Posts by giovanni tiso
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
If you can find me a better statistic than just street collectors, I'll concede the point.
I'll add to the dubious anecdotal evidence: I use to work in the BNZ transaction processing centre, back in the day when they still got people rather than machines to put the cheques through in the evenings. When the donations for the charities came through, you could tell when it was somebody on a budget who was donating, since it would be for a very specific amount (say, 26 dollars 50) as opposed to a nice round figure. My impression was always that these greatly outnumbered the 50 or 100 dollar figures, especially in the run up to Christmas.
-
A "major policy shift [National] talks about behind closed doors". Isn't this the sort of thing journalists should be reporting on, rather than burying? Or is the purpose of the media now to obfuscate and deceive rather than inform?
Didn't Clifton two or three weeks ago remark that political reporters have known about internal conflicts and varying degrees of hidden agendaness within National for quite a bit, but they cannot report on them because they learned about them off the record? It could be one such instance.
-
I get the impression that this thread has fallen into the same trap that 'we' would accuse the mainstream media of generalising about blogs. No doubt Clifton could point to WhaleOil's blog as an indication that a blog is a much worse forum than a newspaper.
Clifton raised a set of fairly specific points withing the context of political reporting and commentary. She went as far as to say that she doesn't know whether the advent of bloggers and the threat it poses to her profession is lamentable or not. But I think she has also shown an uncharactertistically weak understanding of the landscape, and a patronising attitude towards the public. The point is precisely that these days a newspaper is not a forum, the august Listener is not a forum, in that they do not meaningfully engage with their readers. I can't tell you how many times I've thought, reading her column, "jee, nice turn of phrase, Clifton, but what the hell did you mean by that?" or "yes, this makes sense, but what about..." You can write a letter to the Listener, sure, and those pages are still the first ones I turn to, but the restrictions of the format are obviously crippling compared to the kind of discussion we can get going in a place like this.
(I'm not saying that Clifton should from now on spend her time answering my rants, mind, but perhaps once in a while it wouldn't hurt. And at any rate that's the challenge for somebody in her position.)
Ultimately, other than painting an interesting picture of the anxiety of professional journos, the point of the column seems to be 'won't the public be confused'? And that borders on the disingenous, resting as it does on two very questionable assumptions: firstly that professional political reporters and commentators are gifted with Pope-like infallibility when it comes to upholding objectivity and balance (cue the collective laughter of people who actually bother to read and watch the stuff); and secondly it assumes that we are uncritical consumers of media, blind followers of the Farrars and the Browns, the Hagers and the Wisharts (oops, I just threw up in my mouth) of this world. Whereas I'd argue that people who read blogs and alternative media haven't stopped relying on the pros and reading first-hand reporting from the gallery, but are better able to form a nuanced understanding of what goes on in the halls of Parliament and how power works than they did when the mainstream was the only stream.
-
Still, all these horror stories fit in very neatly with my strongly held belief that one learns very little of any value at primary school.
My son for one is having a marvellous time of it. Ditto for kindy, I couldn't have more respect for the teachers he's had.
-
Ah, deep fried pizza! My enduring memory of Edinburgh.
That's nothing. A restaurant in Cowgate served me what I swear could only be described as fried soup.
Don't get me wrong, though, I hold Edinburgh dearly in my heart and surrounding circulatory system.
-
During the Olympic mens' trialthlon - "Well Brendon, at this level, it's the Olympic Games"
He's a streetfighter, Bevan Docherty, he's a warrior, he knows how to go into the deep dark place.
-
Seriously, folks who think The Listener has been ruined by a pack of Tory Stepford Wives aren't going to be talked in off that particular ledge by anyone. Certainly not me.
Agree in principle, but I'm struck by the hubris here. That the top political commentator in the country (am I right?) should not see a conflict of interest in dating a politician is, well, perfectly okay - she has every right to be judged on the basis of her work alone, like everyone else. But she ought to return the favour, don't you think, rather than implying that other writers outside of the journalistic pale couldn't possibly be impartial or objective.
-
It could well ruin their careers.
Some careers could use being ruined. The MSM gladly employs the services of Michael Laws, for god's sake, and we're worried about bloggers lowering the level of discourse?
-
Very few bloggers do reportage. But then, neither does Jane Clifton. She's a commentator.
She sits in the parliamentary press gallery though, presumably, and that gives her access to politicians (other than, you know, McCully*) in excess of what she could get by watching the sessions on the telly and reading the papers and Scoop. So she's a kind of reporter I would say, even if she doesn't break stories.
(*Timing Ranapia's response starting... now)
-
I was hoping in just such a response, Russell, very well put. A couple more things that I find interesting:
Clifton laments that the hybridisation risks confusing the voter, but let's rewind the clock by about ten years: does she think the New Zealand public was well served by political commentariat back then? Fresh off the boat on the eve of an election campaign, I recall finding the paucity of information sources and editorial perspectives in the local media more than a little alarming. Everybody seemed to me to be sick of the Nats those days, and the journalists were hardly the least gleeful of the lot.
Fast-forward back to now: bloggers from all nooks of the civil society, activist commentators that are well-informed and incisive (let the record reflect I'm a big fan of Idiot/Savant), the incomparable Keith Ng (hoping his hiatus will be very brief)... there's an embarassment of riches here.
And don't you find it interesting that whenever the MSM opens up the lines of communication with their readers, it seems that only the most rabid reactionaries take the bait? That's what happens when you pretend to offer a space of discussion, whereas in fact all you can do in such a space is rant, since the authors of the pieces themselves wouldn't be caught dead interacting with their readers.