Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Living the highlife while the punters' investments were turning to shit is perhaps something that the famous Mum And Dad Investor is interested in.
Repeat after me, Stephen: Not everything "the public" (aka panty-sniffing editors) is interested in is a matter of public interest. Personally, if most of my retirement savings had gone down the toilet with Blue Chip, I wouldn't give a whore's cunny hair whether Bryers was blowing his cash on tarts, dining out or buying teddy bears for sick children by the gross. I'd be more interested in whether Blue Chip collapse due to incompetence or gross malfeasance. It might also be the occasion to ask some hard questions about why business journalism in this country so seldom reaches the heights of mere competence, as opposed to PR puffery.
Failing to respect these boundaries would make life pretty unbearable. As I'm sure the Hera;d journalist would complain if it was her private affairs splashed all over the newspaper.
Indeed -- especially when journalism is a trade that is hardly known for attracting teetotal celibates whose idea of a good night out is being in bed by nine with a mug of cocoa and an improving volume. :)
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Fair enough mulit-millionaire holds a private function at HQ while his business goes under. New worthy if salacious.
Um, I even wonder how 'news worthy' the story was.
If Bryers regularly booked out Prego, White or The French Cafe -- fashionable restaurants where you could run up a low five figure bill just on the pricier end of the wine list -- I rather doubt The O'Herald on Scumday would consider it worth more than a (short) paragraph.
Now, if Ms. Phare has any evidence that Bryers misappropriated Blue Chip funds to pay for his (alleged) whore binges, then we might just have a matter of legitimate public interest. As it is, I don't think we're seeing anything more than another example of hypocritical mediia prurience. (For a start, if the HoS finds the sex trade so objectionable perhaps it should stop running ads for these places.)
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Media need conflict in order to survive - or think they do, which amounts to the same thing. "All news good, country optimistic" doesn't sell.
Oh, of course it does.
But here's a marginally more radical notion -- perhaps we need fewer Judy Bailey wannabes telling us how to feel, and a little more focus on giving us stupid plebs solid information so we can think for ourselves. But I guess you have to stop treating people with cynical contempt for that to happen, and I don't see much of that among the chattering classes at the moment.
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She openly acknowledged that many in the political media want a change of government, not because they are right-wing, not because they hate Clark, not because they are in love with Key, but - get this - just because they are bored.
Um... I'm going to have to listen to that again, because I'd like to give Harvey the benefit the doubt, and assume she wasn't quite as prone to another sin of the commentariat (and one I don't exempt myself from): Crossing the fine line between a healthy and active scepticism to the kind of rank cynicism which is not only glib and dishonest, but actively contemptuous of everyone and everything it touches.
Still, I've got to give Colin Peacock credit for pointing out the blindingly obvious: There's no disinterested parties when you're talking out tit-for-tat sniping between competing media outlets, and politicians (and their proxies) whose primary focus is having their spin dominating the media narrative and feel hard done by when the media doesn't play nice.
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Coming from the UK, I'm used to newspapers having a political position: the Telegraph is right-wing Tory, the Guardian is left-wing Labour and so on. But they have *eight* major national dailies, so you can more or less pick one that matches your political orientation and literacy level.
Well, I don't know about anyone else but I read both on-line and would argue while their editorial lines are perfectly clear, they also have well-resourced newsrooms where there's a distinction drawn between news and edtirial, and for the most part their reportage is substantive and balanced. (I'd also note that the Telegraph and Guardian editorially hardly engages in mindless boosterism of 'our side'. I'd actually say both have been distinctively lukewarm towards David Cameron.)
Since the spring, it seems that even this convention has been dumped and the Herald is now fully lined up behind National. I'm not sure why; maybe it was felt that even with a new face and friendlier policies, the Nats could again choke at the last minute without a more solid peanut gallery behind them?
To play devil's advocate, Rich, perhaps Labour is going to choke without the lightweight coverage of the kind where Cullen is allowed to get away with strategic vagueness over what constitutes "essential strategic infrastructure". (Good on the few hacks who bothered asking the blindingly obvious question, but points off for letting him weasel out of answering it.)
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Mostly, though. The three-in-box thing are worse special-features/second disc wise. You can also buy a Three-Disc special edition of The Wizard of Oz for $35.
Sure, but it's a bit like my self of Jane Austen novels> I'd love to spring for the six-volume Oxford edition -- which is annotated up the wazoo, loaded with scholarly analysis, and the texts are lovingly produced facsimiles of the first editions in well-produced hardbacks...
But I'm perfectly happy with my paperbacks, which may be a bit scruffy but are perfectly acceptable clean reading copies.
I'm enormously chuffed with the 'Final Cut' of Blade Runner, which comes with a second containing a three hour documentary that is a model of its kind. (Also the image and sound quality and as close to perfect as you can get.) I just wasn't sure I was ever going to watch the edition that case out a few months later that also includes four other version of the film, and the kind of geeky micro-analysis you'd have to describe as 'for completists' only.
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Mostly, though. The three-in-box thing are worse special-features/second disc wise. You can also buy a Three-Disc special edition of The Wizard of Oz for $35.
Sure, but it's a bit like my self of Jane Austen novels> I'd love to spring for the six-volume Oxford edition -- which is annotated up the wazoo, loaded with scholarly analysis, and the texts are lovingly produced facsimiles of the first editions in well-produced hardbacks...
But I'm perfectly happy with my paperbacks, which may be a bit scruffy but are perfectly acceptable clean reading copies.
I'm enormously chuffed with the 'Final Cut' of Blade Runner, which comes with a second containing a three hour documentary that is a model of its kind. (Also the image and sound quality and as close to perfect as you can get.) I just wasn't sure I was ever going to watch the edition that case out a few months later that also includes four other version of the film, and the kind of geeky micro-analysis you'd have to describe as 'for completists' only.
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No journalist likes that kind of thing, and I suspect there are a few on the Herald staff feeling quite unhappy about it.
And I don't think many journalists like having their reputations being dragged into PR bitch-fights (and I think we've seen both Three and TVNZ confusing PR spin with news in recent months) or political bitch-fights.
In the end, my point is that can we just stop pretending that Colin Espiner or the EPMU are exactly disinterested observers here?
You can hardly hear yourself for people screaming "move along, nothing to see here" at Kiwiblog, but it is weird, and, as I said, DPF would be all over it if the shoe had been on the other foot.
If the shoe had been on the other foot, perhaps there'd also be a little more healthy scepticism shown around here if Jerry Brownlee was alleging Helen Clark personally tried to get a journo sacked, or monstered a whatever-the-fuck you call it out of a media outlet. (Which is different from saying Clark has a very aggressive media team that will do their best to get the appropriate angle on every story.)
I'm pretty sure you'd assume Murray McCully was full of shit until proven otherwise. :)
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I thought we'd all concluded that the published material came from the defense side, not the police side. Or was the one published on the internet different from the one the Dom used?
Graeme: Distinction noted. Kyle: Buggered if I know, but IMO anyone who thinks the Police don't routinely leak and brief to tame hacks is being a little naive, and I just had to chortle at the shock and outrage from Police and the reliably egregious Greg O'Connor at the notion that the defence might have been engaged in some pre-emptive counterspin of their own.
In the end, I am rather fond of the concept that we prosecute alleged criminals in courts of law rather than trial by media. And with all due disrespect to the Dom Post, I've seen little evidence that the security of trial should depend on its collective good judgement.
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Hell, today we have Herald columnists using their columns to advise John Key how to lie to the public..
Oh, yes, Fran was in particularly fine cock-sucking form today. Not.
If I am understanding him correctly, Colin Espiner asserted that the paper has both a conservative tilt and a conservative agenda (ie, it is actively promoting the election of a National Government). I share that assesment. Espiner's response to DPF's Herald's statistics was the right one IMO.
I would add that the Herald's editorials are of an embarrassingly low standard.
And I would add that I'll be a damn sight more impressed if Colin wants to take on the embarrasing lack of editorial standards on display at Fairfaz New Zealand. Sorry to keep banging on about it, but I think (at the very least) Cate Brett should have lost her job over the 'Operation Leaf' debacle, with her last act as editor of the SST being putting her signature on a groveling front page apology to Helen Clark. I'm just one of these cranks who thinks accusing security agencies of spying on the political enemies of the Government of the day is incredibly serious. And it not only wasn't true, but appears to have not gone through fundamental editorial filters.
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