The Phone Is off the Hook

The good(?) ship Labour is heading for the rocks. There’s a tidal wave approaching and it is expected to hit on October 14. This is currently the big story for journalists and they are painfully aware of it. No matter how much bias they cook up, no matter how many pies or scoops of ice cream they show Chippie consuming, the writing is on the wall. The polls have barely moved. The phone is off the hook for their soon to be dear departed friends in Labour. The thought of defeat is gnawing away at them. They are desperate to dial us up.

The journalists are right now struggling with the unpalatable fact that the proof of Labour’s pudding, at least in the majority of voters eyes, is not for the eating. It has a sour taste. Their reporting shows, deliberately or otherwise, that the voters are behaving in a way not to their liking. It appears we need to be taught a lesson and convinced of the error of our ways. What else can the continually biased reporting mean? We voters might live in a democracy (of sorts), but it would seem it is incumbent on the plebs (us) to toe the journalistic and left-wing party lines.

How dare we have a mind of our own and, just in case we do, our thoughts must be expunged at the earliest possible moment. This, it is hoped, can be achieved by brainwashing with a biased campaign of writing and rhetoric. The journalists are the grown-up experts in this exercise and we the voters are merely the equivalent of children needing our intellectual nappies changed.

Journalists in this country are, on the whole, a poor reflection on their profession. They fail miserably in the tests of balance and objectivity. This is very apparent in their election coverage. It is beyond obvious what their game is. It is so obvious that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they didn’t come up with some pathetic trumped-up charge that Luxon could be indicted on, a la Trump in America. Anything to keep their useless bunch of comrades in the race.

Their carry-on over the foreign buyers tax is becoming both embarrassing and tedious. National are not going to release any more information and Nicola Willis has said she will resign if the policy fails, just like Mark Mitchell did on law and order. You never get anyone on the Labour side offering themselves up because they’re all career politicians warming a green leather seat at great cost to the taxpayers and have nowhere else to go. The ones who have resigned are mostly electorate MPs who know they will lose.

Let’s look at a couple of the latest headlines from the Herald:

Audrey Young – National’s numbers problems aren’t going away. (Neither is Audrey unfortunately.)

Within a minute of Audrey’s headline up pops another from Hipkins on exactly the same topic. Are these people in league with each other orchestrating their releases?

Mike Munro – There’s a hole in your bucket, Luxon. (Pathetic: change bucket to head and it sums up the entire Labour Government.)

Meanwhile we have ‘warm fuzzy’ stories and pics about Hipkins in Labour country on the West Coast. He’s talking with the elderly, who look like they have more life in them than him or the party he leads.

These journalists might consider themselves big fish in a small pond but that’s where any semblance of respectability from the public ends. Investigative journalism is what we need, but it has to be on both sides of the political divide. Six years of Labour and you could write a book on their debacles. The journalists haven’t even got to the preface. It’s not too late for them to start, but we won’t be holding our breath.

Like Bob Jones, in a recent article on BFD, I exclude from criticism the husband and wife duos of Mike Hosking and Kate Hawkesby, and Barry Soper and Heather du Plessis-Allan. In his article Bob noted a recent study by AUT’s Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy. It revealed the lack of trust New Zealanders have in our media.

• 82 per cent consider it to be biased along the political lines of the newsroom.
• 73 per cent consider it over-relies on opinion rather than fact.
• 69 per cent of New Zealanders avoid reading or listening to the news, the highest percentage in the world.