Monday 10 October 2011

a reluctant bring-back-bomber post

another hectic weekend. got some good exercise from campaign activities on saturday, attended a multi-cultural council event saturday evening, had a shama board meeting on sunday & then rushed off to a dinner in auckland at the langham hotel. and i managed to tidy my room - still haven't recovered from my teenage years in that regard (nor in any other regard really), and so have a major burst of tidying activity every couple of months.

like many others, i'm pretty annoyed at bomber bradbury being banned from the panel on radio nz, after he criticised the PM. not that i'm a particularly big fan of mr bradbury, and particularly not after his rather silly criticism of julie's post at the hand mirror, wherein she was analysing potential women's representation in parliament after the election and got unfairly targetted by the herald on sunday on the basis that she was a "labour wife".

but it's not only that. there have been a few pretty sexist posts up at tumeke, not necessarily done by mr bradbury but certainly not condemned by him either. in particular, i recall mr selwyn positing that journalism in nz had deteriorated because there are now more women journalists working for the MSM. pretty stupid call really, and really reinforcing the fact (as if it needed reinforcing - looking at you, mr trotter) that lefty men are often just as sexist as the righties.

so yeah. not much of a fan. but also really hating the shutting down of criticism of the PM. it's not like mr bradbury made any racist comments, used any offensive language, made any personal attacks on mr key's appearance or demographic characteristics, or even told any untruths. there's no basis that i can see for the ban, and if you want to listen for yourself, the standard has the audio here. the comments were pretty harsh, but i really can't understand how it breaches fairness and balance when mr bishop provided some balance straight after mr bradbury had spoken.

this kind of silencing is appalling. i'd have thought we'd be hearing a lot from the free speech advocates - you know the ones, who always tell people to harden up and/or get a sense of humour, to stop being so PC, to just switch stations if we don't like what we're hearing. where are all these people? where is their, in this case, very justified outrage at this attack on freedom of speech? i certainly haven't heard them, and i was certainly waiting for them to speak up in support of margaret mutu, but they were pretty silent then as well. actually no, they weren't silent, they were mostly calling for her to be fired and complaining about how very racist she was.

for those of you who are actually outraged at this incident, the email address for complaints to radio nz is rnz@radionz.co.nz. there are more contact details here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

and vise versa.

stargazer said...

funny how that bothers me not one little bit. and certainly not enough to go leave a comment about it on mr bradbury's blog!