The NZ Herald in the past attacked a popular NZ blog site for publishing articles that they described as “hit jobs”. They claimed that the articles were unethical because the author of the articles had allegedly been paid to write them.
How then should we view this article by the NZ Herald who is part of the team of $55 Million?
The article is a blatant attack on the credibility of Liz Gunn for daring to attack the person who is responsible for a large chunk of the NZ Herald’s funding, Jacinda Ardern.
Liz Gunn’s message was not about earthquakes but the Herald focussed on what was clearly a throwaway line and a Mother Earth metaphor to try to paint Liz as a nutter. Funnily enough, when they report on Maori wanting to stop development because of a mythical Taniwha living in a nearby stream they see it as perfectly reasonable and would never dare to suggest that Maori are “bizarre” for believing in such a thing.
Liz Gunn however is not Maori and her extremely effective video could not be allowed to continue to motivate others to stand up to the ongoing attacks on our freedoms by the government. She had to be disparaged and smeared as “controversial” in an attempt to silence and cancel her.
Here are the key lines from the hit job:
a controversial and bizarre anti-vaccine rant online over the weekend.
[…] All of this is it stops with this earthquake. That’s what our mother was explaining to us. We must listen to her. Even those who think Ardern is amazing.
[…] she sparked headlines in December that year when she quit the programme live on air. At the time, it was reported that Gunn and Hosking had not clicked as a presenting team but TVNZ bosses were left scrambling when Gunn told viewers she wouldn’t be back in 2002.
[…] Her rant comes after Ardern announced on Friday that New Zealand would move to a traffic light system
Also included in the article were these disparaging tweets:
The NZ Herald completely neglected to include any of the many positive responses to Liz Gunn’s video.
Here are some of the many positive responses that they completely ignored:
Read the article in full here. Comment on it on The BFD.
