Granny Herald opening eyes?

Written By: - Date published: 11:43 am, October 25th, 2010 - 10 comments
Categories: labour, newspapers - Tags: ,

There was an excellent piece in the Saturday Herald by John Armstrong.  A large 2-page spread, fairly prominent in the paper, and not critical of Labour.  Not fulsome praise; just great, unbiased reporting.

Now admittedly I shouldn’t get excited by such things, but the steadily slipping standards of New Zealand’s papers, combined with a media love-in with National at the last election (all singing from the same hymn-sheet: “Time for Change”, without any analysis of change to what…), leaves good quality newspaper  journalism a sight to behold.

The New Zealand Herald has always been a conservative paper, but has shown a surprising bent of occasional even-handedness of late.  On the whole the editorials are usually still best skipped, even if there is obviously one nameless editorial writer who isn’t indoctrinated; but elsewhere in the paper there have been signs that all is not wedded bliss with National.

It started with National’s Schedule 4 Mining fiasco, that the Herald belatedly “championed” the opposition to.  And maybe they got a little taste of independence.

Not championing Banks in the mayoral race may have been just sensible self-interest in not backing a loser, but also the sweeping victory of Brown may have awakened the Herald to the fact that maybe Auckland isn’t as right-wing as they are.

So the Herald has given the Labour conference a very even-handed coverage.  And has started a new campaign against a National Policy – this time on drink-driving.

I don’t think we should ever expect the Herald to be anything but conservative, but it is nice to see her sometimes thinking again.

(It’s not become all quality though: don’t get me started on the large article about the unscientific poll of a small non-random sample of their readers allowing them to conclude that the public support the PPTA’s wage/condition claims, but not their strike action – that may or may not be true, but that poll doesn’t allow you to conclude anything)

10 comments on “Granny Herald opening eyes? ”

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  1. M 1
    25 October 2010 at 12:47 pm

    Crikey, The Herald must have had a religious experience. For some of the editorial staff this must be approaching blasphemy.

    Good though, that the left in this instance is getting a fair shot.

  2. George.com 2
    25 October 2010 at 9:35 pm

    It is interesting to see Armstrong noted options for Labour to amalgamate the electricity SOEs and extend the role of Kiwi Bank. I will look forward to seeing that as party policy. The Clark govt made changes to social policy but left the neo-liberal market in charge of economic policy. Breaking that mould under the next Labour govt will be a significant step forward to remaking a new consensus following the 2008 economic crash.

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