How the MainStream Media (this time, the NZ Herald) Manipulated You Today

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?"

Meanwhile as I was writing my comment, six other people's comments were posted, all hostile to the Herald. All, like me, were appalled at its attempt to discredit Luxon before he has a chance to prove himself. My comment was never posted. Meanwhile a few minutes after mine was sent, the other readers' comments were removed. The article mysteriously reappeared on the Herald website having been washed. There was no option to send comments anymore and all trace of the previous comments defending Luxon were gone.

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 MainStreamMedia 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:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/prime-minister-christopher-luxon-under-fire-for-using-public-funds-to-learn-te-reo-maori/R5BBVQ2QWZC63OVK3NDAAIJ5HY/

TVNZ's Charter says it must be impartial. Its attack on the new govt breaks that Charter.

TVNZ's Charter states that it must "provide independent, comprehensive, impartial & in-depth coverage & analysis of news & current affairs in NZ and throughout the world and of the activities of public and private institutions". After all, it is funded by taxpayers.

In the UK, the State-owned BBC is under furious attack in Parliament, and even by its own Chairman, since sports commentator Gary Lineker criticized the Conservative government's Rwanda plan (to send refugees arriving in Britain to that country). The critique wasn't even made on a BBC show - it was a personal tweet by Lineker. The BBC's Charter says it "should provide duly accurate & impartial news, current affairs & factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the UK and of the wider world". Ring any bells?

Let's compare the BBC situation with TVNZ's. Bear in mind before you read the following extracts from TVNZ reporter John Campbell's article on the OneNews website that everything in the Coalition Agreement was openly & transparently put to voters by National, ACT & NZ First before the election. Over half the country voted in support of those agreed policies. Yet these phrases come from what TVNZ's Campbell had to say about them:

Luxon .. brandishing the phrase “massive alignment around the goals” ... Miniature, seemed like a better ‘m’ word. Or mean ... On it went ... Like a sermon. Or a sulk made formal ... for Māori ... is the coalition's heart of darkness ... The late-night ravings of a man alone in a bar ... There is a kind of re-colonising here ... deeply regressive ... The dearth of decent & transformative hope .. wilful omissions ... A climate of denial ... the [coalition] agreements feel like they come from a time before we knew better. Before the science ... Luxon has talked ... of getting the “country moving forward”. But this doesn’t feel forward ... it feels deeply & nostalgically conservative. A winding back of the clock ... Aspiration? Not for the poor ... And the men [Luxon, Peters & Seymour], too, as it turned out. Empty of ideas. Dreams? Not really .. But what peculiar obsessions they’ve revealed ... dog whistling. What a terrible waste .. The first formal, 3-party coalition Government in our country’s history, and it somehow manages to seem small. “We cannot wait to get stuck in”, Luxon said, as he looked up from this narrow, limp vision of our future.

For goodness sakes, he attacks the conservative National Party for being ... conservative!? The coalition agreement is not in contempt of the poor, environment, nor discriminatory. It reads as an alternative approach to Labour's - an approach that was put to the public who voted and supported it. Using words like "mean", "darkness", "regressive", "limp" & "waste" to describe it unambigously breaks impartiality. And breaks TVNZ's Charter.

Sources

https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/11/25/john-campbell-i-hoped-to-be-surprised-actually-im-amazed/