, but with no change to the current limits on access across private land.

"If public access is the issue, the debate must also include access rights over private and crown-owned land. To exclude these properties from debate is to imply that Maori land is worth less than private or crown land.

"How can that be fair?

"Wide-ranging debate on the question of public access to beaches, involving all New Zealanders, is the only way to deal with the issue constructively.

The following month, this:

"The Greens support responsible access to the foreshore, which is compatible with Customary Ownership governed by tikanga Maori and the concept of public domain.

"The clearest example is Lake Taupo, where ownership of the lake bed rests with Maori but everyone enjoys recreational access.

"Customary ownership does not provide for the sale of land in the way that freehold title and western forms of property ownership do."

Yesterday, this:

"We have argued from the start that Te Ture Whenua Māori Act should be amended to make sure that the foreshore and seabed land can never be sold. This would address the public concern that this treasured land could be sold to private interests," said Mrs Turei.

You could certainly argue – as one Standard commenter already has – that any limit short of full alienable title for Maori claims is discriminatory, but Turei seems right to declare her party's consistency on the issue.

In August 2003, No Right Turn wrote this, under the headline 'A good start':

The government has released its response to the question of foreshore ownership, and predictably no one is happy. Maori who had their expectations raised by the Court of Appeal ruling are fuming at the thought of only getting those customary rights practised by their ancestors, rather than full alienable title. And the rednecks are unhappy because the government hasn't squelched those "bloody maaris" out of hand.

I had previously opined that any eventual solution was likely to be a damn sight more complicated than National's "beaches for all" rhetoric would suggest, and we're seeing it now. It seems that the government is planning to explicitly recognise usage rights as well as freehold title, and try and steer the Maori Land Court to granting the latter only in extremis. This seems fair enough, and it's not exactly an alien concept (well, at least not to those of us who have studied a bit of history... once upon a time usage rights were all people had, and often they had to give scutage or 40 days military service in exchange for them to boot). Meanwhile, Maori still get to pursue recognition of their rights through the courts (and, in extreme situations, get freehold title), and everyone still gets to go to the beach.

It didn't quite work out that way.

Meanwhile, on June 27, eight days after the Ngati Apa decision (I confess, I though there was an editorial on June 21 but there's no record of it) the New Zealand Herald began publishing a series of editorials that would eventually embrace more positions than a yoga manual. From Stealthy treaty extension had to be blocked.

The Appeal Court's decision was greeted with enthusiasm from iwi around the country. It is a declaration none will forget and its rejection by the Government will add one more grievance to the Waitangi litany. But the court's declaration could not be allowed to stand. It would have been yet another treaty extension by stealth.

The government promise to confirm the beaches in public ownership being hailed in the editorial did not, of course, stand for very long at all. But it was symptomatic of the panicky nature of the time.

I'm looking back at these not in search of a gotcha (for one, I don't think my own writing on the topic would fare very well under that sort of scrutiny) but to try and emphasise that the thinking was more complicated at the time – before all right-thinking people began simply declaring that Maori-should-have-their-day-in-court-end-of-story. As I/S notes above, some Maori interests were making some wild declarations back then too.

Steven Price's excellent August 2003 feature for The Listener captured the spirit of events:

But it's hard to believe that anyone did, such was the turmoil that erupted when the decision was delivered. Attorney General Margaret Wilson rushed to reassure everyone that legislation would be passed to "give clear expression of the Crown's ownership of the foreshore and seabed". Soon afterwards, at a hui at Paeroa, Maori declared that "the foreshore and seabed belong to the hapu and iwi".

After an uproar from the Maori caucus, the government moved to a more consultative process, maintaining that it will find a way to recognise Maori customary interests and still preserve public access to the beaches, and insisting that this would not "extinguish" any rights. "Backdown!" howled National leader Bill English, and called for legislation to "confirm Crown ownership" of the beaches and seabed.

It's likely to get complicated again, and I still regard it as a possibility that the Maori Party will be undone or let down on the issue that led to its creation: a solution that satisfies Pita and Tariana will be a bloody hard sell to a section of National's core support. But this happened yesterday:

Indications the law will be axed comes after National's former leader, Don Brash, who revved up racial tension when it was passed, admitted mistakes were made under his watch.

"I think the National Party got it wrong. I think we should have in fact supported the right of iwi to go to the High Court," says Brash.

I'm even prepared to smile ruefully at David Farrar's airy declaration yesterday that "Labour did not need to panic and legislate," in 2003. Because we're all going to get together and make it work this time, right?

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Dear John | Nov 02, 2009 10:55

You had to hand it to John Key, said my colleague over dinner last week: he's very good. But some of the people around him, "not so much". I couldn't disagree – the sometimes inarticulate and politically unworldly Leader of the Opposition has offered real management talent now that he's actually in charge. If he doesn't display the obvious intellect of Helen Clark, he has made good use of a quality that often eluded Clark – charm.

And the nation, says the polling, agrees. While some individuals in Key's Cabinet are showing themselves to be thoughtful and competent, it's the public comfort in the Prime Minister that provides the tailwind.

The government's weakness – the sense that while its leader sails gracefully on, some of his MPs may not be great team players, or may simply lack skill – has emerged through relatively minor matters: the bungled campaign in Mt Albert, the rugby rights shambles. Key's response in each case was instructive. He walked away from the first, leaving Melissa Lee to her defeat on by-election night. He suddenly switched his stance on the second, sensing that public sympathy lay with the Maori rights bid; and that a buggers' muddle from which all sides could claim victory was the least-worst option.

Thus do traders read the odds. He knew that the downside risk of re-opening the "smacking" debate with a law change was considerably greater than simply fudging the issue and ordering up a review starring Nigel Latta. Presumably, he has made the same calculation as to the risk of a nod towards the future taxation options he has been urged to consider. If he spoke favourably of a property tax, he'd own it henceforth, and he doesn't want to do that.

Another means by which Key's government has avoided risk is by avoiding process and debate. No Right Turn has a must-read post that demonstrates that National's use of urgency in its first year has been unprecedented not only in the sheer number of times urgency has been taken, but in its scope. Here is the list of bills that have been passed without select committee scrutiny:

Crown Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme Bill
Education (National Standards) Amendment Bill
Electoral Amendment Bill
Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal Bill
Employment Relations Amendment Bill
Energy (Fuels, Levies, and References) Biofuel Obligation Repeal Bill
Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Bill
Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Bill
Sentencing (Offences Against Children) Amendment Bill

No Right Turn also noted that under Gerry Brownlee's management, National has begun to take urgency almost as a reflex, even when it doesn't have the business to justify it.

Curiously, the New Zealand Herald, which spent most of last year blathering about an "attack on democracy", has had very little to say about this. Instead, on Saturday, John Armstrong was all about the game – treating the unfortunate TVNZ 7 promo as if it was really the most important thing about Bill English's job.

And John Roughan took refuge in the comfort of alleged common sense, hailing Stephen Joyce's disdain for transport planners, but not troubling himself with an assessment of the two billion dollar folly from Puhoi to Wellsford that Joyce has ordered up on what looks a lot like a whim. Roughan may also be the only commentator in the country to declare himself "in awe" of Anne Tolley's performance as Education minister.

Amid the Herald's buffet of commentary on National's first year, it's a column by a non-journalist, Victoria University's Jon Johansson. He reaches back to the "entrepreneurial" Sir Julius Vogel for a comparison for Key's "unusual prime ministership", but warns:

Key's major weakness is also a function of his professional socialisation. In politics one cannot lead a cohesive government with decentralised decision-making and control structures. The myriad examples of political mismanagement that have characterised National's first year in office will continue for as long as this structural flaw is not adequately addressed. He should take no pride in his Government's ongoing abuse of urgency in Parliament.

But to return to where I began, Key's larger context; his political vision has been quite parsimonious in my view. There is no overarching narrative that tells us where Key intends taking us or what policy mix will best maximise our future progress and choices.

Transforming education (surely the best incubator for our future economic prosperity), leading our democracy (think: the electoral referendum, the Treaty, republicanism), and how to best protect water, our most valuable strategic resource, are being managed, not led, in an entirely ad-hoc fashion.

In fact, the three 'Rs' announcement is so mediocre it barely constitutes an education policy, let alone being elevated as one of the six crucial policies to enhance our economic performance Bill English recently cited.

On the other hand, the ground must surely be shifting on the feet of Phil Goff. Goff is competent, experienced, principled – and so far apparently devoid of the gifts of popular leadership. While some of his caucus have begun to deliver on promise (Charles Chauvel) or been rehabilitated in the hurly-burly of the blogosphere (Trevor Mallard), Goff seems stranded. And unlike the All Black coaching team, he doesn't have a contract that guarantees him the job until 2011.

Thus has National been able to achieve its commanding position in the polls. The danger, of course, is that it will simply trundle along, enacting major changes without real scrutiny, attenuating reform where that seems necessary to stay on the right side of the public mood.

And we'll all get used to it. The Seabed and Foreshore legislation will be repealed, a great deal of the meaningful discussion will be conducted in private and there'll eventually be a bait-and-switch that will undermine the Maori Party's claims to victory. We'll hear "common sense" conjured as a means of diversion from troublesome advice – and perhaps we should be worried about that. Because sometimes "common sense" is the most dangerous thing.

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New Lounge Toy Update | Oct 30, 2009 10:56

It was press day for TiVo yesterday, ahead of the New Zealand TiVo launch next Friday, and the emphasis was on features beyond its role as a twin-tuner Freeview recorder. Which isn't surprising, because the breadth of features is really this thing's major selling point.

TiVo's proprietary EPG (electronic programme guide) format is the key to some of the box's signature features, including WishList, which lets you elect to automatically everything in a certain genre, or featuring a certain actor; and TiVo Suggestions, which learns your viewing preferences (apparently, two thirds of Australia viewers keep Suggestions switched on).

Presently missing from the EPG are the Sky-owned Prime TV, and Maori Television. It's hardly surprising that Sky doesn't want to play, but I'm struggling to think of a reason why Maori Television would refuse to be listed on the programme guide.

Until January, the box will cost $920 with a wi-fi adapter, 320GB hard drive and the Home Networking package, which is in the price range of standard Freeview DVRs. Home networking would seem to be a killer feature for viewers who've already gone non-linear at home. It'll let you play music, photographs and a range of video formats (but not, dammit, .mkv) from your computer via TiVo to your TV. It'll also let you compress and transfer TiVo recordings for viewing on PCs, phones and handheld devices.

To use Home Networking with a Mac, you apparently need the $220 Roxio Toast software, whose feature list includes the ability to "Transfer video from your Mac to your TiVo DVR to enjoy on your TV". This is somewhat inconvenient.

Hybrid TiVo CEO Robbee Minicola also showed me a feature that will appear first in New Zealand: TiVo Genie. It's a search and scheduling web application for TiVo that can also be accessed via iPhone or any other web or WAP capable mobile device. So you can order up a recording at home from your desk at work.

Although Telecom is the exclusive TiVo retailer, you can do all the above with any broadband connection. You'll need to be a Telecom customer to take advantage of the CASPA on-demand content. The least of that is probably the movies offering, which is drawn from the same release window as Sky Box Office. TV series, at $2.95 or $1.95 an episode (with the first three eps free) are more appealing. Music services will come via the Sony Music Australia-owned bandit.fm, which already sell MP3s online and will launch an all-you-can-eat music streaming service for $9.95 a month. (It was suggested to me that this would eliminate the need for party playlists and domestic DJs. Well, only if you're a complete and utter square.)

For all the fuss about Telecom exclusivity, I think TiVo still looks quite good without the Telecom-only on-demand content. It's in roughly the same price range as other Freeview DVRs, and it does quite a lot more. On the other hand, it's coming in to a market where nearly 800,000 subscribers already watch their television via Sky, and 128,000 of those are using the MySky DVR. I don't think anyone knows quite how it will fare, but it may be that its feature set will be sufficiently compelling that some households feel they need both MySky and TiVo.

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Staying with gadgets: I have not yet got around to obtaining a hands-free mobile phone solution for my car, in advance of Sunday's law change, in part because I keep feeling there should be something better than what I've seen.

I use my iPhone all the time as a music player in the car, via a hokey old cassette adapter. The new law will let me continue to do that so long as the phone is mounted. I'm not even sure what that really means, but it strikes me that there should be an iPhone car stereo and hands-free-talk solution. I don't want to spend a fortune, but is there anything I'm missing?

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Best of luck to Orcon today for the Play With Iggy recording. I think they've made this work, and I enjoyed watching the eight new band members' entries (plus this guy). Here's Iggy with the set-up in his Miami studio today.

The live stream of the collaborative distance recording starts here at 1pm. There's a dedicated Twitter stream here.

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This week's Media7 show looked at children's television – which is going through trying times. It's available for viewing here.

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Paul Litterick's essay for the Auckland Archicture Association's competition – about what went wrong with the Auckland CBD – is worth your while reading.
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And, finally, I'm quite taken with this clip from a recent Maura O'Connell performance (hat tip: Nat Torkington):

And, finally, I'm the guest on Peter Urlich's 95bFM show from 10am tomorrow. I get to bring in two tracks to play: one of which will be a world exclusive preview of a recording by a Public Address blogger. (The other will be a great big house tune.)

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Standing up and calling bullshit | Oct 27, 2009 11:17

Finlay Macdonald had a lash at "the national pastime of taking offence" in his Star Times column on Sunday. And at the "pious, bullying scolds" in the news media and the "purse-lipped professional offence-takers" and "bleating pantywaists" who stoke "our corrosively tedious propensity for being prissily 'outraged'" with their "complacent, infantile offence-taking", and are simply making "platitudinous announcements to justify their own existence". And who, by the way, "ought to grow up".

Crikey. Don't get off your bike now.

Among the cases Finlay notes is that of ACC minister Nick Smith, whose unfortunate crack about how if he had a terminal disease he'd off himself for the sake of his family's future income was headlines for about 24 hours. Well, yeah: senior politicians do have to be careful about what they say to journalists in a formal setting – ask Helen Clark – and Smith's crack was ill-advised. He apologised.

But much of the column focuses on the Auckland Grammar boys who took some stupid pictures of themselves worshipping a swastika during a school trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, then published the pictures on a Facebook page:

I'm just grateful Facebook and phone cameras weren't around when I was an unevolved collection of pimples and hormones in a Grammar uniform. If some of our exploits or conversations had been captured for posterity and digitally disseminated we'd still be trying to talk our way out of it. But by the same token, I don't think the society we lived in was as prone to perceiving grievous moral injury every time someone did something fatuous.

Well, actually, when Finlay and I were at school, policemen were bringing criminal charges against Germaine Greer for saying "bullshit" in public, and Carmen was hauled before the Parliamentary privileges committee for supposing that the odd MP might be homosexual. Of all the faux golden-weather memories of New Zealand's past, the idea of us as a garden of free speech is among the less convincing. Perhaps we were simply offended by different things.

There can be little doubt that the reaction to the Grammar boys' stunt was fuelled by the news media's treatment of it as a running story. First, the Lincoln students' idiotic party, then (oh, well, actually, months ago) this. But that's how the news works: one story is a curiosity: two is a trend.

Equally, it's likely that the response was amplified by the fact that these were Grammar boys. Their school has long touted its own prowess at training young men for leadership, and its old boys have been known to display a raging sense of entitlement. So the flap was greater than it might have been had the students come from a less prominent school.

Did it warrant the lead and a live cross on TV news? Of course it didn't. But what actually happened to the boys – they were required to come and apologise to people who were genuinely offended by their actions on a school trip – doesn't really seem excessive. It was a restorative action.

I'm not sure that beyond that, anyone was baying for blood. Indeed, the response appears to have been more sympathetic than that accorded to the farmers' sons at Lincoln.

Finlay moves on:

In Britain a column in the Daily Mail by Jan Moir was vilified for suggesting that gay Boyzone singer Stephen Gately's death may have had more to do with a sleazy celebrity lifestyle than natural causes. Instead of being dismissed as the muckraking of a reactionary media trout in a right-wing rag, her silly column became a rallying point for outraged anti-homophobes and every other self-appointed guardian of allowable thought.

Um, yeah, so shut up and keep it to yourselves, you self-appointed guardians of allowable thought -- or I'll report you to the irony police.

Certainly, if one were to get exercised about every mean-spirited rant in the Daily Mail, one wouldn't have much time for anything else. It would be like taking to the barricades every time Michael Laws said something stupid and offensive. But, clearly, Moir's column hit a nerve: it eventually triggered 22,000 complaints to Britain's Press Complaints Commission – more than the total number of complaints the PCC has fielded in the past five years.

It wasn't just that Moir saw fit to defame a popular performer the day before his family was to bury him; and it wasn't just the smug tone of her writing. It was that Moir conjured her own facts. As difficult as it might be for Daily Mail columnists to believe, it is as possible for a gay man to die of natural causes (in Gately's case, a pulmonary odema caused by an underlying heart condition) as anyone else. And yet Moir saw fit to overrule the coroner, speculate on no more foundation than her own prejudice and accuse Gately's family of lying about his "sleazy" death. It really was a repulsive piece of writing.

And any thought of sympathy for Moir's fate at the hands of pitchfork-wielding Twitter users can safely be cancelled in light of her dreadful "apology", and the Mail's continued attempts to suggest there is something more to Gately's death than the coroner has said.

Sometimes, you do have to stand up and call bullshit: and when tens of thousands of people stand up and call bullshit at the same time, it's going to make a bit of a noise. That should hardly mean they don't have a right to do so.

On the other hand, there's the latest flap in Britain: comedian Jimmy Carr told an audience this joke: "Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012."

Given that Carr had recently visited two military rehab centres – and not for the first time – it's a reasonable guess that the source of his joke was the soldiers themselves. To the extent that my own experience of disability in the family qualifies me to comment, it doesn't seem like a bad joke to me.

So I don't think Finlay's all wrong: the systematic solicitation of outrage from rent-a-quotes – check out this ill-informed blast from Bob McCoskrie after a 13 year-old got a letter from her medical practice about the Gardasil vaccine, and in particular the last line – is lazy journalism, and lamentably common.

But the freedom to give offence is linked to the freedom to express offence. We are the richer for the fact that Anke Richter wrote this eloquent post for Public Address in response to the Lincoln idiocy. The likelihood that sections of the news media will over-egg it the way they over-egg everything else shouldn't mean we can't stand up and call bullshit sometimes.

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PS: This week's Media7 looks at children's media -- and children's TV in particular. I'll be joined by Under the Mountain director Jonathan King, Waikato University associate professor of Screen and Media Studies Geoff Lealand, TVNZ 6 and 7 programmer Juliet Jensen, and Luke Nola, the creator of Let's Get Inventin'.

If you'd like to join us us for tomorrow's recording, we'll need you at TVNZ from 5pm (and certainly before 5.30) and have you away by 7pm. Hit Reply and let me know if you'd like to come along.

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