Mike Hosking and Seven Sharp do a hatchet job on the 'Moment of Truth'.
I WAS SURPRISED that Seven Sharp chose to cover the 'Moment of Truth' event. I assumed that, true to form, it would have far more important issues to cover - like hair products or grapefruits, for instanceThat said you wondered why Seven Sharp even bothered to cover the meeting because it clearly wasn't interested.
Right from the off, Mike Hosking announced that Seven Sharp was 'reluctantly' covering the 'Moment Of Truth' - even the simpering co host Toni Street visibly squirmed at this point.
Hosking then suggested that the whole issue was not one of mass surveillance but one of 'mass manipulation'.
That's right. If you were one of the fifteen hundred or so people who packed the Auckland Town Hall or one of the many hundreds who could not get in, or one of the thousands who watched it on the Internet, Mike Hosking says you were all 'manipulated', presumably by the dastardly Kim Dotcom.
As well as being grossly insulting, Hosking's hypocrisy reached new heights. This is a man who works for a radio station, Newstalk ZB, which has promoted and defended the Key government for the past six years. This is a man who works for a station that railed against the 'nanny state' of the Helen Clark government but now is apparently entirely relaxed about the state intruding into the private lives of all of us, via the methods that Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden have outlined.
And, of course, this is the man who has consistently backed Cameron Slater who has sought to manipulate the New Zealand political process in the notorious ways that Nicky Hager has outlined in Dirty Politics.
If Mike Hosking wasn't bad enough, Seven Sharp sent Heather du Plessis-Allan to provide live coverage of the event. This is the woman who did the now infamous PR puff piece on Cameron Slater.
Echoing the Prime Minister, she described the timing of the 'Moment of Truth' as 'cynical' . Apparently having a political meeting during an election campaign is to be frowned upon. Especially if it might cause difficulties for the Prime Minister.
She could of said, that in an age when politicians avoid the scrutiny of public meetings like the plague, this was a return to better days. She could of mentioned that this was, by far, the biggest political meeting of the election . But she chose to say that the timing of the meeting was 'cynical'. She has clearly been taking lessons from her partner Barry Soper - who works for Newstalk ZB.
Her astounding powers of political analysis led her to conclude that the vociferous clapping and cheering indicated that it was a 'left' crowd. An alternative interpretation is that it was the reaction of a large crowd of New Zealanders who are concerned about what is happening to their country and are glad that they have people like Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden fighting their corner. They certainly can't expect New Zealand's media cabal to do that.
But the agenda of Heather du Plessis-Allan was clear. She wanted to pigeonhole this as a meeting of a bunch of lefties, somehow removed the concerns of everyone else. At this point I heard the voice of another National Party Prime Minister, Rob Muldoon, shouting at a heckler, 'You're not a proper New Zealander!'
Meanwhile Hosking claimed he had read Edward Snowden's article and basically said there was nothing in it. This is also what he said about Dirty Politics. Hosking is now so ideologically blinkered and so determined to defend the Key government at all cost that he is no longer a member of the fourth estate but a de facto member of the Prime Minister's office.
Fair enough. I could have done better.
ReplyDelete