It takes a special kind of stupid for a politician to call up a mate to run a story decrying the ‘attack’ on the Public Interest Journalism Fund, when that journalist and his stories are paid for by the very same PIJF. Then again it is Willie Jackson.
Former broadcasting minister Willie Jackson says Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is talking nonsense on the Public Interest Journalism Fund and the fact he has made a number of outrageous observations is “worrying”.
Peters on Monday continued to poke the media by referring to the $55 million fund as a bribe.
Jackson says the funding went to print, broadcast, mainstream, Maori and online media with no conditions about reporting on Government activities.
“The guy is sort of losing the plot here, talking about the media being bribed. We gave out a sum to support media outlets, in the middle of Covid, gave them the opportunity to survive. Just because we were funding them doesn’t mean they were obliged to talk on our behalf.”
Jackson says National voters must be wondering what they voted for with New Zealand First and Act seeming to dominate the Government’s programme.
“Winston Peters is the new Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand and it is his obligation to now behave responsibly,” Jackson said on Facebook.
NZ Herald
Yet that is exactly what happened. The fund had conditions, those conditions also happened to match the Government’s own lines regarding how the Treaty of Waitangi was to be treated.
Willie Jackson is arguing black is white here. His statement is deliberate and wrong, which makes it disinformation. But he carries on, with smears, slurs and attacks.
His outrageous accusation that the $55 million dollar Public Interest Journalism Fund was a bribe to control the media is a conspiracy theory as weird as his claim that Jacinda knew about the Christchurch shooter and his accusation that Harry Tam had taken a sex worker with Covid through checkpoints.
This is deeply worrying behaviour from New Zealand’s most experienced and oldest politician because he’s behaving more like Sean Plunket than the Deputy Prime Minister of the country.
The Public Interest Journalism Fund was introduced during Covid because it was a disastrous time in terms of media and we were pressured by good people out there to say, ‘hey, you support financial institutions so how about supporting local media that’s struggling’.
It was aimed at supporting New Zealand media to keep producing stories and was not just for RNZ and for TVNZ.
We never ever had any editorial control over anything anyone wrote, and that’s the truth. For Winston to insinuate some conspiracy is absolute disinformation and falsehoods.
If this new far right Government is prepared to lie and deceive right from the start, we will expect them to continue.
They should be ashamed of Winston’s embarrassing behaviour.
NZ Herald
We’ve long been embarrassed and ashamed by Jackson’s own race-baiting, yet he seems to carry on, blithely unaware he sounds and looks like the bombastic cry-bully he has always been.
We all know there were conditions. Conditions to accept and keep the money make it a bribe.
Christopher Luxon was right when he said it created a perception, and as you all know in politics perception is reality.
What we are seeing here are politicians and media who are surly that their team got rinsed at the election.
It is great though, as we can see them, and what they are about, and we can wonder no more at where their loyalties lie, and it isn’t with the voters, it’s against them.
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