Smart Looking Rapist – I find myself for once agreeing with Garth McVicar Posted by BE on January 16th, 2012 I rarely find myself in agreement with Garth McVicar or his ‘Sensible Sentencing’ Trust. I’m a liberal in the area of law and order and not a great believer in the value of lengthy prison... Read More
The new Leader of the Opposition has undertaken to be ‘relentlessly positive’ between now and the Election in September. If her appearance on yesterday’s ‘Q & A’ with Deputy Leader Kelvin Davis is anything to go by, his role is to be ‘relentlessly negative’. ‘Relentless’ is generally a negative term: ‘relentless rain, relentless suffering’ etc. One... Read More
The phrase ‘presidential-style election campaign’ is bandied about a lot these days. Its intended meaning is that voters are as much or perhaps more influenced by the personality and media image of party leaders as by their parties’ policies. This was clearly not, or at least less the case in the pre-television era when party... Read More
On December 7 of last year, around the time the Labour Caucus was considering which of the two Davids, Shearer or Cunliffe, would make the best leader for the party, I wrote a post entitled ‘Shearer or Cunliffe? Why I’ve changed my mind.’ The post basically said that I’d initially thought Shearer was the man... Read More
Yesterday Chris Trotter’s Bowalley Road blog, headed The Unfortunate Experiment, came to the conclusion that David Shearer had to go as leader of the Labour Party. Trotter’s caption, beneath a photograph of Shearer, read: David Shearer is an immensely likeable bloke, and his work at the UN was truly inspirational, but he ain’t anybody’s kind of leader. ... Read More
The wider issue is television itself. Television does not deal well with complexity. This is particularly the case with commercial television which subscribes to the view that the average viewer has a short attention span, is easily bored and likely to reach for the remote within minutes or possibly seconds of the first hint of... Read More
I have received a menacing email from a Ms Sarah Bacon, a partner in the law firm Izard Weston. The firm acts for Fairfax New Zealand Limited, publisher of the Sunday Star Times. The email refers to my recent post The Hotchin Affidavits – Four witnesses swear that Amanda Hotchin did not speak the damaging words attributed... Read More
In an earlier incarnation, more than a quarter of a century ago, I was contracted by the State Services Commission to media train public servants. With my Fair Go colleague Judith Fyfe – she of the huge, eccentric specs – we put people from pretty well every government department through crash courses on handling the press,... Read More
Today’s Herald reports an increase of 5% among viewers in the 5+ demographic for One News over the past year, giving the bulletin a cumulative nightly audience of 665,100. 3 News’ audience in the same demographic over the same period declined by 15% to 375,190 viewers. Put simply, 3 News has just over half as many viewers at One News. Setting aside the argument that... Read More
