April 2010
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MEDIA MATTERS
55 Queen’s Grove
Lower Hutt
Hi, we know that in this Information Age, there is a glut of stuff filling your Inbox daily. However, we hope you will take this moment to review current media issues. Media Matters is a non-profit registered Charitable Trust dedicated to promoting media literacy and parent education in NZ.
Apparently Tiger the Sex Predator is out there again, on the prowl as ever he was,
coming to a golf course near you. Wives and girlfriends,
take cover, the Tiger is loose. Aided by one of the biggest
industries in the world - I’m talking about the one which markets and
endorses sports equipment (you know, caps, clubs, tee shirts, balls,
trundlers, shoes, pretty much the whole golf bag to say nothing of US
companies who pump out Golf programmes by the hour – they even have a
Golf Channel there). So we are forced to conclude, more in
sorrow than anger, that commercial Sport including Golf, has pretty
much bought the world’s media lock, stock and jock strap many years
since), - In other words, Tiger Inc - has managed to massage his way
back into the media’s favour, by doing the very minimum to rehabilitate
himself as a legendary sportsman, an image somewhat spoiled by his real
life status as a serial fornicator.
The media have played along gratefully with this charade because they have millions, indeed probably gazillions of dollars, of contracted investment in Tiger Inc’s endorsement of tournaments and equipment and you name it, Tiger’s on it. I kid you not….
So Tiger’s carefully media-managed mea culpa came out about as genuine as a clockwork orange. Said one grovelling commentator, " Woods spoke of his many regrets during his first session with a full media contingent, calling his behavior "pretty brutal" and admonishing himself for causing "so much harm to the people I love and care about the most on the planet."
This cringing idiot went on "Woods came across as relaxed, sincere and accommodating. He didn't bristle at a single question and responded to one long query with: 'That was a long-winded one there, bro.'"
Woods opened by making two points: He said he was "blown away" by the kindness of the Masters galleries and apologized to his fellow PGA Tour pros for the way they were being "bombarded" with questions about the indiscretions in his personal life.
"Hopefully after today the players can be left alone to focus on the Masters," he said.
Woods was less expansive regarding the SUV accident that landed him in a hospital in the early-morning hours after Thanksgiving. Woods said he got a "busted" lip that required five stitches and a "pretty sore neck."
"The police investigated and they cited me 166 bucks," he said. "It's a closed case."
Woods also declined to specify why he went into rehab. "It's personal," he said. "Thank you."
Gee what a guy. So frank and forthcoming. So clearly penitent and ready to be welcomed back into the fold – as in billfold that is.
Tiger we think you’re wonderful, you make us feel so humble with your magnanimity and spirit of forgiveness for all the wrongs which other people have done to you as the result of your being such a hopeless cheater on your wife. Thank you Tiger, thank you.
And thank you Phil Mickelson, for showing us at the recent Masters that Good Guys do sometimes win.
The Golden Raspberry this week is to whoever it was concocted the TV 7 Panel "The Ad Show".
A recent offering consisted of a collection of ne’er-do-wells from the seedy world of television advertising production, extolling the artistic and creative virtues of various advertisements for beer. So we learned that The Speights Southern Man, who prefers beer to women, was a healthy attitude to promote. Oh really? We also learned that the Tui billboards were cool and clever.
Yeah, wrong! Frankly I don’t give toss what the advertising industry thinks of their products and if they want to extol commercials in terms which suggest they can be equated with real art, like watching a Stephen Spielberg movie, then good on ‘em. Highly pretentious but somehow appropriate to the whole Ad Show idea. But the entire segment this time was about clever ways of selling booze, and how cool and clever is that? Glorifying and glamourising the consumption of grog ignores the social harm it does and creates an entirely false impression that the consumption of this particular drug is benign.
The Ad Show Presenters:
Hazel Phillips & Simon Pound
In fact, of course, alcohol is banned in some countries and will, I believe, be banned here one day (not the sale but the advertising). Airing this segment, a promotion of alcohol consumption, at the very time in the history of this country when we are adding up the cost of lowering the drinking age and putting wine in dairies and generally letting alcohol consumption rip, is an act of extraordinary stupidity. It’s perfectly obvious, whatever the industry might want to argue to the contrary, that a laissez fair attitude to alcohol has come at a major social cost to New Zealanders. Drink driving causing injury and death is now epidemic in the land especially amongst young people. I have never supported a ban on alcohol advertising, but after watching The Ad Show on TVNZ7, I now do.
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