News
Media Review - 27 March 2022
By John Terris
Sunday, 27 March 2022
Big ups also to the Television reporters (mainly young women) who went into the maul of often violent males, protesting at Parliament.
The RNZ newsreaders never fail to please. They are well spoken, music to the ears to those of us who are wearied by the constant ear battering of the opinionation some of the other programmes. Blessedly, they also pronounce the English language meticulously, more than one can say of some of the reporters on the Telly.
Unleashing my G.O.M (Grumpy Old Man), I can’t abide TVNZ On Demand wall-to-wall commercials. What gets me is that they render excellent programme material unwatchable.
Netflix is so superior here and they also provide sub-titles on occasion which is such a relief when the dialogue is not so good. They have Dame Jane Campion’s award-winning POWER OF THE DOG up there too, which has only recently reached cinemas worldwide.
The governments's public media governance report is out as of March 10 and The Hon Kris Faafoi’s announcement speech used the word PUBLIC 20 times, yet there has been no participation on the part of the public, in the lead-up to this. MEDIA MATTERS urged the government earlier this year to convene public forums to discuss the issue before the Expert’s Panel reported but our concerns were dismissed. The report is very welcome, but the process of its public consultation before release was entirely among the Industry. Even the Experts group was composed exclusively of industry insiders. So, these changes are basically rendered by the Industry, talking to itself. Where do the Public, who have to pay for it, get to be heard? The Select Committee stage of any subsequent legislation is way too late.
We’re talking PUBLIC MEDIA, here folks, and there has been no provision for THE PUBLIC Voice.
Here is not the news - 27 January 2022
By John Terris
Thursday, 27 January 2022
TVNZ One newsreaders sometimes send confused messages about what they’re trying to do. Is it to present important recent events or to show off their boobs? Other female presenters featured in the same bulletin managed to restrain their desire to BE the news. Fortunately, the main offender (pictured) is not typical.
I’m not a prude, but The News is The News. In the Tonga Tsunami, people died. Where’s the respect for the people involved in tragedy, and is the cut of Melanie’s curvature at all relevant to those events.
The Dompost is one of our better newspapers but I worry about some of the standards of written English sometimes on display. One of their journalists declares (20/1/2022) that what people want from the Government is “a reasonable degree of certainty around….” something or other. WHAZZAT? For a start, things are either certain or they’re not, surely. What is a BIT of certainty or a CERTAIN AMOUNT of certainty? And what does the word “around” convey, like its companion favourite, “across”, apart from nothing at all. Perhaps language is still on holiday at the Dompost?
Media Review - 20 January 2022
By John Terris
Thursday, 20 January 2022
RNZ MATINEE IDLE: Quirky Simon Morris and Phil O’Brien, weekday afternoons in the hols. SO BAD, ITS GOOD.
NETFLIX: I have been waiting for it, and it has arrived ..an increase in the monthly subscription. I don’t care too much as long as they keep on showing us all those addictive 4 parterres, mainly about marriage travail and crime that pays, but also such a relief from “Local television” from TVNZ which consists mainly of cheap “reality” shows featuring Australian cops and custom men. Whose reality are these? Not ours, surely?
WOMENS ISSUES JOURNALISM: The likes of Alison Mau and Zoe George are so great at what they do, which is outing the chauvinist and the creepy in all of us blokes.
And speaking of AUSSIES AND CRIME PAYING: The Ashes as has proven to be a dead duck as has the series between the Black Caps and Bangladesh, but both series have made gripping TV in patches. Views of the Aussie dressing room suggest that as far as winners are concerned though, the wearers of the Baggie Green surely deserve the trophy as the best cricketers in the world in the category of the game which involves swaggering while sitting down.
Briefly Noted - 3 September 2021
By John Terris
Friday, 3 September 2021
A lot of us in Lockdown are thrown onto our own resources and it’s an opportunity to pay more attention to what is available by way of stimulus or comfort, on the Telly. Like me, you may have discovered that since the decision on the part of the Government not to exact an annual multi-million dollar Dividend from TVNZ ( the size of which ensures that the state broadcaster have no money to produce anything but rubbish) and also to spend more money on public interest media, that the number of great Kiwi productions has swelled. Stardust, written by and starring the redoubtable Rose Matafeo, Milk and Money, the first decent locally produced Doco in a decade, and Kura, a fast and funny series about the pull of Oz on a couple of rangitahi from Papakura, are all great viewing. Seeing ourselves on the Box, has been a long time coming.
THE COMMERCIAL BREAK (a 3-5” piece of black and then 2-3 minutes of ads) was a feature of television watching from its inception in NZ 1n 1960 and until around 2016, when without any notice, let alone consultation, the TV Channels did away with it altogether. Suddenly, you would be watching a gripping crime drama and, without warning, let alone the traditional fade to Black, a commercial for house insurance popped up. MEDIA MATTERS has campaigned against this vigorously for five years, which is of course a removal of the right NOT to watch commercials.
At last, again without notice, a much briefer(1-2“) fade to Black has been inserted to signal ads coming up. Not long enough, certainly, but a rare partial victory for the Viewers!
Censorship of critics of the Media by our Media, is embedded. We regularly write to the papers and are never printed and to RNZ’s Media Watch and are never quoted or printed.
Let’s give a special shout out to the NZ Listener, which actually has a column for listeners and viewers – the only print publication in the country I know of which does.
Here’s our latest effort, declined by Wellington’s Dominion Post:
Why is it that so many ordinary readers and viewers no longer trust traditional media and have migrated to Facebook and Twitter? Surely, at least partly because of the arrogant assumption on the part of those Media that they somehow have a monopoly on wisdom. The fact that we taxpayers are currently propping up media companies, public and private, to the tune of a total of around $100M and counting, through the Government-funded Covid Response handout to businesses and the Public Interest Journalism Fund, demonstrates as clearly as is possible, that in order to get them to report news that really matters to us, we have to give the glorious Fourth Estate barrowloads of taxpayer cash.
Lockdown Diary - 22 July 2020
By John Terris
Wednesday, 22 July 2020
Now that we have emerged from Level 3 and are well on the way to being back to where we were, (though sadly, we will never be the same), I have been keeping a media Diary and here are a few notes taken along the way.
23 March 2020: Last Saturday morning I sat in my car and
listened to the highly authoritative tones of the Prime Minister of this country, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern.
It was 12 noon and she was making a statement to the nation.
She declared that we would be in Lockdown as from Wednesday.
