"One Ring to Ruke Them All" : the assault on journalism in NZ

The last suffocation of journalism – the media mega merger

Martyn Bradbury

theDaily Blog,

11 May, 2016

Government’s don’t like well informed electorates, it makes it very difficult to sneak things past voters who are aware of the issues than those who aren’t.

Currently we have a Government who have gleefully underfunded public broadcasting and allowed the free market to dilute the rest.

This failure of a free market will see a monopoly of newspapers in this country. People who buy monopolies fight to keep that monopoly and what ever political party that guarantees no regulation will get the support of this new media empire.

That’s one less voice to ask questions.

That’s one less voice to pay attention.

That’s one less voice to demand accountability.

That’s one powerful owner.

Combine this new monopoly with a strangled public broadcaster and a Prime Minister who has attacked critical media anytime it’s reared its head.

John Key’s crimes against Journalism

• Killing off Public Broadcasting TV by shutting down TVNZ7 and having Minister’s lie about how many people watched the station.
• Raiding newspapers and broadcasters to stop them publishing the tea pot tapes.
• Defaming investigative journalist Jon Stephenson who questioned if NZs SAS had committed war crimes in Afghanistan by handing civilians over to known torture units.
• Defaming investigative Journalist Nicky Hager by calling him a communist conspiracy theorist when Hager opened up the Dirty Politics black ops team working within Key’s office.
• Calling award winning Journalist Glenn Greenwald and whistle blowers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden ‘Henchmen’ when they revealed the truth of Key’s mass surveillance plans.
• Having all of Andrea Vance’s emails and phone records taken.
• Using far right hate speech merchant and Fascist Cameron Slater to smear public servants the Government didn’t like.
• Falsifying SIS information and working with the state spy service to smear Phil Goff in the media months before the 2011 election.

Well funded Public Broadcasting is a watch dog on democracy, an underfunded one becomes a lap dog to authority. There’s a reason those in power want to keep voters distracted and stupid.

This is a failure of the free market the same way the free market has failed housing in Auckland.