Archive for the ‘Media issues’ Category
Negative campaigning
There’s a fantastic article about negative campaigning in this month’s New York magazine… Frank Rich: Nuke ’Em Why negative advertisements are powerful, essential, and sometimes (see “Daisy”) even artistic. It includes this distinction, which touches on some of the discussion we’ve had here earlier about political activists like Cameron Slater purporting to be ‘media’ when […]
Deploying his establishment charms
Andrew Gimson, writing in The Guardian, displays a decent, honourable amount of cynicism (in my opinion) describing the efforts British Tory PM David Cameron exerted to try to ‘hose down’ his obviously-cosy-to-the-point-of-symbiotic relationship with News International’s Rebekah Brooks standing in for Murdoch. Her text (SMS message) with words to the effect of ‘professionally we’re in […]
Two good US politics reads
Steve Schmidt (former McCain campaign manager) A Career Resurrected After McCain and Palin – New York Times 8 June 2012 Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought – The Washington Post 9 June 2012 Worth reading, and if you’re like me, worth archiving. I’ll fold some of the […]
A study in spin. And Farrar lends a hand …
The NZ Herald calls the government’s presentation of proposed teacher cuts dishonest, political humbug and a study in spin. The fact is that the present moves will make it harder for teachers to deliver quality – and disproportionately harder for teachers in low-decile schools whose pupils are attracted to the subject areas under attack. If […]
Hollow Man Matthew Hooton recites his creed
Featuring extensive quotes from National Party sources, Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception exposed and excoriated a cynical, deceptive team of politicians, spin doctors, professional deceivers and behind-the-scenes, shadowy political donors seeking political influence and ‘policy for sale’ — some of whom, judging by results, are still very much […]
‘A loathsome piece of filth’
That’s actually something I said about somebody. And I meant it, as harsh as it sounds. I didn’t say it to them, I didn’t say it publicly, nor did I post it online here or elsewhere. It was my personal opinion at the time, provoked by their actions. They stand out in my mind as one of […]
Why I use an ad-blocker (You must be kidding me @NZHerald)
I was using my non-ad-blocked Chrome web browser for something tonight and thought I’d just see what news was happening, so popped over the nzherald.co.nz You have got to be kidding me … Ridiculous over-the-top interruption marketing. Doomed to fail, in my opinion. – P Update: It certainly illustrates why I use AdBlock and Glimmerblocker […]
How we got to charter schools
I stumbled across this on the web, looking for something else. Worth reading. From the Autumn edition of Education Aotearoa: The influence of the business lobby, particularly the Business Roundtable and ACT, in pushing New Zealand into the hands of the charter school movement is shown in a timeline of developments put together by NZEI’s […]
TV ‘ad hopper’ … um, yes please.
OK, so it’s not a one-sided argument, but still, put me down for one of these … the equivalent of AdBlock in my web browser: The disruptive technology at hand is an ad eraser, embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Charles W. Ergen’s Dish Network, one of the nation’s top distributors of TV […]
John Key’s media whack-a-mole ‘tactical’ — Gavin Ellis
I said yesterday in Setting a narrative: ‘aggressive’ ‘hostile’ ‘antagonistic’ ‘tabloid’ media that I thought the prime minister’s comments criticizing the media (and especially the NZ Herald) were an oh-so-deliberate attempt to characterise future criticism of the Key administration as an aggressive, sensationalist news media lowering standards to desperately chase sales/readers/viewers. Defensively denigrating the news […]
I’d double-check if they told me what day it was
More on the negative credibility of bloggers ‘seeding’ controversy in the mainstream media … Following my brief mention of bloggers who make sh*t up (Negative credibility sux, eh @whaleoil? eh @dpfdpf?) I was interested last night to read NZ First leader Winston Peters’ speech notes for a Wintec media lunch yesterday where he pinged the […]
