Posts by Steve Withers
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Hard News: Strange days for journalism, in reply to Russell Brown,
If she dumps her shares and the value crashes....she could probably buy an even larger chunk of the company at firesale prices.
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Free speech in NZ has for a long time amounted to the right of foreign billionaires to propagandise in support of their business interests and political clients. The only exception has been the state broadcasters: TVNZ and RNZ. The “business-friendly” (billionaires client) National party hates them and is doing all it can to hand broadcasting over to the unethical foreign billionaire they favour the most: Rupert Murdoch, who owns 44% of SKY.
Unless you have a billion dollars, the only thing you can do about it is don’t give them your money and do all you can to support local media who act ethically.
…and don’t vote for people who can’t see that limiting effective free speech to foreign billionaires is a bad thing.
I don’t subscribe to SKY and never will while this situation remains. I refuse to pay for propaganda and subsidize my own dumbing down.
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Thanks, Ian. I have the Shock Doctrine.....and keep getting PTSD every time I crack it open. The dull, leaden weight of the broad public ignorance that allows these things to happen is too much for any minority to overturn. Who would have thought all the fascists ever really needed to do to win was invent television, combine it with sports and vacuous comedy and let the public mind rot for a generation? So simple. So very effective. A whole society of hedgehogs on the highway of life.
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League tables could be a measure of how the government is failing to provide an adequate education to various communities. What fascinates me is the government’s apparent intention to see these measures of success or failure as something akin to a force of nature over which they have no control. One does get the impression that kids in schools at the lower end of any scale have nothing much to do with the government and there isn’t much of a sense of ownership or commitment to address that. This plays to all the most negative stereotypes about National Party people dis-owning the people at the bottom….and their kids. Instead of working to lift them up…..you label them and walk away…and give others the means to label, avoid and walk away, too. Really? Is that the Kiwi Way?
In almost every policy area this government disgusts me. Public broadcasting? Give it to Rupert Murdoch. Climate change? Do nothing. Public transport? Lie about the benefits...and build roads. Asset sales? The price of power went up a year ago to pad the balance sheets prior to sale. We're *already* paying for the assets we still own. It's all grotesque.
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Hard News: Disrupting the Television, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Sky is 43% owned by Rupert Murdoch, so "racketeers extracting monopoly rents" is to be expected. That this present government is actively *enabling* this agenda by running down public broadcasting assets we all own (and that Rupert Murdoch hates).....is just one more example of the "national" in National Party referring to some other country. Not his one.
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What mystifies me is why anyone “needs” (mainly) crap TV content at all…from any source. I suspect as a society we have all gone completely overbored on ‘entertainment’…and consume far too much of it. Entertainment used to be something you did for yourself and your friends and the wealthy – occasionally – would see a show or put one on. Today, we think we’re hard done by if we can’t consume ‘entertainment’ in one form another several hours each day.
I realised a few years ago how much being entertained was preventing me from seeing much that is in the real world…and more or less turned it off but for a handful of hours / week. First to go was sports. I don’t pay god money to watch adult play-time in leagues conjured up to provide content for Rupert Murdoch (Super 15 – or however many it is now).
Sky? I see no need for it at all…..even if it wasn’t 43.x% owned by a lying, warmongering man I consider to be a criminal. That it is just makes it easier to not have it. I also don’t mind using the +/- $1000 / year for other purposes.
That the National party have climbed into bed with Sky merely confirms my already low opinion of their ethical compass…and their apparent preference for serving the interests of foreign billionaires of all kinds above us mere locals...who collectively own the public media assets they are presently destroying and running down.
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If I buy music at all it's probably a single song via iTunes...Maybe 5 in the past year. Otherwise, I use JetVD to download the soundtrack to YouTube music videos as mp3 files. The sound quality is usually more than good enough for my aging ears. The last several CDs I bought in a shop either sounded terrible or wouldn't play at all on my player....so they ceased being an option. Sometimes people just email me a song they think I might like. I often do.
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My issue is with what terrible stewards the National party are of our public assets. Ripping up public broadcasting and defaulting to Sky seems a terrible way to enhance the value and returns from the public media assets we all have a share in. The same goes for the asset sales program. It only makes sense if this government has the aim of transferring public assets into private hands....and not for the benefit of the public. It's a wonder anyone votes for these thieves.
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Are we seeing the same ‘Murdoch effect’ here in New Zealand? The wings are being pulled off public broadcasting in favour of Sky TV……which (last time I checked) is 44% owned by Rupert Murdoch. Sky Chairman, Peter MacCourt, come from Murdoch’s News Limited in Australia, where he has worked since 1983. If I have any of this wrong, please correct me and cite a verifiable source (just for certainty).
We don’t have to look to the UK to see harm Rupert Murdoch does to media. The National Party is firmly in his pocket right here at home.
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Hard News: Killing Volume, in reply to 3410,
Same here. I've never heard of "Volume" until today.