[media] The Comment Section

Furthermore – can we have new political commentators please?
It was hard to stomach the presence all over the TV of professional **** Matt Hootron, smugly spinning for his Nats inner circle masters. Hooting is just getting more and more visible, despite being neck-deep in the mire of the Brash National leadership, as revealed in Hager’s “The Hollow Men”. His newspaper column is pure PR for the Nats – how come no-one is talking about the inexplicable moment on Saturday when a victorious John Key, live on TV linkup talking to Hootsmon, told him he was pleased that Hooting could run the “Key wins” newspaper column he’d read earlier? Do all political columnists send drafts of their columns to party leaders the day before they run? I mean, WTF?
I’ve talked before about the huge bias in NZ political punditry towards conservative white men, and the surprisingly large representation among them of active National party operators such as Hootron. Our media continues to do us a grave disservice by perpetuating this state of affairs.
Which by no means is an endorsement of token lefty Chris Trotter. Incredibly, his post-election column in the Sunday Star-Times began “the NZ left has just suffered its own 9/11”. This epic lapse in taste and judgment leaves me feeling nauseous.
My recommendation – razor gangs for the commentariat. Chop out the grumpy old men and give the space to new blood, new faces, new perspectives, and particularly to political and perhaps even ethnic diversity.
And please put Matt Hootie back in his box.

5 thoughts on “[media] The Comment Section”

  1. To whom are you speaking, Morgue? To whom are recommendations and pleas for change in media directed? To whom should they be directed?

  2. Jamie: those are serious questions that call the bluff of my facetious comment. It seems to me that the only way change can come is through editorial leadership in the print media, which in turn is primarily influenced by (1) what the owners request (2) what the buying public seem to want (3) what prominent overseas print media is doing (4) what the editor personally believes.
    Thus, points of leverage for approaching this idea seriously:
    (1) suggest public demand (e.g letters to the editor)
    (2) befriend an editor or an owner and convince them its a good idea
    2 is a bit of a stretch, but not out of the ballpark given this is New Zealand, littlest big country in the world.
    So that leaves 1. And that will be a hard, hard road.

  3. FWIW, she who watched the election coverage at my house says that earlier in the night Hooton had said on TV that he’d prepared two versions of the column he was going to run the next day.
    Her memory is that in Key’s chat with Hooton later in the night Key was saying he’d seen that bit of the panel footage from earlier in the night, and was responding to it. She didn’t think there was any suggestion Key had seen the content of the column from the TV footage.
    Here ends the second-hand recounting. 🙂

  5. Chris Trotter’s piece was whinging nonsense that gave Key supporters an easy target. Having him presented as the voice of the Left doesn’t do us any favours.
    It pains me to say that ’cause he was very nice when my dad died.

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