Author Archive
‘Harmful’ online speech. Outlawing castigation? Cactus Kate tries to vanish.
On three occasions during my ‘career’ as an online critic and avenging angel I have deliberately pulled back from castigating a ‘target’. In all three cases, I became concerned at what appeared to me to be the real possibility that the person whose actions and modus operandi I was criticising might do themselves physical harm […]
‘Dirty Politics’ revisited: More evidence of deceit and covering tracks
It’s funny how the brain works. Earlier this week, I passed a copy of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics on to a new workmate after he’d expressed a harshly negative opinion of Hager — but when I asked him if he’d read any of Hager’s books he admitted he had not. Rather than lend him mine, I […]
Carrick Graham, vendettas and miasma
I don’t talk much about PR attack blogger Cameron Slater’s sometime paymaster and ghostwriter Carrick Graham, although I haven’t completely ignored him — (see?). Carrick’s claim to fame was revealed by Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, and in somewhat redacted material leaked to the news media and further afield by the [alleged] hacker Rawshark through […]
The Hollow Man: PM’s “fabricated” smear on Snowden documents
Evoking FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) is a tactic commonly used by tobacco lobbyists and climate change denialists – attempting to impugn the veracity of evidence. In this case the Prime Minister’s empty smear has been exposed … The NZ Herald‘s David Fisher reports … The Prime Minister’s office has said it has no factual basis for […]
Following through on a complaint to TVNZ re Mike Hosking’s lack of fairness
‘Talk is cheap,’ as the saying goes. I sent this formal complaint in to TVNZ (my first!) last week about Mike Hosking’s unfair victim-bashing. A friend encouraged me to post it here – possibly to inspire others to follow suit. I was reluctant, wary of giving the impression of grandstanding. But he asked me to […]
Russell Brand’s (quieter) Ed ‘Milibrand’ interview
I heard excerpts of this interview on BBC PM early this morning — and wanted to watch it. I’m glad I did. Good to see the ‘despondency message’ (“Why vote? It doesn’t matter”) Brand has promoted being challenged. Miliband’s points – making change through politicians can be hard work, slower than you want, and subject to […]
The road to Mike Hosking, vilifier of young women
Some of us have always seen radio announcer Mike Hosking as a puffed-up little prat. I was there at Broadcasting House when this shortish young guy with a big voice and a very strange manner arrived in the Network Newsroom. He’d come across from Radio NZ’s commercial network. We were one big happy family then […]
Hey RaboDirect, if Mike Hosking’s selling you, I’m not buying.
A nasty side of radio announcer Mike Hosking spilled out into view last week as he ‘bashed’ the victim of John Key’s serial bullying. Hosking, supported by TVNZ’s OneNews, sponsored by RaboDirect, vilified the waitress whom the Prime Minister admits he repeatedly harassed, pulling her hair at her workplace over several months, despite her objections. […]
The twisted trail of the NZ Herald’s ‘statement from the editor’ re Ms Glucina
Updated with NZ Herald editor Shayne Currie’s memo to staff – see bottom. A lot of journalists, myself included, are compulsive information hoarders. We archive and keep things ‘just in case’ we may some time, in the distant future, want to refer to it. I keep this scan of Tim Hunter’s story about Carrick Graham […]
Govt’s mischievous pet monkey flings own dung at zookeeper. (Matthew Hooton disgraces himself. Again.)
Pro-government spin doctor Matthew Hooton disgraced himself on the radio again yesterday. I didn’t get to hear it until late last night as I’ve been busy. But when I did, once again I genuinely worried for his state of mind. And I wondered what the producers of Kathryn Ryan’s show can be thinking about this […]
The P word PLAGIARISM in today’s news aggregation game
Note: Just this morning, 13 April 2015, while searching for a graphic in the media library of this blog to insert in a comment, I came across this post (below) in ‘drafts’ from July 2014. I have no idea why I neglected to publish it at the time. Reading it again this morning, I found […]
A snippet of advice about using pass phrases – Edward Snowden
This is an un-broadcast clip from John Oliver’s hilarious but excellent interview with Edward Snowden about surveillance earlier this week. (Which you can see here at youtube – as I post this it’s had a remarkable 4.7 MILLION views!) This short discussion (below) about pass phrases (as opposed to passwords) is worth a watch too: […]
Public relations and the anti-democratic style of politics
I had an interesting chat online with some other journos yesterday/last night about the place (or, in my view, lack of place) of paid PR propagandists like Matthew Hooton as ‘pundits’ or ‘panelists’ in news and current affairs shows. (Click the image below to read around the conversation on Twitter. There was quite a lot […]
Guest post: The history of Propaganda
Paul Bieleski from Nelson sent this in as a comment on the last post … I found it interesting. – P Propaganda The “Congregation for Propagating the Faith” founded by the Catholic Church in 1622 is where our use of the word propaganda has come from. Its activity was aimed at “propagating” the Catholic faith […]
