Cracker by Damian Christie

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Cracker: A Whale of a Tale

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  • Jeremy Eade,

    I think you mean Jim Kramer Gio.

    auckland • Since Mar 2008 • 1112 posts Report Reply

  • Jeremy Eade,

    and he told chris mathews his book was shit, but we are a small place and we do have to be more polite because industry is limited , smaller and more intimate in this country.

    auckland • Since Mar 2008 • 1112 posts Report Reply

  • Cecelia,

    Basically in our game it doesn't matter who you work for or what product you put out - there'll always be someone who thinks you are a pile of shit.

    Maybe - and I sympathise with hard-working people who perform thankless jobs. I was a secondary school teacher for decades. You just have to grin and bear the constant moaning:)

    I just think there is a vein of frustration in this discussion. Russell and Damien are very good journalists and they have chosen to work in aspects of the industry in which they can make an intelligent contribution. It's not about them. It's about the way TV One news and current affairs is not as good as it could be, the way it used to be before it was so ratings driven.

    The spoof pro-whaling chappy just focused attention on it again. I think Damien wanted to discuss spoofs but ended up tapping into the winter of our discontent.

    Hibiscus Coast • Since Apr 2008 • 559 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Jon Stewart

    Unlike the larger US media market, NZ lacks (First Amendment-derived) fair use/satire copyright provisions. There's also a decent chance of being sued for defamation if you are honest on air.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Jeremy Eade,

    On the flip side there are others who castigate RNZ for being too pointy headed, wooly minded, PC, and having delusions of intellectual grandeur.

    Intellectual grandeur sounds like a good policy to me man,and as opposed to what? Dumbfuck nowhere grandeur. I'll go with the intellectuals.

    auckland • Since Mar 2008 • 1112 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Jose is a rising star. And Jesus H. Christ I hadn't seen the We Are the World rendition by the Israeli journalists... I think I need a drink or five.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic,

    In the words of Rodney King, can we all just get along? Let's re-focus on the real enemy here.

    If people think scraping the lowest common denominator isn't a big deal, then functionally illiterate vigilante mobs speak volumes otherwise. Ditto for the shock jock egging on ultra-nationalists in Cronulla.

    There potentially comes a tipping point where acceptable discrimination crosses the line into persecution.

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Hotel Travelling is mind numbling boring.

    Oh boo-fucking-hoo. Being a consular official isn't exactly fun and games 24/7, but Witi Ihimaera managed to more constructively use his time writing two novels and most of a volume of short stories during his downtime in D.C. and New York. And if he was getting into the gay scene in either city, I very much doubt Wellington was getting the invoices.

    And don't you dare tell me that Jones wouldn't have been the first one lining up to take whack if a senior civil servant was outed charging porn to a ministry-issued credit card.

    ETA: Idiot/Savant also asks a good question. If you're going to give "red blooded males" a pass on publicly funded porn to relieve the boredom, why make a fuss about a night at a strip club? Or a high-end brothel? Or a jolly evening of besti... I mean inter-species erotica:

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    That was far worse than the Crossfire interview. And he's had Crossfire-like moments with a lot of people, although mostly it didn't look like they started that way - in other words, he was playing good host and things just became adversarial.

    It's more to do with the pace and structure of an interview. Stewart will have opened gently with the intention of nailing Kramer in the course of it. The key to it was confronting Kramer with his own words, via the clips. The DailyShow's video research is awesome. But Stewart does also do some just-joshin' interviews with people who deserve to be questioned properly.

    FWIW, I learned later that Tim Pankhurst was furious at being on a Media7 panel about the Greg Clydesdale paper his paper touted -- because it followed a Newsmash which referenced the infamous National Party electoral advertising campaign of 1975. That was my call and I don't regret it.

    The interview you referred to, I think, was a valedictory one. The context was different. And he was, after all, the editor of the paper that has given Phil Kitchin such great licence to pursue the public interest. So, yeah.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    And don't you dare tell me that Jones wouldn't have been the first one lining up to take whack if a senior civil servant was outed charging porn to a ministry-issued credit card.

    Okay, I'll debate you there. I think there would have been a long line in front of Jones lining up to take a whack in such an event.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    But if you ever throw a mock party in the Media 7 studio to demonstrate what our politicians spend our taxpayer money on, I'm outta here. Take it from me, most people can imagine quite successfully what 3 bottles of blanc and 19 DVDs look like without visual aids. 'Ratings dear'. Yeah, whatever.

    One of them did that? Jesus wept.

    Studio reconstructions are clearly this year's thing with the foreign news consultants.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Jeremy Eade,

    I feel sorry for Shane Jones. I haven't worked out why.He seemed like a good politician.

    auckland • Since Mar 2008 • 1112 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    I know why I feel sorry for him. Because I like him and can't believe he was so careless.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    I know why I feel sorry for him. Because I like him and can't believe he was so careless.

    Let us conclude the day on a note of agreement.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    You guys like him? He always seemed so bloody... entitled, to me.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Jeremy Eade,

    Still travelling, credit cards, porn....it happens everday, the hotels love it.

    So he uses this card but pays it back, and I presume they get per deims.

    Do we give 'em daily expenses or do they just read the gidgeons bible everynight sucking on the complimentary hotel cracker.

    He was sloppy, private enterprise can be just as sloppy, but as far as I understand he paid it back or is there proof he was hiding things?

    and he wanked...which is just awful.

    auckland • Since Mar 2008 • 1112 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    Let us conclude the day on a note of agreement.

    Sorry. I've ruined that, haven't I?

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Little bit :-)

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Okay, I'll debate you there. I think there would have been a long line in front of Jones lining up to take a whack in such an event.

    Heh... fair enough, but you'd think someone who's made his name railing against "iwi elites" would have been more careful than most. But I think it's fair comment to say there's more than a few civil servants who've been on the receiving end of bile facials over the years from politicians (sometimes fairly, often not) who are quietly getting their schadenfreude on. If I was Howard Broad (who is apparently grossly and undeservedly over-paid in Labour's book), I'd be releasing my own expenses with a copy of the NZPF's own rules on appropriate use of credit cards.

    I know why I feel sorry for him. Because I like him and can't believe he was so careless.

    Which is what I found hard to believe about Phil Heatley. But since the evidence is there in black and white, screw the lot of them and their hypocritical entitlement. I'm not going to squander my limited reserves of sympathy on people who are entirely the architects of their own misfortune. And as Danyl's totally sweet satirical post pointed out, there are plenty of people who've lost their jobs and ended up with a criminal record for less.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen Judd,

    I just think there is a vein of frustration in this discussion. Russell and Damien are very good journalists and they have chosen to work in aspects of the industry in which they can make an intelligent contribution. It's not about them. It's about the way TV One news and current affairs is not as good as it could be, the way it used to be before it was so ratings driven.

    Yes.

    I do not like television news as it is now. Maybe it was never that good, but I feel it is not even as good as it once was. I feel that so very strongly that having started to make a small, gracious, to my mind completely defensible criticism, I lack the self-control to leave it at that, and I have to sing my relentless monotonous song again. Come back, let me hold you with my skinny hand, see my glittering eye. I started growing this beard when we had Dateline Monday with its typewriter intro sequence and Brian Edwards stalked the land.

    Perhaps I lack the industry knowledge to appreciate current standards of "good". Perhaps, now that I'm an elderly man of 40, I just have to let go of expectations formed in an earlier, never to be recovered age.

    It's interesting, though, isn't it? Yesterday's orthodoxy, to which I am attached, is today's heresy. So I live in hope that as swiftly and arbitrarily and unexpectedly as it went away, it will come back. Meanwhile I see no reason at all to accept as givens things which once upon a time were extremely doubtful.

    Am I unreasonable? Very well, I am unreasonable. I can't help it. Frankly I wish I could -- I feel these surges of ill-feeling are unbecoming.

    On the other hand:

    "You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables."

    (I think Sam Johnson would have died many years younger, perhaps of an apoplexy, had he been exposed to television as it is now.

    BOSWELL: And what do you think of the art of television broadcasting?
    JOHNSON: Sir, it is a very base medium, in which a few supremely artful men are employed by the mercantile classes to sow the seeds of avarice and mound them in dungheaps of distraction, so that multitude of artless persons might be induced to make unwise purchases of goods and services which they otherwise might have disdained, while the groves of Academe are left to wither untended.)

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 3122 posts Report Reply

  • bronwyn,

    But since the evidence is there in black and white, screw the lot of them and their hypocritical entitlement.

    I think this is what is upsetting most people - the fact that some MPs think that they're not going to get caught, so who cares? Anyone who's ever had an overpriced beer from the minibar on a work trip knows that it takes another minute at check out time to pay for all of these things separately, and therefore avoid awkward questions at reimbursement time.

    (I actually type this from a hotel room, on a work trip. I'd be raiding said mini bar but all I can find is some pottles of long life milk).

    tamaki makaurau • Since Nov 2006 • 86 posts Report Reply

  • Sofie Bribiesca,

    , it seems a perfectly fair question.

    Oh dont mind me. I just comment that it's a bit trash. Of all my friends and I like to think I have a few, I have no idea what any of them earn. I have no care . To me, a lot seem to be good at what they do.So why does it matter?
    FWIW. I was raised and surrounded by people with money. For me no one is better for it. For you Joe Wylie, (I have 2 friends with the surname Wylie, they are off to England 2 moro) I am glad we have crossed paths and money has nothing to do with it. :)

    here and there. • Since Nov 2007 • 6796 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    Well, not just the telly. Kyle declared that Paul Holmes has no talent as a broadcaster.

    I'll happily concede that this might just be me and some others. He certainly was fairly leading edge in his TV work (I've never heard him on the radio). Just not my leading edge at all.

    One of them did that? Jesus wept.

    Campbell Live. By the end of the show he had a hell of a party on the desk in front of him. You can understand why though. Today must have been the news/current affair show's big wet dreams.

    I think this is what is upsetting most people - the fact that some MPs think that they're not going to get caught, so who cares?

    I'd suggest that today's news would have had a lot less porn and alcohol and whatnot in it if 6 years ago Labour ministers had been told that all their credit card purchases were going to end up on the news. As much as the news about it has been a bit silly, I like the transparency, it will make a difference in how they treat their funds. Good on the Greens for starting this whole thing and for Lockwood Smith (I'm forcing this out now) for following through.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    I feel that so very strongly that having started to make a small, gracious, to my mind completely defensible criticism, I lack the self-control to leave it at that, and I have to sing my relentless monotonous song again.

    I resent the accuracy of this description.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Joe Wylie,

    For you Joe Wylie, (I have 2 friends with the surname Wylie, they are off to England 2 moro) I am glad we have crossed paths and money has nothing to do with it. :)

    Why thank you. Sadly enough I'm unable to claim acquaintance with any Bribiescas, but while I'm on it, perhaps you'd post a definitive guide to pronouncing your interesting name. My ignorance creates a little speed bump whenever I happen to scan it.

    flat earth • Since Jan 2007 • 4593 posts Report Reply

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