This morning the Herald ran a leading front page headline on its website, with the title "Double Standards: Taxpayer Funds Luxon's Maori Classes". There's no Christmas Cheer & Goodwill to All from the MainStream Media; no honeymoon for the new government. No, it's just meanness and negativity. The story was a take-down of Luxon for, can you believe it, making his best attempts to learn te reo Maori !? It accused him of hypocrisy by enrolling in the classes whilst trying to diminish the language and questioned his integrity because his courses were tax-payer funded.
Now here's how you were manipulated and the Herald's Editor is welcome to dispute my version of events. After the story appeared, it shortly opened up for readers' comments. Mine was as follows:
"Yet another example of the NZ Herald and Mainstream Media (MSM) bashing the new government. Why can't it respect the election result & democratic will of the people?"
Gosh, seems Granny Herald didn't want the country to know that the silent majority who had voted for National, ACT and NZ First were appalled by the job the journalists were doing on Luxon today - the paper did not want a torrent of hundreds of comments come flooding though revealing to the nation how out of step the MainStream Media actually is with the mood of the country.
Come on, NZ Herald Editor, deny my story is true. I witnessed it with my own eyes. The Herald article is below, without any comments allowed, of course, and no trace of the ones that originally appeared.
Sources:
Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. Rob blogs at Down To Earth Kiwi
TVNZ,NZ Radio, and most N.Z. Newspapers continue to act defiantly by revealing their divisive actions with the racial diatribe they continue to serve up on a daily basis.....even the Cricket commentary and backdrop on the scene calls New Zealand Aotearoa and Maori names given to various actions on the field, it is all so bewildering. The NZTA and New Zealand Health, keep being referred to by Maori names which 95 % of the population and the 1000's of tourists cannot have any idea what they refer to. Who on earth is running this country and these media stations surely someone can just call them up and say "Stop all this nonsense right now " we want New Zealand back …
Some four years ago the Herald editor denied any political bias in the Herald reportage and claimed vehemently that his paper followed the highest principles of The Fourth Estate. I pointed out that in the four years of his tenure as U.S. president the Herald published no single article, editorial comment, opinion piece, news or cartoon that was not defamatory of Donald Trump. No reply was given.
Late comment, but somewhat related to the media - I went to see ‘Willy Wonka’ a few days ago with my young neice and was taken aback with two of the preliminary clips. One was about Tikanga Māori and the other seemed to be promoting a movie or documentary, I believe, about Mt Taranaki.
There was a comment by one of the young actors about the inappropriateness of climbing the mountain. Maybe this is a subtle way of talking about banning climbing Mt Taranaki and other popular climbs like Mt Ruapehu?.
I know the iwi aren’t keen for people to climb Ruapehu.
What a sneaky way of doing it by influencing young people going to see a block buster movie.
That article finally pushed me over the edge. I have removed the NZ Herald app from my phone.
A Worlds of Journalism Study, “Journalists in New Zealand”, published last October, exposed a strong political bias in mainstream journalists.
That Worlds of Journalism Study, revealed 5% of NZ journalists describe themselves as “extreme left”, 15% as “hard left”, 22% say they are “left leaning”, 20% are “mild left”, and 23% are “middle left” journalists.
85% are left leaning!
Do you think that sort of result is going to deliver balanced, objective and impartial journalism?