Posts by Alfie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
The 3D staff aren't taking the demise of their show lying down. Duncan Greive has the lowdown.
The Spinoff can reveal that 3D‘s journalists have called on lawyers, forensic accountants and employment experts to help build a case that proper processes weren’t followed, and are in a dialogue with the channel’s Human Resources department.
“If Weldon thinks he can take on a room full of investigative journalists and they’re just going to roll over, he’s very much mistaken,” says a source privy to the situation.
At first glance it appears that the journalists have a good case.
The challenge centres on three elements. It’s alleged:
* That MediaWorks did not consult in good faith.
* That MediaWorks provided 3D with misleading and inaccurate reasons for closure.
* That the seven days the programme was given for consultation were not nearly adequate.I wonder how closely the suits at Oaktree Capital Management are watching their investment in MediaWorks dissolve before their eyes?
-
I almost posted this in the flag thread but it’s probably more appropriate here as it involves a major MSM player blurring the lines between factual news coverage and advertising.
Yesterday’s Mediawatch reported on something called the Flag Summit, hosted on Newstalk ZB (owned by NZME) and iHeart Radio (operated by NZME) last Monday. Just imagine… a whole 24 hours of flag debate… stimulating stuff to be sure.
The New Zealand Herald website, meanwhile, joined in from 8pm, unfurling article after article about the flag referendum.
Be still my beating heart. You might be forgiven for thinking that the flag debate had suddenly entered the public consciousness and made John Key’s day.
But this wasn’t our MSM reacting to public demand. The exercise was dreamed up by NZME then funded using taxpayer money, courtesy of the PM’s handpicked Flag Consideration Panel. Neither the panel nor NZME would reveal the cost of the exercise, but such blanket coverage across multiple media is unlikely to come cheap.
I didn’t hear or read any of the coverage so I don’t know if the listeners/readers were informed that they were paying for the advertorial. Or should that be sponsored content? Or maybe just plain media prostitution?
-
The government is still frantically trying to conceal any details of the Saudi sheep dirty deal involving millions of dollars of taxpayers' money being used to effectively bribe a foreign businessman. The chief ombudsman is investigating.
The Stuff story opens with a remarkably clumsy line.
Details about the deaths of New Zealand sheep sent to Saudi Arabia by the Government are refusing to be released for public transparency.
Pardon? Are the facts of the case really requesting privacy? Does Stuff no longer employ sub-editors?
NZTE have withheld the information on the grounds that releasing them would likely prejudice the commercial position of the subject, and they have an obligation of confidence.
While it could be argued that most bribes carry an implication of confidentiality, this is a weak response when the issue involves the serious misuse of public money. Once again the government is using the OIA to obfuscate rather than enlighten.
-
Campbell Live producer Pip Keane has joined Campbell's RNZ team.
Checkpoint with John Campbell, which launches on January 18, 2016, will be a 90 minute news and current affairs programme, going out on radio and streaming online.
-
Things can't be going well in Chez National when they start trotting out b-grade backup puppets.
Michelle Boag, the former National Party president, says she is "disgusted" by those evil women who stood up in parliament and dared to share their experiences of sexual abuse. How dare they make it "all about them"?
Boag's reaction to Key's abhorent claim that opposition members were somehow supporting rapists is not recorded in the story.
-
Matt Nippert - Flag process: Was it a spin job?
Nearly a third of public submissions to the Government's flag consideration panel, all of them critical of the process and supporting the current ensign, were ignored in official reports and advertisements purporting to show public opinion.
-
While the Carter/Key roadshow has disgracefully shamed parliament this week, Peter Dunne stands out for his robust criticism of Australia's appalling abuse of human rights.
The modern concentration camp approach Australia has taken is simply wrong. It was wrong when the British tried it in Northern Ireland in the 1970s; it is wrong in Guantanomo Bay, or in Israel today. Australia is no different. The right to due process and fair and open trials is inalienable. So New Zealand needs to be asserting basic human rights and freedoms, not stooping to the name-calling and abuse that has passed for debate over the last week.
Toby Manhire is always worth reading and in Ten things John Key has (and hasn't) said he highlights Key's attempt to play both sides of the debate by claiming he's working for the poor sods who are stuck in Aussie gulags, while simultaneously attacking the opposition for taking the same stand.
Key's performance this week has been so offensive that I'm expecting John Oliver to revisit prime minister ponytail next week.
-
Incredibly, Key is now trying to paint himself as the victim.
Key said Opposition MPs had "hurled" abuse at him rather than backing the victims of crime.
"The comments and the abuse that's been hurled at me, not a single one of those has been about a victim or alternatively about New Zealanders.
"I'm actually the person standing up for victims of crime - I'm certainly the person that's been standing up for New Zealanders to make sure that they are protected."
Are we seeing the beginning of a new meme... a dead cat double bounce? Lynton Crosbie must be proud of his protegé.
There's a petition over at Action Station calling for Key to apologise.
It's Not OK Prime Minister -
Tracey Watkins on Carter's contribution.
Parliament's Speaker David Carter could have defused the situation on Wednesday after admitting he erred in not making the prime minister apologise for unparliamentary behaviour over his comments on Tuesday.
But Carter instead lit a fresh bomb under the whole sorry affair by insisting his hands were tied.
From here it can only get uglier.
-
Polity: Cold, calculated and cynical, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I’m still looking for the full copy…
