Archive for the ‘Media issues’ Category

Things that aren’t supposed to be said

Following up on my post the other day about deciphering political codes, highlighting how political campaigns sometimes try to imply the unsayable (like ‘Keep Howick White’) … here’s a fantastic article by Gabriel Sherman in New York Magazine about Fox News supremo Roger Ailes dealing with unstable wunderkind Glenn Beck … which relates to the […]

Political code words: signals to the faithful

I don’t know Dick Quax personally but my daughter met him out campaigning and said “He was lovely”. The former Olympic runner is heir-apparent to FYT (fine young Tory) Jami-Lee Ross‘s super-city Auckland Council seat now that Jami-Lee has begun his sentence term as National Member of Parliament for Botany following Pansy Wong’s resignation under […]

Yes, you are accountable for your words… but even more so for your actions.

Some interesting, contradictory, discussion about the role of social media in news journalism… we’ll have to get our heads around the issues with this stuff, by the look of things. This appeared in my Twitter timeline (ahem, feel free to follow @onthepaepae) this morning: … having been promptly re-tweeted by a number of journos I […]

With one swift blow, Kate knocked the wind out of the duplicitous toady …

Nice to see conservative blogger Cactus Kate calling conservative blogger David Farrar for being a National Party mouthpiece the other day … Labour’s argument goes a little something like this. Their core voters are married couples with two kids earning say $50,000. In the House today Labour bombarded the National Party with examples of such […]

Inconsistency: hoist on our own petard?

This article The Other Torture Debate by Arthur Brisbane is worth reading to help understand how a journalistic ‘aspiration’ for an appearance of impartiality can lead to very poor decisions. In what I saw at the time as a prime example of the thin end of the wedge, the NY Times seemed to adopt the […]

Is this how Shaun Stenning’s victims bite back?

Wow. At the risk of being terminally self-referencing, I just became aware of a campaign to retweet links to the mammoth comment thread here on ThePaepae.com about the refund movement aimed at Shaun Stenning’s twalk and snipr internet marketing schemes and Dollar Rose ‘investments’ (see Is this how Shaun Stenning handles a request for a refund?) […]

Everything we know about you guys is wrong

I just watched How to Train Your Dragon with my son and some friends … it’s a magnificent, heart-warming movie, which incidentally addresses one of the perennial themes of ThePaepae.com — recognising our fear of ‘the other’ or ‘the out-group’ (in this case, dragons) and that fear’s role in conflict. Embedded in the storyline is […]

Welcome to the mainstream, social media (like, again)

You may remember I quoted from a matrimonial settlement that addressed Facebook accounts and statements thereon as part of the divorce … Facebook’s tentacles now part of divorce settlements! Well, The Guardian is reporting that the family division of the courts in the UK has now joined the fray, in response to online speculation about […]

Facebook spinning a lil bit of Google smear

One of the topics we muse about here on ThePaepae.com is various attempts people make to masquerade as things-they-are-not. e.g. Dean Letfus as an unbiased and experienced ‘property expert’, Shaun Stenning as an ‘internet marketing expert’ who has ‘made millions’, Sean Wood as a ‘satisfied customer’ of (ahem) Sean Wood, Bernard Whimp as a straightforward […]

A rebel general has been killed by the Empire

It’s worth reading this homage to the NY Times report of President Obama’s announcement. It engenders a bit of empathy. CORUSCANT — Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader […]

Hello anonymous commenters?

Ooh err, anonymous comment trolls — here’s a development reported by The Guardian‘s Josh Halliday: US billionaire wins high court order over Wikipedia ‘defamation’ … Louis Bacon, the founder and chief executive officer of Moore Capital Management, was given permission on Monday to use a UK court order to obtain the information from the US publishers […]

Defamation? Or law of consequences?

Spruiker Mark Hotchin — the face of Hanover Finance (claiming in its TV ads: “This One Weather Update is brought to you by Hanover, a New Zealand business with the size and strength to withstand any conditions“)*, whose operation broke promises to 16,500 investors leaving them out of pocket $554 million and subject to a questionable arrangement […]

Dirty rotten liars posing as their opposites

Look at this page which an innocent Google image search result led me to last night: As well as a bogus scan with blinking displays and an imitation desktop window (displayed within the browser) — supposedly checking my computer for malware and viruses telling me the ‘alarming’ news that ‘Your computer is infected‘ the website […]

I don’t want to see any pictures of Osama Bin Laden dead or alive

Good grief. No thanks. Any such images would settle nothing, as Jon Stewart said (sarcastically): A photo will end the speculation — just like that Zapruder film put to rest all that JFK business.  

I can see Pakistan from my house. Security clearance? You betcha!

Oh, boy, those White House photographers must have an ultra-plus-plus security clearance, huh?  Here’s Pete Souza’s pic of the gang watching the Osama Bin Laden ‘kill or capture’ mission LIVE-as-it-happens … just like TV show 24 only the body count is real. Imagine being there. UPDATE: Spoofed by NZ Herald cartoonist Rod Emmerson UPDATE 2: Hillary Clinton […]