NZ’s new government: A grab bag of hot takes

New Zealand’s new three-ring circus government goes back and forth from from comedy to farce, and the jokes that are its announced policies, while jokes, aren’t even remotely funny. This is going to a long—well, however long this government ends up surviving before it implodes.

So far, one announed policy scrapping has attracted worldwide attention: The Tripartite Regime has announced it will repeal the landmark world-leading smoke-free legislation adopted by the previous Labour-led Government. That legislation would have slowly raised the legal age to buy tobacco products so that no one born in 2009 or later would ever be able to buy tobacco products in New Zealand. It was also slowly reduce the number of places cigarettes could be purchased from 6000 to 600. Naturally, powerful forces moved against it.

The tobacco lobby claimed that not allowing today’s 14-year-olds to ever buy tobacco would lead to skyrocketing increases in blackmarket tobacco, a dubious claim that the National Party Prime Minister, Chris Luxon, has been parroting since coming to power. Given the declining rates of smoking in New Zealand, and that the law wouldn’t even affect anyone for another four years, this was an interesting claim—and probably utter nonsense.

The real reason for the change seems to be tax (though Chris Luxon now denies that, as well as denying the claim that senior National MP Chris Bishop, a former tobacco industry lobbyist, took part in coalition negotiations on the issue). However, ever since the current Job Share Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters (who himself has been a cigarette addict for decades), killed National’s promise to allow foreigners to buy private houses above $2 million, and so, also killed the 15% tax Luxon planned to charge foreigners, National was desperate to find revenue somewhere to pay for their planned tax cuts (which will almost certainly be targeted at helping the rich, if the past is any guide).

Winston apparently struck again in securing a promise to pull all sex and gender education guidelines from schools. Winston wants to prevent schools from addressing any Rainbow issues, gender identity in particular. During the campaign, he promised that if his party formed government, he would pass a law requiring business owners make sure that toilets for customers would only be used by people whose gender corresponded to their sex assigned at birth, though he didn’t say how, exactly, he expected businesses to do that—did he expect them to conduct inspections of customers’ genitals? Probably.

Winston knew he’d never lead any government—only a small fraction of NZ voters ever vote for his party—but by pandering to the most ignorant, bigoted and conspiracy-loving segments of society, he knew he could win votes and get donations to his party. With Winston, politics has always been transactional, not philosophical or ideological. Well, it never used to be.

The thing is, most of the curriculum was about how the body changes, about relationships, diversity, and—most importantly—consent. The goal was to help young people to understand the changes they were experiencing, that there are rules around sex, and that, most importantly, no means no. That, too, will be dumped so Winston can wage his “war on woke”.

Maybe this shows that Winston has spent too much time around cookers and other fans of conspiracy theories, because in many ways he seems to have gone weird. For example, attacking the news media has always been part of his cynical game: His fans ate it up because they hate the new media and/or just like to see Winston go after journalists. Lately, though, his attacks have become downright sinister.

He spread baseless disinformation and lies born out of conspiracy theories about the New Zealand news media, first at the singing of the coalition agreement, then during the photo op at the new cabinet’s first meeting, and also told a media outlet that he’s “at war” with the news media.

Then he truly went off the deep end, spewing the utterly bizarre claim that the news industry was responsible for the long second Auckland Covid lockdown, asking, "Why did [the media] allow the second dramatic lockdown with only one case in Auckland”, and since he was a real, non-job share deputy prime minister when the lockdown first began—um, every accusation is a confession, maybe? Chris Luxon said that Winston puts things in ways he wouldn’t (which must be the understatement of the week), and the Deputy Leader of his Party, Nicola Willis, tried to diminish the seriousness of Winston’a ravings, calling it “hyperbole”. How long can Luxon and Willis carry on pretending like that?

These are only some of the latest highlights from the 3-ring circus, and there will be plenty more to come until Parliament finally goes away for Christmas and gives us a break from them. At the moment, my personal favourite description of the new government and it’s mishmash of policies came from Chlöe Swarbrick, Green Party MP for Auckland Central. Yesterday morning, she told TVNZ’s “Breakfast” programme:

It's definitely not the government of low wage workers, renters, or anybody who sits on the margins of our society. The priorities of the incoming government should be dealing with the dual crises of inequality and the climate crisis.

But instead, what we have with those two agreements is a grab bag of 200-plus-odd random policies that come across more as hot takes from your uncle at Christmas. It's not a vision for the future that New Zealanders deserve. I just can't see how we're gonna get anywhere near the issues that really matter.

Swarbrick also succinctly described the reality of this hodgepodge government: "It's a pair of scissors, it's not a vision for the future of this country.”

This is going to a long—well, however long this government ends up surviving before it implodes or is turfed out.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 398 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 398, “17 and 28”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 394 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 394, “Hairy day”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

The ‘end’ of Covid

At one minute past midnight last night, the New Zealand Government ended all remaining Covid restrictions. This means that Kiwis testing positive for Covid will no longer be required to isolate for seven days, and requirement that all visitors to health care facilities wear face masks also ended. In essence, life in New Zealand for most people is now completely back to “normal”, like what it was in the pre-Covid times.

In announcing the change, the Minister of Health, Dr Ayesha Verrall, said, “While our case numbers will continue to fluctuate, we have not seen the dramatic peaks that characterised COVID-19 rates last year.” The Government also pointed out that the levels of the virus detected in wastewater, and also the number of hospitalisations related to Covid, have been trending downwards since the beginning of June, and also that over the past month the number of cases of Covid reported have hit their lowest levels since February 2022. All of which is very good news.

The Government conducted a massive advertising campaign to encourage New Zealanders to get this year’s influenza vaccination, and that seems to have helped take some of the strain off the healthcare system. I received my influenza and Covid booster shots back on May 30.

I think today's change is a sensible move, not the least because—if we’re truly honest—plenty of people (probably most) were ignoring the last remaining rules, anyway. On the evening news last night, a mask-wearing person talked about how even though there were signs telling people to wear a mask when entering her healthcare facility, few did. Last June, I went for my routine blood tests and wore a mask. While I was there, a woman came in—not wearing a mask. As I was leaving, a different woman who appeared to be my age or somewhat older, entered, also not wearing a mask. I didn’t take mine off until I was outside and walking toward my car.

A few days after my blood tests, I had an appointment at my doctor’s office. It was simply to check my blood pressure and weight, which hadn’t been measured (officially, that is…) in several years. I wore a mask, of course, and from what I could see, the patients there did, too—more or less. One older man was wearing his more like a chin strap, and the masks of others didn’t seem completely seated properly. In other words, compliance with the rule looked to me to be sort of half-hearted—at a doctors practice, no less, a place with sick people in it.

This being an election year, TV journalists asked if the relaxed requirements were some sort of election ploy. I mean, of course the people who hate Labour to the very core of their being because of the Government’s sound, fact-based response to Covid would suddenly completely change their minds about Labour simply because the Government removed the last two restrictions. Sometimes the idiocy of journalists is absolutely breathtaking.

Other, more rationally-inclined journalists asked health officials if it was sensible to relax the requirements while it's still winter, the season with the most respiratory illness. That absolutely was a fair question, and there were differing opinions in the answers, as one would expect. However, with the Covid-related demands on the public health system far lower than has been the case in a very long time, and with Spring beginning just over two weeks from now, it seems to me that this is as good a time as any, and many healthcare professionals agree with it. Will the change “help” Labour’s election campaign? Of course not—but neither will it hurt them. I’ve seen with my own eyes how many people are completely over the restrictions, anyway, and they have been for quite some time.

I’m someone who’s considered at higher risk of bad outcomes if I catch Covid (or influenza, for that matter), and even I can see the sense of ending the last restrictions. We’ve all moved on, and the Government is really just catching up. Clearly some TV journalists have some catching-up to do, too.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 385 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 385, “Wet, whiny, inward-looking country”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day

Yesterday was a special one-off holiday, Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Day, New Zealand’s official day of remembrance for the late Queen of New Zealand. There was a national service in Wellington (video above), but, if we’re honest, for most New Zealanders, it was an unplanned day off—and the final day of an unexpected three-day weekend.

While this is the first time most workers have experienced the death of their monarch, Commonwealth Realms faced opposition to a day off. Australia declared a holiday (held September 22) not long after the Queen died, but republicans opposed it, as did businesses, of course. Canada declared a National Day of mourning for the Queen on September 19, the day of her funeral, which made it a statutory (paid) holiday for federal workers only. Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba decided not declare it a statutory holiday, meaning ordinary workers wouldn’t have a paid day off, but Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, and Labrador all did, and British Columbia made it a holiday only for provincial public service workers. In Canada, the mess was largely because businesses opposed it on the grounds they only had six days to make arrangements. The United Kingdom’s “bank holiday” on the day of the Queen’s funeral was not a paid day off.

NZ businesses and the most rightwing party in Parliament whined loudly about having to give workers a day off. Of course. However, while business and their allies in politics and the media can be counted on to always complain about having to do anything positive for workers, I have to admit I didn’t really see the point of having a special holiday on September 26.

The Queen’s funeral was a week earlier, and the official period of morning in her native United Kingdom ended that day. This meant that New Zealand’s day of remembrance a week later was disconnected from the official mourning. Add to that the fact that photos of her ledger stone had been revealed, and NZ’s day seemed kind of, well, pointless. On the other hand, it’s not unheard of for official days of remembrance to be held some time after the date, though not usually for such a high-profile person.

The official commemoration was a national service at The Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, a modernist Anglican cathedral whose cornerstone was laid by the Queen on January 13, 1954, during her Royal Tour of New Zealand. I watched a bit of the service, but not for long—it wasn’t my sort of thing, being a Christian service for Christians like the Queen. From what I saw of the service, though, they made an effort to be inclusive, similar to the actual funeral.

The Queen’s Personal New Zealand Flag entered the cathedral at the start of the service, and led the departure at the end (I saw that on the news later, though, because it happened before and after I watched). That standard isn’t the same as her official banner used in the UK, since within New Zealand her official position was Queen of New Zealand, not of the UK. It was used mostly the same way the one in the UK was, and the service was the last time it will be used for official purposes. A new banner will be created for King Charles III. Australia and Canada also have Personal Flags for the monarch.

There was a minute of silence held throughout the country, however, I wasn’t aware of that, either, until I saw the evening news because it, too, happened before I turned the TV on. I’m pretty sure most New Zealanders weren’t aware of it either, not unless they were somewhere where the service was being shown.

I have mixed feelings about it all. First, I completely understand that she was head of the Church of England, and as such, having such an overtly religious service is appropriate. On the other hand, as I’ve said many times, I’m uncomfortable with overt religiosity of any kind being merged with civic and governmental functions. At the same time, I’m also well aware that the New Zealand government doesn’t have any sort of secular official “services” (as, indeed, many governments don’t). And, of course, anyone who didn’t want to take part for whatever reason—religious, political, lack of interest—didn’t have to because there was, of course, no compulsion to participate.

Desipte all that, for me it mainly just seemed kind of unnecessary: She’d been buried a week by then, and most people had already started moving on. I question the wisdom of continuing the mourning for another week because of the effect that it can have on the people who clearly were personally affected by the Queen’s death. But there’s one thing more, and the harshest question: Did that many New Zealanders really need or specifically want a special day to farewell the queen a week after her funeral?

The only televised coverage was on Newshub, the news operation of TV Three, which is part of US-owned media company Warner Bros. Discovery Australia-New Zealand, apparently partnering with NZ’s state-owned radio broadcaster, RNZ. However, Newshub hasn’t posted its coverage on their YouTube Channel (though it may be available on their on-demand streaming service, ThreeNow; I haven’t checked). The video above is from the YouTube Channel of The New Zealand Herald newspaper, and it’s just a version of the Newshub coverage, some of it raw footage (with chyrons added, covering the broadcaster’s chyrons that identified who was speaking…). The broadcast was funded by government funding agency, NZ On Air. All a bit weird, it seems to me, since both TVNZ’s One News and Newshub carried the actual funeral live, yet the coverage of the one in New Zealand and for New Zealand was much lower key. Does that mean an implicit acknowledgement that it just wasn’t a very big deal?

To be blunt, the answers to the questions raised by all of this don’t matter: It’s truly over now, and New Zealanders are moving on. There will be different stories and questions related to the monarchy in the years ahead, but this particular chapter is now well and truly closed. Questions, however, will be the one certainty in the future.

My prediction came true

New Zealand’s television line-up is about to get a bit of a shakeup, with more to come. From next week, channel positions will change, and much later on, the government plans on forming a new public broadcaster out of two Crown-owned media entities. Some of this is quite meta, and much of it only of interest to New Zealanders, but it will also mean changes for this blog—because my prediction came true.

Back in September of last year, I wrote about Discovery Networks NZ (aka Discovery, Inc) buying the TV channels of Mediaworks, and I noted that their two free-to-air music video channels were likely doomed: “It seems highly improbable that the new owners will keep the music video channels.” In that same post I noted that Discovery had a lot of programming that it owned, and so, it had plenty of content to fill those two channels. I said:

The company’s international division… owns a lot of channels around the world, so they have some options for what to use when replacing the two music video channels. It seems unlikely to me that they wouldn’t do that: They already own the programming, don’t need to license the content, and it would be much cheaper than making programming for New Zealand.

I got it exactly right.

The company is ending The Edge TV and The Breeze TV on Monday, March 21, and that means the only free-to-air music video TV channel (one I’d describe as currently broadcasting music “most of most days”) will be Juice TV. I talked about that channel back in May of 2020, and I’ve noticed that it’s now more likely to broadcast mainstream music videos than the original version did, but its content is still largely not mainstream. The two former video channels will be available to stream from their respective radio channels’ websites, but, who actually does that? I never did before, and it seems unlikely I will now (I’d have to launch a web browser on one of my devices to watch it on TV, which is possible, but cumbersome.

The change to music video channels means that it’s improbable that I’ll find much new music, since I don’t listen to radio anymore, and so, the main driver of my old “Weekend Diversion” posts will be gone. That doesn’t mean they’re dead, though: I’ll talk about older music (as I’ve always done), and I’ll still occasionally run across new music by accident (usually when it’s a music bed in a video, or used in a commercial or something). We’ll see. At any rate, the loss of the free-to-air music video channels again will definitely affect what music I write about, and how often. Again

One of the music channels is being replaced by a new channel, called “Rush”. That channel appears to be a New Zealand—perhaps, “New Zealandised”—version of the company’s Australian channel, “9Rush”, which is a joint venture with Australian broadcaster, 9 Network. Its programming is supposed to be “adventure” stuff targeting males 25 to 54, the same demographic that TVNZ’s “Duke” channel originally targeted, though it no longer does.

Discovery’s other new channel is actually rebranding/replacing a channel they already owned, Choice TV. The rebranded it “eden” (all lowercase) is promising "A Better Everyday". The channel will apparently carry many of the same programmes Choice TV had, but also some drama, among other things, that Choice didn't broadcast. There will also apparently be at least one “local show”, though at the moment I’m not clear if that announced show is NZ-made or Australian-made. A eden+1 channel, which will carry eden programming on an hour delay, will also be added, replacing the other music video channel.

All of these are part of a larger re-jig of the channels on free-to-air Freeview and also on pay-TV Sky. Many of the changes are of a “housekeeping” nature, such as, putting all the +1 channels together and adding a one before their channel position (so, TV One+1 will become 11, Two+1 will be 21, Three+1 will become 13; the new eden channel will by 8, and its +1 will be on 18). This change makes a lot of sense for people with remotes that allow channel changing by number, which my current Android box doesn’t (that box is a topic for another day), so for me this change doesn’t give me or folks like me anything at the moment, but I think it might eventually matter for me.

A complicating factor in all this is that Discovery and Warner Media are merging into a new company (to be called Warner Bros. Discovery), which will, among other things, allow them to combine their online streaming services (the Discovery+ streaming service isn't very old and, as far as I know, neither it nor Warner Media's HBO Max service are available in New Zealand). I have no idea whether this merger will be good or bad for consumers, however, reducing the number of streaming services would be welcomed by a lot of people, including me: To access all programming available through streaming services, every month someone would probably have to spend at least five times what they’d pay for ordinary pay TV—though, if they had ordinary pay TV, they wouldn’t be able to access all the content available. Also, not all streaming services are available in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, other changes are in the planning stages. Last week, the NZ Government announced plans to merge TVNZ and RNZ into a new public broadcasting entity. The new entity will be funded by a combination of advertising, as TVNZ is now, and also government support, because the intent is to end the requirement that the entity has to return a dividend to the Crown, as TVNZ currently must (RNZ is commercial free). While details and specifics of the merger are awhile off yet, the new entity is intended to ensure public broadcasting will continue, and to provide New Zealanders “with high quality, independent, timely and relevant media content,” as Broadcasting and Media Minister Kris Faafoi put it.

The merger means that regardless of what the for-profit companies do, New Zealand content (especially Māori content) will continue to be made and broadcasted. It’s way too early to tell if Discovery will make much local content for any of the channels it bought, but they may not be interested in producing New Zealand-specific and Māori content when they have so much foreign content they can simply re-purpose. However, a strong public broadcaster making local content could provide strong competition for viewers, and so, advertising revenue—and that might provide an economic incentive for Discovery to make local content. Hopefully.

Things are definitely changing for television in New Zealand, and I’ll be interested to see what Discovery's new channels broadcast, even if it’s all foreign. I watch TV to be entertained and informed, and sometimes foreign content is—for me—better at one or the other than a local programme might be. Not always, but, the competition for eyes can make locally-made NZ content better, too. Hopefully.

Television hasn't been a unifying force ever since pay-TV took off and splintered audiences: With zillions of things to watch at any given moment, the odds there'd be a mass audience for one single broadcast became extremely rare—and that only become more true when streaming services appeared. Because of that, the changes made by Discovery may not really matter much. New Zealanders will still have NZ-made programming to reflect us and tell our stories, no matter what Discovery (and, evenetually, Warner Bros. Discovery) does. This is why my own reaction to all this change is mostly a shrug of the shoulders.

There's one thing, though, that I want to note for my personal history: Those video music channels kept me company during the original Covid lockdown, a period when I was also in my first year without Nigel. They were, at the time, very valuable to me. However, I gradually watched them less and less over time, and the channels I watched the most were TVNZ's TV One or a couple of Discovery's NZ channels, including Choice TV.

All of which means that whatever happens in the shakeups and rearrangements, we'll all adapt just fine, like we always have. We already have plenty of viewing options, after all, and we can always find something to watch.

Is the video end nigh?

It looks like my Weekend Diversion posts may become rare again: Today NZ broadcaster Mediaworks announced that their TV channels were being sold to American company, Discovery, Inc. The network already owns NZ channels Living Channel (a lifestyle channel only on pay TV), Food Network NZ (a NZ localised version of the company’s own Food Network, and only on pay TV), Choice TV, a general broadcaster that’s on both pay TV and free-to-air, and HGTV New Zealand. Discovery Inc.’s flagship channel, Discovery Channel, is available on our pay TV service. If the sale is approved, I think it’s inevitable that the two music video channels I watched when they popped up earlier this year will be going away. Again.

Back in May, I talked about the return of the music video channel I always used to watch, and I noted that the company that ran them was for sale. That channel, and other “softer” music video channel were branded for two of the company’s radio stations. Since the company is keeping its radio stations, not selling them to Discovery, Inc., it seems highly improbable that the new owners will keep the music video channels. But I have no idea what they’ll do with them.

The company’s international division, which owns the two NZ TV channels, owns a lot of channels around the world, so they have some options for what to use when replacing the two music video channels. It seems unlikely to me that they wouldn’t do that: They already own the programming, don’t need to license the content, and it would be much cheaper than making programming for New Zealand. Will they make the programming more “international”? There’s a part of me that will be interested to see what they choose.

As part of the deal, Discovery, Inc. will get the broadcast rights to Bravo TV in New Zealand (which is somewhat localised, and both pay TV and free-to-air), along with the existing TV channel, Three, which is the main competitor to government-owned TVNZ (like their channels, Three is both pay TV and free-to-air).

It’s possible that regulators will shoot down the sale because it will concentrate a lot of channels ion the hands of one company. But aside from the two music video channels, the only new ones they’re acquiring are Bravo and Three, and therein lies the problem for them: Choice, which they already own, is the largest independent free-to-air broadcaster after the company that’s just been sold. In other words, there would be two companies that would control all free-to-air TV in New Zealand (pay TV operator Sky TV owns Prime TV, and that free-to-air and pay TV channel is the only other significant free-to-air channel in New Zealand—and that's just one channel. Discovery’s hope may be that regulators decide that since the new merged Discovery, Inc. operations would be much larger than the two were separately, it'd be much stronger competition for TVNZ, which is by far the dominant broadcaster. We should know by the end of the year.

One way or another, I still expect the two music video channels to go away at some point, either through re-purposing by Discovery, Inc., or if that sale is rejected by regulators, then they may just be shut down to reduce costs. That’ll leave Juice TV, which I mentioned back in May, and sometime video programming on TVNZ’s Duke channel (called, cutely, “Duke Box”). But there’s no guarantee either will be broadcast music videos often enough, or that their videos will be interesting enough, for future Weekend Diversion posts. We’ll—ahem—see.

Stuff turns 20

Stuff's current logo.

I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t normally comment on a news company’s anniversary, and certainly not the anniversary of its website’s launch. However, this one is something I have a somewhat indirect connection to: Yesterday the Stuff website turned 20.

In 2000, I was working for INL (Independent Newspapers Ltd), the company that launched the Stuff website. I was working for the Auckland division that published the Sunday Star-Times and Sunday News Sunday papers, along with the weekly tabloid/gossip paper, NZ Truth, the racing titles Friday Flash, Best Bets, and Turf Digest, along with some magazines, the biggest of which was NZ TV Guide (there was another Auckland-based division that published a stable of magazines).

When the website launched, we were given some swag (which I still have somewhere), and our own internal company site, Our Stuff, which had, among other things, stuff, as it were, about the company and the industry.

Not long afterward, our division was rebranded “INL Sundays” (which, we joked, made us sound like an ice cream shop). The company began internal reviews that resulted in job losses at other divisions, so when it was out turn, my teammates and I joined a union (I mentioned that in a post about unions back in 2014).

Not long after that, in June 2003, the company was sold to Australian media conglomerate Fairfax Media. I transferred to another division shortly afterward (which I’d planned ahead of time), and left the company altogether the end of that year.

In July 2018, Fairfax merged with Australian media conglomerate Nine Entertainment Co. (which had once owned New Zealand TV channel Prime). Nine made it clear it intended to sell its New Zealand assets, by then branded under the “Stuff” name, and that finally happened—after the lockdown—with a management buyout (for “one dollar”). Stuff now owns the Stuff website and all the surviving papers—the weeklies, Sunday Star-Times and the Sunday News, along with daily newspapers Dominion Post (Wellington), Christchurch Press (Christchurch), Waikato Times (Hamilton), plus a bunch of regional papers.

I basically stopped reading Stuff several years ago because so much of its content was shallow clickbait. I returned when the country’s biggest newspaper, The New Zealand Herald put up a paywall because I thought the paywall was a very bad deal, and its existence meant I could never be sure whether the Herald story I saw a link to was free or not, so I just stopped following links to the paper’s website. Instead, I started checking our other New Zealand news sites, including Stuff, among others.

Like most NZ mainstream news organisations, Stuff’s journalism is varied, especially when it comes to covering New Zealand politics, leading some to claim it has a rightward tilt—though not nearly as much so as the Herald. Maybe so—such things are mostly a matter of opinion. However, many of the company’s journalists are very good. For example, I think Henry Cooke is the best political reporter in New Zealand, an opinion I came to after reading his reports on US politics and election campaigns—the first NZ journalist I’d ever seen get it right. Given how complicated and labyrinthine US politics is, anyone who gets that right is bound to do well covering NZ politics, and he has. If only the politics journalists at competing major media companies were half as good, we’d have a decent newsmedia overall.

My connection to Stuff, then, is only that I worked for the corporation that started it, and in an entirely different division and city than where the site was born. Even so, I was keenly aware of its launch, and I relied on it for a long time. Then, it changed, I changed, and then we both did that some more, and now I’m back to checking them out frequently—though not every day. Another thing that’s changed over these 20 years is that I often need a break from all news, and I’m certainly not alone in that feeling.

Here’s to another 20 years of stuff from Stuff.

See also:

“Stuff turns 20: From unwanted child to biggest NZ website, the story of how Stuff grew up” – Stuff

Fronting with truth

The image at left is the from page of The New York Times for Sunday, May 24, 2020. The paper used the names and a brief part of the victim’s obituary as away to convey an idea of who the person was, what their life was like. It’s 1,000 snapshots of of the sort of vibrant people that the USA has lost.

1,000 is also a small fraction of how many people the USA will lose before this is all over. The front page was published just as the USA was closing in on 100,000 deaths. And with many, many more deaths coming after that, it would be easy to lose sight of the fact they’re people who were lost—not mere numbers.

The paper published a note about how the project came together, but the piece speaks for itself, really—and it speaks for 1,000 of those who were lost.

Guarding what, precisely?

Wow. Just... wow. Just went through LAX immigration. Presented my journalist visa and was stopped by the CBP agent and accused of being part of the ‘fake news media’.

— James Dyer (@jamescdyer) August 22, 2019

Are the USA’s border guards there to protect the USA’s borders, or are they there to protect the current occupant of the White House? There’s growing evidence that it’s becoming the latter, and whether it’s individual initiative or official policy only matters because of the degree—the offence is the same. It sends a chilling message to foreigners and US citizens alike, journalists in particular, and it also inevitably will put lives at risk.

The latest evidence that border guards are acting inappropriately came a few days ago when James Dyer, a journalist with Empire Magazine (a British film magazine published by a division of German international multimedia conglomerate Bauer Media Group) posted the above Twitter thread (which are also readable on Crooks and Liars). His next three Tweets tell the gist of the story:

He wanted to know if I’d ever worked for CNN or MSNBC or other outlets that are “spreading lies to the American people.” He aggressively told me that journalists are liars and are attacking their democracy.
James Dyer @jamescdyer August 22, 2019

Apparently the only truth now comes from YouTube and the president. All this said under a CBP sign that says “we are the face of our nation.” And with a framed picture of 45 staring down. In fucking California!!! Welcome to Trump’s America!
James Dyer @jamescdyer August 22, 2019

He let me go after I said that I was just here to write about Star Wars, and would keep the fake news about that to a bare minimum. Thankfully the statute of limitations has expired on @ChrisHewitt’s 5 star review of Attack Of The Clones...
James Dyer @jamescdyer August 22, 2019

Dyer goes on to make clear that he was not detained: “He made no attempt to physically detain me beyond the questions (and lecture),” he Tweeted. He added, “Questions at customs are to be expected while fingerprinting etc is going on. It’s just the fake news/MSM diatribe that was surprising and inappropriate.” He didn’t get the agent’s name, nor make a complaint, at least in part because he wasn’t mistreated or detained.

There’s nothing new about harassment of journalists at the border. Back in March, it was reported that under the current regime the US Government was engaged in surveillance of journalists, lawyers, and immigration/migrant activists. The American Civil Liberties Union pointed out that the regime’s behaviour is unconstitutional—as if the regime would care about that.

In Dyer’s case, however, this wasn’t part of official harassment, and this appears to have been the actions of a CBP agent who supports the current occupant of the White House and took it upon himself to be political police by aping the current occupant’s lies and smears about the newsmedia. Dyer subsequently Tweeted that CBP contacted him to apologise and to assure him that “they’ve identified the agent concerned and are taking appropriate action to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” That’s good news.

The problem here is that the agent implied that supporting the current regime and not critiquing it, its actions, or its Dear Leader is a perquisite for a foreign journalist to enter to the USA. That one agent did a lot of damage to the USA’s image overseas, but the big question we can’t answer is, how many other journalists has this happened to without being reported anywhere? How common is this?

Other presidents have hated the newsmedia—hell, Nixon's infamous “enemies list” included a few journalists. What makes this current regime different from all the previous presidential administrations is that the current occupant of the White House is promoting hatred of the newsmedia in general, and journalists and particular media outlets in particular. That’s unprecedented and incredibly dangerous.

This should even need to be said, but in the modern USA, apparently it does: A free and unfettered press is a necessary prerequisite to a functioning democracy. Once cannot exist without the other. In the USA, the ability of journalists to do their important work is becoming harder and harder—which pretty much seems to be the point of the current regime’s harassment of journalists.

So, sure, this incident seems to be the action of one fervent frothing fan of the current occupant of the White House taking it upon himself to act on the words of the current occupant—you know, like the El Paso shooter did. Or the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter did. Or as the guy who sent pipe bombs to critics of the current regime, including media organisations and journalists. There is a link, a clear and direct line from the words spewed out by the current occupant of the White House and the decision of individuals to act on those words.

This time the incident was gross, disgusting, and illegal, but next time? There’s clearly no limit to how far the fervent frothing fans of the current occupant of the White House will go to act on the messages from that man.

Harassment of journalists isn’t the only thing going on here, and they’re not the only ones in danger from those fervent frothing fans. How can we be sure one of them won’t choose a weapon rather than mere haranguing?

The rhetoric of the current occupant of the White House inevitably puts lives at risk. This is how it starts.

Second Democratic Debate

The second Democratic Presidential Debate, hosted by CNN, was terrible. That wasn’t the fault of the candidates, at least, not exclusively. Instead, it was CNN that ran an absolutely awful show. It was silly, pandering, and often seeming like it was little more than “Survivor: Democrats”, with the show attempting to manufacture conflict where there really wasn’t any, and to ignore those who weren’t singled out for attention. Americans and Democrats alike deserved better, and CNN failed utterly.

We could see early on how awful coverage would be. Both nights, the coverage began with a long verbal introduction of the candidates for the night, a commercial break, then back to the broadcast beginning with yet another introduction of the candidates in the debate. Then a long flag ceremony, an interpretation of the US national anthem, and, finally, a dozen minutes or so into the broadcast, they got ready to begin the actual debate.

Night One was the Bernie and Elizabeth Show, and Night Two was the Joe and Kamala show. Other candidates occasionally got to say a few things, but the questions and follow-up questions were mainly directed at the two candidates who were the focus of the night.

We can see this in the amount of speaking time given to the candidates:

On Night One, Elizabeth Warren got 18:33, and Bernie Sanders got 17:45. The candidate with the third-most amount of time was Buttigieg, who got 14:07. The next four were all similar: Bullock 10:59, O’Rourke 10:58, Klobuchar 10:49, and Delaney 10:31. The small amount of time given to Delaney will surprise some people on Twitter, since they complained abut how much he was talking. Ryan was next at 9:47, followed by the bottom two, Williamson on 8:52 and Hickenlooper on 8:49.

On Night Two, Joe Biden got 21 minutes, and Kamala Harris got 17:18. Booker was this on 13:05 and Gillibrand was fourth on 11:25. The next four were all similar: Inslee 10:48, Tulsi Gabbard 10:47, Bennet 10:25, followed by de Blasio with 9:17 and Yang on 8:53.

Commentators on the night and since seemed unimpressed with Night One, and CNN’s use of Delaney, and to some degree Hickenlooper, to attack Sanders and Warren without giving much else. Vox’s Ezra Klein Tweeted: “Seriously? More time for Delaney in the hopes he'll attack Warren's wealth tax? But...why?” At the time, I wondered if it was just for the fireworks. Williamson was lauded for some of her statements, especially on contaminated water for Michigan, but at the time it didn’t impress me because the same point had been made many times before by others. Her comments on race and reparations, however, were better than most of the others—but despite that, I still think she’s a flake. I also thought that Mayor Pete got in some of the best comments of the night. A transcript of Night One was posted by The Washington Post, saving us all the burden of having to watch it all.

I still followed Twitter on Night Two, but I actually didn’t listen as closely as I did on Night One—I was already over the whole thing by then. I rolled my eyes when de Blasio used his opening statement to attack Biden and Harris, because it seemed like little more than a desperate play for attention. It also set the stage for the tone of the night, mostly a fight between Biden and Harris, as it was in their match-up in the First Debate. This time, though, Harris seemed far less able than she did in the First Debate. Instead, Booker did the main job of attacking Biden—at the very least, he was generally more effectively than Harris was. Castro, like Harris, also wasn’t nearly as impressive as in the First Debate. Yang got a lot of positive talk after the debate, but he didn’t impress me, either. The last thing the USA needs, in my opinion, is another president who was a businessman who thinks he has all the answers.

As it did for Night One, The Washington Post posted a transcript of Night Two.

NBC’s coverage of the First Democratic Debate may have suffered from technical glitches, but CNN’s suffered from something far worse: Bad choices. From wasting viewers’ time at the start of each night, through to giving Warren and Sanders too much speaking time on Night One and doing the same for Biden and Harris on Night Two, CNN made too many dumb choices for the debate to be of any use to anyone, especially undecided voters.

Actually, it wasn’t terribly attractive even for politics junkies like me. Roger Green, who is a political science major like me, didn’t watch either debate, but nevertheless had some good observations on the candidates and how they did. The two nights certainly didn’t persuade me to back any candidate, nor did I become opposed to any—or, to put it more accurately, nothing changed my opinions of the candidates.

The second Democratic Presidential Debate was terrible. Americans and Democrats alike deserved better, and hopefully they’ll get it in the debate next month. I’m just not sure I’ll want to watch it.

Related:
CNN Was Ill-Equipped for This by Megan Garber, The Atlantic

Hidden truth and lies

It’s not uncommon for us to see a thing that’s true, but misleading. In the Vlog Brothers video above, Hank Green talks about three examples of things that aren’t completely as they seem. Hank calls this a “head lie” because it takes a true thing and makes us believe something that isn’t actually, literally, true, or not completely so. While this isn’t always deliberate, it’s certainly common, and we need to be mindful of that. I certainly try to be.

Hank and John Green have both frequently talked about the lack of reporting or even awareness of good news. That's usually been in the context of the fact that good news often gets buried with so much reporting about things that are bad. Hank’s video is sort of an extension of that, in this case, that the news presented isn’t exactly what it seems to be, maybe not even accurate or true. But, who’s to decide?

Way back in 2014 I decided to try an experiment looking for the good news buried on otherwise negative reporting of a story, and I didn’t have to try hard to find an example of what I was talking about. The thing about that particular example is that it, too, was creating a “head lie”, and most people would have no idea it was happening.

For that 2014 post, I had the time, the resources, and, obviously, the inclination to dig deeper to find out what the wider story was. Most of the time most of us don’t have one or any of those things for most stuff we see in the news or from PR agencies. But if don’t look deeper ourselves, no one is going to do it for us.

This all raises an important question: Who’s to say that the version presented in the news, or even from PR companies, isn’t the best, most accurate version? Ultimately, we have to decide for ourselves. We can look to see who has a vested interest in the way a story or statistic is presented, something I did in that 2014 post. But we can be as limited by our own biases in that regard as are the people packaging the information for our consumption. The problem here is confirmation bias, the human tendency to view all information as confirming what we already believe, and ignoring or discounting all evidence that contradicts our beliefs. This happens most often and predictably on issues we care deeply about and also beliefs that are central to us. That means that, at least sometimes, the information presented may actually be the most accurate version.

Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is to see all the facts and to know the larger context those facts are part of. If those aren’t given to us, and if for whatever reason we can’t investigate the matter for ourselves, that still leaves one last tool: Scepticism.

I’ve often said that whenever anyone (media or PR company, politicians, whatever) tells us something, especially stuff that results in a strong reaction within us like outrage or indignation in particular, then we should ramp up our scepticism and doubt what we’re being told.

Personally, I try to get the story from multiple sources because that often helps me see if the facts are true as reported. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen a headline for a story about an issue I care deeply about (usually about LGBT+issues, but it could be anything, really), and I have a strong reaction to it, only to find out that story doesn’t back up the rhetoric of the headline (clickbait, in other words). If the linked story does back up the headline, then another source often presents a fuller, better context. Either way, I can dial down the outrage meter. This isn’t foolproof—the additional sources may be downplaying something that it’s appropriate to be outraged about—but it’s better than accepting everything presented to us as factual and accurate and outrage-inducing.

As it turns out, Hank talks about this in the description of the video on YouTube, something I don’t normally read, but did this time as I was making my final edits to this post. He made a particularly good point, too:

Once I started thinking about this video, I saw more of these lies at every turn. They're common in political speech, and insidious in their usefulness. Often, once you click on the headline or watch the video, you even find out that you had taken the wrong message from the headline. And then, in that case, you feel like it's your fault that you misunderstood… but let me tell you, no one thinks as much about headlines and titles as the people who write them. They know exactly what they're doing.

And you might think, "But if it's explained in the article.… no one got hurt, right?" Except that the vast majority of people who see a headline do not read the article… the headline IS CONTENT and needs to be treated that way.

He’s absolutely right, and it’s another reason why scepticism is so important. When we remain sceptical about what we’re being told, especially about stuff that reinforces what we already believe to be true, then we’re far more likely to be able to evaluate the information being served to us. That, in turn, makes it much harder for a “head lie” to take up residence in our brains, which, in turn, will make new facts and evidence easier to evaluate fairly.

As always, the power is ours. We just need to use it more.

What have we become?

There’s been a marked increase in abusive and threatening behaviour directed at New Zealand politicians and even those who work for government at any level. The video above, from TVNZ’s One News, talks about the abuse and death threats received by Auckland Councillor Penny Hulse, as well as some of the others who have been threatened. The reporter, Katie Bradford, has also been abused and threatened on social media. What have we become?

To normal people, it’s obvious that it’s NEVER okay to act like this, to abuse, bully, or threaten the lives of people especially when they’re just doing their jobs.

My friend, Councillor Richard Hills, publicly shared the link to the video on Facebook, saying, “this shouldn’t be happening and it’s happening way too much.” He added, “the abuse and vitriol directed towards politicians and staff especially female staff/politicians is out of hand and should not be tolerated.” No sensible person could disagree with that. But then he also added:

I get obsessive bizarre homophobic stuff that I ignore and police investigated my own death threats earlier in March and council followed up on some death threats and other comments on a certain page last year. It’s disappointing that’s for sure.

I was aware that he’d received homophobic abuse, but I wasn’t aware that he’d received death threats, let alone that they were referred to the police. But the saddest thing of all is that I’m not in any way surprised about all this.

However, things have become a LOT worse in recent years.

The One News report touched on some of the wider context, namely, that the extreme abuse is often related to specific issues or aspects about politicians. As the One News report mentioned, Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman was given Parliamentary Security escorts at Parliament following an escalation in threats made against her after the lone MP for the neoliberal Act “Party” called her “a real menace to freedom in this country”. [See also: “Golriz Ghahraman on dealing with the ‘scared, panicked, angry mob’”].

It’s also not just politicians who receive harassment and threats of violence. For example, people working for Auckland Council are frequently abused and threatened, too, though most of the time the newsmedia doesn’t report it. One time recently the media did report it—by participating in the abuse.

In April, a woman from Auckland’s North Shore dumped 19 dead ducks, presumably killed by avian botulism, in an Auckland Council customer service office. The article claimed that “allegedly” the dead ducks had been “left rotting beside North Shore ponds for three days” before the woman took them and dumped them in the Council offices, thereby endangering the health and safety of the staff, anyone visiting the office at the time, and any staff who might attempt to remove the dead ducks. Worse still, the Stuff news site clearly knew about the stunt in advance, since they had a reporter and camera crew there to report it, yet they did nothing to stop her. Why doesn’t that make Stuff an accessory? [Note: Stuff’s irresponsible and reckless behaviour is why I won’t link to the article; if you must read it, copy and paste this link: http://bit.ly/2x6eENc].

The most serious threats, such as death threats, can always be referred to the police, but the larger question is, how do we stop this reprehensible behaviour from happening in the first place? It starts with the rest of us. When I shared Richard’s post on my personal Facebbook, I said:

Each of us can play our part: There are things we can do to stand up to the bullies while still keeping safe from them. But one of the best strategies is to be kind to everyone all the time, and for one simple, powerful reason: Children are watching; we need to live like the adults we want them to become.

Let me be clear: Practicing kindness by itself won’t fix this, but it can help by setting an example for children to follow, and it can also give the victims of abuse a level of support—a kind of soothing of their wounds. There are also specific things we can actively do, too, while keeping ourselves safe.

Most of this sort of abuse and bullying happens or begins on social media, and there are anonymous ways to deal with that. When we see a comment on social media that’s particularly vicious, and especially if it threatens or advocates violence against someone, we must report it. Facebook and Twitter alike often choose to ignore threats, but reporting’s an important to do, anyway, and the bad people won’t know we did it. I do this all the time, so I can vouch for the fact it’s safe.

If we feel a little braver about a comment left on a Facebook Page, we can report it to a page Administrator, however, they may sympathise with the abuser, and we may end up being attacked on their page. We must choose our battles carefully. Don’t post screenshots or summaries on Facebook/Twitter to “name and shame” the aggressor; ironically, that could make the companies punish you for bullying.

In the real world, we can sometimes stand up publicly and challenge someone who’s being abusive, at least if they’re not violent and unlikely to become so. However, the person may have a weapon (most likely a knife in NZ, unlike the USA). It may be safer to do other things. If the person seems to be violent, or likely to become so, ring the police. It’s better to ring them for nothing than to risk it escalating into something terrible. After you ring the police—and only after that—you might start videoing the abuse. It could be useful in the event the police prosecute, however, if the person sees you doing that, you could become a target.

Sometimes we can safely intervene directly, as I did back in 2017. In that post, I also shared a graphic (at right—click for a larger view) by artist Maeril, who shared it on her Facebook Page. It shows an approach we can take if we see someone being harassed. It’s not without risk, obviously, but it can be very effective, regardless of the reason they’re being harassed.

At the moment, the best long-term strategy, and certainly the safest of all, is to model the behaviour that we’d want children to copy. If enough of us do that enough of the time, it will help. But the bigger solutions to actually fix this? At the moment, no one actually knows what they are. In the meantime, we all know one thing: This is not who we want to be. It’s up to us to make sure that this sort of thing will never be acceptable, that it will never be who we’ve become.

Footnote: Ironically, I first "met" both Richard and Penny through social media. So, social media's not all bad, all the time—but it could be so much better than it is. In my opinion, Richard and Penny are both awesome, and Auckland and New Zealand need more people like them in government and fewer bullies and harassers.

Paywall bad news

Newspapers are struggling to survive nearly everywhere. How they deal with the challenges varies, and among the solutions are paywalls, membership schemes, donations, and others. The New Zealand Herald has just launched a paywall, and not very well. There’s no compelling reason to subscribe to their “premium” service, and I won’t be doing so—yet.

The New Zealand Herald first tried a paywall a few years ago, and it failed miserably. The main problem was that they were the only one in New Zealand, and people could get the same news many other places for free, so the only thing they offered that couldn’t be seen elsewhere were their columnists, and, as I said at the time, “they’re just not that good”. Okay, that was a bit snotty, but nevertheless true: Many were grumpy, curmudgeonly, right-wing, irrelevant, or some combination of those. Sure, some people, probably the same ones who ring up talkback radio to whine about something or other, may have appreciated those, um, attributes, but neither I nor anyone I knew shared that viewpoint.

In more recent years the paper again started talking about launching a new paywall, but never quite seemed ready to do it, probably in part because, once again, they’d be the only major mainstream news site in New Zealand doing it.

In recent months, the talk started becoming more frequent, and then they started labelling content on their website as “Premium”, apparently to let people know what they’d be getting access to as subscribers—and what they’d lose access to if they weren’t. Unfortunately, that wasn’t obvious so I avoided everything marked “Premium” assuming one had to pay to see it.

Still, what they were showing were mostly in-depth journalism and investigations which was at least promising. Meanwhile, the rest of their home page included clickbait, often sourced from overseas papers, including the reprehensible Daily Mail in the UK.

I am told—because I didn’t see it myself—that when the new paywall launched, they had a click-baity story about Prince Harry and Meghan behind the paywall—not exactly the sort of thing that would entice someone who wants serious journalism. That’s the first thing they’ll need to fix: They can’t put clickbait behind their paywall if they want to be taken seriously.

The second thing is that they’ll need to prove that the money raised will actually go to journalism, and not just into the pockets of shareholders, here and overseas. So far, it seems that most people don’t think it’ll happen, and this is just about money for shareholders. They’ll need to make a big deal about hiring journalists, if indeed they do so.

Much of their content, they tell us, is still free, but that includes the stuff designed to promote radio personalities and programmes on the Herald’s NZME sibling radio stations. By and large, these “columnists” are absolutely terrible, promoting especially privileged and self-centred rightwing drivel. Still, at least they’re not behind the paywall at the moment, because that would be a strong disincentive to subscribe.

Their biggest problem is that their digital subscription rate (see graphic above) is way too high. At $5 per week, it works out to $260 per year, though if someone makes one annual payment it’s $199. They’re offering a special rate of $2.50 per week for the first 8 weeks, after which it goes up to the full rate.

For comparison, The Washington Post digital subscription is $100 per year, which is about NZ$150 (the Post currently has a promotion of $25 for the first year, which is NZ$37.60). The New York Times is currently $1 a week for a year (US$52 is NZ$78.13). Which means that a new subscriber could get both the Post and the NYT for not much more than half the price of the cheapest NZ Herald digital subscription. I know which option that I would choose.

Increasingly, the Herald has not been a good paper to read. Many of their articles have a strong rightward lean, either in tone or focus (or both), and many of the stories have been in the, “okay, but why is this ‘news’?” category. They haven’t done as much in-depth or investigative journalism as they used to, and they rely too much on foreign papers—like the Post, for example, and I already subscribe to the entire paper, not just what the NZ Herald wants to show me.

Their only drawcard is that they’re New Zealand-based and cover New Zealand stories. But the same thing can be said of any number of other news sites here in New Zealand that don’t have a paywall. If they expect people to pay for news they can get for free elsewhere, then the Herald will have to lift its game and offer news and features that people can’t get for free elsewhere. That may sound harsh or unfair, particularly to hard-working and overstretched journalists, but it is reality. In the news business as with every other business, the consumer is king.

When I first looked at overseas digital newspaper subscriptions in 2015, neither the NYT nor the Post were there yet (back then, the NYT had a pricing plans based on device rather than content). Now, they’ve become much more customer-focused, so much so that the Post won my business in July of last year. If the NZ Herald wants to make their paywall work, they’re going to have to learn from their examples.

I didn't like the NZ Herald we’ve had over the past few years, and I certainly wouldn’t pay to subscribe to that. But if they can put up good, solid journalism without click-bait or shallow columns by radio personalities, and if they can offer it at a much more sensible price—and reinvest that money into journalism—then people like me could be tempted in. That won’t happen right now, and probably not for a while, if ever. The jury’s still out.

Whether the new paywall will actually work or it will fail like the last one did will depend entirely on how the paper adapts to customer expectations and needs, and how much emphasis it places on content that’s worth subscribing to. The NYT learned and adapted, and so did the Post. The NZ Herald can certainly do the same—IF they want to. But, that’s news for the future.

Political Notebook: International edition

These days it seems like there are too many political events happening too fast for anyone to keep up with. One thing is no sooner reported before another pops up. When one is following political events in several countries, things get even more complicated. This post is the start of one solution for me.

When I began these Political Notebook posts, I saw them as a way to talk about subjects that would never get a post of their own. But these days there’s too much to keep up with, things that ordinarily would get posts of their own, so these Notebook posts have taken on new duties—and more frequency.

Jacinda superstar

The world has learned something over the past couple weeks that many of us here already knew: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is pretty awesome. Sure, she’d been feted before, like last September. Which I mentioned in “New Zealand’s very good week (https://amerinz.blogspot.com/2018/09/new-zealands-very-good-week.html).

Now, of course, the world has taken note of the calm, rational, compassionate, strong, caring, and stunningly admirable leadership shown by the Prime Minister after the terrorist attacks in Christchurch. Bryce Edwards, a politics lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington, does a Political Roundup column in the NZ Herald. I frequently disagree with his conclusions, but this time he seemed genuinely taken with the “International fascination with Jacinda Ardern”.

There’s been some grassroots reaction to her, too. I heard there was a petition for Jacinda to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which actually seems a pretty reasonable thing to happen. I don’t know how serious that is. However, there’s definitely a petition on Change.org: “Speaker Pelosi: invite New Zealand’s Prime Minister here to America to address Congress”. I have no idea whether anything like that could or would happen, but I’d love to see it happen, not only because Congresscritters need to hear what she has to say, and also for the entertainment value that would come from the inevitable Twitter Tantrum that a certain someone would be sure to descend into.

Meanwhile, this past Friday the Prime Minister spoke at the National Remembrance Service. Newshub reported: “'The nation that discovers the cure': Jacinda Ardern's anti-racism speech sparks standing ovation”, and it was pretty awesome (the transcript of the speech is at the link). But, then, by now we pretty much expect her to say just the right thing, don’t we?

Random notes

A couple other pieces caught my attention this week, too:

“Trump Warned Us He Would Be a Terrible President” because he did, really, didn’t he?

“Associated Press offers new guidance to media on 'racially charged' vs 'racist'". This is motivated, at least in part, by the racist motivations of the Christchurch terrorist and some newsmedia’s reluctance to call it that. Meanwhile, a debate has broken out over whether the newsmedia should mention the Christchurch terrorist by name (he should not be referred to by name). Radio New Zealand’s CEO and Editor in Chief published a shallow defence of their plan to sometimes name the terrorist in their news coverage: “Explaining RNZ’s mosque shootings coverage – and why we’re naming the accused”. I couldn’t possibly disagree with him more, and I found his excuses self-serving and a bit arrogant. Your mileage may vary.

Time to start next week's page in the Notebook.

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The video above is the Super Bowl ad for The Washington Post. It talks about what newspapers do, and some of the journalists who lost their lives in the pursuit of truth, and ends with the paper’s tagline: Democracy Dies in Darkness. It’s a good ad.

Last year I subscribed to the digital edition of The Washington Post, after considering whether it would be that paper or The New York Times. There was a reason I chose the Post:

…I chose The Washington Post because of the nagging doubts about how easy The New York Times takes it against the current occupant of the White House, for example, never, ever, calling something he said a lie, even when there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever that he was lying. It makes me wonder what other punches the paper is pulling.

The reality is that no matter the media source, it won’t be perfect. Journalists are human beings and they make mistakes. Sometimes editors make bad decisions. And resources can often negatively affect the quality of the reporting. That’s the place where we all begin our evaluation of news sources.

Contrary to popular belief, most mainstream media sites don’t have a definite ideological position. This doesn’t include opinion pages and columnists, of course, nor does it include Fox “News” which is a propaganda channel, not a real news source. But even Fox will, once in a great while, report a story without displaying its customary biases.

This matters because of the people on the Right, or some who listen to them, repeat the banal declaration that the news media has a “liberal bias”. That’s nonsense for many reasons, but that’s far too big a topic to include in this post. The important thing is that mainstream newspapers, and even most mainstream broadcast and cable news outlets don’t deliberately “slant” the news.

Similarly, it’s a lie and a smear that the mainstream news media report “fake news”. They just don’t. If they did, their audience would see that and no longer trust that news source, and their profits would disappear. That’s because their profits depend on being dependably accurate; if they really did lie, they’d lose everything.

There are two reasons so many people believe the worst of the news media. First, of course, is ideology: The Right has a vested interest in tearing down the news media and the legitimacy of journalism because they don’t want the truth about what they’re up to exposed. The Republican Party has spent decades perfecting their propaganda and disinformation apparatus, and many people—including far too many journalists, actually—fall for it.

The current occupant of the White House has deliberately stoked hatred of journalists and contempt for mainstream journalism. He does that because it suits his agenda, of course, but mostly because, since he’s narcissist, he gets angry when the mainstream news media won’t lie about him and report nothing but nice things and compliments of him personally. He has never attacked Fox “News” which, of course, has never strongly criticised him and always praises him.

The other reason some people persist in believing the worst of journalists is that they do make mistakes. All news organisations have procedures for addressing their mistakes, but those whose minds are already made up in the negative never give journalists credit for that. They want to believe that journalists have a bias and an agenda, so, in their reality, a mistake isn’t a mistake, it’s a deliberate assault on them. It’s personal.

There is a third factor at play in the USA, and that’s the country’s bitterly divided and highly toxic politics. The two sides of the political chasm cannot agree on anything, so it makes sense they project their biases onto others, and, yes, both sides do that. Journalists are caught in the crossfire, trying to report on the truth to the best of their abilities.

It’s important that ordinary people stand up for journalism and journalists. It’s fair to criticise them when they get something wrong, but it is not fair or reasonable to attack them merely for existing, nor to generalise their mistakes as being evidence of bias. We all ought to be able to understand and accept that a story reporting things we don’t like being said, or that point out flaws in the people or policies we favour, is NOT the same thing as those stories actually being wrong. Good journalism should make everyone uncomfortable at some time or other. Instead of getting angry at them, we should instead consider first whether they might actually be right, because if they’re not, it should be easy enough to prove. But when they’re clearly right, we should accept that and move on. And that’s regardless of ideology, party, etc.

Finley Peter Dunne created made a sarcastic description of newspapers, one part of which has become an aphorism about the duty of newspapers: “To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. They don’t owe us anything but the truth, whether we like hearing it or not, because it is so important. It’s really true: Democracy Dies in Darkness.

Change on NZ TV screens

Tonight longtime TVNZ broadcaster Peter Williams signed off for the last time, nearly 40 years after his career began. He’s been a familiar face on New Zealand TV screens for so long that a couple generations have grown up seeing him. Nearly four decades is a long time for any broadcaster.

Peter Williams has been on TV the entire time I’ve been in New Zealand, among the last I could say that about. In all those years, he was always professional, generally matter-of-fact, especially when presenting the news, and not over dramatic or sensational. It’s difficult to find people who have anything unpleasant to say about him. When he left the studio for the last time, he received an “honour guard” of colleagues sending him off.

It’s possible that his “nicest guy in broadcasting” image may change in January next year when he joins rival media company Media Works “Magic Talk” station, a combined talkback radio and music station that will replace the company’s “RadioLIVE” talkback radio network. “I have plenty of thoughts and opinions on various issues, formed from having quite a few years on this planet," he said last month when the new role was announced. “I'm really enthusiastic about sharing my views with those who call, email or text in.”

This may be what’s sometimes called an “inside baseball” thing, possibly unlikely to be of any interest to people who are not from this country. However, anyone wanting to understand another country would do well to look at its media and its shared cultural touchstones. This is one of those things for understanding New Zealand.

Just before Williams’ final sign off, fellow news presenters Wendy Petrie and Simon Dallow, who anchor the news Monday to Friday evenings, presented a retrospective video of his career (below) which may help to place him in the broader context of NZ pop culture.

In any case, everything changes, nothing stays the same forever. Tonight something reasonably significant changed in New Zealand, and that’s worth noting.



Update: In fact, Williams' gentlemanly "nice guy" image didn't last after he made the move to talkback radio. He veered sharply right, and ended up promoting rightwing conspiracy theories. He now does work for the streaming radio programming of a far-right anti-vax fringe group. He has also been active in hard-right political movements, too.

Local reaction

A foreign backpacker* was murdered in Auckland earlier this month, and that set off an extensive public reaction across New Zealand. While it’s good the victim is being remembered, there are aspects of this that aren’t good. The questions about all this outpouring are, first, why this case, why now? And, more importantly, what can we do to fix things?

It’s good to mourn the loss of someone to murder, and not the perpetrator. And, sadly, this backpacker is not the first, and probably won’t be the last, to meet their death here, though by far the most common reason is accident. But the large public reaction is unusual, and it seems somewhat out of proportion, especially because this backpacker’s not the first to be murdered.

The alleged killer was given name suppression in court, which means it’s a prosecutable offence to reveal the alleged killer’s name in any way, including on social media. Unfortunately, some New Zealanders openly defied the law, or came close to it, in their anger over the crime. Name suppression exists to ensure the accused gets a fair trial, and also to protect the victim in some cases (usually cases dealing with sexual assault or abuse). Part of the idea behind it is that it’s impossible to “un-do” publicity about the fact that someone has been accused of a terrible crime, which means that if they’re not convicted, their life will be destroyed. This is especially true since the Internet is forever, and anyone Googling an acquitted person’s name after the fact would find out about the charges—but not necessarily about the acquittal (probably wouldn’t, even).

The right to a fair and impartial trial is fundamental to any concept of justice, and yet, because people are so worked up about this case, as they have been about others in the past, some are willing to risk breaking the law. The bigger issue here isn’t that they could be prosecuted for their Tweet or Facebook post, but that they could derail the trial completely—cause a mistrial—and that will only prolong the ordeal for the family of the victim and delay justice even longer. So, breaching a suppression order is always a stupid thing to do.

There’s room for a robust debate on whether there should name suppression at all, but that debate cannot be advanced by deliberately breaking the law, unless one is willing to pay the consequences of doing so in order to make some point. Most of us aren’t—or wouldn’t be if we calmly reflected on the matter.

It seems to me that the sometimes reckless disregard for the consequences of violating a name suppression order is merely the result of people’s outrage over this case, which is the same reason it’s happened before. People are also embarrassed that this has happened in New Zealand, when our international guests, whatever their age, gender, nationality, mode of touring, etc., OUGHT to be safe. Sometimes, no matter how good the vast majority of us are, one bad—or evil—person can stain us all.

But there have been other tourists murdered, and plenty of New Zealanders are murdered every year, too. So, why this case? Why has this one hit a nerve that those others haven’t? I don’t think we can fully understand that yet, but there are pointers.

It’s true that the news media has been fuelling people’s passions by giving the case extensive coverage, but they do that all the time, so that’s not a logical reason. Something else must be actually fanning the flames.

It could be that social media is stoking the fire by giving people an outlet to express their raw emotions—grief, shame, rage—without any brakes or space for reasoned thought. Social media—Facebook in particular—profit when we are in a heightened emotional state and reacting broadly, unthinkingly, and confrontationally, and probably out of proportion to an incident. That’s what social media encourages us to do.

We should remember murder victims like this one, we should feel sympathy for their families and friends, and we should also redouble our own personal efforts to make our foreign guests feel welcome and safe. All of them.

What we mustn’t do is allow our raw emotions to drive us to lash out in irrational and counterproductive ways, nor to allow one case to blind us to all the similar and, sadly, even worse cases that don’t make the news or social media posts.

In short, we need to be better humans. We cannot by ourselves prevent this from ever happening again, no matter how good and noble our intentions. But if we all work to become better humans, maybe—maybe—bad things like this will become so rare that a strong reaction will not only make sense, it’ll be required.

The way we’ve been acting as humans allows things like this to happen. By being better humans we can help to fix that.

*I’ve chosen not to name the backpacker, or to use identifying descriptors of the victim, even though the linked stories all do, because my questions and unease actually have absolutely nothing to do with this particular case. It’s also one of the few ways I can limit how much I add to the frenzy surrounding this tragedy when, again, this particular case isn’t the point.

The news should make your uncomfortable

In the video above, MSNBC’s Katy Tur talks to supporters of the current occupant of the White House outside one of his many campaign rallies, this one in Macon, Georgia. There’s nothing in it that will surprise anyone—until her closing comments, where she tells viewers: “[MSNBC is] not your safe space”.

The USA’s hyperpartisan reality is now so deep and bitter that the two sides aren’t even listening to each other. Worse, they actively reject the other side without even even listening to them. Abraham Lincoln famously said about the issue of slavery that “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. That’s always been self-evidently true, but never more so than when the country is deeply and bitterly divided as it was then, and as it is right now.

I get it: Sometimes we really do need to be within our own bubbles to heal from the things that anger, disgust, frighten, or outrage us. We need to hear from people who share not just our political ideology, but also our values. But if we live full-time in that bubble we can never find out what common ground—what shared values—we may possibly have with people with whom we disagree. If we live full-time in our respective bubbles, we will never have our assumptions and beliefs challenged, so we can never be sure that they’re sound and rational. Feeling they are doesn’t make it true.

Which is why it’s so important to consider the other side’s views, and not assume their media is “lying” just because someone in our bubble told us they are: We need to check it out for ourselves. I’ve written several times about the methods I use to evaluate news stories, regardless of the topic or the ideology of the source. The method used isn’t important, it’s that it’s possible to objectively evaluate the truthfulness of what is reported without relying on a gut reaction—OR our bubble.

In evaluating news, one terrible approach is to “pray about it, think about it, if it sounds right, it is right.” That’s looking only within one’s own bubble. So is decrying MSNBC talking to Republicans, and for the same reason. One cannot challenge one’s own assumptions or verify a news source by staying within one’s bubble. It’s impossible. As Katy Tur says at the end of her piece, “If everything you read or watch gives you comfort, you’re doing it wrong.”

We all want to accept what those in our bubble tell us. That’s understandable. However, we can remain in our bubble and still venture out to check things for ourselves. Nuclear arms reduction negotiators used a phrase that is very apt for this: Trust, but verify. Sometimes—shock!—people within our bubble, even politicians, will tell us things that aren’t true, or that are misleading.

The job of the news media is to report facts based on the available evidence, not to make us comfortable or to present only flattering fluff about politicians. If news media reports make us uncomfortable, that’s a good thing! It can spur us to truly look into an issue ourselves, and to look outside of our own bubble, even if only to try to refute the report. And in so doing, our own opinions and beliefs will become better and more valid because they’ll be based on evidence, not hunches or feelings or agreement within our bubbles.

If we look only for news media that makes us comfortable, we really are doing it wrong.