Just wondering

Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, November 29th, 2008 - 8 comments
Categories: Media, national/act government - Tags:

“National’s honeymoon has to run its course. The public – not Labour or the media – will decide when that honeymoon is over” writes John Armstrong.

I’m just wondering: how does the public gather information on what the Government is up to, to decide if it wants the honeymoon to continue? And, how do we, the public, collectively decide and communicate that the honeymoon is over?

I’m guessing there is some kind of medium, or even media, via which information on what the Government is up to is communicated to us and public opinion is communicated or, rather, created. One would think that it is the people who operate and inform these media who, having the power to decide how they represent both the Government’s actions and the public’s response, actually decide whether or not there is a honeymoon and whether or not it is over.

Could one argue that by pretending the media is a mere conveyor of information, not a shaper of that information, Armstrong is attempting to excuse the failure of the fourth estate to fulfill its duty to ask the hard questions of those with power? I’m just wondering.

8 comments on “Just wondering ”

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  1. Ianmac 1
    29 November 2008 at 11:50 am

    Read Herald/Bill comments re “Stem tide to Australia” but none the wiser really. Just repetition of the Election slogans. You are right. How can I tell?

  2. Rex Widerstrom 2
    29 November 2008 at 2:41 pm

    Tsk tsk. A reporter of his experience should really have a better grasp of some fundamental logic traps before putting finger to keyboard.

  3. Daveski 3
    29 November 2008 at 8:49 pm

    I’m just wondering if the previous Labour government tried to perpetuate the honeymoon through employing vast number of spin doctors. But as they would only be telling the truth, that would be all right wouldn’t it?

    I think people’s experience in daily life is much more important than the media – forgetting the intelligentsia and tragics who populate these types of places.

  4. lprent 4
    29 November 2008 at 9:08 pm

    Daveski: Such an emotive and fundamentally stupid term “spin-doctors”. Also largely used inaccurately.

    In case you had not noticed, there is a hell of a lot of the government available on the web these days. This is because that is what the public demands, especially in the under 40’s age group who grew up with computers and the net, but increasingly in the older age groups as well.

    As you dig around the various government websites, contemplate the effort required to maintain them and keep them up to date – been there done that – it is an enormous lot of work.

    As far as I can tell, this is what functional illiterates like the rightly dishonored McCully (who seems to be amongst the most vocal cheerleader for this foolishness) are describing as ‘spin-doctors’. At least when I read the definitions of what he classes as spin-doctors, he is lumping in all of the webmasters and people writing content for those sites.

    Of course that probably accounts for 90% of the increase in that category. I’d also predict that using the same definition, the number of ‘spin-doctors’ will continue to rise as fast as, if not faster under NACT. The demand is there from the people who don’t want to have to deal with paper, and want to google information about the vast range of things that the government services provide.

    So if you want to use the the term ‘spin-doctors’ and talk about numbers, perhaps you’d better define and prove the numbers about what you’re talking about. Otherwise I’ll consider that you’re talking crap. It is just another meaningless term in the hands of illiterate fools, which usually you aren’t.

  5. Rodel 5
    29 November 2008 at 10:24 pm

    Same old cliches!

    A plea to Editors, specifically Mr Armstrong’s boss. Any ‘journalist’ who still uses cliches like
    ‘ nanny state’
    ‘anti smacking bill’
    or ‘politically correct’
    is professionally lazy, and should be`replaced by someone who can write with freshness …. and is it too much to hope …for some depth in analytical thinking ?

  6. the sprout 6
    29 November 2008 at 10:49 pm

    very nicely put SP.

  7. r0b 7
    30 November 2008 at 1:17 am

    Test

    Edit…

    OK, works in Firefox.

    Lynn – in Safari 3.1.1 I can’t post a comment – if I try I just get a blank page with the message “Error: please type a comment.”

    [lprent: Sorry, forgot to press Post – there is a new post about it]

  8. Brett Dale 8
    30 November 2008 at 2:01 pm

    Key will be judge by his performance as leader and his results, and not by his associates like Aunty Helen was.