It started with this, last week:
And yesterday, we had an article from Jason Walls on the same subject:
But recently, there’s been a stark and worrying change in the level of animosity directed at journalists.
Yesterday morning, for example, my partner woke me up to tell me someone’s been commenting on her photos with deeply personalised criticisms directed at me.
To get to me, they came at her.
For others in the news media, it’s been worse.
Over the weekend, a 1News cameraman was attacked by anti-vaxxers while filming a vaccination event in Greymouth.
A Newshub reporter was heckled by a member of the public as she was setting up for a story.
Unfortunately, all signs point to these sorts of incidents not just continuing, but getting worse.
New Zealand’s now at the ugly end of the vaccination rollout. Almost everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been.
Among the remaining 10 or so per cent yet to get the jab, is the incredibly vocal anti-vaccination community.
They seem to be united by two things: Their distrust of the Government and their hate of the mainstream media.
Newstalk ZB
I wish to make it clear that I do not condone violence in any way, but a journalist getting ‘heckled’ doesn’t really seem very scary to me.
The truth is, the public has become very tired of the lies and propaganda fed to us by the media. It isn’t just anti-vaxxers, as they keep trying to tell us, it is people from all walks of life, vaccinated or not, who disagree with what is going on in this country and want it to change.
But for some reason, the media thinks it can just take the government’s money, feed the public government propaganda and everyone will just accept it like good little sheep.
Well, as we have seen recently, they won’t.
The former was on full display last week after a far-right conspiracy theorist faked media credentials to get into a press conference to heckle the Prime Minister.
Jacinda Ardern said she was only taking questions from “accredited news media” and moved the press conference to another location – which she was right to do.
The incident was clipped-up and put online, where it went viral on the fringe far-right, anti-vax websites and forums.
Facebook and Twitter are now ‘fringe, far-right, anti-vax websites’, are they?
And what is Walls’ definition of ‘accredited media’? Does he mean those bought and paid for by the government? Clearly, he does.
The day after Ardern’s press conference was hijacked, another set of protestors blocked the entrance to a vaccination clinic she was meant to visit in Whanganui.
Once it was clear the Prime Minister wasn’t showing up, the mob turned on reporters.
According to journalists on the scene, it was confronting.
Police had to physically step between the two parties, as protestors loudly yelled about how journalists’ salaries were paid by the Government.
But journalists’ salaries are being paid by the government. They are unofficially known as the ‘Team of $55 million’. Don’t tell me Walls has never heard that expression.
I find it amusing that the people of New Zealand are turning on the media because they are puppets of a hard-left socialist government, and the journalists themselves are now writing articles looking for sympathy.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of them that, if they did the job they are supposed to do and held the government to account, told both sides of each story and stood for up our human rights, there would not be a backlash against them.
All I can say to Jason Walls and Mihingarangi Forbes is – do your job. Do it properly, and the people of New Zealand might start to support you again.
Otherwise, things might turn really ugly.
Please share this article so others can discover The BFD
