"Journalists can’t report on it unless they have some basic understanding of it."

This is true of more than just IT Security. Journalists can mis-report many subjects - but you're not going to know unless you have some level of understanding yourself in that area.

Me, I was crying into my porridge watching that TVNZ article. I can't recall whether it was TVNZ or TV3 who described Defcon as an "underground hacking network", but that's laughably wrong. But the general populace won't know otherwise, and so accept it as being the truth.

Oh dear. OnDemand displays a lovely "This video is for New Zealand viewers only" message, despite me being a genuine Kiwi sitting in an office in central Wellington.

Filtering based on IP is inaccurate at best - just because I'm on a VPN via the US, doesn't mean I'm not a New Zealander. TVNZ could at least say something honest, like "we're not prepared to stump up for the internantional bandwidth" rather than claiming that I'm not a New Zealander.