The NZ Herald has a long history of opposing Maori resistance to the theft of their lands and suppression of their culture. It began in 1863 with a policy to oppose Maori resistance to British occupation and colonisation. Yesterday the NZ Herald hardcopy used a white supremacist symbol to announce it wouldn’t be reporting on protests on Waitangi Day.
Among the Tweets criticising the NZ Herad‘s latest outrage, NRT linked to a page on papers past, showing the founding policy for the NZ Herald:
In 1863, William Chisholm Wilson, […] to start a rival daily, the New Zealand Herald. The new daily had a clear editorial policy – a more constructive relationship between the North and South Islands and a combative response to what it termed ‘the native rebellion’ – but Wilson’s main motivation was commercial, seeing a business opportunity as Auckland’s population grew rapidly.
Yesterday, the print edition had a front page image of a white fist announcing it was protest free, as shown on Twitter by An(i)archy. Dylan Horrocks improved on the image.
Yeterday, Morgan Godfery explained why protest is an important part of Waitangi Day. Today, Stuff (also a news site with right leaning tendencies), showed a better way to cover Waitangi Day, protests and all. It reported an the diverse positive activities that marked the Day. And it said this about the protests:
A hikoi that started in Cape Reinga with 70 people had grown to about 300 as it peacefully made its way through the grounds.The hikoi was promoting the need to protect the environment and Maori’s special relationship with it.
A Christchurch couple were impressed by the hikoi’s approach and message.
Gaynor Duff and Terry Reid are on a North Island road trip, and timed their visit to Waitangi to coincide with the national day.
“People were protesting but in a dignified manner.
“If Maori can’t have a voice here where can they,” Duff said.
“It’s a special place to be today,” said Reid.
The right wing editorial position of the NZ Herald has been well known throughout its history. Back to the Papers Past article linked above:
For decades the New Zealand Herald changed little in its appearance and sober, right-of-centre editorial stance…
Today The NZ Herald continues with its right wing editorial stance, in support of the Key government’s asset sale programme, ‘Editorial: Good reasons for the Govt to push on with Genesis float‘.
The editorial takes a tip from John Key’s MO, in putting forward a very slippery line. It promotes the asset sales failure to achieve the government’s stated goals as a positive thing:
In purely financial terms another float makes no sense. Unfortunately those are the terms the Government has mainly used to justify the unpopular programme. It has also cited benefits for the sharemarket in what were supposedly gilt-edged offerings. The weakness of the stocks are undermining that argument too. The Government is left now with no choice but to explain the real reason for the asset sales all along: economic efficiency.
So Key and his ministers lied! Why didn’t the government explain the “real reason” from the beginning, rather than lying about their reasons? Laughably, the editorial says that if the real reasons were generally understood the asset sales would not be so unpopular. Well, is that not an admission that the government has failed with this policy?!
If all it took to be popular was to explain the real reasons, why didn’t the government do it? Oh, but maybe that would make their budget pronouncements of the financial benefits look weak.
It then uses the old (dodgy) free market line that all business competition is good, especially if it has a “level playing field” as its basis – as if such playing fields are ever really that level. They are skewed towards the profits of the most powerful.
The editorial then goes on to slam the Labour and Green parties for hindering this (allegedly) “noble” process. And then tries to argue that profit making by businesses contributes to a more efficient economy.
However, as in Mike Smith’s latest post on The Standard, Geoff Bertram has produced evidence that the competition introduced by the deregulation of the electric power sector has resulted in increased power prices for the consumer. Rather than attack the evidence, Bertram has been personally slammed by the spokesperson for the Government’s Electricity Authority
Meanwhile, the sophistry and dodgy reasoning of the Electricity Authority’s latest report has been exposed in this analysis: aiming to justify the huge price rises and discredit the Labour-Green single- buyer policy.
It’s good that there are other sources to counter the NZ Herald‘s right wing spin. And the Herald’s primary goal remains the same as in the 1860s – to be a commercial enterprise. In spite of its great claims about economic efficiencies, the Herald does not even operate within the kind of competitive market it argues for: it is THE major daily paper with a wide circulation, in a MSM playing field that is dominated by right wing corporate-supporting media.
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