Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Reading Material | Oct 17, 2007 14:18

I'm probably en route from Wellington (for the New Zealand Open Source Awards) to Auckland (for the New Zealand Music Awards) as you read this, but I've left you some reading material.

Firstly, there's my Listener column on the pathetic behaviour of some New Zealanders on Wikipedia after the All Black loss in the World Cup.

But mostly, NZ On Air has posted We're All in This Together: Public Broadcasting in the Digital Age, a discussion paper I wrote with the assistance of Andrew Dubber. It's big -- 17,000 words in a 235KB PDF -- and it took a long time to finish, but I'm quite pleased with it.

As part of the research (and the deliverables), you may recall that I ran a survey to gather ideas about the future of public broadcasting. More than 800 people, from Scoop and Thing, but mostly from Public Address, participated, and there are some great comments on it. Just click the "view" button to read them.

You can find the survey results here.

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Copyright Abuse | Oct 17, 2007 10:30

The Standard seems to have really got under the skin of John Key's office -- so much so that it received a nastygram from Key's office, in the form of an email from Key's "web editor" Francis Till declaring: "You are displaying, without permission, a modified picture of John Key on your blog and in your petition drive. Please remove it."

The Standard is now wondering whether and from whom National got permission to use Helen Clark's picture on all those billboards, but that's not really the point. People on the public payroll should not use copyright to try and quell speech.

Meanwhle, the Exclusive Brethren just can't stay out of the news. It has been revealed that -- surprise! -- the Brethren lied about the source of funds for its massive pro-John Howard advertising campaign during the last election.

As it always does, the church leadership has insisted that the campaign was funded by private businesspeople. But ABC's Four Corners showed that the Brethren's parliamentary lobbyist paid $340,000 into the bank account of the front company, Willmac Enterprises. And the donations weren't declared. The church has responded by claiming, as usual, that " "being persecuted because of its beliefs".

A former Australian Family Court chief justice has accused the Brethren of "abusing" children by denying them access to their parents. And name suppression has been lifted in the Nelson sexual abuse case.

On a lighter note, Robyn has posted the clip of Charlie Brooker's excellent guide to TV news.

I've been meaning to mention last week's trip to Wellington, which kicked off with a night out with the Mint Chicks on Thursday night, who were very loud but awesome. I saw Roger Shepherd there, and he pointed out that they really were quite an extreme band to be attracting all those teenage girly fans.

The next morning I was up early for a Parliamentary breakfast to open to the Association of Community and Access Broadcasters conference, and -- pausing only to do half an hour's autism lobbying at the Beehive, an opportunity for which I was very grateful -- proceeded on to give a presentation at the conference itself. I talked about social media and how important the internet is to the boom in community radio in the US, and people seemed to enjoy it. The delegates were, without exception, delightful, so if I was of service to them I'm pleased.

I needed to zone out a bit after that, so I popped over to the City Gallery, where there's currently a wonderful McCahon triptych dedicated to Rua Kenana. If you haven't seen it, go and stand in front of it for a while. Thereafter, my darling arrived and after spending Friday night with friends, we drive up the coast to see my mum, coming back via the Dowse to view the Philip Treacy hats (I was bored, but, then, I am a boy …). Then my darling and I checked into our hotel (on our own! Woot!) and had dinner then a show; the show being the Joe Strummer documentary, The Future is Unwritten, which I loved. Yay.

Anyway … what if the editor of the Herald on Sunday was preparing to move on, and what if his prospective replacement was rumoured to be … Robyn Langwell?

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Te Qaeda and the God Squad | Oct 16, 2007 11:02

The Dominion Post today covers yesterday's police raids in part by harking back 30 years, to the Full Gospel Mission -- better known as the "God Squad" -- the millenarian religious sect whose apparent stockpiling of weapons at a compound in Waipara was a huge news story in 1977. It's a story with lessons for all sides of our new controversy.

Some members of the sect served at Christchurch's Wigram Air Force Base, and tensions about their connections to the Full Gospel Mission developed through the early 1970s. In May and June of 1977, police and military personnel searched the Mission's Waipara property -- using a warrant that contained the phrase "subversive conspiracy" -- and houses owned by sect members in the Hutt Valley.

But the story didn't break until two sect members driving north were stopped by armed police in Blenheim, and their car searched for explosives. The next day Truth broke the story on its front page, under the headline 'Odd Sect Gun Raid'.

Truth wrote of "a web of intrigue" at a "fortress-like structure" and hinted in a separate story that the sect had been recruiting "airmen skilled in communications". Rumours of a "nuclear pit" at the compound (actually a swimming pool) were quoted as fact. The report set the tone for an orgy of press coverage that should give pause to anyone who complains about today's media. The Press, The Dominion and the Evening Post went wild with words like "sinister", "brainwashed", and "bizarre".

The Herald this morning has a photo of a man it describes as a "paramilitary freedom fighter" fleeing from police. Much as I am inclined to, as The Chills put it once, never trust a man in camouflage gear, that seems a pretty adventurous caption. And the Dom Post's lead slaps a headline, Napalm bombs found in anti-terror swoop, on a story that doesn't exactly seem to say that.

Yesterday, various media organisations also ran with anonymously-sourced claims that the police raids were sparked by a threat against the life of the Prime Minister, even though Police Commissioner Howard Broad carefully said there was no imminent target.

The authorities in 1977 were not so measured in their utterances. Two days after the Truth story, the SIS director Paul Molyneux was reported as saying his organisation was "working with the police to establish if the activities of the sect involved terrorist or subversive aspects". Molyneux went on to publicly dismiss the claim of a set member that the weapons seized in police searches were part of an antique collection: "They may say that it was a private collection, but I am not naïve enough to think that is so," he blustered.

Several folk of North Canterbury saw fit to erect an effigy of a figure on gallows at the gate of the Mission property, and to let loose shotgun blasts in the area.

It was more than a month before a magistrate found that the weapons were legally obtained and possessed, and the story gradually faded -- until another series of searches for weapons in 1987. The Mission fell apart after its messianic leader, Douglas Metcalf (who turned out to have been having his way with the womenfolk) died in 1989.

But, as the Dom Post's story this morning points out:

[O]ne former member of the Full Gospel Mission, John Turton, who later became a Presbyterian minister at Reporoa, said the sect members marched as a military group "basically preparing for what I consider was anarchy".

Police raids on the camp and members' homes throughout New Zealand in 1977 blunted its military capacity. Firearms and ammunition were confiscated and charges were laid against several sect members, including some against Dr Metcalf that were later dismissed.

Mr Turton later said the police action prevented a siege in the style of the shootout in Waco, Texas, where a 51-day stand-off between a religious cult led by David Koresh led to the death of Koresh and 85 of his Branch Davidian followers.

Police raided Camp David again in 1987, but – without the powers conferred by the Terrorism Suppression Act, which only came into force in 2002 – a glitch with the search warrant gave cult members 48 hours to bury their arms along the highway between Waipara and Murchison and in forests, said Mr Turton.

So perhaps the God Squad wasn't entirely benign.

Various people were quick yesterday to bemoan the crushing of their civil rights, to (for goodness sake) compare the raids to activities at Guantanamo Bay and, even in the sane and sensible Public Address forums, allege sweeping state conspiracies without a shred of evidence.

There is also a remarkably widely-held belief that TV3's presence with a camera at the early morning entry to the Abel Smith Street house in Wellington is the fruit of a conspiracy between the police and the media. This not only has no basis in fact, it's completely fucking stupid.

I spoke to TV3's news chief Mark Jennings yesterday afternoon, who said that a cameraman working on Sunrise, saw the police on their way to exercise their warrant nearby, grabbed his camera and followed them, and got a couple of minutes of very useful footage, which TV3 posted as soon as it could, without even adding a commentary. If the dark forces of state control had really been looking to stage a media event, do you really think they'd pick the guy from Sunrise? And wouldn't they have invited along a reporter too?

My own view is that there clearly seems to be enough evidence to warrant some form of police intervention, and that the police have so far (with the exception of a farcical attempt to search without a warrant in Christchurch) played it by the book. The Herald has an interview with a woman who was subject to the recruiting entreaties of the balaclava-clad "freedom fighters" of Ruatoki -- she thought they were " out there and pretty mad" -- and a story (rather disappointing after last night's promotion on the paper's website) of how two local hunters stumbled on one of the camps. The two young men were threatened, retreated, and, as you would, informed the police, who were already investigating the "training camps".

This is the Trade Me feedback page for one of the men arrested, who traded as hunt4life. He bought a hell of a lot of stuff -- ammunition, combat gear, at least one semi-automatic rifle (of a type that could plausibly used for hunting) -- and sold very little. Whatever else might be discovered about hunt4life, his Trade Me rep was first-class.

I didn't see cyber-hori's feedback, but Scoop's photograph of the search warrant for the Wellington house suggests a similar haul.

Would these people really do what is alleged? I don't know, but this blog, which seems connected to some of those arrested, seems to countenance armed resistance in theory. On Indymedia, one looney (who also wanted to come to the New Year "freedom fighters" gathering that seems of interest to the police) is calling for an end to peaceful protest and to "rise and strike down those who have inflicted their pain into the Name of Freedom."

I suspect that most of the people scared witless by the police action yesterday are guilty of nothing more than an association with persons of interest. And I do not think we were facing sectarian warfare or anything of the kind. But it isn't out of the question that a handful of people might act on crazy ideas, as greenies and animal liberationists have before, in other places.

That remains to be seen, just as it remains to be seen that the invoking of the Suppression of Terrorism Act has been appropriate (there's a feeling in certain parts of the public sector that the scale of the operation was intended to demonstrate to our allies that we're not the weak link they link we are, but, again, that's just speculation). But I'm fairly sure that things have been going on that warrant the attention of the police at some level, and I'd feel the same way if those alleged to be involved were right-wing nutters.

Perhaps now would be a good time for everyone to chill out, and perhaps even have a giggle at this post from another forum:

one of the cyber-hori items was:

Army camo / camoflauge pants XXXXL

Fattest terrorist ever.

LOL …

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The standing-still sweep | Oct 15, 2007 07:46

As you digest all the easy copy about the Auckland mayoral race, it may be helpful to know this: John Banks has achieved his landslide win in the Auckland mayoralty election with almost exactly the same number of votes he attracted in his landslide loss three years ago: about 45,000.

In 2004, only three candidates attracted more than 1000 votes; eight did so this year. Five candidates polled more than 5000 votes; only three did so last time. On a rough calculation, Banks won with about 40% of the vote, and the support of less than 15% of Auckland's registered voters (He polled about 1500 votes fewer than he did to win his first term in 2001, and Hubbard won 3700 more votes than Christine Fletcher did that year.)

Dick Hubbard's failure to inspire has been reflected in the loss of about 27,000 votes; a consequence of the dispersal of non-Banks votes amongst a much wider field, but also of a return to Auckland's City's traditionally pathetic turnout.

It looks a bit like a test case for STV. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Banks wouldn't have won under a preferential voting system. But he did win, by standing still, under the system we've got.

I haven't done the numbers for the council vote (although any of you can feel free to do so for the rest of us), but it seems more clear-cut. City Vision can blame itself: infighting and conspicuous consumption never play well with the voters. But if there was a vision in the almost insanely negative campaigns run by many Citizen and Ratepayers slates, it was lost on me.

I'm pissed off that Richard Simpson has been dumped by the burghers of Hobson: he was one of relatively few councillors with real imagination, and without tedious tribal allegiances. In Western Bays, I'm disappointed for both Lindsay and Rea and Sally Wenley in a very even council race, and I'm very pleased that our hard-working community board has remained basically intact.

The Auckland Regional Council is quite interesting: the centre-left, and Mike Lee, remain in the ascendancy. Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief -- and expert lobbyist -- Michael Barnett comes as the top-polling Auckland City representative, and I'm quite pleased to see him there. That North Shore voters delivered Christine Rankin as their top-polling ARC candidate is a testament to the advantage of celebrity in municipal contests.

Although the words of Gil Scott Heron are tempting, it's three other words that fit: Auckland deserves better.

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Those Men Again | Oct 11, 2007 10:36

The Standard has a good scoop: the transcript of Nicky Hager's submission to the select committee considering the Electoral Finance Bill; well part of the submission anyway. It's a clearly-voiced perspective: Hager endorses the controversial limits on third-party campaigns and asks the committee to re-introduce restrictions on anonymous donations and trusts; a more urgent issue, he contends, than third-party campaigning.

There aren't many people who would disagree that the bill before the committee is a mess and and that the removal of measures relating to anonymous money was misguided. And, although Hager strongly disagrees, that its crackdown on independent advocacy in election years is too onerous.

(NB: Nicky has been in touch to point out that he covered this in the part of the submission that wasn't published: I began my written submission and oral submission agreeing with the criticisms of the parts of the EFB that restrict freedom of speech (of course!), saying I was sure they would be fixed and that therefore I would be trying to refocus attention on the other important issues".)

It seems certain to change more than most bills at committee stage.

Hager's submission contains some extra Hollow Men spice too. Most notably, he airs a suspicion he says he couldn't back up sufficiently to include it in the book: that National had a direct hand in the design of the Exclusive Brethren's controversial campaign material. I presume the original tape features the sound of the Labour members of the committee salivating.

There's been a bit of coverage of another select committee hearing: the one into the Misuse of Drugs (Classification of BZP) Amendment Bill. Over at Blogging It Real, dc_red slams Jacqui Dean and Idiot/Savant has posted the draft of his own submission on the bill.

Personally, I'd feel more comfortable with banning BZP if I could be confident in the process to approve any new Class D recreational drugs. BZP's place in the legal market is basically an accident, and I'm sure there are more benign (and more effective) substances that could fill the role.

There's some inadequate reporting on studies relevant to the new drug-driving legislation. A story that originally appeared in The Press is headlined More drugged than drunk fatal crash drivers - ESR is, bizarrely, missing the number that would justify the headline: the total number of dead drivers who had alcohol in their system -- which was the key feature of a similar police study last year.

And there are so many caveats on the announcement from the Christchurch longtitudinal study on alcohol versus cannabis in driving that it does more to obscure the issue of road safety than anything else. Meanwhile, the director of Waikato Hospital's ED says: "It is not common, alcohol is the far bigger problem for us … There are isolated cases, but even then it is hard to separate the mixture of drugs and alcohol."

I'm inclined to agree with Metiria Turei that the new bill's exclusive focus on illegal drugs doesn't make sense when the statistics show a significant number of drivers impaired by legal substances and specifically exempts prescription drugs. The focus, as she says, should be on impairment by whatever means, and not on a new way of enforcing the Misuse of Drugs Act. But National has weighed in behind the bill, so we'll get a law that doesn't do what it says on the label.

Suzanne Schokman's report from the Media Women in Asia seminar I mentioned recently is online at the Radio NZ site, as is Kim Hill's interview with Indian journalist Sagarika Ghose. Also, David Robie has a roundup of the seminar, and his AUT students have written their own stories. It's all good stuff.

And I'm a strong supporter of the modest performance right fee that APRA levies on businesses that use music, such as cafes and gyms -- but APRA's British equivalent appears to have jumped the shark by taking a car repair firm to court because its mechanics listen to radios that are audible to members of the public. Unless there's something I've missed about this, it seems silly and counterproductive.

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