NZ Media Bias

"Our troops", well that cannot be

2007-12-10T10:30:00.000-08:00

Just read this incredible opinion by this most disgusted woman to grace our shores:

[Helen Clark] had noticed the BBC's usual objectivity had "slipped" during the invasion of Iraq. "You would sometimes find people talking about 'our troops'. Well, that cannot be."

How far have ethics devolved since World War II.

The unbiased Reuters

2007-08-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

The NZ Herald has the audacity to put up a Reuters story that compares "Jewish lobby groups" that object to material that has been used by Hitler in his attempt to exterminate them to efforts of the Chinese government to ban words like "freedom" and "expression".

Think it's only the Chinese government that tries to censor content on the internet from its citizens?
Not so. Jewish lobby groups in Germany are the latest to try and wield the censor's editing knife on what they deem is objectionable web content.

Note especially the what they deem as objectionable web content.

It's an absolutely disgusting article.

UPDATE: after a phone call, the NZ Herald rewrote the article. A copy of the original article is available for those who want to compare the two.

Climate "scientists"

2007-08-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

That 90% of climate scientists are complete morons was already obvious to the cognoscenti. In a stunning discovery by bloggers it must now become obvious to the rest of the world as well.

These graphs were created by NASA's Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

******* unbelievable.

Not on TV any time, but here are the new figures:

The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

How the journos protect the Labour government

2007-07-22T13:55:00.000-07:00

Here a prime example, from the NZ Herald of course:

Miss Clark stood by Mr Benson-Pope in the past when he was embroiled in controversies.

He was alleged to have physically abused students when he was a teacher, and those allegations were investigated by the police who did not lay any charges.

It's true the police did not lay any charges, but the spin here makes it appear as if there was nothing to the allegations. On the contrary, the police found there was prima facie evidence, but that it was not in the public interest (because it was another Labour minister) to lay charges. That would have been the correct description.

On right wing think tanks and baptists

2007-04-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

As the perceiving reader no doubt is aware of, the NZ Herald never labels a think tank as left wing. They're either think tanks or right wing thing tanks. Never left wing think tanks or right wing think tanks.

In the smacking debate we see the same bias at work. We have right wing (christian) fundamentalists and unnamed, good-willing on the other side. They're never Satanists, communists or Trotskyists.

In the debates in the scientific literature, Dr Larzelere has been the leading proponent of smacking.
Canadian Joan Durrant, who was brought to New Zealand by the Government last year, has led the opposing argument that smacking produces a more violent society, citing Sweden as a model of a society where a smacking ban has reduced violence.
Dr Larzelere, 62, attends a Baptist Church near the university where he works in Oklahoma, but he rejects Dr Durrant's allegation that this makes him biased.

When was the last time the NZ Herald printed personal information about someone who opposes smacking? Who is Joan Durrant? We don't know, and we never will.

But Thank God for Google.

When is miserable miserable?

2007-04-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

According to the NZ Herald, position 22 out of 30 is a miserable position:

The best New Zealand service in the study could only muster a miserable 22nd place out of 30 surveyed.

We also score 22 out of 30 in the OECD prosperity index. When did the NZ Herald call that miserable? Perhaps 22 is miserable when a company is responsible for it, and fine when the Labour government is responsible for it?
The NZ Herald is actually pretty consistent in its comments on low rankings:

New Zealand's poor OECD ranking for phone call costs is not likely to have shown much improvement when official statistics are released soon, says a telco consumer watchdog.

So let's watch with interest how the next OECD growth ranking is discussed in the NZ Herald.

Only one of these polls is news

2007-03-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

The sophisticated readers of this blog probably will suspect I'm talking about the Times Online Poll versus the BBC poll.

No, let me contrast the last poll with another one:

only 25 per cent of the Europeans questioned felt life in their country had improved since it joined the EU.

Oops. Compare:

In the USA TODAY/ABC News Poll, Iraqis by 43%-36% said life was better than before the invasion. That's a decline from the optimism in the November 2005 survey, however, when by 51%-29% Iraqis said life was better.

When will Bush pull out of Europe?

Clear as mud

2007-03-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

NZ Herald's headline writer and the journo writing the article often have trouble understanding each other. Here a really sad example.

Why not give every one a house?

2007-02-14T00:29:00.000-08:00

Houses are expensive in New Zealand. That is of course everyone's but the government's fault. But You can become a councillor in NZ and hold these views:

Mr Northey said possible alternatives were:
A capital gains tax on all property or on investment property only.
A ban on house sales to foreigners who lived overseas and rarely came to New Zealand.
Government controls on prices of building materials, or greater competition in supplying them.
Requiring a minimum amount of affordable housing in all significant urban developments.

This is so horribly said that I can't comment. Let me therefore offer a few solutions as well:

Give everyone born in New Zealand a house.
Introduce a law that everyone should get a wage that is as much as one third of the price of an average home.

Just trying to help this communist paradise...

They determine what is news

2007-02-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

The guardians of the gate are at again. They determine what is news, and what part of the news is news. A good catch of Adolf Flinkenstein:

The original quote from Obama was 'If he wants to fight the good fight in Iraq then why doesn't he get ginned up and send an extra 20,000 troops....'
The sanitised version printed in The Herald carefully left out the phrase 'ginned up.'

Al-Jazeera will run One News

2007-01-30T09:52:00.000-08:00

Al-Jazeera might run One News says the NZ Herald:

The other name being mentioned is Trish Carter, a former deputy to Cutler who now heads the Kuala Lumpur bureau for the Al Jazeera English-language channel.
She applied for Mr Ralston's job and when she missed out saw her job disappear.
Insiders suggest that if she came back when her contract at Al Jazeera runs out in June, it would be to a more senior strategic role at TVNZ.

I hope you got that people: we have people at TVNZ who are comfortable moving between One News and Al-Jazeera. Now they might even be back for a senior role. The choice in news and current affairs in NZ is now between the far left (Alliance voter John Campbell) and the extreme religious right (Al-Jazeera sympathisers).

Maybe you should just start reading blogs.

Having kids? It's not your fault

2007-01-25T16:58:00.000-08:00

The O'Herald wants taxpayers to pay for all and sundry, including its own tax discounts. A typical editoral on Thursday reads:

Subsidised childcare is a new and urgent social need. Modern living standards are now based on double-income households and most new parents need to return to full-time work by the time a baby is a year old. Most manage to afford the cost, though some probably cannot. They need Government assistance for it and should get it. If the Government simply provided fully subsidised childcare to those who could not otherwise afford it, there would be no problem.

Subsidised childcare is a new and urgent social need. Yes, that's the O'Herald for you. The editors are still sucking the taxpayer tits, and won't grow up.

Lemons and peaches - why great unknowns won't sell

2007-01-03T14:24:00.000-08:00

The NZ Herald continues with one of their most brutally stupid series on economics. The title is incorrect by the way, because the article is about that it does sell.

Take the second hand car market: if you buy a car, do you trust the car dealer? He has all the knowledge, and you are powerless right? And of course, you can't buy the information you need, you totally depend on the car dealer. Sigh, for a few dollars the AA does a vehicle inspection. Tim Harford is just a moron or living in North Korea.

The same for the supposed rip off of tourists. It might happen, but it's not that the tourists can't find all the books and guides that tell them all about their destination, and how to avoid being ripped off, and what the cheapest options. are. And none of our friends ever tells us of places and campings to avoid, isn't it?

This drivel fills up the pages of the NZ Herald. Hope you enjoy paying for it.

Depriving the poor keeps the wealthy spending

2007-01-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

It is no wonder subscriptions to the NZ Herald are plummeting. With articles like "Depriving the poor keeps the wealthy spending" , in the business section, readers with any sanity left will be unsubscribe before lunch time.

What an insane story. All airlines are conspiring to give most of their customers bad service. Just to coach a few more dollars from the rich. There's no market, no entrepreneur who can see any value in giving most customers more value for their money. Nope, they all desparately need the dollars of their few rich customers.

Yes readers, that's why your cars suck, to coach you into buying a Rolls Royce. That's why your stereo sucks to coach you into buying a Rockport, and that's why Windows sucks to coach you into buying Linux. Well maybe not that.

But anyway, companies are out there to get you. Giving lousy service earns lots of money. Get the point?

When you believe the media

2006-11-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

They believed the media:

t is understood the couple were warned a week earlier about the dangers of staying in free camping areas, but like many tourists thought New Zealand was a safe country.

And abducted at gunpoint, how can that be? Guns are illegal in New Zealand. Or is this another case that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.

You have a problem when you believe that the US is unsafe (yes, that's what the media tells you), and NZ is safe. Our own Minister of Police has been telling that for years, crime is going down, down, down. And our own media has lapped it up. Critical distance from the government? Not if your side rules.

25% of TVNZ strikes and no one will notice

2006-10-25T12:58:00.000-07:00

TVNZ has 1200 staff. 300 will walk out today. But no disruptions in the programming schedule are expected.

NZ Herald got tax cut for favorable coverage

2006-08-15T14:50:00.000-07:00

Dr. Cullen has admitted that the NZ Herald got a tax cut as favor for its coverage in the last election:

"The owners of the Herald recently found themselves liable to a very large tax bill even though they could reasonably argue that the transaction which triggered it would not at the time have done so according to the general understanding of the law.

"As a result the Government has agreed to support legislation which effectively retrospectively validates that understanding and relieves the Herald's owners of the bill."

And he makes some other good points as well. Whose spin do you believe? As far as we can discern, Labour has lied less than the NZ Herald, which misreports daily. Try getting them to admit a mistake.

Time saver

2006-08-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

Save yourself some time. You can stop and skip reading all those articles and analysis what the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel means. Just read this short piece.

A nuclear Iran

2006-08-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

The question is not if Iran wants nukes, the question is, will we let them? The left has mostly answered yes, why not. All that talk about wiping Israel of the map is just rhetorical, and anyway, if Israel is removed, it would make the Middle East a quiet place. What alternative is there? Michaal Gerson looks back and looks forward in reviewing five years of Bush policy:

Everything we saw took us further from the reality we could not see. Five Augusts ago, hijackers in Florida trained in gyms, bought small knives and practiced flying in rented aircraft. In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and Taliban leaders argued about targets and strategy, until bin Laden gave his final orders. Nineteen tickets were booked and purchased, and leftover funds were wired frugally back to Al Qaeda. "And then," as President Bush said, "there came a day of fire."

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, while the president was on the road in Florida, I was working at home on a never-delivered speech announcing a long-forgotten initiative called Communities of Character.

Qana was staged: definitive proof

2006-08-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

Watch the video. Our Green Helmet Guy directs the show. This is the conclusive evidence that Qana was staged.

Not in the NZ Herald today. Or tomorrow

2006-08-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

This story won't be told in the NZ Herald, neither today, nor tomorrow:

While on the Hezbollah side, it's really interesting — I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah- controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed. They are much cruder, obviously. They don't have the experience in this kind of thing. But they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their — what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drives. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them.

A nation that could restrain itself no more

2006-08-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

Here a short video summary why Israel once again has to defend itself against those that deny Israel its existence.

L.A. Times shows how it's done

2006-08-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

If L.A. Weekly can cover Reutersgate, why can't the NZ Herald?

Another day in the life of the NZ Herald

2006-08-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

As I was curious to see how the NZ Herald would handle the aftermath of having a completely wrong screaming headline and wrong numbers. How would a dead tree product advise its readers that it had informed them incorrectly? Would they feel any duty to provide context? And so, for $1.50, I again stepped back into a different reality.

The Wednesday edition of the NZ Herald is perhaps devoted to Careers. What struck me was how few real jobs were advertised. With real jobs I mean jobs in the productive sector, jobs for and by people who pay the taxes that make the non-profit jobs possible. The Career section was filled with jobs for state schools, state hospitals, state agencies, state departments, state art, you name it. And it was filled with some jobs where I wondered for what kind of people this would be a career step. For example between the ad for dental therapist and Ladies Wanted for the Femme Fatale club, I found this one:

18 months in Honiara, hmm. Ok, let's see if the NZ Herald found it their duty to inform their readers that their headline in page B1 and the main thrust of the article yesterday was incorrect:

Again the NZ Herald is concerned with names, but not with numbers. Perhaps the world section will make an attempt to inform its readers. The first thing I noticed was the screaming headline, very similar to yesterday:

Perhaps the headline was also similar to the day before. And it will be the same headline the day after. I've no idea if the 50 mentioned were accurate, already revoked, or actually killed by failed Hezbollah rockets.

Opposite to the title we find the hand:

What the NZ Herald doesn't tell is that photographers get bonuses. AP for example gives away $500 per week. The more carnage the better. We should be shocked by these images, but for them it's businesses. For example photographers spend quite some time getting good shots of this hand, taking it from different angles, removing stuff, just to make sure it looked really good. We hope the person who had to be digged out, didn't mind. We can definitely assure you that he won't share in the bonus if these photographers get one.

At the bottom of the page we found the pseudo-corrections. First Houla:

No context provided. Nothing that the NZ Herald had it as its opening story. The same story mentions that the death toll is now 966. Really? Isn't it a 50% reduction like in Qana? So it would be 480? Or perhaps it is a 50 to 1 reduction as in Houla, so the civilian death toll is really 20? Who would know? All these death people were civilians? The Hezbollah military dress code is a T-shirt and jeans...

The second pseudo-correction is the doctored image story:

This story has been delt with fairly prominently in the world, even mentioned by CNN and the BBC. Again the NZ Herald provides no context. And nothing about the added buildings and the added missiles. He just added a bit of smoke. Yeah right. In the original picture there is some fire. Unclear is if this is a missile strike or a Hezbollah rocket that exploded while refueling. In the doctored picture it looks like the whole city is on fire. How many pictures of this guy did they run? What other pictures did this guy make? How involved was this guy in the staging of the Qana pictures? How many of these guys are there? The NZ Herald isn't interested in these questions. No context, no follow-up, just a brief summary. Perhaps readers of the NZ Herald have learned to read between the lines.

On page B3 I found pal Robert "Jesus was born in Jerusalem" Fisk. Haven't read his column, he probably tried to decide if the Jews or the Israelis were at fault in this war, but I noticed another picture:

A guy walking past a demolished building. By Reuters. Involuntarily questions began to raise. How often has this building appeared in the newspaper as having been demolished? How often has this person appeared in the newspaper walking past his just demolished home? Are we allowed to know NZ Herald?

The NZ Herald also has a comments section. For our younger readers, this is somewhat similar to the comments section on a blog. Like blogs, everyone can participate, but that doesn't mean everyone can see your contribution. That's a big no in the dead tree business. Only journalists get to write. You get to read. No participation, no communication with readers. But sometimes the gates open a little. That's when the editors of the newspaper pick the best comment they have received. Today they picked this gem:

People who target and blow up women and children are equal to people who try to steal a passport. How's that for moral equivalence? But who am I to argue with the selection of the editors of the NZ Herald.

PS: no news on Cuba and its glorious leader.

Neutral commentary on National Radio

2006-08-08T22:16:00.000-07:00

No, the title isn't sarcastic. Listen to the National Radio segment between 4:10pm and 4:25pm on the war between Israel and Lebanon, you will hear commentary I consider to be neutral. Parts I agree, parts I disagree, but no obfuscating of the facts. If you want a good, quick intro, listen to this.

What is shocking is the presenter telling us the opinion of his audience is split 50/50. Between Israel and Hezbollah. 50% of the audience of National Radio want Hezbollah to win. Hezbollah's stated goal is the destruction of Israel. This is New Zealand 2006.

Villages full of villagers?

2006-08-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

We keep reading about high number of civilian casualties when Israel drops its bomb in Hezbollah. They're probably announced just before printing time, so the MSM can get them on the front page. A few hours later, when the dead trees have been printed, the numbers are retracted. But what is the chance of Israel hitting civilians? According to CNN reports, when they go into villages, they're empty except for Hezbollah militants:

There are very few people left in the villages now. The only people, when we went recently, and found were just young military-age men, most likely Hezbollah or Amal Party fighters. So it is difficult to continue to find compelling stories,

Note also that a story is only compelling when they can find civilians. Dead or alive...

A little bit further we find:

and the reason I'm giving you that answer is that until now Hezbollah has been very difficult to cover. We've come into town several times and only found Hezbollah fighters.

So CNN goes into villages and finds almost exclusively Hezbollah militants. Doesn't this indicate we have to be very careful with reports of civilian casualties when all the villages are only occupied of Hezbollah militants?

An apology

2006-08-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's post I tried to come up with a reason why anyone would mention the war in Lebanon in connection with the high oil prices and show a picture of Israeli tanks to underscore the point. I couldn't come up with a reason.

But apologies readers, there is an explanation I hadn't considered.

2006-08-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

EU referendum on bias, read it all:

Which brings me back to the point where this entire saga started just over a week ago. What we are dealing with is not one news agency having a rogue photographer and incompetent editors who then try to cover their backs but a canker that has eaten into almost the entire MSM or, at least, its English language parts.

There are various reasons here, I think. One is the bias that is no longer seen as bias. The MSM tends to lean to the left and takes up all left-wing causes with gusto. This goes even for the supposedly right-wing publications like the Daily Telegraph.

They have all reached a stage when they no longer even understand that they are biased but assume that their own bias is the objective point of view. It is those who depart from it who are weird. We have seen this on matters European, on the reporting of American politics and society and, above all, the Middle East. Here it is axiomatic in most of the MSM that Israel is a land-grabbing, arrogant, aggressive, imperialistic, racist ….. (fill in the blanks) entity, though few would admit that they think the country should not even exist.

Most journalists do not bother to find out much about Israel or, for that matter, the surrounding countries and will happily repeat any old rubbish about the treatment of Israeli Arabs, for instance. When did the BBC last mention the fact that there are Arab deputies in the Knesset?

Nothing to see here, "just juicing up", move on

2006-08-08T12:31:00.000-07:00

Jeff Jarvis explains why photos about the war in Lebanon are being Reutered and staged:

It seems more likely an act of agenda that fits into the current argument about proportionalism in the Hizbullah-Israel war. One side of the argument is, of course, that Israel's security was violated by Hizbullah, and it has a right to defend itself and to assure that these attacks will stop by disarming or disabling Hizbullah. The other side of the argument we hear now is that Israel's response is disproportionate, an argument I find puzzling in war, where the disproportion is in winning or losing. If the effort is not to make war look worse but to make one side in it loodisproportionatete, then I suppose it makes sense to make the smoke bigger and blacker. It makes sense if that is your agenda.

It doesn't make sense if what you're trying to do is report the news.

A succinct summary of the arguments I would say. But our local media commentator Russell Brown sees things differently. He argues that all the photographer did was "juicing up a pictures". That's all. He believes it's crazy to ask if the photographer in question was a Hezbolsympathizeriser. There's no need to follow up. No need to ask why the photographer did it. No need to ask how many more photos this guy doctored or even staged. No need to ask how many more of Reuters photographers are doing these things. Such questions are all part of the crazy right wing conspiracy. The photographer has been fired, and that's it.

How many actual photographers can he gather to support his claim? Anyone who lowers his standards to defending "just juicing up" will find themselves quickly out of work I'm afraid. You just can't trust anything they produce.

And this is the same Russell Brown who believes that Hezbollah doesn't hide behind civilians:

You may have seen Salon's The "hiding amongst civilians" myth which contends that Hezbollah avoids (for practical rather than humanitarian reasons) population centres. I suspect it's not the whole truth, but it is based on direct reporting and it is certainly worth reading.

Ok, it might, or might not, be the whole truth, but it's close according to Russell. How upset will Russell Brown be with the following picture? It's obviously Reutered by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, because Hezbollah doesn't hide behind civilians. Or will he defend the "juicing up" of this lone Hezbollah militant with a few innocent civilians as well?

A day in the life of the NZ Herald

2006-08-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

I was curious if the NZ Herald had printed any correction after my phone call yesterday. After all, newspapers like the NZ Herald are very concerned with numbers. The number of US soldiers who have died in Iraq is printed almost daily. Every civilian in Lebanon massacred by Israel is counted instantaneously and appears the next day in the NZ Herald. Buying a dead tree product isn't an every day occurrence, but I managed. Below what I saw.

I first googled the corrections page. With a dead tree product you do that by flipping pages. Almost as easy as using a mouse. Below what I found:

The first thing I noticed is that the NZ Herald is concerned with accuracy. For example the name of an Auckland women who was rescued from floodwaters is "Hattaway" not "Hallaway" we learn. That's good, it's definitely important to spell names correctly. But spelling numbers correctly seems to be of lesser concern. I couldn't find any hint that the story about the death toll in Qana was corrected, or at least a mention that the NZ Herald has printed other numbers.

On B1 Qana is mentioned again. This time the number of deaths mentioned is not very precise: dozens. Could be 28, the number counted by the HRW, could be more, the NZ Herald doesn't know:

The big story on page B1, the world news section of the NZ Herald, is Houla. Forty villagers killed screams the headline:

The story itself makes mention of up to 60 villagers killed. As you all know, the actual number was one. The NZ Herald kept updating their Houla story this morning, removing Houla, adding it, changing numbers. Nothing in the online article mentions revisions or why the article was changed. Will the NZ Herald post a correction tomorrow? Or is correcting incorrect screaming headlines not in the interest of the NZ Herald reader?

I was shocked by other content I found. The B-section had a story about a US cowboy general who gets blamed for why "freedom fighters" in Iraq blow up their women and children in their country:

The freedom fighters in Iraq are mad at the US, that's why they blow up their countrymen when they visit a market. Eh, well, if the NZ Herald says so.

An opinion writer opines that suicide bombers in the Middle-East are motivated by the desire to free their country of occupation:

The U.S. occupied Saudi Arabia, therefore the hijackers flew planes into the Twin Towers. Israel unoccupied Lebanon six years ago, but still occupies Israel, so that explains why Hezbollah continued to rain rockets on Israel for the past six years. The only interesting fact this article uncovers is that the majority of Hezbollah suicide bombers are lefties. Really:

We were shocked to find that only eight were Islamic fundamentalists; 27 were from leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union; three were Christians, including a female secondary school teacher with a college degree.

Who would have thought...

The NZ Herald also printed this most enlightening picture on the war in Lebanon:

But it's from Reuters! Was it made by Adnan Hajj himself? Is it the sole shoe of a woman whose house was just bombed by the Israelis? Was it Adnan's own shoe? Was it reutered from a Nike commercial? The meaning of this photo is one thing, but we from the VRWC want to know: is it real?

The first thing that comes to the mind of the NZ Herald caption writer when asked to produce a photo accompanying an article on rising oil prices is that it is caused by Jews:

As a layman in these matters that wouldn't have come to my mind exactly. But who knows? Perhaps the simple economic law of supply and demand doesn't explain your fuel prices. Behind all these things could be the Jews, or not? The rising demand in China can have only little impact on the oil price. The US doesn't drill in Alaska. I thought that was due to concern for the local population of midges, but no, the fighting in Lebanon has far greater impact. The US hasn't build a new refinery in the last 30 years, but even that is nothing compared to Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Also that the biggest oil field in the US has stopped pumping for a few months is just a drop in the bucket compared to Israel's devastating campaign that causes your fuel price to rise. I've attempted to locate if Lebanon has oil for example, but not according to the CIA fact book. It has some oil refining industry to the same book. But none currently operation according to Alexander's Gas and Oil Connections, dated the 25th of January 2006:

Lebanon was among the first in the Middle East to build oil refineries in the 1950's, but now its facilities in Zahrani and Tripoli are inoperative making it one of the only countries in the region with no refining capacity, and consequently entirely dependent on imported fuel sources.

But regardless, if the price at the pump rises again, don't blame the government who takes just 50%, don't blame the oil companies who make obscene profits of just a few cents after subtraction of all costs, but blame the Jews.

Anyway, the NZ Herald finishes with a happy note: all is well in Cuba.

Quiz

2006-08-07T15:39:00.000-07:00

Question: how many articles has the NZ Herald published about the story that its news agency Reuters sacked and next pulled all 920 the pictures of one of its photographers?

It's not that these pictures haven't appeared on the front page of the NZ Herald.

Update: as we have a possibly correct answer, here the article on the sacking of the Reuters photographer. Let us now wait if they cover the pulling of the 920 photographs. And the 2nd confirmed photo that was reutered. And if they inform their readers which of the pictures have appeared in the NZ Herald.

The pseudo-massacre in Houla

2006-08-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

As willing instruments in the propaganda war the NZ Herald has dutifully reported the death toll from the 'massacre' in Houla:

An Israeli air raid killed more than 40 people in a Lebanese village late last night, Lebanon's prime minister said. ... "An hour ago, a horrific massacre took place in Houla village as a result of the intentional Israeli bombardment that resulted in more than 40 martyrs," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told an emergency Arab foreign ministers meeting in Beirut.

Residents of Houla said they feared up to 60 people, including many children, had been killed. They said most of the people were shepherds who had refused to flee the fighting.

But as it turns out only one person was killed:

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said Monday that one person was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Houla, not 40 as he had earlier reported.
"The massacre in Houla, it turned out that there was one person killed," Siniora said. "They thought that the whole building smashed on the heads of about 40 people ... thank God they have been saved."

I'm not going to call the NZ Herald this time. Let's see if and when they bury a correction.

Update: the NZ Herald has now silently rewritten their story. You won't find the word Houla in the article anymore. No indication that the article was rewritten or why it was rewritten.

Update II: at 11:35am the text was changed to include Houla again. No indication that the earlier story was incorrect. And will a correction appear in tomorrow's Herald?

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said overnight that some 40 people had been killed in air strikes on the south Lebanese border village of Houla alone, but later retracted his statement.

"They thought that the whole building smashed on the heads of about 40 people ... thank God they have been saved," he said.

How many civilians did die at Qana?

2006-08-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

How many civilians did die at Qana? As many blog readers will know by know, the most reliable number is 28. The NZ Herald isn't aware of that:

"Qana. Never again" in reference to the bombing in the Lebanese town where more than 50 civilians were killed.

I called the NZ Herald. The person I spoke to was completely unaware of the issue and questioned how would I know if my numbers were correct. Sir, both both the Human Rights Watch and the Red Cross have done actual counting on the ground. They did that five days ago. And the MSM still keeps issuing the more than 50 number. No wonder dead trees are a bad business at the moment. People who like to be informed cannot rely on these organisations.

It appeared to me that more than 50 dead was quite important to the NZ Herald. But let's see. The person I spoke to promised to update the article after researching the issue.

Update: the NZ Herald has the HRW correction in another article, insidiously posted at the bottom of an article:

Human Rights Watch reveals that 28 people died in the attack rather than the 54 originally reported by Lebanese rescue workers.

Do the editors read their own newspapers?

Update II: the NZ Herald has corrected the story without notice. It now reads:

In reference to the bombing in the Lebanese town where Lebanon says at least 54 civilians were killed.

They still can't admit the 54 was wrong. Who's using the numbers here for a purpose?

Do they also have an MP for capitalism?

2006-07-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

Or private property? Maybe it's time for some affirmative action:

The change was informally signalled at a function at Premier House in Wellington yesterday celebrating the 20 year anniversary of homosexual law reform, where Mr Chauvel was introduced as Labour's new gay MP.

What do you know about Iraq?

2006-07-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

What do you know about Iraq if you depend on Radio NZ? They basically only report the car bombs.

What would people know about NZ if news agencies only report about it when another kid was murdered, or another severed head was found?

Is anyone really listening?

2006-07-04T14:18:00.000-07:00

The new on Concert FM, back to back: ce breakers can't get through the unusally thick ice at Antartica (we were told the whole thing was meltinga way!), and a story that we're not doing enough to stop emitting green house gases (which supposedly heats up earth, not that it is working this winter).

One may assume that the end-is-nigh arm chair philosophers first thought the earth was really warming up. Why else invent a catch phrase that you don't believe describes what is happening? Now the earth's global temperature is dropping for the last 8 years or so, we're just calling it climate change. Anything unusal in the weather can now be attributed to us. To you, driving in your car, to you turning on the heater in winter, to you taking a plane to visit your family.

It's a bit like ancient times: when it was raining, the gods were crying. when it was thundering, the gods were fighting or throwing their hammers. When it was dry or wet, the gods were angry.

Climate change: it's all your fault. It's best if humanity just disappears from this planet.

It's the D-shackle stupid

2006-06-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

The NZ Herald, who can see the Otahuhu substation if they just once looked outside their window, reports on the power failure:

Energy Minister David Parker yesterday released three reports supplied by Transpower which confirm that Auckland's blackout was triggered by the failure of two severely corroded D-shackles at the Otahuhu sub-station.

I don't believe they ever acknowledged they couldn't even get the facts right in this case.

A lengthy sentence

2006-06-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

What is a lengthy sentence?

Hutchison's lawyer Frank Hogan said a lengthy finite sentence was needed for Hutchison,

It's 7.5 years. Given the case I would say string 'm. But I'm not a caring liberal.

Tagging dogs a good idea?

2006-06-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

And why not tag kids? Belgium is taking the lead:

Electronic identity cards for all children under 12 are to be introduced in Belgium. They will bear a code designed to allow parents of missing children to be traced instantly.

And if tagging kids is good, why not adults? After all, if even farmers are no longer responsible to provide their animals with food during winter, but expect the taxpayer to bail them out, even adults can no longer be responsible for themselves, can they?

The missing word

2006-06-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

Do you know what word I was missing in this NZ Herald article?

Auckland lost its power after a simple metal shackle holding an Otahuhu substation earthing wire failed and the wire snapped.

In an unusual chain of events, part of the wire fell into switching equipment and caused the huge blackout.

It's the word wind. It appears in the phrase wind farm however. If that's the direction we're looking for as solution, I suggest you buy a own diesel generator for your business now.

Biased BBC blog

2006-06-19T13:07:00.000-07:00

Another blog focused on media bias is Biased BBC. They've been around for quite a while.

Monday Morning Quiz

2006-06-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

In this week’s quiz we ask:

Which weekly women’s magazine featured these actual stories in its lead off “news” section this week:

-- The heart-breaking story of injured twins and their touching story of survival.

--A ‘special’ about aging rocker Paul McCartney—we still love him, now he’s sixty-four!! Say kiwi fans!!

--The hialrious and toucjing story of a duck in Dublin which stopped traffic as she marched her 7 chicks to their first swim

--“I will recover!!! my story of alcohol abuse” vows Rolling Stone Ron Wood.

--Further heart-break for Lana!!!-- former model and CELEBRITY Lana Coc-Kroft’s brother is in trouble after an incident at a supermarket.

--The exclusive and touching and heart-breaking story of the model caught up in Bali nightmare!!!! Friend speaks out!!!!!: “Maybe some day, from Micelle herself, the truth will come out. I know in my heart she’d make the most amazing ambabssador to children and young models”.

--The EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with steaker and hero solo-mum about THAT run and THAT bikini!!! Lisa Lewis Talks!!!! (again). Complete with photos!

--Dancing with the Stars winner, Norm Hewitt, from last year slams this year’s dancers: “You’re not up to scratch”. Exclusive!

--Canterbury farmer’s touching struggle without electricity, plus a touching letter from Journalist John Keast to all Aucklanders: “ When you woke on Monday morning, I guess you went to work. Or didn’t. when some of these folk woke, their world changed. It had turned white and very cold….snow is hard to shift…that’s the thing about snow and wind….People across this region are tucked up against fires and heaters. If they have them….” !!!!!

-- An EXCLUSIVE half page picture of CELEBRITIES Alison Mau and Petra Bagust!!!!!!!

--The EXCLUSIVE column from Dancing with the Stars judge: “ Rodney Dropped out, now it’s Three the Hard way!!!!!!!!”

--The smart way to keep a track of your kids at school—scientists tell!!!!!

--Paul McCartney and Heather’s heartbreaking split: “my soft-porn past heart-break!”

--More on Lisa Lewis!!!!! and THAT bikini!!!

--More on Rodney Hide being voted off Dancing with the Stars.

Is it:
-- Women’s Day?
--Women’s Weekly?
--Hello! (?)
--Sunday Star Times ?

What happened to the wind?

2006-06-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

The NZ Herald now reports on the simple link that blacked out half of Auckland:

A simple metal shackle has been isolated as the cause of Auckland's chaotic power blackout, prompting Transpower to launch a nationwide inspection of similar equipment.

It was revealed yesterday that a D-shackle - a D-shaped item used to fasten wire to other equipment - failed and subsequently caused Otahuhu substation's earthing wire to snap. ...

Electrical engineering experts spoken to by the Herald last night speculated that the shackle's failure could have been caused by corrosion, physical wear and tear, or a manufacturing or design fault.

What would happen to this world if journalists just jumped to conclusions and didn't have checks and balances? What if they couldn't even get the facts in their own city, in their own neighbourhood right? If they couldn't, you would start to distrust anything they say about hurricanes in the US (Katrina), global warming, the war in Iraq, etc., wouldn't you?

The NZ Herald remains silent

2006-06-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm probably not deemed worthy of an answer by the NZ Herald. Just an annoying layman. Questions can only asked by journalists.

Let's read the latest from Transpower:

Chief Executive Ralph Craven says a full investigation is underway into why an earthwire snapped, and the impact it had when it dropped into switching equipment at Otahuhu substation.

And let's quote that NZ Herald article again:

The cause was a small earth wire which a wind gust snapped off a high-voltage pylon near the Otahuhu B substation,

Remember this little story next time when journalists talk about "checks and balances."

Nothing yet from the NZ Herald

2006-06-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

So far my email to the NZ Herald has gone unanswered.

A timely read is therefore Lory Byrd's piece that assertion has replaced truth:

What is a greater concern than the lack of civility, however, is the inability of many in the political arena to even agree upon the facts. Worse than the loss of civility, is that of truth.

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes argued the “fake, but accurate” defense when confronted with evidence that their 2004 pre-election story accusing the president of being AWOL 30 years earlier was based on obviously forged documents.

Trying to get answers from the NZ Herald

2006-06-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

At 11:05 I called the New Zealand, asking if I could speak to Mathew Dearnaley or Martin Johnston, who are mentioned as the authors of this article. Both were unavailable. I left my phone number at Martin's answering machine. Not having identified myself as a blogger, my status as commoner lowered my priority on Martin's callback list I suppose, because 2.5 hours later I still had not spoken to him.

I called again. This time Martin was available. He could not divulge his source, but asked me to email him. He didn't give me his email address, so I emailed him using the form made available by the NZ Herald.

So either he offers a good source and we apologise profusely for accusing the media of jumping to conclusions. Or we have a very simple easily understood example how reality ends up in your newspaper.

Time to call Transpower

2006-06-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

What shall a single blogger do when faced with conflicting reports on what would be a very simple statement of fact? Who is he to go against the Goliaths of the media? The newspapers of record, that print all the news that's fit to print, the ones that ~~jump to conclusions~~just report and you decide?

Such a blogger goes to the source. Of course not being a real journalist he doesn't know if that's the strategy one should follow in order to get paid, but blogging is for free and for fun, so it doesn't really matter.

So around 10:50am this blogger called Chris Roberts, Communications Manager at Transpower. Who confirmed that:

There were high winds at that time.
We do not know if that was a factor.

He confirmed that there press statement was correct. So how did we get from his statement to the Z Herald which writes:

The cause was a small earth wire which a wind gust snapped off a high-voltage pylon near the Otahuhu B substation

The NZ Herald gets it wrong. Or are we?

2006-06-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

It gets more interesting by the minute. The NZ Herald writes:

The cause was a small earth wire which a wind gust snapped off a high-voltage pylon near the Otahuhu B substation, short-circuiting lines supplying electricity for 700,000 or more people throughout central, east and southwest Auckland.

So what happened?

The AP gets wrong

2006-06-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry, that isn't news. But even the most willfully ignorant leftie must now admit to the fact that if AP can get it wrong about a country living in a benign strategic environment, what would they dare to report about countries where it is much harder to get the facts?

Gale force winds battering northern New Zealand cut power to the nation's biggest city on Monday,

AP, the most untrustworthy news source on the planet.

How hard is it to go to the Transpower website where we can read:

A fault, which occurred at 8:32 am this morning, caused the power failure when overhead earth wires dropped into Transpower’s 110 kV switching equipment. ...

There were high wind gusts in the affected area at the time of the outage and this may have been a contributor.

How did we go from "might have been" to "gale force winds cut power"? Does it really matter if you're an AP journalist? You get paid, regardless of the facts.

Hat tip: PC.

More malicious media misrepresentation makes me mad

2006-06-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

Hat tip: Adolf Fiinkensein.

Haditha is a fairly large town in Iraq and is strategically important because of the two large hydro-electric plants there. Reportedly 12 US Marines from Kilo company of the third battalion massacred 24 unarmed Iraqis in retaliation for the killing (by a large roadside improvised explosive device or IED) of one of 1st Marine company's own (Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. The death occurred on 19th November 2005, with the "massacre" shortly thereafter. Among the dead were reportedly 11 women and children.

I think it is interesting to note that before Lance Corporal Terrazas death, 20 Marines were killed and subsequently a further 14 (plus their interpreter) were also killed. I mention that because I don't understand why the death of this one soldier incited this "massacre" where the 34 of Marine deaths did not.

I want to mention two other points of interest:

Firstly: The Iraqi defence force, have you seen them? they drive "hummers", they have uniforms very, very similar to US uniforms and they also use a large amount of US weaponry, it would be pretty easy for civilians to mistake them.

Secondly: In the background of that al Zarqawi video did you see what type of rifles were resting against the wall? An AMERICAN M4 and an AMERICAN M60. Do you remember what type of light machine gun he was firing in the desert? Yes, AMERICAN. If these terrorists can get their hands on US arms, why couldn't the get other US stuff (uniforms, vehicles)

Now, it is only a matter of time before rabid lefties try to accuse me of being a rightwing conspirator or something like that. Well I'm not. Of course there are atrocities in war, that is the nature of warfare. Men and women are trained to kill on command, it doesn't surprise me if their instilled violence "overflows". But my suspicion is aroused when the story breaker (Time magazine) can't produce the original sources to back-up their claims.

Young Adolf of Sir Humphreys writes:

Haditha hoax
The first strong indications that the Haditha story is a hoax appeared this morning, courtesy of Powerline. It seems Time (the original story breaker) has been unable to produce the photos alleged to underpin the story. Time is backing away from the story with a series of 'corrections.' Further, it seems the first genuine 'firt hand' reports from Marines who were on site at the time are indicating the rules of engagement were indeed followed correctly.

Again and again and again, the treasonous Antique media rush into print with hugely damaging stories without so much as even a gesture toward checking facts. Swathes of anti-Bush, anti-military editorial follow, all enormously helpful to the enemy. The moral fibre of the populace is successfully eroded.

Adolf will not be surprised if within six months, like the Berlin Wall, the so called insurgency in Iraq is over and then ordinary people in the west will ask "How come it happened so quickly? The media told us all was lost."

Iran will be found to be the major driver of the insurgency and, within another year, it too will undergo regime change.

Adolf thinks the western media, particularly the US media, will pay a heavy long term price for their perfidy over Iraq.

Hard to find a common denominator

2006-06-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

Not New Zealand news, but this is so ridiculous and amusing that I just had to link to it.

Next they're after your company

2006-05-26T14:13:00.003-07:00

The NZ Herald, not content with deploring the removal of dictators, applauding the "democratically" elected government of Iran and embracing nationalisation of companies, now has set its eye on successful NZ companies.

Last year it won the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise supreme award for exports. And when it launched on the Stock Exchange two weeks ago it was warmly received by investors.

But there is something that Rakon has been keeping quiet - it is the sole
supplier of an important component in the smart bombs made for the United States military.

Rakon said last year that it was not privy to the end-use systems of its
customers however a major Weekend Herald investigation today can reveal: ...

Next time any of your goods are used by Americans the NZ Herald will be writing an article about you. Remember: only export to North Korea, Iran and China.

Katrina revealed ineptitude—of the press, that is.

2006-05-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

Even in New Zealand millions will believe that Bush botched Katrina and that the press did a real good job. Jonah Goldberg summarises it again:

Where to begin? As I’ve written before, virtually all of the gripping stories from Katrina were untrue. All of those stories about, in Paula Zahn’s words, “bands of rapists, going block to block”? Not true. The tales of snipers firing on medevac helicopters? Bogus. The yarns, peddled on Oprah by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the New Orleans police chief, that “little babies” were getting raped in the Superdome and that the bodies of the murdered were piling up? Completely false. The stories about poor blacks dying in comparatively huge numbers because American society “left them behind”? Nah-ah. While most outlets limited themselves to taking Nagin’s estimate of 10,000 dead at face value, Editor and Publisher—the watchdog of the media—ran the headline, “Mortuary Director Tells Local Paper 40,000 Could Be Lost in Hurricane.”

In all of Louisiana, not just New Orleans, the total dead from Katrina was roughly 1,500. Blacks did not die disproportionately, nor did the poor. The only group truly singled out in terms of mortality was the elderly. According to a Knight-Ridder study, while only 15 percent of the population of New Orleans was over the age of 60, some 74 percent of the dead were 60 or older, and almost half were older than 75. Blacks were, if anything, slightly underrepresented among the dead given their share of the population.

And he makes the case that the press actually might have killed people with these stories:

Keep in mind that the most horrifying tales of woe that captivated the press and prompted news anchors to scream—quite literally—at federal officials occurred within the safe zone around the Superdome where the press was operating. Shame on local officials for fomenting fear and passing along newly minted urban legends, but double shame on the press for recycling this stuff uncritically. Members of the press had access to the Superdome. Why not just run in and look for the bodies? Interview the rape victims? Couldn’t be bothered? The major networks had hundreds of people in New Orleans. Was there not a single intern available to fact-check? The coverage actually cost lives. Helicopters were grounded for 24 hours in response to media reports of sniper attacks. At least two patients died waiting to be evacuated.

This story will not appear in a newspaper near you.

Reuters is upset

2006-05-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

The NZ Herald has an extremely funny story from an upset Reuters. It's worth going through in full. This post will provide an englightening example of how to read between the lines when you're faced with a rabid left news outlet as Reuters, or AP, or CNN. I'm voicing the opinions of the purported Reuters writer after each quote. Let's start with the headline:

Captured al Qaeda document 'shows weakness'

The document shows no such thing, that's why we have to put it in quotes. al Qaeda is strong, it's being reported in the media everyday, so it must be true.

BAGHDAD - The US military published on Monday what it said was a captured al Qaeda document showing the Sunni Islamist guerrillas recognised they were weak and unpopular in Baghdad.

Warning flags: US military claims something.

The document, an apparent review of the group's strategy in the Iraqi capital, was seized with videos on April 16 near Yusufiya, just southeast of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

Nice try US military, but this document is just too good.

A translation of the undated, three-page document, whose authenticity could not be independently assessed, suggested al Qaeda was reviewing tactics in the city, currently focused on car bombs and other guerrilla tactics.

We're always interested in independent assessment. Except when we're trying to prove stories that we know must be true, but for which we only have faked, but nonetheless accurate proof.

It proposes improving its military capabilities to hold territory, in what appeared to be preparation for any civil war.

You know, we shouldn't be judgmental about things. Targeting women and children is just assessed differently in different cultures, so we are justified in calling this part of their operations their current military capabilities. Holding territory to create a Taliban like-regime is improving things. And that civil war? You know the one we have been writing about for the last three years? It's about to start. Really soon now.

The document was mentioned in a news briefing last week at which the military also aired what it said were outtakes from a video promoting the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, that was posted on the internet.

A spokesman mocked the Jordanian's competence with a gun and his choice of American sports shoes, seen in the unedited film.

Mocking al-Zarqawi, the blasphemy.

A statement on Monday accompanying a translated transcript of the "Baghdad Strategy" document quoted another US military spokesman, Brigadier General Rudy Wright, as saying:

"This information confirms what the government of Iraq, Coalition forces and ultimately the people of Iraq already know -- that AQIZ's role only attempts to impede Iraqis in following the road to prosperity, security and national unity."

AQIZ is a US acronym for "al Qaeda in Iraq, Zarqawi".

Have to let people know that a Brigadier General is someone from the US military, not the Salvation Army. Our readers can be so stupid sometimes.

The statement also quoted the original document as reading: "Al Qaeda in Iraq attacks mosques and other public places to draw media attention and is having difficulty recruiting members because the people of Iraq do not support its cause."

The accompanying document did not include that sentence.

Yes, we can read too. This is another great example of the US military just claiming things that are not there. The document said that "In other words, these activities could be understood as hitting the scared...", but that doesn't matter. None of our readers will ever look at the original sources, for which we won't provide a pointer anyway. We're the guardians of what our readers are allowed to know and research.

Locked in a battle for public opinion as much as in combat with the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the US military has previously released what it says are captured documents showing dissent or disillusion in the guerrilla ranks.

Yes, it's a battle for public opinion. And we're proud to do our best. So far we've been far more successful than AQIZ. Now, where are the barrels of oil we were promised?

The translation provided by the military showed the unknown author putting the strength of active fighters, referred to as "mujahideen" or holy warriors, at about 110 in Baghdad -- 40 each in the northwest and southwest and 30 in the east.

Yes, purportedly unknown. But we know who benefits from a document like this. So who would most likely have written it?

"These are very small numbers compared to the tens of thousands of the enemy troops," the document concludes. "How can we increase these numbers?"

Oops, this might indicate to our readers that the minuteman are just small. What to do to increase their numbers?

Since US and Iraqi officials generally assess the numbers of Sunni insurgents in the thousands, the figures may refer to hardcore Islamist militants, rather than all Sunni gunmen.

Well, perhaps we can't get away with minuteman, but insurgents will do. Terrorists is sooo judgmental. And note how cunningly we use the US military here as a reliable source. If it makes the terrorists look good and big in numbers, they can play a useful role in this battle.

The assessment, as highlighted in the US statement, finds that "every year is worse than the previous year" in terms of the control the guerrillas exercise within Baghdad compared to that of US forces and "the Shi'ites"' Iraqi police and army.

The document expresses criticisms of the car bomb and other "surprise attacks" that are "the main strength of the brothers in Baghdad". An element of the document not mentioned in the US statement was its urging the group to prepare to hold territory, possibly in an all-out civil war.

Not mentioned, yes, the US military tries to hide the truth. But we've uncovered it for you. And by Allah, pbuh, they will succeed. And we succeeded in mentioning civil war again, clever.

"The policy followed by the brothers in Baghdad is a media-oriented policy without a clear comprehensive plan to capture an area or an enemy centre," the writer says, as translated by the US military.

As you've seen before, we can read this document to. And it is unfortunately accurate, but we can still give little nudges to our reader that this is a US military translation. Can't trust the translations of these guys.

"This direction has large positive effects; however, being preoccupied with it alone delays more important operations such as taking control of some areas, preserving it and assuming power in Baghdad (for example, taking control of a university, a hospital, or a Sunni religious site)."

Strange country Iraq. The left is not in power at universities? Bush is clearly dangerous, now he has even installed his puppets at universities! The man will stop at nothing.

The document is also critical of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni group expected to be involved in a new, national unity government, and the Sunni Muslim Clerics Association. It describes them as rivals for influence over the Sunni minority and raises the question of the loyalties of Sunni Iraqi troops.

Yes, that civil war again. It's really around the corner now with these questions about loyalities.

Well, we from Reuters are satisfied with this article. Ready for publishing. We've mentioned that elusive civil war in Iraq a couple of times, despite no mention of this in the original document. We've done our bit in this battle for public opinion today. Tomorrow another article about the looming civil war in Iraq.

Al-Qaeda says it's only winning in the media

2006-05-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

A story that will not be brought to your local newspaper. Al-Qaeda admitting it is losing in Iraq:

[T]he Americans and the Government were able to absorb our painful blows, sustain them, compensate their losses with new replacements, and follow strategic plans which allowed them in the past few years to take control of Baghdad as well as other areas one after the other. That is why every year is worse than the previous year as far as the Mujahidin's control and influence over Baghdad.

But there's one front where they keep on winning:

The policy followed by the brothers in Baghdad is a media oriented policy without a clear comprehensive plan to capture an area or an enemy center. Other words, the significance of the strategy of their work is to show in the media that the Americans and the government do not control the situation and there is resistance against them. This policy dragged us to the type of operations that are attracted to the media, and we go to the streets from time to time for more possible noisy operations which follow the same direction.

National Radio gets talking points from the Democratic Party?

2006-05-02T19:27:00.000-07:00

This morning Eva Radich talked to her US correspondent Lilo Stainton. This morning it became abundantly clear that Eva Radich is ready for promotion. First listen to her insights on the US illegal immigration debate:

You had a WONDERFUL day yesterday, Mayday with, with I don't know, it seemed to me that all those immigrants on the streets throughout the states made an incredible impact.

How subtle have illegals been turned into immigrants. If I was a legal immigrant I would be quite pissed off to be treated the same as a lawbreaker, but hey, what do we know? We're not journalists. The laws don't apply to them.

But next she goes after the big fish. Angling for a position as CBS anchor perhaps, or a position as senator for the Democrats. Listen to this clip please. Remember, this is on New Zealand state radio, sponsored by you, the taxpayer. A few extracts below:

Because Mayday also marked another event that I guess some people, heh, would be worrying about, that's three years since the day that president Bush on that navy ship in the Persian gulf announced: "Mission accomplished in Iraq."

Next listen to this absolutely priceless extract from Rush Limbaugh's show where he first has a montage of Democrats speaking on the floor, and next a montage of the US media. Listen to one journalist, and you've listened to them all. Rush asks:

The question is, which came first here? Did the Democrats in Senate decide to go out and make a big deal of this and then it was picked up by the Drive-By Media, or did the Drive-By Media call the Democrats and remind them that this is the third anniversary, or is there somebody else, a third party somewhere, that is sitting around informing both friendly groups, "You know what, this is the third anniversary of Bush's landing on that aircraft carrier. We might be able to score some points." I play this only to illustrate the symbiotic relationship here that exists between the Drive-By Media and the Democratic Party. It is doubtless. I mean, if anybody still doubts this, it's on you. There can be no question about it.

Who would have guessed that Eva Radich is ready for a prime job at a US TV station? She fits right in!

NZ Herald journalists are whores

2006-04-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

In every sense of the word now apparently.

Pulitzer price

2006-04-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

What's the price of winning a Pulitzer? Defend dictators and terrorists, or in other words communists and islamist. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, this year's winner, rose to the defense of Sami Al-Arian in 2002:

The point is not whether one agrees with Professor Al-Arian, a rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard who is harshly critical of Israel (and also of repressive Arab countries) — but who also denounces terrorism, promotes inter-faith services with Jews and Christians, and led students at his Islamic school to a memorial service after 9/11 where they all sang ‘God Bless America.’ No, the larger point is that a university, even a country, becomes sterile when people are too intimidated to say things out of the mainstream.” Al-Arian’s detractors, not his defenders, were the ones who were supposed to be intimidated into silence.

Sami Al-Arian has just pleaded guilty to a charge of “conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds to or for the benefit of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Specially Designated Terrorist” organization. He has agreed to accept deportation.

Retired generals II

2006-04-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

How ignorant can you be if you only read your own newspaper? Fran O'Sullivan shows the way.

It was show-time at the Pentagon yesterday when United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld broke from strenuously defending his Iraq record to meet Phil Goff.

Six former US generals are calling for Mr Rumsfeld's head as opinion polls turn against the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq invasion.

But Mr Rumsfeld still turned on a guard of honour for New Zealand's Defence and Trade Minister on the Pentagon steps, even though New Zealand did not join the American-led invasion.

Mr Goff, who arrived in Washington in the midst of President George W. Bush's surprise White House reshuffle, found Mr Rumsfeld fairly chirpy under the circumstances.

Sigh. No doubt the retired generals will be doing the leftie talking shows which no one watches anymore except journalists. Does Fran really think that 7 generals, with some general criticism and who only spoke out after getting their pension, put any weight in the scale? Does she know how many retired and active duty generals the US has? Does she really believe Mr. Rumsfeld will give this matter 1 minute though a day?

It might be a big topic on the Daily Kos perhaps, but otherwise it's a big yawn.

But what insight can you expect when your own newspaper prints the left wing rants of its owners, The Independent, day after day after day?

U.S.Generals Call for Resignation of Media Leaders

2006-04-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

We should listen to retired generals:

... “I believe that it’s time for them to step down,” said one unnamed retired three-star general. “The editors of The New York Times and Washington Post and the news producers at CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC should resign effective immediately.”

“They’ve formed a tight cabal that focuses only on news that reinforces their neo-journ ideology,”

... “You can’t relieve your top commanders while your side is winning,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “Frankly, the Pentagon doesn’t direct enough attention to the car bombings, sectarian strife and rumblings of civil war which show that we’re making progress in Iraq every day.”

New Zealand should withdraw now

2006-04-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

Recent events have shown that the critics were right all along. It is time for New Zealand to withdraw its troops:

No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.

The country appears to be in a state of civil war.

There is widespread riots and looting.

There is ethnic violence, different groups fighting each other.

There is no end in sight. We have been there for years, but we have achieved nothing. We might be there for many, many years to come. Our troops should come home now!

We don't have enough police and troops here in New Zealand, so why send them overseas on an imperialist mission?

Yes, New Zealand should withdraw from Honiara.

Supporting terrorism

2006-04-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

NZ is now in the good company of Iran in continuing to give aid to terrorists. Supporting the local economy there and all that such as the shrapnel producers. Take a good look at the picture at the right, and then read this:

Shrapnel is what killed Phillip Balhasan, who stayed alive long enough to realize his children had survived, and to hug them tightly before he collapsed.

But even this is not enough for the terrorists. They also soak the shrapnel in rat poison, because it causes hemorrhaging — victims may bleed to death before they can get to the hospital.

Remember all of this, when you hear the world tell Israel to “use restraint” in responding to this attack. Remember all of this, when you read about the innocent metal shop owners who insist their shops were only making nails and screws for construction purposes.

Remember all of this, when Israel is the nation that is demonized by the blind, hateful people who wear checked kaffiyehs at anti-war protests, and call Israel an “apartheid state” for building a separation barrier — to keep out the monsters who would use bombs like I have just described.

Remember this, when you look at the pictures of the results of the bombing, and notice the thousands of dents in the metal surrounding the bombing area — the mark of the ball-bearings and other metal shrapnel.

These are the people with whom the world sympathizes: Those who create and set off the bombs. Not the victims. The bombers.

And that’s the worst evil of all.

Clever little blogger

2006-04-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

The panel, the little left snuggle fest between 4pm and 5pm got off to a promising start. They invited a leftie, unbelievable. The money quote:

National Radio: ... And he [Ed: Michael Deke] is a leftie! Nah, hah, David Farrar's blog calls you left leaning, Michael that may be referring to a strong easterly up the Otago harbour, I don't know.

Michael: he's a clever little blogger [Ed: how compassionate], isn't he, hah, I think it's ok, well spotted Mr. Farrar. If it comes to the choice of a compassionate, open, equitable society, than I'm proud to be a little bit left leaning.

National Radio: Well said. Now also from the Peoples Republic of Christchurch, councillor ...

What a fun. And Michael is left indeed. Note the typical left tactic of setting up a strawman. Always paint your opponent is racist, bigot and hateful. We have already forgotten the compassion John Tamihere showed to his cats, Abu-Pope to his pupils, Housing New Zealand to a whistleblower, and H1 to her civil servants. Or the compassion of Labour announcing they have a dirty list on National Party MP's, but won't use it. What a compassionate little society of Labour members we live in.

But to get to the point. Mr. Deke, you can be as compassionate as you want. Good on you. But the little problem I have is, why do you want to take my money to be compassionate?

Nine To Noon

2006-04-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

No idea if the program between 9:00 to 12:00 is still called Nine To Noon, but it has become a hardcore leftist wall-to-wall soundbite of misinformation. Just tuned in around 9:30. Haven't heard so much untruths in a minute for a quite a while. The host had some US Democrat, probably a journalist, to talk about the Scooter Libby case. As someone who has followed it quite well and made some decent money betting on this case, I was astounded. These people really live in a different reality. But anyway, it makes for good money.

Fake War Photo's

2006-04-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

How many photos have been published in our newspapers that were faked?

Thanks to digital technology, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most photographed in history. Photographers with digital cameras have provided, almost instantaneously, an enormous flood of accurate, dramatic, and even shocking images to people around the world. But the daily downloads of news photos include some that are staged, fake, or so lacking in context as to be meaningless, despite the Western media's best efforts to separate the factual from the fictional.

Global cooling: 1998-2005

2006-04-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

A must-read article in the Daily Telegraph. No that's not the owner of the NZ Herald, the owner of the NZ Herald is the UK's most left-wing daily, The Independent (yes, that's the paper of Robert Fisk). Let me quote:

Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.

The Panel

2006-03-21T00:19:00.000-08:00

The Panel is a taxpayer funded hour where lefties can be nice to each other. But sometimes there aer germs. Such as today. Everyone wondered why Chris Parker had left. He hadn't done anything really wrong had he, not like the others.

Not like the others. For every next minister that appears with unfavorably in the headlines they trot out the same arguments. He hasn't done anything really wrong. It's not important. Time to move on. But it's interesting that the goalposts on what the previous minister had done wrong are suddenly shifted when the next one is discussed. So Abu-Pope did a lot of wrong things? Something for which he should have resigned? Don't listen to the panel to find out.

Yeah right Reuters!

2006-03-10T17:20:00.000-08:00

WHAT REUTERS PREACHES...

By Michelle Malkin

From Reuters' editorial policy:

Reuters news operations are based on the company's Trust Principles which stipulate that the integrity, independence and freedom from bias of Reuters must be upheld at all times.
Reuters has strict policies in place to ensure adherence to these principles. We are committed to accurate and balanced reporting...

...We do not take sides and attempt to reflect in our stories, pictures and video the views of all sides. We are not in the business of glorifying one side or another or of disseminating propaganda. Reuters journalists do not offer their own opinions or views.

...and what Reuters publishes (hat tip: Drudge and readers):

Compare the drastic cropping above with the other photos from Cheney's speech at the U.S. Labor Department's 2006 National Summit on Retirement Savings: here, here, and here.

NZPA cringe - or how not to write a news item about NZ and the US military

2006-03-08T22:52:00.000-08:00

Submitted by AL on Thu, 09/03/2006
NZPA/Stuff has a little item up on a brief mention of New Zealand in this years US Pacific Command Posture hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee.

Actually that's not true. What they've really got is partly a word-for-word copy-and-paste of an incorrectly paraphrased segment in the US Armed Forces Press Service summary of the US Pacific Command Posture hearing of 7 March 2006.

Yes thats right, the people at NZPA couldn't even be bothered locating the full transcript PDF of the statement prepared for the hearing. They just pilfered something from the press wires and tacked on some of the usual fluffery about banned nuclear bombs and the USS Buchanan. Took me four clicks to find that PDF after a Google search for the Armed Services committee.

Anyway.

To the NZPA, this paragraph from the transcript:

Winning the War on Terror is our highest priority at PACOM. Cooperating nations of the region, particularly Australia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Fiji, Mongolia, and New Zealand, are making or have made significant, worldwide contributions to the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tonga has previously committed forces and we expect force contributions again in 2006.

suddenly becomes this:

Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan and even Vietnam rated a mention before NZ. Adm Fallon said his command was working to "mature" joint and combined warfighting capability and readiness:

Pedantically the reporter is correct: the words "New Zealand" were positioned last in that sentence. But I think New Zealanders should be proud of our mention along with the above named countries, regardless of the word order. Do you think the reporter had a constipated look on his face while (s)he was squeeing that one out?

And then for some off reason New Zealand is compared to Mongolia:

But the American Forces Press Service reported that when Adm Fallon spoke of advancing US security interests and enhancing regional stability through vibrant alliances, and opportunities for new partnerships - New Zealand was only mentioned after he lauded Mongolia, as a "staunch ally fighting terror around the world"

Well again technically the NZPA reporter is correct. But the following is what the AFPS actually wrote:

Mongolia, a staunch ally fighting terror around the world, is striving to establish a regional center for peacekeeping training. "Khaan Quest, a PACOM-Mongolia peacekeeping exercise, will serve as a capstone to this year's peacekeeping training efforts," he said.

Sounds like a valuable service to me.
So much for reporting the news

Sweden, just 60 years ago

2006-02-28T14:59:00.000-08:00

Our dear PM loves Sweden. She frequently mentions it as an example. Which should make you very afraid. Our media of course hasn't paid any attention to this, nor asked what she actually means. Especially Chefen at Sir Humphrey has done a great job keeping us informed about Sweden. And here's another little item of interest, just keep it in mind when she says the S-word again:

In my book, I write that Sweden has been prompt to wag its finger at the American democracy; during World War II, it was less eager to lecture to Nazi Germany.

Civil war and the final crisis of capitalism

2006-02-26T16:30:00.000-08:00

Bloody, heard even Newstalk ZB this morning on the "close to civil war theme". I can't put this to rest, but I refer you again to blogs to get really informed, and not just be a disposable piece in the information war:

Elements of the MSM seem to await a civil war in Iraq with the same breathlessness that Marxists used to await the final crisis of capitalism. Each significant instance of violence between Sunni and Shia is viewed either as evidence that the civil war has started or is just around the corner.

Iraq close to civil war or what?

2006-02-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

According to the screaming head line in this morning's O'Herald: "Mob pushes Iraq near civil war". I haven't bothered to read the article. Because no doubt it will have been written by The Independent, a British newspaper. In Britain you have an ultra-left-wing newspaper, The Guardian. But there's room to the left of ultra-left, and that spot is occupied by The Independent. They're the owner of the O'Herald, that's why its pages of foreign news are filled by hatred of America. Because America is the symbol of capitalism, of success, of personal responsibility. And that all most be destroyed.

A prime example of the specimen that you can find in The Independent is Robert Fisk. So it's safe to skip any article coming from The Independent. Although having not written a single line of this article, I'm 100% certain that it does not contain a single proof that it is near civil war. A murder or a defaced mosque does not civil war make, else we would be near civil war here in Auckland.

But the question is still relevant. Is Iraq near civil war? How can we know? What would be relevant signs? For insight into these questions we have to turn to blogs once again. Bill Roggio does the work our newspapers can no longer be bothered with (if they ever were):

By all indications, the situation in Iraq is tense, and the threat of continued violence is real. The possibility of a full-scale civil war is quite real as emotions are running high over the destruction of the revered Shiite shrine and the retaliation against Sunni mosques.

But the media has not asked or answered the following question: what exactly are the leading indicators for a full blown civil war - meaning the political leadership of the main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties no longer wish cooperate, and an open and organized battle between the parties ensues?

The following list contains the main lead indicators a full scale civil War in Iraq is underway: ...

State of National Radio

2006-02-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

Just caught the ten o'clock news + the announcement of Linda Clark. The only two items in this world that were important for National Radio were that the Israeli's shot two innocent teenagers. They also quoted someone from Israel's military who said these two were busy trying to detonate a bomb. And one of them was a known terrorist. But you know, according to Palestianian sources these were just two innocent teenagers. Had World War II happened today, I'm sure National Radio would have given equal time to Hitler as well. Hitler said .... A jew, just before he went into the gas chamber said ...

The second foreign news item that was of national interest were some British awards given to Brokeback mountain. Who would have thought.

And next Linda Clark. She announced that we she was going to discuss, seriously I'm not making this up, that all the kerfuffle with Iran might be because Iran wanted to sell its oil in Euros, not dollars. It had nothing to do with Iran wanting to acquire nukes, their president publicly announcing they wanted to wipe Israel off the map, with the long range missiles they acquired from North Korea. No, and it had nothing to do with OIL as well. Nope, it all had to do with the value of the dollar.

You just get soo tired of these creeps that are using our tax dollars to sprout their hatred of America. And if you have a sense of deja-vu, you're correct. Iraq also sold its oil in Euros. And that would have led to a slide in the dollar so America attacked. Just to get up the valuation of their dollar, America send over their soldiers of whom 2000 have died. Just to up their currency.

I'm so glad I'm not Linda Clark. I would feel so embarrassed.

Jon Johansson

2006-02-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Jon Johansson makes another appearance on the scene. He is political lecturer at Victoria University , but appears to make more time on radio and in newspapers for the occassions where Labour must be defended or Don Brash smeared. And there are a lot of those occassions, so I doubt he gets much lecturing done:

Mr Johansson said the spending should be kept in context.

"I read today that there's a prediction that (United States senator) Hillary Clinton is going to raise by 2008 $500 million for her presidential campaign.

"In New Zealand you are not talking about some rampant system out of control."

How cute. A stab at America and a defense of Helen in a single sentence! People should not be free to do with their money as they please, for example giving it to Hillary. And because Hitler murdered far more people than a typical dictator, the system isn't out of control.

I'm tired already. Read PC for more comments.

What??!! Journalistic commonsense??!!??

2006-02-09T15:21:00.000-08:00

This is a start, a MSM journalist looking at blogs as more than thieves of market share.

Bloggers: an army of irregulars
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website

For many in the "mainstream media", as bloggers call us, weblogs are at best a nuisance and at worst dangerous.

They are seen as the rantings and ravings either of the unbalanced or the tedious.

My experience over the past few months has led me to an opposite conclusion.

I regard the blogosphere as a source of criticism that must be listened to and as a source of information that can be used.

The mainstream media (MSM in the jargon) has to sit up and take notice and develop some policies to meet this challenge.

Most big organisations, whether in news or in business, have no policy towards blogs.

They might, as the BBC has, develop a policy towards their own employees setting up such sites (no political opinions etc), but they have nobody monitoring the main blogs and have little idea how to respond to any criticism on them.

Alternative sources

First, here are a few examples of how the bloggers have, for me, become a useful source.

Only this week, they tracked down the origin of a fake cartoon which has been fuelling the furore over the characterisation of Muhammad in a Danish paper.

One of the pictures being circulated, a very fuzzy, grey photocopy, apparently showed the prophet Muhammad with the face of a pig.

It was quickly pointed out, by bloggers and others, that this was not one of the 12 Danish cartoons.

Nobody however knew the origin of this portrayal.

Then I received an e-mail from a reader passing on a link to a blog called neandernews.

And there it was.

The picture had nothing to do with the prophet. It was a photo of the winner of a "pig-squealing" competition held last summer in the French Pyrenees. It had first been published on the MSNBC website in August.

Another example came after Hurricane Katrina wrecked New Orleans.

Children survey the damage done to their New Orleans home by Hurricane Katrina

There was a lot of discussion about who was to blame for the failure of the relief effort.

Then someone sent me a photo that had been circulating on blogs of yellow New Orleans school buses inundated in their parking lot.

They had clearly not been used for evacuation as they should have been according to the city and state plan.

This showed that the mayor, praised without much stint until then, had something to answer for.

It was part of the evidence upon which I concluded that blame should be shared at all levels of government.

I also benefited from the Daily Kos site when the issue of the use of white phosphorus by the US military in Iraq was under discussion.

The Pentagon initially denied its use as a weapon but the bloggers were able to link to an article from an embedded reporter who had watched marines using it as such and to a report in an army magazine about its use in Falluja.

The examples show the collective strength of blogs.

They have an army of what Sherlock Holmes called his "Baker Street Irregulars," that is an almost unlimited number of people around the world, many of them expert on the subject under discussion, scouring sources and sending information in to an easily accessible central site which can disseminate it instantly.

Power of blogs

The other role of the blogs is to criticise and attack.

And here they have shown their power in a way that ought to make big media organisations also take notice.

Bloggers have already helped to bring down or damage two very important media figures in the United States.

One was Dan Rather of CBS News, who came a cropper after a report on "60 Minutes Wednesday" in September 2004.

The report, compiled mainly by producers with Rather in the role of the front man, alleged that President Bush had been given special dispensations when he served as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.

The allegations were based on supposedly original documents.

However, the first crack in the case came when a blogger (from freerepublic.com according to a subsequent inquiry set up by CBS) questioned the typeface used in those documents.

It had not, he said, been available on typewriters at the time.

The whole story unravelled.

The other major scalp was the Chief News Executive at CNN, Eason Jordan.

He had made some remarks at a discussion in Davos in January 2005 about journalists being possibly targeted by US troops.

There was a semi-official blogger at the session (i.e. one invited by the organisers) and he set a ball rolling which gathered pace as other bloggers then accused Jordan of blaming the military unfairly.

It ended in Jordan's resignation. He was the victim of a "blogswarm".

Opinion varies as to whether this was justified or not.

Blog agendas

Of course, one has to remember that most blogs have political agendas. Many of them are on the right of the spectrum. But it is not that hard to discount the opinionating and pick out the facts.

The photo of the unused school buses in New Orleans came by way of a site called the USS Neverdock, so-called because it is always in action, I suppose.

It is run from Scotland by Marc Landers, who once served in US Naval Intelligence. He still fires with all guns.

"My motivation is to expose the bias in the BBC's reporting," he told me. "We are at war unlike any we've been in before and facing an enemy who wants one thing - to wipe out western civilization. The BBC, through its biased reporting, has sided with the enemy."

USS Neverdock is one of three main sites in the UK that monitor and usually attack the BBC from the right.

Another is called, simply enough, Biased BBC. One of its leading lights, Andrew Bowden, says that one of his major complaints is "the politically-correct institutional group-think (and sometimes plain ignorance) that comes across in a lot of the BBC's news and current affairs output."

He also opposes the compulsory licence fee that funds the BBC.

A third site, which specialises in detailed textual analysis of BBC and other media reports, is called The American Expatriate, who is Scott Callahan, a banker living in London.

"Since moving to Britain I've noticed that coverage of America is especially poor, not just in an opinionated way (eg America is an ignorant place, full of bible bashers etc) but even at times in a strictly factual sense. As an American living in Britain with a rather different take on Americans, American life and American politics than that of the media here, I thought that I was in a position to provide some corrective commentary," he said.

There are some leftwing sites, the main one perhaps being Medialens whose motto is "correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media."

Run by journalists David Cromwell and David Edwards, Medialens has "media alerts" on the big issues of the day as it sees them. A recent one concerned the reporting of climate change.

It criticised, among others, The Independent [British newspaper]: "The Independent is feeling the heat from public criticism of its adverts pushing foreign travel, cars and endless consumerism."

In fairness, it also quoted an Independent editor who dismissed such critics as "a curmudgeonly lot of puritans, miseries, killjoys, Stalinists and glooms."

So, unlike some sites, it does seek debate.

I have taken to intervening in some of these sites if and when I am personally criticised and sometimes to defend the BBC in a general way.

Otherwise the comments go unanswered. I found that one rapidly develops a very thick skin and I can now understand how politicians can cope with criticism.

If the mainstream media does not respond, it will suffer. The same is even truer of businesses, whose products can be disastrously damaged by web-based attacks.

The principle is: the broader the attack, the less the effect.

It is when the criticism is detailed and pointed that it can hit home.

And with the growth of blogs, such detailed criticism is being made more and more often as the sniper fire from the bloggers targets individual stories and interpretations.

If the MSM does not respond, it will suffer. The same is even truer of businesses, whose products can be disastrously damaged by web-based attacks.

If the criticism is fair it must be answered, directly to those making it. Remote, computer-generated responses are counter-productive.

And mistakes must be quickly corrected. If the criticism is unfair, then the MSM has to know about it early on and develop defensive tactics.

Richard Sambrook, head of the BBC World Service and Global News Division (who runs a blog himself) accepts that the BBC needs to do more.

"The BBC should proactively engage with bloggers. This is a new issue for us. Some departments look at blogs, though haphazardly. But it pays dividends. The BBC is a huge impersonal organisation. It needs to come out from under its rock," he says.

As for using blogs as a source he says: "The key is careful attribution. It would be a big mistake for the MSM to try to match the blogs, but they can teach us lessons about openness and honesty. The MSM should concentrate on what it can do - explain, analyse and verify."

If only other journalists would engage their critical thinking skills (if they can still remember their 'Journalistic Ethics 101' paper).

"Stupid is as stupid does"

2006-02-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

This isn't a post critising the Mainstream Media, it is a post that gives an example of where the MSM have accurately highlighted hypocrisy: see? They can do it! It is from the NZ Herald too, but before they replaced their spine with jelly.

A lot of people seem to think the Danish cartoons occurred in a vacuum. Well they didn't as Chefen of Sir Humphreys ably writes. In-fact quite the opposite is true, they occurred after sustained violence and attacks on the European way of life.

As Hamlet would say:

"Something smells rotten in the state of Denmark"

But I want to take a slightly different tack. I know that each day several people check out this blog from overseas (and peace be upon your fingertips for it). Here in New Zealand we have one Muslim member of Parliament: Dr Ashraf Choudhary. Now Dr Choudhray has some, well, interesting interpretations of Islam. He voted for the Prostitution Law Reform Act (Which legalises Prostitution) and he voted for the Civil Union Act (which allows same sex marriages). The irony of these two votes is that they were both 'conscience votes' (where Dr Choudhary was free to vote whichever way his conscience led him, being a Muslim you'd think, like the rest of Islam, his conscience would be firmly AGAINST these two issues). But in a piece of sophistry that would make Himmler himself gush with admiration, Dr Choudhary loosed his loins and offered up this gem onto the alter of the gullible:

Some stoning okay says Choudhary

05.07.05
By Ruth Berry

Muslim MP Ashraf Choudhary will not condemn the traditional Koran punishment of stoning to death some homosexuals and people who have extra-marital affairs.

But the Labour MP - who has struggled with his "role" as the sole parliamentary representative of the local Muslim community - is not advocating the practice here. Mr Choudhary once again found himself between a rock and a hard place on questions of Islam when he appeared on TV3's 60 Minutes programme last night.

It was examining warnings about extreme fundamentalism within New Zealand's Islamic ommunity.

Mr Choudhary was asked: "Are you saying the Koran is wrong to recommend that gays in certain circumstances be stoned to death?"

He replied: " No, no. Certainly what the Koran says is correct.

"In those societies, not here in New Zealand," he added.

Hmmm, let me see, murders, arsons, death threats and whatever else for drawing cartoons overseas, but New Zealand Muslims are OK with Prostitution and Homosexuality...

Is it just me or does something not ring true there?

Just as a wee side issue, does anybody want to take bets at how long it is before Ahmed Zaoui is interviewed as an 'expert' (I wouldn't be surprised if it has already occoured)?

pbuh

2006-02-07T17:54:00.000-08:00

Question: how long will it take before our media will start to insert pbuh after the name of The Pedophile?

Consequences

2006-02-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

How far removed National Radio is from reality was again on full display this morning. An item on the cartoons. But the item should have been over Phil Goff's comments:

The media should have realised there are consequences when publishing these cartoons.

Or words to that effect. Do you like the sound of that word? Consequences, ominous word, isn't it? What does he mean actually? That there are consequences when you show a cartoon about the Virgin Mary on television? If you repeat the humiliation of the man that didn't open his mouth when he was brought as a lamb to the slaughter?

Hell no, as a friend of Phil would say. Always follow the money. It's remains good advice and if we do that we detect that New Zealand does 100 million in trade with Iran and 1.5 billion with muslim countries. And you thought that we didn't participate in the liberation of Iraq because we were opposed to removing dictators? Hell no, it would just have hurt our trades.

And now Phil is caught. This cabinet thought they could weasel themselves out of making a choice for democracy and freedom. Discard the ties with their traditional allies and pick up a few trade partners in the Middle East along the way. That strategy is now faltering. Just because of a few cartoons. No free trade deal with one of our biggest trade partners. And no trade with our new friends either.

Consesequences, yes, consequences if you publish a cartoon. Have you heard that word before? For example in the last one hundred years when a cartoon was published? Consequences, what would Phil mean? Suicide bombers? Beheading? Bombings? Isn't that the real story?

The consequence of this affair will be that foreign countries will now determine what appears in our newspapers. It starts with cartoons. Then with stories commenting anything less than favorably on the Islam. With forgetting to put "praised be his name" at the appropriate points in the text. Yes, there will be consequences. Too bad National Radio still believes the only consequence here is a story with "he says, she says". But perhaps they've learned that there are consequences too if you're too hard on our Labour government.

Jihad: the cartoon

2006-02-04T14:42:00.001-08:00

I can't help but think that this Danish cartoon fiasco is ironic. Ironic because it should show us how powerful the Main Stream Media is. It is fanning, nay, setting, fires that society is the 'victim' of. This is a rating Bonanza for the MSM.

How can you tell that the MSM is rubbing their hands together in glee? When there really is an issue that is "too hot to handle", the MSM will be as quiet as a church mouse. Even if it is creating a tornado of social commentry, they won't say anything.

So let's summerize that: Less important, MSM makes a big noise, More important, MSM makes almost no noise. Funny how that works; but it does.

Dear Muslim Extremests, because you lack this knowledge, I will let you in on infidel west thinking on this matter. Cartoon = not reality. Now, those cartoons aren't very respectful, but for as long as I've been alive cartoonists have been commenting on social issues. Pull your beards in, at least the Koran wasn't immersed in a glass box of urine, or a statue of Mohammad wasn't displayed in a condom.

Dom-Post Hits out at King in Editorial

2006-01-02T12:17:00.000-08:00

The dom post has written a very succinct editorial in a vain which you don't often get these days on Annette King's contempt for the democratic process and the institution of ministerial accountability.

The editrial ends by stating:

"But, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it can only be assumed Ms King considered the ministry's tardiness a minor matter. She would not be the first minister to think parliamentary questions a petty annoyance.

They are not, however. Questions to ministers are a key feature of the Westminster system of government. They allow the elected representatives of the people to hold ministers to account.

Ms King's failure to meet her parliamentary obligations over such an extended period is alarming. She should explain herself."

A backgrounder--in August 2004 MP Murray McCully asked a routine question of then health minister Annette King. she had 6 days to answer it, it took her 7 months, and even after that the answer had to be changed 3 times.

Current Health Minister Pete Hodgson is now claiming that King can be absolved from questioing because she is no longer minister.

That is wrong in any reasoning of common sense and wrong in fact--Westminster protocol is clear in this instance. Once a Minster ends his/her term as minister they are still responsible (in the technicalministerial sense of the word) for the decisions they made as minister and in fact may enforce them.

The most exagerated example of this in recent times is the case of Richard Prebble and the papers surrounding the sinking of the Mikhail Lermantov (sp). The papers are sealed to this day awaiting an order from Prebble to uinseal them because he was the minister responsible at the time of the sinking.

As the editorial puts it:
"Presumably, Mr Hodgson believes that (King no longer being minister) absolves her of all responsibility for what happened during her six years as health minister.

That is a convenient view for a minister in a shop-soiled third-term government to take. But it is not a view that serves the public interest."

........

UCLA--Media Bias is Real

2005-12-19T16:30:00.000-08:00

I would love to do this in New Zealand!!!!

------------------------------------------

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

Date: December 14, 2005
Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-825-1046

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.

The most centrist outlet proved to be the "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and ABC's "Good Morning America" were a close second and third.

"Our estimates for these outlets, we feel, give particular credibility to our efforts, as three of the four moderators for the 2004 presidential and vice-presidential debates came from these three news outlets — Jim Lehrer, Charlie Gibson and Gwen Ifill," Groseclose said. "If these newscasters weren't centrist, staffers for one of the campaign teams would have objected and insisted on other moderators."

The fourth most centrist outlet was "Special Report With Brit Hume" on Fox News, which often is cited by liberals as an egregious example of a right-wing outlet. While this news program proved to be right of center, the study found ABC's "World News Tonight" and NBC's "Nightly News" to be left of center. All three outlets were approximately equidistant from the center, the report found.

"If viewers spent an equal amount of time watching Fox's 'Special Report' as ABC's 'World News' and NBC's 'Nightly News,' then they would receive a nearly perfectly balanced version of the news," said Milyo, an associate professor of economics and public affairs at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Five news outlets — "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and the Drudge Report — were in a statistical dead heat in the race for the most centrist news outlet. Of the print media, USA Today was the most centrist.

An additional feature of the study shows how each outlet compares in political orientation with actual lawmakers. The news pages of The Wall Street Journal scored a little to the left of the average American Democrat, as determined by the average ADA score of all Democrats in Congress (85 versus 84). With scores in the mid-70s, CBS' "Evening News" and The New York Times looked similar to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has an ADA score of 74.

Most of the outlets were less liberal than Lieberman but more liberal than former Sen. John Breaux, D-La. Those media outlets included the Drudge Report, ABC's "World News Tonight," NBC's "Nightly News," USA Today, NBC's "Today Show," Time magazine, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, NPR's "Morning Edition," CBS' "Early Show" and The Washington Post.

Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts.

Another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom was that the Drudge Report was slightly left of center.

"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Web sites," said Groseclose. "Very little was based on the stories that Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."

Yet another finding that contradicted conventional wisdom relates to National Public Radio, often cited by conservatives as an egregious example of a liberal news outlet. But according to the UCLA-University of Missouri study, it ranked eighth most liberal of the 20 that the study examined.

"By our estimate, NPR hardly differs from the average mainstream news outlet," Groseclose said. "Its score is approximately equal to those of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report and its score is slightly more conservative than The Washington Post's. If anything, government‑funded outlets in our sample have a slightly lower average ADA score (61), than the private outlets in our sample (62.8)."

The researchers took numerous steps to safeguard against bias — or the appearance of same — in the work, which took close to three years to complete. They went to great lengths to ensure that as many research assistants supported Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election as supported President George Bush. They also sought no outside funding, a rarity in scholarly research.

"No matter the results, we feared our findings would've been suspect if we'd received support from any group that could be perceived as right- or left-leaning, so we consciously decided to fund this project only with our own salaries and research funds that our own universities provided," Groseclose said.

The results break new ground.

"Past researchers have been able to say whether an outlet is conservative or liberal, but no one has ever compared media outlets to lawmakers," Groseclose said. "Our work gives a precise characterization of the bias and relates it to known commodity — politicians."

-UCLA-

WTO Reaches Agreement--Helen Clark's Opinion About Agreement Bigger News Than Agreement

2005-12-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

Take a read of this article from NZPA, entitled " Clark welcomes WTO result ".

It makes it sound as if Helen Clark had something to do with it, right?. well she wasn't even there.

This is a major major story that will have major ramifications on NZ, but instead of just reporting the historic deal, somehow the NZPA have decided to turn it into a good-news story about Helen Clark, even putting her name in the title.

However nowhere does it say that she has had nothing to do with the deal. They use semantics to make it sound as if she was there however. She hasn't even put out a press release on this issue, but somehow the good and faithful at NZPA are connecting this tremendous news to her.

I have to ask--why don't NZPA just report the story instead of trying to put some NZ spin on it? surely a major trade agreement is news worthy enough in and of itself without needing to attach some unprompted reflected glow onto the Prime Minister.

Forget the hard-working diplomats, forget even the detail of the deal itself, all NZPA are interested in is finding a way of making Helen look good.

The semantics here are actually really very cleaver, read the first two paragraphs:

" Prime Minister Helen Clark today welcomed a World Trade Organisation deal on farm subsidies but said progress needed to continue...

Meeting in Hong Kong, ministers from 149 states saved the long-running global trade talks from collapse yesterday with an interim deal to end farm export subsidies by 2013 and open rich-country markets a bit wider to the world's poorest nations."

Isn't that wonderful?! It mentions the Prime Minister and then says that ministers from 149 countries attended, so the reader could be forgiven for making the logical conclusion that the PM is one of those who negoiated. Brilliant!

Are they finding good news and then associating the PM to it? Will the next headline read: " PM Overjoyed that Ethiopian Boy learns to read"? or " Helen Clark congratulates Lotto winner" ? C'mon NZPA, there is no end to the good news that Helen can be associated with.

NZPA STILL running Benson-Pope Line

2005-12-17T12:37:00.000-08:00

Even a week after the gross misleadings and selective leaking from Benson-Pope's Press-sec, who now faces disciplinary action NZPA are still running the line that Benson Pope "has the numbers" that the incident never happened.

Under the header--Benson Pope Lashes out at Collins, they have the below story.
The only problem is that the line they repeat from Benson Pope was said 4 days before this article was printed on the 16th.

I can only conclude hat NZPA are now desparate to indulgre in some stopwatch journalism--having given the anti-Benson-Pope side too much airtime they are now trying to even up the score by creating non-stories, even when noting has happened.

NZPA article follows:

Benson-Pope lashes out at Collins
16 December 2005

Embattled Cabinet Minister David Benson-Pope today called National MP Judith Collins "obsessive" and her claims "hollow" over historic allegations that he assaulted pupils when he was a schoolteacher.

The Dunedin South MP – speaking on Radio Dunedin this morning on his weekly radio spot – maintained he was one of 19 people who either had no recollection of the allegations or did not believe they happened.

"I've got the numbers on my side," he said.

The police report released earlier this month found there was a prima facie case for assault against Mr Benson-Pope over allegations that he abused students when he was a teacher at Dunedin's Bayfield High School in the 1980s.

It said nine witnesses contradicted his denial in Parliament that he did not stuff a tennis ball into a student's mouth and tape his hands to a desk at Bayfield High in 1982.

The report also said 15 former pupils could not remember the incident and four said it did not happen.

Mr Benson-Pope said Ms Collins' behaviour had been "quite obsessive" and he challenged her to name the Labour MPs she said had approached her and her colleagues earlier this month claiming they did not support him.

"If the media asked her to do that they'd find out that she's as hollow as we know she is," he said.

Mrs Collins said she stood by her statement but said she would not name them.

"If I named them, it's not being kind to them because David Benson-Pope is not known as `brownshirt' for nothing," she said.

Mrs Collins said it seemed Mr Benson-Pope could not assure people that he had the support of all his colleagues.

"The man has been shown to be deceitful and I think my word is worth more than his," she said.

Mr Benson-Pope said he had received "fantastic support from all over the place" and the allegations had "only ever been political and I think most people see that".

Being a Cabinet Minister demonstrated the "considerable confidence" Prime Minister Helen Clark and Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen had in him.

"I wouldn't be doing the job I'm doing unless I had their confidence, that's for sure."

ENDS

--NZPA

BBC - Voice of The Democrats

2005-12-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

The day after the most stunningly successful political event since the fall of the Berlin wall, namely free and fair elections in Iraq, here is the BBC's lead story.

BUSH SPYING CLAIM CAUSES US STORM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4536310.stm

It is clear from the story itself that President Bush has done nothing illegal so it is likely the 'storm' in fact is another optimistcally inaccurate weather forecast from the Democrats. There seem to be no complaints about the fact that the surveilance complained of lead directly to the prevention of at least one terrorist attack in Britain.

And what about the real story of the day? The near 70% turn out by Iraqi voters in an election which shows (a) every likelihood of providing Sunnis with a considerable measure of political influence and (b) considerably watering down the influence of the Iranian backed Islamist Shia faction. A truly remarkable aand positive result, given the loud, long and gloomy predictions from the MSM and the rest of the Bushhitler brigade.

This story, grudgingly recognising the success of the election, was tucked away down on the bottom left corner of the screen. Was there any acknowledgement of the vision and determination of a Great American President? Of a remarkably competent Allied Military? Of a brave local Iraqi population?

Not one word.

Mark Steyn was right. Now, only the Democrats, the MSM, what's left of Al Qaeda and the Left remain on the wrong side of the reality fence.

Murray McCully on the NZ Political Media

2005-12-16T02:31:00.000-08:00

Gee Murray, why don't you tell us what you REALLY think of the Press Gallery?

Opps, I think he just did!

Here's some excerpts from McCully's weekly news letter (edited)

The 2005 Baubles
It would be churlish, at the end of such an eventful political year, not to present the mccully.co 2005 Baubles to those who have rendered services above and beyond the call of duty:

(...)

(snipped: some interesting comments on TVNZ, which needs to be aaddressed on this site, but at another time)

The Craven Sisterhood Lackey of the Year Bauble proved to be the toughest assignment for the judges. All media outlets in the Parliamentary Press Gallery made spirited bids at times for this honour. But in the end (and we apologise immediately to Tracey Watkins and Comrade Vernon Small at the DomPost who showed real commitment), for sheer unremitting consistency it was impossible to go past Radio New Zealand. Whether it was Union boss Brent Edwards, in charge of their Election Unit, Education Reporter Gail Woods faithfully retailing the Labour and Teachers’ Union line, the unbroken chorus of lefty-pinko on-air presenters, or CEO Peter Cavanagh attending assiduously to the wishes of his political masters, it was a complete, all-round performance.

Union Steals From Members

2005-12-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

That's what the headline should have been.

(Yeah I know it's Pommy media not NZ media but we can bash a few Poms can't we?)

Some fifty million pounds appears to have been ripped off sick mine workers by voracious lawyers. This is one up for the lefties, I thought. Here's the headline.

"'Greedy'Lawyers to Repay Victims"

But not until I had read halfway through the piece did I realise that the good old grasping trade union was in for the chop as well.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1934658,00.html

“They shouldn’t have deducted it in the first place and it’s right that they should pay it back,” said Max Brown, a retired miner who had more than £1,000 deducted from his compensation. “At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.”

The external review, published yesterday, was ordered by the DTI in July after disclosures in The Times about the financial relationship between a number of law firms and leading officials at the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. The disclosures are now the subject of an inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office.

Mr Wicks said: “If anyone has in any way been misinformed or hoodwinked into making a contribution to a trade union on the grounds that this is paying for their legal costs, when the legal costs are actually being paid by my department, then I think that’s outrageous. That’s very, very wrong.”

And no doubt the poor bastards of workers had paid this union it's dues for the whole of their working lives. Do you wonder why I so detest the despicable creatures of the left?

Herald Resorts to Form - "Government apologist"

2005-12-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

Audrey Young under the headline "Peters wins some but falls short" ries vainly to put some positive spin on his abject failure to oust Clarkson.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters lost his claim of overspending against his Tauranga nemesis, National MP Bob Clarkson, but he did not lose every aspect of the case.

He lost some arguments and he won some, but he did not win enough to push Mr Clarkson over the $20,000 spending limit in the Electoral Act and into a subsequent byelection.

Mr Peters fell short by $1840.21 - but even then there would not necessarily have been a byelection.

That is three different ways to try to make Winston look good. This is despite Winston claiming Clarkson spent over $100,000.

To use Winstons favourite word…..He demonstrably failed to prove anything at all.

It is sad that the Herald and Audrey Young have to try to spin this abject failure as some sort of victory for a sad and pathetic has-been politician.

Also posted at Whale Oil Beef Hooked

Cronulla lost part 2

2005-12-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

Further to my post about the riots on Cronulla beach. Some commentators were fixated on the age of the example I used to highlight the simmering tensions. Just because someone is convicted and imprisoned for an event doesn't mean that event didn't happen. Once reading this, ask yourself this basic question: Did the New Zealand MSM give an accurate view of the Cronulla riots?

The Sigmund, Carl and Alfred blog gives a summary of cases of the type I highlighted yesterday.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Gang Rapes, The Media And The Conversation Never Had

While there may not be any rioting on France by 'dissafected Muslim youths', it appears there might be some ongoing 'integration problems' with the Islamic community in Australia.

According to the author of "Australian Politics" (who also authors some other excellent blogs, including the well known blog, there is another go around of the gang rapes in Australia, with Muslim 'youths' assaulting non Muslim women. A Sydney man accused of a gang rape has had his bail revoked after he allegedly threatened to kill the teenaged girl at the centre of the allegations.

The 19-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is one of eight men charged over an attack on a 17-year-old girl at Hurstville, in Sydney's south-west, on June 25, 2002.

The Lebanese-born man, who was 17 at the time of the alleged offence, is charged with eight counts of aggravated sexual assault in company. The offence carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Seven other men, two of whom are brothers, also have been charged over the alleged attack. Read the source of the article.

The story gained notoriety for a few reasons, not the least of which was because the press at the time refused to report on the hate and racism aspects of the crime. Miranda Devine wrote: So now we know the facts, straight from the Supreme Court, that a group of Lebanese Muslim gang rapists from south-western Sydney hunted their victims on the basis of their ethnicity and subjected them to hours of degrading, dehumanising torture. The young women, and girls as young as 14, were "sluts" and "Aussie pigs", the rapists said. So now that some of the perpetrators are in jail, will those people who cried racism and media "sensationalism" hang their heads in shame? Hardly.

The journalists, academics, legal brains and politicians who tried to claim last August that the gang rapes of south-western Sydney were just a run-of-the-mill police blotter story being beaten up by racists, scaremongers and political opportunists don't ever want to acknowledge the truth about that ugly episode in Australian history. They don't want to acknowledge the fear and tension that ran through a part of Sydney they rarely visit and can never understand.

There is plenty more. See this article from Quadrant Magazine, for a more indepth look.

By the way, don't allow 'disaffected youth' to influence you. Before the Paris riots, there were plenty of gang rapes in Paris suburbs.

For a look at how media has distorted reality when it comes to rape, see this article, Racial Gangrape: Another Diversity Disaster.

Cronulla lost?

2005-12-13T01:53:00.000-08:00

New Zealanders have been done a huge dis-service. You could be excused for arriving at the conclusion that without provocation, Australian louts set about to violently beat anyone that had an Arab appearance. The Main Stream Media certainly implied, even stated this was the case.

But the truth of the matter was radically different, in fact so different that it is hard to believe these facts could have been overlooked. The attack of the two male lifesavers on the north Cronulla beach was not the reason for the ensuing violence but merely the conduit by which years of repressed tension finally bubbled over.

If the MSM of New Zealand had it's way, you wouldn't remember a series of very high-profile rape cases, such as the rape of an Australian woman who was violently gang-raped by Lebanese-Australian youth, one of them reportedly said to her that she was about to be "f----- Leb-style" and that this was happening because she was "an Australian pig".

Gangs of Middle Eastern men have been committing crimes, motivated first by racial issues, against other Australians, reportedly this crime wave is at epidemic levels, with seemingly random acts of violence targeted at any non-Muslim Australian.

I am not condoning the retaliation by the white Australians and it is widely known that there were neo-nazis and white surpremicist groups working to their naferious agendas. But it must be remembered that these groups will seize on racial disharmony/unrest in any form in which to vent and recruit. (as a wee side note, I find it a little ironic that neo-Nazi groups trying to destroy a group, Muslims, that seek to crush Jews - they must ask, "What Would Hitler Do?")

Muslim leaders very loudly proclaim that all they want is peace and how terrible it is that the infidels, woops, white Australians were attacked by these strange mutants that claim to be Muslims. They don't understand what it is that encouraged these renegade Muslims to consider non-Muslims as Infidels. At some stage, Authorities must look at the Muslim thugs individually and ask this question, if I was an Al Qaeda recruiter, who would I recruit? I guess, the answer would be that Al Qaeda would recruit disenfranchised, poorly educated, preferably violent, Muslim males that feel downtrodden and second-class citizens.

I'll believe the uncertainty of Muslim leaders when Muslim women march down the main street of Cronulla loudly denouncing their male 'superiors'.

These were the things we weren't told, at best these issues were glanced over, at worst we were deliberately misled, you decide.

Stuff shows ignorance of US....again!!

2005-12-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

In a headline emblazoned:

US executes former gang leader

Stuff shows their ignorance.....actually it was the State of California that fried his sorry ass. Oh wait he died peacfuly by Lethal Injection.

The guy in question was the founder of the Cripps gang and murdered 4 people in 1979 robberies.

The only thing worse that this hopeless headline is the rantings of Rev. Jesse Jackson in support of the criminal.

Crips gang co-founder Stanley “Tookie” Williams has redeemed himself writing children’s books during his 25 years in San Quentin State Prison and still denies committing the four murders that landed him on death row, Jackson said.

UPDATE:
The link above that I used has demonstrably changed. When I first linked to it the Headline was indeed as reported above, now the headline and indeed the whole article at the link is different.

Some plonker commenter at DPF's site has dared to accuse me of making it up. Well I didn't, one can only now assume that Stuff saw the error of their ways and amended the article.

Ross P Kettle Cartoon

2005-12-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

I think he's trying to make a statement here.

I'm sure he won't mind me publishing this--afterall, his cartoons were used by the Alliance in the last election campaign.

I don't think that this guy is a very good cartoonist--there is no subtlty, no wit, not even very good art. Perhaps that's why none of the major papers carry his stuff in print edition.

I think the point he is trying to make is that Condalezza Rice is sanctioning torture. Why then does he not have a cartoon of Fidel Castro or Mugabe or any number of dozens of world leaders who openly sanction and encourage torture as a means of holding power, rather than Rice, who denies using torture??

Kettle is just a plain boring America hater.

Oh gee, that would mean holding every country except for America to blame for all the evil in the world. Why does America have to meet a higher threshold of morality than every other country? Those damn Americans with their legal opinions!!! they're ruining the world!

TVNZ vs TVNZ

2005-12-11T04:26:00.000-08:00

Blood-letting, Hari-Kari and stomach ulcers seem to be dubious management techniques, but for the life of me the description seems to fit. What is going on at TVNZ? has political expediency triumphed over all else?

Since a TVNZ reporter compared my drab plagiaristic spewings to Russell Brown's Mercurial penmanship, I have decided to follow such an august example and copy, as he did (with the appropriate reference of course) John Barnett's, the head of South Pacific Pictures, speech to last week's SPADA conference (Hat-tip DPF, btw - I looked at that parody blog with my eyes closed, honest).

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Barnett seems to be on the ball, he has highlighted areas which, to my detached eyes, seem important. Most notable in Barnetts speech is when he recalls an address that the Prime Minister gave where she referred to commercial content providers as examples of television where she was informed and/or entertained. That comment alone takes scoring an 'own goal' to a whole new level!

The Charter is an interesting thing isn't it? I can recall a programme (that was headed by a musician) that briefly introduced an old (overseas) movie, then spoke for a few minutes at the end of the movie and fulfilled requirements of the Charter by producing a New Zealand programme. Despite the fact that the foreign movie was several hours long and took up a vast majority of the programme. It seems that the synergy of the TVNZ Charter and the Broadcasting act have a similar effect as a bladder to a drunk man, useful when it is under control, but what a mess when it isn't!

So I'll ask the question:

Why have a Charter when we have a Broadcasting act?

As Barnett thoroughly establishes in that speech, isn't the activity of New Zealand On Air sufficient to ensure a wide variety of programming? Instead of one or two channels providing local content, wouldn't it be better to have all of the channels providing local content?

Doesn't the whole systemic approach just scream, OVER LEGISLATED?

Syndicated beat-up

2005-12-10T23:28:00.000-08:00

A while ago I was identified on National Radios NinetoNoon show by Chris Harrington and labeled as a plagiarist. Below is the transcript of the interview that pertained to me, my comments will follow this transcript.

Also, I want to stress that I am not afiliated with, or 'a member' of the Maxim Institue.

Transcript of interview:

(Key: ER = Eva Radich, CH = Chris Harrington)

ER- While listening to that, on a slightly broader issue is Chris Harrington who is a senior journalist in charge of Television New Zealand's investigative unit. Chris has concerns of his own about plagiarism more generally, not in main stream media generally but in blogs; that's the personal weblogs that have proliferated and Chris joins me now. Chris tell me what your experience has been with blogs.

CH- Well quite simply, Phil Kitchin and I have done some investigation, those investigations have been appropriated by blogs, now...

ER- Appropriated in what way?

CH – Well, large sections of them have been quoted, scripts have been quoted and interviews have been quoted. Now that is fine if you attribute and I suppose this gets back into the whole Maxim Institute deal. What is so wrong with these blogs or columns attributing people work, would it have weakened anything? No and I suppose it's the thing... I can't name this blog [Ed - he may as well have, he uniquely identifies Kea Blog] that really gets up my nose at the moment, because we are on air, we are bound by the Broadcasting Act, we are bound by the laws of defamation, blogs aren't and its...

ER- They aren't? They're completely exempt from those situations?

CH – Well no, they're not completely exempt but who is going to file a defamation action against a blog? And they are not bound by broadcasting or newspaper laws on fairness. Ah, for the moment, on this particular, that was apropriated, we are fighting a large and quite costly action before the Broadcasting Standards Authority, of which we won the first round of, about tapes, er, reporters notebooks becoming, that, for a very very difficult argument. It's costing us money, it's costing us time. A blog, or anyone else for that matter, can appropriate it and they don't have to pay those costs. So I guess my argument is that serious journalism and difficult journalism at times, is being stolen and at the same time that theft of materials is not paying the true costs of presenting it as there own and this blog has now moved on, contact of ours, source, sources of ours and our, our talent and has in turn, turned out to actually take an interest in our story, that's fine, but the original blog was an appropriation and I, I think it's really interesting about blogs, there are brilliant blogs like Russell Brown's “Hard News”, but then you get blogs and I quote from one here [Ed - and here we go], “I think therefore I blog”. I mean, forgoodnessake, this is just, this is celebrity blogging. I am, I exist because I am in a blog, it doesn't matter what the quality of information is, it doesn't matter if I have stolen it from people, it's there, I exist. I mean, I am sorry I am just really passionate about journalism and I just think that you know...

ER- I guess it's the price of having stories available on the web is that they are then fair game and I mean you just gotta rely on peoples integrity and if there isn't any integrity you have no comeback.

CH- But we're all bound by, if you like, disciplines of integrity, we bel... er, sign-up to a set of journalistic ethics, whether we keep them or not is another question, we are bound by the Broadcasting Act, we are bound by the defamation laws, bloggers aren't

ER- Well maybe that's the problem; the bloggers should be subject to the same laws as everybody else.

CH- Well, we don't want this wonderful, sort of, circus of information controlled, what I want is some honour amongst bloggers, I also want some honour amongst people, as in the Maxim case, who literally appropriate other peoples' ideas and present them as their own. It's just unfair, you cannot make a decision on information if that information is not the person you think it's coming from, I mean it's just so simple, getting back to Greg Flemming, the argument has become a rightwing, leftwing argument, surely it is an argument about the validity and truth of information.

ER- The, the fact that we want to have an open discussion through the web and through the blogs, er, does that make up for the fact that some people use it incorrectly?

CH- I don't know, I'm, I'm a bit lost, it's, I come across these Walter Mitty journalist that have stolen other peoples' ideas, other peoples things and present them as their own and I mean, you know [sigh] I am looking at a political blog here [Ed - again Kea Blog] in front of me at the moment, er, three quarters of it I just cannot read out on air they'd be defamanatory.

ER- [laugh]

CH- Now, I mean...

ER- They, they've become like conversations haven't they? Everyone entitled to say what they think on [undistinguishable].

CH- Yeah but, if you and I have a conversation, that's fine, nobody else is listening to it. It's this sort of pretense that blogs aren't accessed by people. You go to a really good blog like Russell Brown's "Hard News", I suspect that would have a higher hit rate than any current affairs show I have ever worked on, more people are reading that, thinking about that blog, it's fantastic. So they have real, genuine power, they are published material, they have a journalistic presence and yet they are not bound by anything. Now that's, that may well be fine and part of me says yes thats great but the other part of me says you know, well, this load of nonsense sitting infront of me at the moment [Ed - once again, Kea Blog], you know, “The Greens are out, that's dangerous because they are dangerous”, I mean it's political, it's just claptrap stuff and increasingly, not my generation, the younger generations are becoming very, very dependant on blogs for their information, all I want to say is treat them with some degree of cynicism and treat coloumns like Alex Stewarts with some degree of cynicism.

ER- Because you wouldn't want to go one step further and remove your stories from the web because of your worry at what's happening to them.

CH- No, no I dont, all I ask for is that these sorta Walter Mitty journalists out there attribute so people know and also it's just, it's just degree of authorship, nobody like, even a you know, a... television hack, we like to see our material attributed and so people know where it's coming from and it get's back to the Maxim thing, attribute, tell me where the sources are.

ER- Thank you for that, Chris Harrington, TVNZ, journalist.

Link to the original posting

26-Apr-2005: "The monster of Berhampore"

There is going to be an interesting article on TV One's "Sunday" programme ( 1 May 2005) entitled "Monster of Berhampore". The article is about multiple sexual abuses allegedly preformed by Walter (Wally) Lake (Later awarded an OBE). The abuses are said to have taken place at the Presbyterian Support Service's Berhampore Orphanage during the 60s. I've looked into this case a fair bit and it is shocking! As well as the sexual abuse allegations, not only is it alleged that Lake stole their pocket-money savings, but it is also alleged that he took their gifts to give to his own children. These allegation aren't just from a single person, but from a dozen people!

Does my post not reference that I am writing about a programme on TV1 (of which Harrington is the head of their Investigative unit)? In this post I made it clear that I, personally, have been following this issue. I have mentioned facts (such as the pocket-money and gifts) that were not mentioned by Harrington.

Why am I bothering, why am I letting this get to me you might ask. Well I'll tell you. I am a budding author and have written a novel, claims of plagiarism are taken extremely seriously by the literary community. There are thousands of books written each year, each book seeks representation by a literary agent. When a literary agent states they wish to represent you, they specifically ask if you have had any claims of plagiarism made against you, if there has been, most will simply move onto the next book awaiting representation.

Also, having a disability, I have to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously and I feel that Harringtons allegation may be very detrimental. In short, I believe it is quite likely that Harrington has irrepairably damaged my reputation and my earning potential. He has left abusive and aggressive comments on my blog, never once did he personally approach me to discuss this matter and rather than him showing the 'honour' that he claims bloggers lack, he chose to air this issue on a nationally syndicated radio programme.

What is the definition of Defamation again?

The other issue, which is very important as well, is that I would be concerned to see this develop as a trend, where MSM feel it a useful tool to 'pick off the stragglers' in the blogosphere. I think if we are not watchful, that could well happen!

Peace Time Poofters of the Press

2005-12-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

The MSM and the Democruds have tried to beat up another shock horror scandal concerning the operations in Iraq of a private company which has a multi-million dollar contract with the US Defense Dept to disseminate information to the Iraqi media.

Journalists of Russell Brown's calibre are complaining that this is propoganda but nowhere have I yet seen any claim that any of the stories were untrue, or inaccurate, or fabricated. That's what propoganda is. The sort practiced by the BBC, Reuters, France2 and others, all of whom are intent on doing their best not only to report only bad news but to damage the Allied war effort to boot.

It should be no surprise that the administratin has taken stern steps to see to it that the 'good news' of the real progress made is published. They would be derilect if they did not do so.

Today I saw a quote from an MSM journo in Iraq which went something like this.

"When American soldiers are being killed we don't report the opening of a major sewerage works. American lives are more important than Iraqi shit."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1920076,00.html

It is interesting to note the whining complaints of the MSM who missed out on this lucrative Defense Dept contract. Even more interesting to note the reason the young Pommy upstart got the contract. He had demonstrated a track record of operating outside the Green Zone. By implication one can assume the MSM do not have such a reputation. Instead they sit on their fat arses in their bunkers, relying on the protection of the very troops they seek to deride and frustrate.

Of course this is just another example of dishonest, lazy and arrogant journalists finding out they no longer own the news.

Shoot the lot of them, I say. They are as close to being traitors and/or spies as you could possibly get.

How Lefties Hunt In Packs

2005-12-10T18:49:00.000-08:00

You'd be forgiven for thinking Mary Mapes has joined TVNZ.

A few weeks ago we reported on a nasty little slash and bag raid in which a disgruntled TVNZ journalist used Radio Left Wing's Nine to Noon programme to defame a blogger. The blogger lodged a complaint with the Broadcasting Standards Authority which immediately forwarded the complaint on to both TVNZ and Radio NZ. A formal reply has been received from Radio NZ in which the complaint has been dismissed, primarilly on the grounds that the blogger was not named.

Therein lies some interesting and devious sleight of hand. While the blogger may not have been named he was very clearly identified by the garrulous TVNZ reporter who then went on to falsely accuse him, among other things, of plagiarism; of stealing a story; of using TVNZ reporters' notebooks; of having the effontery to go to 'our own sources.'

What the loud mouth reporter did not know was that his unnamed blogger was well known to the scource long before TVNZ even got a sniff of the story involved. In fact, it turns out the unnamed blogger is also a budding author and has written a novel surrounding the story in question. An earlier novel is currently being considered by a publisher. (It begins to look as though, in all probability, the unnamed TVNZ reporter actually stole the unnamed author's story.)

Some days before the Nine to Noon broadcast, the TVNZ reporter had left a comment on the bloggers blog in which he asked- 'Do you steal all your work, you wanker wannabe hack...?' Foolishly, he did so under his name, using a TVNZ IP address. One could be forgiven for concluding that the unnamed TVNZ reporter who heads an investigative unit was and is running a campaign to get at or denigrate the unnamed blogger, aided and abbetted by his friends at Radio Left Wing.

Little imagination is needed to work out how damaging to an author's reputation with his prospective publisher and to his future career might be a series of well publicised accusations of plagiarism. In an interesting twist, when the unnamed blogger posted an account of this episode on his blog he received a number of comments among which were two apparent individuals commenting on the blogger's foolishness and the unnamed TVNZ reporter's impeccable character and ability. It happens these 'two' commenters both used the same IP address which turned out to be located at the University of Singapore where, lo and behold, a second unnamed jounalist member of the TVNZ Investigative Unit just happens to be completing a scolarship.

All of these interesting snippets have been passed to TVNZ and have been dealt with by an unnamed executive who describes himself as Bill Ralston's Assistant. His considered reply after reviewing all the evidence was:

Hello JasonYour complaint to the BSA has nothing to do with TVNZ. Try RNZ.

Adolf understands the whole matter is being formally referred to the BSA for further deliberation.The unnamed blogger had the presence of mind to take a transcript of the Nine to Noon interview and has engaged legal counsel to advise on protecting his reputation as a professional author. If I were the unnamed TVNZ reporter I would long ago have advised my Professional Indemnity Insurer that I am likely to be the subject of action. If he did not do so when the complaint was first received by TVNZ, then he likely will have rendered himself without cover in the event successful action is taken against him or his employer in this instance.

...and a few weeks later

http://jwatson.kol.co.nz/

Jason Watson has posted a transcript of the RNZ Nine to Noon interview with Harrington of TVNZ. We have posted on this story before and the published transcript allows for improved scrutiny. It makes very good reading - go and have a look.

Is it defamatory? I'm not a lawyer but I would think if it is not then it goes very very close. What do you think? There appears to me to be malicious intent, deliberate falsehood and a clumsy attempt to avoid defamation by 'not naming' the target while making sure the public has no doubt who it is. I would have thought this last matter is quite damning as it indicates premeditation.

One thing is certain. Harrington has not shown himself to be particularly bright. Just read his opening gambit on bloggers and defamation. Further, the interesting post script from Watson showing the original Keablog post would indicate it never occured to the intrepid Harrington that Watson was onto the story some time before the Chief Investigative Reporter arrived on the scene.

I would imagine Harrington, TVNZ and RNZ might be watching developments carefully.

Media Beats Up Beat Up

2005-12-10T18:35:00.000-08:00

A few days (Mid November) I read reports in various media ( I can't remember exactly which but I think they included the O'Harold and the BBC) of Saddam having been beaten up by his Iraqi guards. The reports left one with the impression the attack was recent and unprovoked.

Not so apparently. He was briefly bashed, back in July, by a couple of court stenographers for slinging shit at Islam!!! So much for his lawyers' gushing press releases about Saddam's penchant for all day prayer and reading of the Koran.

Asked whether the shrines of the Imams Hussein and Abbas in the city had been attacked by Iraqi forces, Saddam at first pretended not to know the two holy figures of Shia Islam.

But he then said: "Who do you mean? Those manayich [buggers]?" According to the Iraqi lawyer, two of the court's clerks who had been taking notes then lunged at the former dictator and started to punch him.

Saddam fought back until the judge succeeded in restoring order, but not before the ex-dictator's head was bruised. US guards posted outside the makeshift courthouse in Baghdad found the incident amusing and did not intervene, the lawyer claimed.

Just goes to show the pen now is mightier than the poison gas.

· Linked Article

Who watches Mediawatch?

2005-12-10T18:31:00.000-08:00

Last night (November 13th) I listened to Colin Peacock's Mediawatch programme on Radio Left Wing. You can hear it on the RNZ website if you have a spare twenty minutes.

There was a segment dealing with attribution of copy, a subject which, along with plagiarism, has been dealt to by a number of blogs. Some bloggers and commenters have indicated annoyance with an apparent fixation with this subject. Time to move along, they suggest

Accordingly I was surprised to hear what seemed to me to be a Mediawatch beat up on The Bay of Plenty Times. It was almost as if the leftie journos of RLW were going to give the BOP Times it's just deserts for daring to come out in support of the National candidate recently. The give away was in the tone of the interviewer who has learnt to insert the breathless giggle into any question which is overly aggressive. Kinda like "I was only joking really. Don't take this personally, I don't really mean it." It's the same little giggle Helen Clark uses when she's telling public porkies.

The story revolved around the media coverage of the execution style murder at Te Puna bridge. The BOP Times chappy was complaining that the big city journos had swarmed into town (I'm not sure whether literally or just via their internet screens) and had pinched material from his paper and published it without acknowledging the source. Mediawatch kept trying to put words into his mouth - in one instance he said 'You're really accusing them of going to 'your sources' aren't you?" Now where have I heard that before? Ah yes, Nine To Noon - Harrington of TVNZ slagging Keablog. These state funded journos seem to have the notion that they 'own' sources. The BOP Times editor had to waste half the programme continually correcting this fool who had decided what the story was going to be before the interview, no matter what his victim said.

In point of fact, it seems none of the BCM (Big City Media) actually unearthed any news which had not already been covered by the BOP Times. They took pictures and copy from the BOP Times and used them. The only complaint from the BOPT was that the BCM did not recognise the source. All they had to do was acknowledge the fact that the material was first published by the local newspaper. But no, they wanted to look as though they had done it all themselves.

Why did the puffed up pompous Peacock go for the BOPT instead of the BCM? Thet's where the real story was. Lasy jounalists, mendacious editors and unconcerned senior management. Oh and of course it's much more fun if you're a leftie journo to attack a small country paper which supported the National canditate because he was a good candidate and one who won fair and square.

Sir Humph's Catches the Beeb out

2005-11-16T22:39:00.000-08:00

hat tip to Robert for spotting this for me...keep those media tips rolling folks.

http://sirhumphreys.blogspot.com/2005/11/so-blatant-so-bbc.html

The BBC can't go far without the boys at Humphrey's catching them out.

The Totally Brilliant Crock of Shit that is the QANTAS Media Awards

2005-11-12T23:11:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder why the QANTAS media awards never have either a change of sponsor or a supreme award?

The answer is brilliant. Shear brilliant.

Here’s what’s going on:

- QANTAS puts on a bogus media awards show and gives out a whole bunch of nothing awards like “best news programme”, “best news”, “Broadcasting Industry Award for Outstanding Achievement”, and “Qantas Award for Television Journalism”.

- You give the awards out equally between both major networks and the major news agencies, in such a way that every year both networks can claim to be the best news.

- You pump up the journo’s egos and ply them with booze.

- You get a few days of free self-congratulatory publicity (full page ads in national newspapers) proclaiming wins in the “prestigious” QANTAS media awards.

- You get a free promo before every news programme all year.

…all this for the cost of a hall for the night and few cases of booze.

Brilliant!!!!

Sloppy Rugby Journalism from The Herald

2005-11-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

For some reason the rugby journalism seems to be quite sloppy at times—often the grammar and wording is weak and the content is hardly insightful. I'm told that rugby reporters are the viola players of the journalism world.

This morning’s Herald online features an article that appears to have been half-written last week.

Take a look at some of the paragraphs—they are just pointless fillers. We already know that the All Blacks bet Wales last week—thanks for reminding us.

The giveaway is of course this paragraph:

“The All Blacks scored five tries to one to reach the halfway point of their Grand Slam bid with ease before a packed Lansdowne Rd crowd of 42,000.”

My bet is that a few days ago the author of the offending article wrote the following paragraph, having found the Lansdowne Rd capacity in another story :

The All Blacks scored (insert #) tries to (insert #) to reach the halfway poin in their Grand Slam bid with ease before a packed Lansdowne Rd crowd of 42,000.”

Unfortunately there were only 35,000 in the stadium, since the capacity was reduced 7,000 two days ago after a fire.

What makes this bad is that it has been up now for about 4 hours and hasn’t been corrected.