Posts by Craig Ranapia
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I think it’s also true that the official messaging of 2015 has smoothed out the century since into something far less complex than it really was.
I've never felt that connected to the "official messaging", but that might have more to do with the way Anzac Day actually went down in our house. I remember spending my childhood getting up in the dark, remembering to be very careful not to do anything to annoy my father whose sadness was like a fog. And which he never, ever talked about.
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Just a few reasons why we shouldn't take our electoral agencies -- and the job they do exceptionally well -- for granted as much as we do.
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Speaker: A conversation from belief, in reply to Rae Sott,
Religion and indoctrination go hand in hand and you sound well and truly indoctrinated
With all due respect, Rae -- this is exactly why I don't talk about my experience of faith around here much, or in any great depth. To have a part of my life that is intimate, complex and often intensely painful (and don't bother lecturing me on how horrible organized religion so often is to LGBT people. I've lived it.) airily dismissed as "indoctrination" makes me question whether getting into it is worth the headache. Civility and basic empathy is a two way street, and frankly it's one too many theists and atheists need to stop treating like a demolition derby.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Cecelia,
It’s hard to argue this case without sounding callous but I believe that Simon was arguing that “Campbell Live is the last bastion of current affairs journalism” is a romantic view of Campbell rather than the reality. In fact there are lots of snippets that are frustratingly lacking in depth
Fair enough -- but I don't think I'm the only person who has been going to some pains to say "Campbell Live is very far from perfect, but it's really something I'd rather not lose".
But to be entirely cynical nor is it very useful -- or intellectually honest -- to engage in the starry-eyed romanticism of statements like (as simon puts it) "Hoping a private channel does serious journalism is no substitute for having a public channel that’s obliged to." I'd very strongly recommend Jean Seaton's Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and The Nation, 1974-1987 for a bracing reality check on any nostalgic pining for some golden age that never really existed.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
I’d assume your assessment is correct except… for a few stories, while the pieces themselves may be fluff, they’re probably bringing attention to more serious broader issues.
Thanks for that, Lucy. "Fluff" is one of the many things that is very much in the eye of the beholder, and while I know a lot of folks around here don't like the term much, check your privilege.
I don't mean to pick on you Simon, but that "School-in-a-Box helping Vanuatu kids" may have been trivia to you and you're perfectly entitled to think so. It may not be trivial at all to those in the audience who have family in Vanuatu, or contributed to Unicef's Cyclone Pam Appeal which financed it.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Michael Meyers,
You’d think from reading the comments on PA that everyone in NZ believes Dirty Politics, no one votes National and everyone watches Campbell Live.
There are days (and most of a decade - don't ask) when I don't know why the hell I bother hauling my bloated carcass out of bed...
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Cecelia,
John Campbell is an intellectual but he fronts a programme that is a mixture of advocacy journalism, lots of human interest fluff and some political interviews. I don’t think his abilities are being used to their full extent.
I don't disagree with your larger point (I think John Campbell would be really great at a long-form interview show) but context matters and Campbell Live is a general interest, prime time five-nights-a-week, forty-weeks-of-the-year current affairs show. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with "human interest fluff" as part of a well-balanced diet. After all, plenty of the stories coming out of Christchurch could be characterized as HIF, and that's a legit part of the story too.
And one thing I like about Campbell is he has the kind of temperament where he can do the warm, empathic HIF and the stern brow-crinkle at the not-so-great and not-at-all good equally well. That's a lot rarer than you might think.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Russell Brown,
Campbell used to actually get complaints about doing so much on Christchurch.
Sure, but in the history of journalism it’s funny how many of the great stories outlets dine out on for years – if not decades – were initially greeting with “Oh, by Perry White’s salty chocolate balls, enough already , move on!”
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Russell Brown,
Without Campbell, who would know about the suffering and the struggles of people in post-eqnz Christchurch?
How can we quantify what it did for Chch people to be told “We haven’t forgotten you”?That’s probably CL’s great example of putting editorial imperatives ahead of market sense. And good on them for that.
I thought it was both. "What are the legitimate stories of genuine broad public inerest the other bastards aren't telling, or telling well and in-depth?" Not only sounds like a good editorial imperative, but identifying a gap in the market you can fill.
And let's be honest: Am I the only one around here who can find Campbell's Tigger-on-speed persona occasionally cloying? But, hell.you can't say he's not a singularly distinctive brand. :)
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Yamis,
After being part of a high school that got shat on by shonky ‘journalism’ by Campbell Live I refused to watch another episode.
Fair enough -- and I don't think anyone (least of all our host) is claiming Campbell Live and its host is a flawless jewel in the media crown that has never gotten anything wrong. The odds of that happening over a decade of working journalism are roughly zero.
But even though it's not a terribly high bar to clear, Campbell Live is more substantive than Seven Sharp by orders of magnitude, and for all its flaws I'd argue public discourse would be diminished if Three was penny wise, pound foolish enough to cancel it. Or effectively neuter it with a thousand budget cuts.