News stories don’t just pre-exist somewhere out there, walking around intact and whole, waiting for an equal chance to step through the door of a media outlet and into the public arena.
They exist in tiny bits and pieces, among heaps of junk and distortions and agendas — and the bits are selected, assessed, ranked, and assembled, according to the rigour and professionalism, or the whim and worldview, of the journalists and outlets involved.
Barry Soper chose to construct a pretty ugly beast out of their scraps. The Herald chose to parade it. Then they stepped back and let everyone else feed it, until the whole thing became something big and real-seeming enough to cause genuine uncertainty and fear, and to prompt genuine attempts to do the proper journalistic work of understanding what this new health initiative is all about.
This article comes out as a butthurt whinge, to be bluntly honest.
Whether the reporting on this was fair is a matter of opinion, whether it was factually accurate isn’t. We saw our media absolutely bend over backwards to portray Marama Davidson’s actions in the best possible light, the author of this seems to have expected the same treatment by our media, and is shocked and appalled they didn’t get it.
Fuck em.
In this case the reporting was neither fair nor factually accurate.
In order to be factually accurate it has to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It didn’t do that. It presented a half truth and the racist public devoured it because it reinforced their “white replacement” persecution complex.
What half truth is that, hammer boy?
Besides, imagine how long every news article would be if they had to contextualise everything. At some point, you need to assume a certain amount of prior knowledge.
What half truth is that, hammer boy?
the claim that the policy was changed to hurt white people.
Besides, imagine how long every news article would be if they had to contextualise everything. At some point, you need to assume a certain amount of prior knowledge.
A certain amount.
This media. Where the author absolutely goes out of their way to paint Marama’s comment in the best possible light, with the kindest possible interpretation of her words, then goes on to write a pile of absolute drivel about colonialism, and how white women don’t go to refuges?
Also Once were Warriors gets mentioned a bizarre number of times.
Let’s be honest, Marama got much kinder treatment from the media than a white cis man would have gotten.
Let’s be honest, Marama got much kinder treatment from the media than a white cis man would have gotten.
White cis man are so persecuted aren’t they? We really should shape our society to make sure white cis men get more advantage. I don’t know how then can cope with so much oppression.
I don’t think there’s any dispute the herald reporting was factually accurate. The issue is that it was very heavily biased and was obviously designed to be inflammatory clickbait.
What a fantastic article. I knew as soon as I heard the news about this that it was ragebait bullshit, but so many didn’t. I have explained to people IRL what this policy is trying to do, how it does it, and how the article titles were misleading at best.
This kind of journalism has no place in NZ.
Nah, the reporting on this was factually accurate. The author seems to have expected our media to justify the course of action our health departments are taking, and was shocked and appalled when they didn’t.
In order to be factually accurate it would have to present all the facts. It didn’t.
While accurate (race is a factor), how it was framed, how it was presented, and how little additional information was given was intentionally done to promote outrage by misleading the entire situation. I do not think it was presented in a factually accurate way.
Race is one of many factors. It is an independently clinical factor, just like age, socioeconomic status, pre-existing conditions, and more. We don’t see any outrage about any of that, do we? To present it as it was in the initial media attention framed the entire situation in as negative a way as possible. They intentionally left out parts of the situation to make it seem worse than it was. If not intentional, than incompetent.
You can’t expect a news article to provide context and back story for everything, or every news article would be a novel in it’s own right.
Besides, our media frames and presents things in a certain light all the time, it’s just this time it wasn’t the angle they wanted them to take.
It included some accurate facts, and excluded a bunch of other facts that contextualised what was happening. Framing is important as it helps to influence how an article is read and what takeaways a reader has.
I’ve locked this. The article is great but the discussion happening in the comments does not seem to be of benefit to any participants.
