LUXON, SACK TVNZ AND RNZ BOARDS NOW

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John Campbell's leftist sympathies are neither here nor there. He has a right to them. But he has no right to vent them on TVNZ's website. As Chief Correspondent for a taxpayer-owned broadcaster he should come across as neutral.

The same goes for Jessica Mutch-McKay. Thank God, MSM's Head Mistress will no longer fix the hapless viewer with that basilisk stare. She's gone to fresh fields - to "Aotearoa's oldest bank" to quote ANZ's website, as PR (er, where's 'Aotearoa'?). What price her obvious support for the Left now, as she earns big money ensuring that much bigger monies flow into the vaults of New Zealand's biggest bank? 

Then there's Newshub's story about a kid being found at Prime Minister Luxon's Waiheke Island home on New Year's Day, early. All right, it's the silly season but what's this beat-up really about? The value of the PM's property, it seems. 

Property records show the Prime Minister and his wife Amanda own the multi-million-dollar holiday home, situated across the road from Onetangi Beach on the north side of Waiheke Island. 

Homes.co.nz currently values the house at $6.59 million. https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/01/teenager-allegedly-found-by-police-at-christopher-luxon-s-waiheke-island-holiday-home-in-early-hours-of-new-year-s-day.html?fbclid=IwAR3WFVzpozf315Et-1NRuisuNNAdo2Q0WZtHcBfJbSRhtd_CNWKAtq8YRrsix /- 

 Come on. What's the value of the PM's home got to do with the price of fish?New Zealand, in the wake of the Ardern Government's 'Titanic' is floundering. In a desperate attempt to keep the country from going down, this nation elected a new coalition but Campbell, Mutch-McKay and Newshub (starring Jenna Lynch) have been doing their darnedest to sabotage the operation.

Karl du Fresne has a thing or two to say about it.

(It should be remembered that Campbell- obviously a 'lovely man' - is typical of journalists, in that he lacks faith in God. 

"Stuff I've seen in this job has left a deep sadness in me. I often find myself being devastated in a way. I don't believe in karma, too many bad things happen to good people."https://www.nowtolove.co.nz/lifestyle/career/john-campbell-return-to-tv-39827

That is typical of non-Christians in the media - and the absence of Christians, especially Catholics, from the MSM broadly speaking is yet another confirmation of the awful deterioration, humanly speaking, in the Church since the '60s and that momentous event in modern history, the Second Vatican Council. 

It's actually so awful, no decent person (like Campbell for instance) would want to admit to Christian or Catholic beliefs unless possessed of that true faith which is Christlike, which welcomes persecution.

So, over to Karl du Fresne.

As a believer in free speech, I would never question John Campbell’s right to unburden himself of a long, whiny lament about where New Zealand is going under the new government.

I do object, however, when it’s published on the website of a taxpayer-owned broadcaster, TVNZ, which has an ethical obligation to observe editorial balance and political neutrality.

If you wanted proof that brazenly activist journalism is not only accepted but encouraged, even by state-owned media, there it is, right there. Clearly, TVNZ is untroubled by the fact that the man it calls its Chief Correspondent adopts an unashamedly political posture and sets himself up as an outspoken adversary of a democratically elected government.  It’s a measure of his ego that he can take such a provocatively defiant stance and expect to get away with it.

And it’s not as if this was the first such column. In an epic display of dummy-spitting, Campbell has grizzled repeatedly about the election outcome – here, here and here. I’m surprised he hasn’t demanded we vote again and keep doing it until we get the right result.

That he doesn’t like the new government is not so much the issue here. That’s his right as a citizen. What’s offensive is that he misuses his position as a high-profile journalist – one who has spent a large part of his career in the state-owned broadcasting system, with all the power and privilege that confers – by petulantly and very publicly railing against a government that his fellow New Zealanders voted for. The Labour Party may be beaten and demoralised, but that’s okay because Campbell has set himself up as the de facto Opposition.

It possibly doesn’t occur to Campbell – nor to TVNZ, obviously – that his political partisanship seriously compromises his journalistic credibility among the many New Zealanders who voted Labour out and welcomed the policy U-turns that he finds so egregious. What chance do New Zealanders have of hearing politically neutral comment from the state-owned TV network’s Chief Correspondent? What chance of a straight, unbiased account of any contentious issue about which Campbell holds strong opinions? The answer, it seems, is zero. That being the case, shouldn’t it matter to TVNZ that viewers who object to Campbell’s posturing are likely to switch off or turn away whenever his face comes on screen?

 

What chance of neutral reportage from Mutch-McKay, married to Ardern's bodyguard? 

 

Nearly three months on from the election, Campbell still appears unable to accept that the country voted emphatically for change. I suspect that like many journalists, six ecstatic years under Labour misled him into thinking that a radical left-wing government was now the natural order of things. He exemplifies the elitist metropolitan commentariat which, for those six years, so dominated media discourse that dissenting opinion was all but smothered. 

Nowhere in his anguished lamentation does Campbell acknowledge that the government he objects to was legitimately elected by ordinary people exercising their one chance in every three years to influence public policy. Perhaps he avoided mentioning this because he’s too polite to come right out and say his fellow New Zealanders are thickos, racists and reactionaries, although the implication is clear enough.

The falsity of his carefully crafted image as a Man of the People has thus been laid bare. He displays nothing but contempt for the government and, by extension, for the people who elected it. He has made a career out of oozing empathy, but his goodwill toward his fellow New Zealanders stops short of accepting their right to vote for a government he doesn’t approve of.

 

Maybe the mask was empathy but it makes him look like a muppet

 

Having said all that, let’s give Campbell his due. He writes very well, albeit a bit too emotively. He is achingly sincere. You can feel his pain. I think he genuinely cares about his fellow New Zealanders. The thing is, so too, no doubt, do Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and – who knows? – perhaps even Winston Peters. That presumably is why they entered politics.

One must never pretend to know another's motivations but with all the good will in the world one might well suspect that Luxon, Seymour and Peters have other, slightly less creditable, reasons for being in politics. And from the evidence of Luxon's and Seymour's votes recorded in favour of abortion (without anaesthetic!) and euthanasia, it's certain that they don't genuinely care about fellow New Zealanders in the womb of their mothers, or the elderly and infirm shut away in 'homes' at the mercy of uncaring 'carers' or greedy rellies.

The mistake Campbell makes, as is frequently the case with the sanctimonious Left, is that he thinks he has a monopoly on virtue and compassion.

The Left are generally all in favour of murdering infants in the womb and anyone else the world no longer has use for. That is not virtue, it's vice which utterly excludes true compassion - which is not a matter of warm fuzzies but of reason, based on the Decalogue, the Gospel and the teaching of the Catholic Church.    

On a broader note, the government has a problem. It owns two powerful media organisations, TVNZ and RNZ, that are essentially hostile to it and will function as centres of resistance to its policies. Democratically speaking, this is intolerable. The obvious solution is for the government to send a signal by sacking the TVNZ and RNZ boards, but the question then becomes: would it replace them with strong, competent, independent directors, or would it succumb to the temptation to install political toadies? I wish I could be confident of the answer.

To finish on a personal note, I hesitated for a long time before writing this because my wife and I were good friends of John Campbell’s parents. They are (or were, in the case of his late father) lovely people. The two degrees of separation that characterises New Zealand society sometimes makes things awkward, but there it is.

 

St Titus, Jan 4 (etching, Jacques Callot) 

St Titus, Disciple and Companion of St Paul, pray for us