Media Biz 09 – either sinister or incompetent, but with an opportunity
A few weeks ago, Gordon Campbell wrote an excellent fisk of the Media Biz 09 conference advertising bumpf. This morning on Mediawatch (from 06:30) Colin Peacock covered the issue in characteristic...
View ArticleCannabis bust news coverage bingo
Here’s a fun game. Watch tonight’s TV news (either channel) and count the following tropes. Update: I did this — both channels, since they were conveniently on at separate times, and was pleasantly...
View ArticleFrom the Department of Random Ideas
How about Shane Taurima for Sean Plunket’s replacement on Morning Report? A radically different style from Plunket, but he does have good interviewing chops, very extensive experience and strong...
View ArticleDepicting Julia Gillard
I’ll be watching with interest the characterisation — and caricaturisation — of Australia’s new PM, especially as compared to Helen Clark. Some of you might be aware that I once wrote a research paper...
View ArticleThe television will be revolutionised
Tim Watkin has written a great think-piece on Pundit about the “birth of a new news” in New Zealand. He asks a lot of good questions about the imperatives and tensions inherent in this (and I hate the...
View ArticlePut it out of its misery
After defending New Zealand’s broadcast news media in recent weeks, and bemoaning the lack of funding for public service broadcasting in particular, TVNZ has tonight hit rock-bottom. The so-called...
View ArticleTen strategic communication lessons from the Alasdair Thompson fiasco
Today has been a remarkable day. Rarely do we see such an epic failure of communication as we have seen from Alasdair Thompson. Because these events have played out mostly in public, they also present...
View ArticleWhen the media says a woman is no more than a whore
A man moves in with his girlfriend. A few months later, in an argument over the rent, he strangles her to death. Media coverage: Prostitute killer’s appeal rejected Killer of sex worker loses appeal...
View ArticleHearing no evil
A few days before the November 26 general election, TV3 aired Bryan Bruce’s documentary Inside Child Poverty, and I posted on the depressingly predictable response of the usual right-wing subjects. And...
View ArticleIdentity is politics
(Or: How the activist left learned to stop worrying and love identity politics.) Here and elsewhere I spend much time railing against the notion that “identity” is somehow distinct from “politics”, or...
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