🌏 Planet B Media 🐝

OPINION: Is success as a journalist now defined by their celebrity status? Does anyone still aim to find and accurately report a good story?

There are three branches of Governement: The executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary. They are independent of each other. Then there is the media which is referred to as the 4th Estate, ie the 4th “branch” of Governement, and as such is independent. At this opinion piece says, its the media’s role to independently report the news, not lead the news,make the news or be the news.

If the media lived by that founding rule, we would have had better, questioning, challenging, coverage of the election.

If NewsHub lived by this rule, they wouldn’t refer to the Governement as “our Government” in news broadcasts. It sounds too cosie, too cobberie, aligned and not independent.

Throughout Jacinda’s party political broadcasts during lockdown, and independent broadcaster in the guise of media would have presented a balanced programme. They would have challenged and questioned. They didn’t. The didn’t even allow any opposition. In the States recently, when Trump was talking rubbish, the networks cut him off. Our media wldn’t have the balls to do that.

I guess TV channels are there to entertain and win viewers. So Paddy Gower and Tova O’Brien do their opinion pieces every night and pretend to be telling us exactly as it is. They are simply performing. They, them, are the fake news.

And so we have TV personality of the year. They’re auto-cue readers. Their highly self opinionated. They believe their own press. Look at THREE’s The Project. Kanoa Lloyd: character assasinated Hannah Tamaki over her role in Dancing with the Stars. Jessie Mulligan campaigned for the Wealth Tax on that programme in the guise of some new accounting methodology to present a balance sheet. And they call themselves journalists. They’re not. They have no skin in the game. I’m sick of them mascerading as truth. They are the difference between a studio album and a live concert. They need to get out more, and reflect the real world.

TV personality of the year is solely about ratings. Marketing their channel. Dont get caught up in it.