Saturday, May 28, 2011

New Zealand News Media - Complete Crap

When I first started blogging one of my favourite topics to rant about was the shabby New Zealand news media, but more recently I've left it alone. The reason for this is that I avoid the New Zealand news media these days - I don't subscribe to the newspapers, I don't watch television news and I don't listen to radio. I used to be a news junkie and I am still, but my primary source of news now is the Internet. I subscribe to four newspapers including the New York Times and The Telegraph, plus numerous mazagines, blogs and instant news services such as Breaking News on my iPad; I watch all the foreign news channels on Sky; and I listen to international news radio services on my computer and iPhone. I am better informed than ever before including about my own country. Ironically, the I find I get a better perspective about what is really going on in New Zealand through foreign news coverage than from any of the local sources I used to subscribe to.

This Saturday my wife bought The Dominion Post weekend edition and I read it cover-to-cover to see whether anything had changed. It hasn't. The Dominion Post is full of mind-bogglingly trivial local news, gossip about so-called "celebrities", and left-wing political propaganda masquerading as editorial commentary. There was only only one international story of note - the belated reporting of the arrest of Ratko Mladic - and little else that could be classified as real news.

I am very glad I no longer subscribe to, or watch, or listen to, the New Zealand news media. They remain complete and unadulterated crap.

1 comment:

John Ansell said...

Saturday's edition of the Dom Post should have featured an ACT ad headlined 'Fed up with Maori radicals?'.

But despite insisting that ACT pay full price for the ad they had booked, they insisted that the party replace that ad with something less contentious.

I wrote that ad, and took great pains to ensure that it contained nothing but true statements.

The Herald had no trouble running the same ad on the same day.

But the newspaper of the capital city of New Zealand saw fit to censor the honestly-held true statements by a political party because the straightforward wording was, in effect, too honest for their taste.

The same paper had no problem running a column by Rosemary McLeod pillorying me for my views on the Maorification of New Zealand.

To their credit, they have given me the right of reply. That reply will include a scathing criticism of the paper's cowardice in censoring the ad.

We'll see whether they run it. If they don't, I'll be sending it to the Herald.