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As part of our drive to keep our comment section the best in New Zealand we showcase each week an example of a top-notch comment that adds value to The BFD.
Today’s comment was written by idbkiwi Thank you idbkiwi for taking the time to craft such an interesting comment.
I’m not sure exactly what to liken it to: the closest I can come up with is the duplicitous, disingenuous, narcissistic, blame-shifting buffoonery of the character Dr Zachary Smith from the 1960s tv series ‘Lost in Space’, who routinely and repeatedly ignored warnings and his own previously lived experiences to foul-up again and again, creating distrust in his every utterance.
At the stroke of midnight, an article appeared on Stuff informing us of yet another (large) fall in trust towards this country’s main-stream-media from the public, as published in AUT’s third comprehensive “Trust in news in New Zealand” report. The press release accompanying the AUT report includes a prominent quote stating the very obvious:
“In general, trust in the news has declined because the news media is seen as increasingly opinionated, biased and politicised.”
AUT senior lecturer Dr Merja Myllylahti
You don’t say. That seems straightforward enough, don’t you think?
Well; no, not according to Stuff who go full-on Zachary Smith mode to deny the very obvious failing using obfuscation, allusion, blame-shifting and nonsense, even the headline is disingenuous. Yes: it’s an 8 percentage-point fall, but that represents a 15+% percent negative swing in trust, that’s huge, but more importantly – from nett positive trust to nett negative overall trust. Put another way, a similar fall over the next two years (highly likely) will see public trust fall into the meagre 30-40 percentile range where it will be true to say the overwhelming majority, rather than the mere simple majority, of folk no longer trust our news sources.
Stuff’s Dr Smith stand-in; ‘head of news Mark Stevens’ is reliably comical:
“Public trust was a key measure of success for Stuff’s news team…”
Good grief, I hate to point it out, mate, but in this case, it’s a key measure of failure, are you listening? No. Of the perceived (actual) tainting of news by the Public Interest Journalism Fund Stevens claims:
“the Public Interest Journalism Fund was a minuscule fraction of Stuff’s investment in news-gathering and journalism over more than 150 years.”
1) The PIJF is not an ‘investment’, it’s a hand-out.
2) Stuff has existed for 17 years, not ‘more than 150’.
Conflating the corporate hoovering of mast-heads by INL and Fairfax from the ’80s into the early part of this century does not an authentic history make any more than SAIC Motor Company placing an MG badge on an Indian-made car in 2022 and claiming thereby proof they’ve been in the auto industry for nearly a century.
It’s pure piffle, but so typical. There’s more, it’s hilarious, the fall in trust is due to (you guessed it) “misinformation and disinformation” especially “since the arrival of the Delta variant in 2021”.
Yes, dear, of course, it is. This despite the fact that the Classifications Office study of Ms Information, whether (non-binary) mis, dis, or mal, conducted in late 2020, before Delta had even been heard of in this country, found we believed our MSM to be the purveyors of such tosh-information routinely (29%) or at least occasionally (76%).
The problem is you; Stuff, and cohort MSM. For the very reasons, nice Dr Merja Myllylahti stated: you are too opinionated, biased and politicised. Your arrogant midnight article in response to the very valid criticism is just more proof of your debilitating narcissism.
Robot: “Danger, danger, Dr Smith”
Zachary Smith: “Oh, what would you know.”
