Mark Freeman
One of the journalists responsible for the Stuff Circuit online hit-piece documentary Fire and fury has expressed confusion and frustration at the antagonistic attitude of some pro-freedom protesters towards mainstream journalists.
Paula Penfold and her team spent months following several spokespeople (“inciters”) in the freedom movement online to find out “who’s driving a violent, misinformed New Zealand – and why”
The New Zealand On Air-funded documentary shows footage of two Stuff journalists being confronted by irate protesters at this year’s occupation of Parliament grounds.
In an interview with the BHN, Penfold seems bemused by the anger expressed towards mainstream journalists. At the Parliament protest, she used the “hostile environment training” (such as situational awareness) that she had previously undergone to prepare for dangerous situations overseas:
We used that to a degree in places like Afghanistan, but we used it full-on in Wellington. And that makes me really sad, not just as a journalist but also as a citizen, that our hostile environment training is most useful in our own country. What the hell? What’s gone wrong?
One of the pillars of our democracy is under threat when people won’t let us report. … I’ve reported on I don’t know how many protests in 30 years as a journalist and I’ve never been treated like that in this country or anywhere else.
Youtube
The only reason Penfold gives for the hostility is that New Zealand protesters have been influenced by local “inciters” and overseas actors such as Donald Trump and QAnon.
She avoids any mention of the underlying cause of protesters’ anger.
This has to be seen in the context of the imposition of unprecedented restrictions and the extraordinary stripping of citizens’ rights in the last year or two, signalling a radical shift in the relationship between the government and its citizens.
The February convoy and protest at Parliament was a visceral response to the government’s denial of access to jobs, income and services to many citizens who were exercising what was hitherto a fundamental right to bodily integrity.
Penfold is also obviously blind to the fact that Stuff and other government-funded mainstream media were complicit in this denial of human rights by largely ignoring the voices of the unvaccinated—as well as brushing nearly every fact and opinion that was counter to the official covid narrative under the carpet. That’s where the anti-media anger comes from.
It must be difficult for Penfold to accept that the mainstream media’s one-sided and discriminatory coverage has further eroded the New Zealand public’s trust in them. It’s clear that the mainstream journalistic “pillar of democracy” in this country is crumbling.
