Monday 3 July 2006

Darnton v Clark on the media

The good news is that Bernard Darnon did get some media coverage for the news that he's taking the Prime Minister to court.

The bad news is that the coverage has been so sparse, and so grudging. Most media outlets would just rather not report this. TV3 for example, who were offered an exclusive on Thursday night, went with the the other news of the day instead -- which included the goings on in Gaza -- and left Campbell to fill his programme with the astonishing news of how to run your car on raw sewage. Clearly far more important than news that the PM is being taken to court to justify half-a-million dollars of election overspending with misappropriated money.

Radio New Zealand was one of the few organisations to buck the trend by actually interviewing Bernard, but the bad news here is that the interview was with what seemed a bunch of morons and retarded clowns, and his co-interviewee Stephen Franks was given more time to speak than Bernard. (You can listen to this interview online here; it begins about six minutes in.)

Reaction around the blogosphere has been relatively good -- and donations from bloggers have been welcomingly high, for which I know Bernard is very grateful. But here too there have been some odd omissions: people who on the face of it you might have thought should be favourably disposed to such a case who have yet to declare any interest. I guess, once again, it's time to check one's premises.

UPDATE: Barry Soper told Larry Willams on Newstalk ZB this evening that the question of Mr Darnton's legal action against her was put to Helen at today's post-cabinet press conference, to which her response was "rather snippy." "She was refusing to be drawn on that," said Soper, saying "that's a matter for her lawyers to handle." Audio here of Soper's comments.

LINKS: Bernard Darnton interviewed by 'The Panel' - Radio NZ
Darnton Vs Clark - supporters' website

TAGS: Darnton v Clark, Politics-NZ, Politics-ACT

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I watched TV3 last Thurs, too.

It didn't quite get to Barney the ski-ing budgie, but Campbell's mid-news promo that his following programme was on the not-to-be-missed topics of happiness and sewerage gave a strong pointer that he didn't give a crap. :)

(Nicole Kidman's wedding to wotshisname, slavishly covered second-by-second the previous wknd, was obviously far more newsworthy).

However! When this goes to court, this early ignorance/apathy (gutlessness I suspect) is something Bernard must remember to broadcast loudly.

Use it - and let's make the bastards look even more stupid than they are.

Vengeful? Moi?!

Anonymous said...

I used to watch Campbell Live on TV3, but his show is becoming a joke, so I have switched back to TV1 Close-Up. The stories in Campbell Live are sort of borderline between non-sense and ridiculous. There was a coverage of a former stock-broker (brother of All Black Brian Lochore) about his so-called , breaking of the 'Davinci Code' using Fibonacci Numbers. TV3 interviewed this publicity seeker about his thouhgts about the market dynamics and he said, that he is designing a revolutionary trading strategy using Fibonacci Numbers of how to predict the market. This is utterly rubbish item to be included in a current affair program such as Campbell Live. There was no economist (academic or practitioner) interviewed for his/her view on Fibonacci in its applications to economics. This means, that if such claim by publicity seeker such as Mr. Lochore are allowed to be aired on national TV without challenge either by academics or practitioners then the program is non-sense to be screened. I tried to search for 'Fibonacci' in an online database repository for research papers in economics that I frequently browsed named "RePEc" and no single citation of Fibonacci in any paper. Fibonacci is used in computer graphics softwares but I doubt that it has been adopted in econometric modeling.

http://repec.org/

Not giving weight to Bernards interview by TV3, shows that they deserved the declining of their number of viewers. I hope that viewers that they (TV3) have gained from TV1, would actually abandoned TV3 and go back to Susan Woods close-up program.

Anonymous said...

Frankly, anyone who watches TV1,2 or 3 deserves what they get.

andrewfalloon said...

I'm sure most people can guess where my opinions lie in this case. The reason I haven't commented on it is that I have not looked into the case particularly indepth. I will now do so :)

Go Bernard!!

Peter Cresswell said...

Onya, Andrew.