EVER BEEN HAD? WE PAID $$$ FOR VAX SPIN; MINISTERS LIED TO US

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PM Stalinda Ardern's MsGovernment (so called because it's misgoverned by Ms Ardern) paid a PR spin doctor to tell us whoppers about rolling out the vax they said would save our lives.

Seriously ...

Pink-haired, pink-politicked Siouxsie Wiles was one of the 'independent' commentators snaffled by PR specialist Karl Ferguson of Arkus Communications to conceal the Government's bumbling over procurement of the vaccine at the cost - to us taxpayers - of $133,600. The propaganda was of a scale to take Ferguson four months' fulltime work.

The other 'independent' commentator was none other than Prof Michael Baker. Ferguson's triumph in snaring Wiles and Baker, guaranteeing them an instant ascent to fame via the gogglebox, was ascertained by documents released to The Herald under the Official Information Act.

Tu-whit, tu-woo ...

How unsurprising that it was the lefty academia who supplied Prime Minister Jasinister Ardern with such compliant 'experts', and that Wiles and Baker would so obviously revel in their day in the sun.

On the other hand, how surprising that the so-called Opposition's Judith Collins has finally found her voice, and pointed out that the Government started funding these expensive spin doctors three months before it bothered about funding anyone to negotiate for purchase of the vaccines.

“At a time when the public needed the truth about what was being done to manage the biggest public health issue facing New Zealand and the world, the Government was deceiving us all by using PR and spin to hide its failings,” said Collins.

“It misled experts and used them as pawns in cynical, manipulative and dangerous politicking designed to fool New Zealanders and cover up for the Government's ineptitude.

“Ministers were carefully scripted – told how to lie – about how vaccine procurement was going and to create the deceit that everything was going well.”

“The truth is, procurement wasn’t going well. Despite being told otherwise, New Zealand was in fact a long way behind our peers in the queue to get the vaccine.

“But with the 2020 election on the horizon, the Government couldn’t afford to have New Zealanders know the truth about its failures, so it carefully stage-managed a PR campaign funded by taxpayers to fool us.”

“Had the Government put half the effort into actually procuring the vaccine as they did on creating spin and lying to the public, we wouldn’t have had the slowest vaccine rollout in the developed world and more than a million Aucklanders wouldn’t be stuck in an ongoing and draconian lockdown.”

“Jacinda Ardern must take responsibility for this deceit. New Zealanders deserve an explanation and an apology.”https://chrislynchmedia.com/newsitems/Mediafavourable

Ardern should actually be arraigned for trial on a charge of treason. It's like Collins has waited and waited for the voter worm to turn on Ardern before daring to oppose her in any meaningful way. And it looks like the media might be following suit.

And - with no apologies for the pile-on - support for Labour and confidence in the MsGovernment has dropped to its lowest since Ardern's election in 2017. Support for the Labour/Greens' government is down 5% points to 50% in October. Support for the Labour Party dropped 6% points to 39.5%, according to a Roy Morgan Poll.

So what did she expect, after locking Auckland up throughout October? NZ may have been - was - stupid to re-elect her in 2020 (if in fact she was re-elected, that's debatable) but - even though a majority voted for MMP, and even though our streets are full of muppets in masks - at last it looks like the collective penny is dropping.

(We may note in passing that Ardern actually failed at her first attempt to enter Parliament. Waikato spurned her, but hello! she got in on Labour's party list. That's the way Communists infiltrate democratic parliaments; that's their M O.)

Support for the Greens was up 1% point to 10.5%.

Support for National, up by 3% points to 26%.

Act NZ was unchanged, a record high of 16% and support for the Maori Party unchanged at 2%.

https://chrislynchmedia.com/newsitems/labour-support-down-and-government-confidence-rating-drops-to-lowest-since-2017?

And - we're on a roll here - how about this from the BFD?

It always strikes me as a terrible indictment of the NZ media that, if you want to find unbiased reporting of the performance of our government, you have to look overseas to find it. I am sure there are other countries whose media pack do nothing but praise the government; in this, we have something in common with the People’s Republic of China, Russia and North Korea.

Actually, even the Chinese press is allowed some scrutiny of the government, although no doubt there is a fine line which they must not cross. But here, our government must be absolutely perfect, because they face no scrutiny whatsoever. I am not sure that this is something to be proud of.

Our journalists who do want to scrutinise the government tend to write for independent media, such as The BFD, or overseas publications. Some write for The Spectator Australia, and the quality of their opinions is very good. Sadly, the average New Zealand punter does not read The Spectator. Shame, because it is so much better than Fairfax’s excuse for a daily woman’s magazine, Stuff.

Amy Brooke of The Spectator identifies the problem in a nutshell.

“Trustworthy, insightful, important” — one thing we can say for our mainstream media is that they must think we are a pretty thick lot.

Well, we were thick enough to elect her. ("I always vote Labour!" )

The New Zealand Herald’s generous assessment of its own performance is paralleled by Stuff’s brag of “truthful, independent and trusted journalism”, and incredibly enough, also asking us to support “Independent NZ-owned journalism”.  Did they mean to say “Government-owned Journalism’? 

 Amy Brooke of The Spectator identifies the problem in a nutshell. Did they mean to say “Government-owned Journalism’? 

 Nothing is independent about Stuff – the media outlet that refuses to allow articles or comments about their own position on climate change. Nothing like being “insightful”, is there?

Both our main print media have bagged the trust claim. Perhaps many have been somewhat over-trusting, given how quickly the ambitious Jacinda Ardern was elevated to sainthood by so many media commentators. And then we have the consistent stories of her daughter, Neve, now three years old, as appealing as toddlers and little ones always are. So we get details of her birthdays, photos of her being carried around, even at official ceremonies;  of the cakes her father and mother self-deprecatingly show they have made for her… the presents given… and the promise now of her parents planning to get married in summer in  Jacinda’s partner’s home town. No doubt details of the bride’s dress will be available to hopeful female journalists in particular — probably, however, with fewer as enthusiastic as previously.

Of course they will. Jacinda always wheels out a soft story whenever she is receiving any form of scrutiny, but these days, she might have to try on 27 dresses to bat away the criticism of her government. She’ll do it though.

However, although our arguably now corrupt mainstream media outlets are signing up to follow the government line on the divisive agenda Ardern’s coalition is forcing upon the country, it is good to see the courage of some of our journalists beginning to challenge what is happening.  

Corrupt. Yes, it is a harsh word… but how else can you describe a media pack which, almost without exception, treats the prime minister and her government like messiahs? They just about lick her godawful boots. This is ‘independence’, is it?

It is utterly untruthful of our media outlets to claim to be “independent and trustworthy” when being basically bribed by the government. In a display of largesse for which we taxpayers are forking out, officially (mis)called the Public Interest Journalism Fund, we now have what should more appropriately be called the Government’s Self-Interest Journalism Fund.

Stuff itself, in the recent pay-outs by government, has received $300,000, with the requirement to produce a “cultural competence” course for journalists “to fundamentally shift representation in New Zealand media”.

Fundamentally shift it from right to left. 

The Spinoff, handed out $207,000, must agree to do a podcast series “to explore Maori issues”.  This is pretty small beer, given that Maori Television, NZME, Pacific Media Network, Newshub and eleven so-called support partners, awarded more than $2.4 million, are reportedly required to hire 25 Maori and Pacific cadets, some of whom are required to be “diverse”.

"DIverse." What's that? Could they possibly mean LGBTQYZ? 

Other news outlets are also to be paid by the government, as with the NZME, for producing a weekly bilingual section in the Rotorua Weekender… as long as it covers iwi (Maori neo-tribal) issues. Radio New Zealand, the biggest recipient, currently receives $48 million a year from taxpayers and gets an additional $806,000 for its podcast, The Detail.  As has been pointed out, not only all these handouts,  but the $3.5 million paid for the childish, misleading, and cartoonised television advertisements — misrepresenting the  “Three Waters” theft of the country’s water — has taxpayers funding their own indoctrination. 

And in the case of the potentially suicidal, funding their own demise. 

That’s the tragic part. We are paying for this propaganda, and there is nothing ‘independent’ about it.

 To use the word corruption is unchallengeable, when any government pays media outlets to propagandise the public — with the same outlets untruthfully claiming to be independent and trustworthy — while basically being bribed to follow a far-Left agenda. That this should happen in not (quite yet) a totalitarian régime, but in what was once thought of as a democracy, with a free press, is quite staggering.  

Absolutely.

Ardern’s government is blatantly taking over the media, an important part of any plan to destroy a democracy. It is more than shameful for those at the top of media management to be accepting these bribes, with the inevitable resulting pressure on all journalists to conform. It is to the great credit of those few who are increasingly reluctant to do so –- but who are now at risk of losing their livelihoods. 

The Spectator Australia

It troubles me enormously to think of how easily we have fallen down the rabbit hole of government control of the media, and no one in the mainstream media seems in any way inclined to stand against it. That they can support a government found to be wanting in so many important areas, just makes a complete mockery of what true journalism stands for.

But then again, I think we are clearly misquoting our beloved media. Surely The Herald means to say that it is – “Rustworthy, Inciteful and Impotent”. And Stuff? “Woeful, Dependent and Busted”.

There… fixed it for you.

https://thebfd.co.nz/2021/09/06/the-velvet-gloved-media/

No spin

And in case, like one muppet we spoke to today, you still believe the media, consider today's dutiful despatch from The Herald, below. New Zealand is living a bad dream, and only the media can wake us up. But they've been drugged, with the most potent of drugs: money. .

Auckland's hard border will stay in place over summer with only double vaxxed people allowed to escape the locked down city, according to the Prime Minister.

As Christmas and the much looked forward to summer holiday period is fast approaching, people around the country are wondering whether they will be able to reconnect after many months of restrictions.

Jacinda Ardern told ZM's Fletch, Vaughan and Meghan this morning that the Government was still working through the logistics of enabling Aucklanders to leave the city and visit friends and family for Christmas and over summer - but it would only apply to those who were double jabbed and had returned a negative Covid-19 test.https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-delta-outbreak-aucklands-border-to-remain-over-summer-may-only-open-to-the-double-vaccinated/2AWOPZT64DWP5VYXUTPTAA3QFU/?utm_campaign=nzh_tw&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=nzh_tw#Echobox=1635897713-1

New Zealand's Catholic Bishops must acknowledge their part in the play-out of this evil scenario - which is not yet quite a nightmare, but almost certain to become so. The silence of the Church of Nice and Kind, when confronted with Ardern's agenda of massacre of New Zealand's next generation, is tantamount to complicity.

All Catholics, and not just the bishops, should repent and make reparation by prayer and penance for our own apathy, and for not holding the hierarchy to account for their failure to resist Ardern's Abortion Law Act, smuggled through Parliament in the Trojan horse of Covid on the Vigil of the Annunciation, 2020.

 “What hast thou done? the voice of the blood of thy brother crieth to me from the earth: now, therefore shalt thou be cursed upon the earth” (Gen 4:10).

Cain slaying Abel (Peter Paul Rubens)

"Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide: the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come"(Deut 32:35).