Archive for the ‘Media issues’ Category
Busted 2: Sinclair Broadcasting demonstrates what’s “extremely dangerous to our democracy”
How craven is this? (Very.) Highlighted by (among others) Deadspin in ‘How America’s Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers In Trump’s War On The Media‘ Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be […]
Poor @ProtonMail – smeared by its dodgy users
A side issue raised by the Cambridge Analytica exposé is the revelation that the subterranean dirty political operators use a feature of end-to-end encrypted email service ProtonMail – expiring messages (sometimes called ‘self-destructing’ messages, no doubt in homage to TV show Mission: Impossible and its classic line, “This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds.”) Cambridge […]
Soo busted. Cambridge Analytica’s extensive dirty tricks shopping list exposed
Good god. This is devastating. And, at another level, deeply ironic. Watch below. 19 minutes of your time well-spent. And to think we used to regard Crosby Textor as ratbags, huh? Just goes to show. This exposé also puts into context our local wannabe political activists highlighted in Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics — remember […]
Making a pig of it. Jordan Williams has been tardy with his financial reporting obligations
It appears the PR attack machine operated by New Zealand’s most defamed man Jordan Williams (the value of whose reputation has been under review) and his ‘co-founder’, long time National Party political activist David Farrar, has been delinquent in its financial reporting obligations since the end of January this year. The ‘NZ Taxpayers Union Inc’ incorporated society […]
Jordan Williams and Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance – Putting the ass back into astroturf
Follow this twisted tale … start with Peter WM … I did a quick Google image search on one of the "People like you" from the rate payer association's website. He lives in the USA. I contacted him and he's never heard of the association, let alone been a member. pic.twitter.com/bLO22VdzJE — Peter WM (@pwmxx) […]
Tintin in The Matrix – cool
Wouldn’t this be cool?! h/t to @becs and @CamilleStein
John Key’s flying pig falls to earth
David Fisher took literally years to shed even a little light on how Teflon John Key misled New Zealanders about a mass surveillance system on our internet his government was commissioning for the Americans. The whole very carefully, diplomatically written article is worth reading: John Key, mass surveillance and what really happened when Edward Snowden […]
Murky PR update: ‘The Bloggers Club’
Alex Casey at The Spinoff had some emails leaked to her which revealed a behind-the-scenes attempt at opinion manipulation via news media. See ‘Mum’s the word’: The online influencers secretly paid to go on 1News Two prominent online “influencers” appeared in a 1News story about Kmart without having disclosed payments from a PR company acting […]
Facebook is not the devil
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I have been terribly troubled by Facebook’s ‘surveillance economy’ model: the way it tracks and analyses its users’ social graph and extrapolates a map of their ‘interests’ and demographic information before delivering them (the users) and their privacy up like lambs to the slaughter on the altar of commerce and, […]
Facebook is holding ‘your’ readers captive
A little while ago I helped a mate extinguish his Facebook profile. He’d had enough of it. In my own case, I run a very limited profile there and often wince when people (‘friends’) post material which refers to me. I see that as adding data points to the humungous conglomerated information that the rapacious […]
Is undisclosed, paid PR the new normal in politics?
It’ll be no surprise to readers of ThePaepae.com that I despise behind-the-scenes, subterfuge public relations and opinion shifting efforts, especially if they’re funded in a non-transparent way. By coincidence, if you examine the tags dirty PR and dirty politics on this blog, the same cast of characters keeps on appearing. Over time that can make me […]
Carrick Graham and Slater Jnr’s PR attack blog smear campaign inches towards court – with Katherine Rich attached
I mentioned in an earlier post, Most Defamed Man Ever Jordan Williams to appeal ruling, that NZ Food and Grocery Council Inc lobby group head, former National Party MP and bright young hopeful Katherine Rich, had been ‘joined’ to a defamation action against dirty PR operator Carrick Graham and his glove puppet Cameron Slater. This […]
Why is Matthew Hooton SO UPSET at efforts to increase voter turnout? (AUDIO)
Here’s some commentary from PR professional Matthew Hooton, owner of the ‘Exceltium’ PR agency*, on how he sees efforts by New Zealand’s Electoral Commission to increase voter turnout. “I think the way the Electoral Commission has behaved, taking upon itself (despite having no statutory basis) to try and massively increase the turnout to try and […]
