Degrees of bias

I try to avoid commenting negatively on other people’s bloggings (or prefer to comment on their own site), and this is especially so for someone whom I like (despite not having yet met up) but I am going to comment on how Russell Brown has commented on the Dalziel affair because Russell is also a media critic himself.

In his most recent post before Dalziel was sacked Rusell merely comments “She’s really lucky” to have kept her job and earlier asked what on earth Dalziel was thinking.

Now this is a case of a Minister deliberately and repeatedly lying to and grossly misleading (Helen’s words) the media. Does anyone think for a second how if this was a National MP we would not have had the a torrent of invective language about why the Minister must be sacked and how the refusal to sack her is a sign of everything wrong with the Government and PM etc etc. Instead we merely get a “she’s really lucky”.

In fact in the same column Russell refers to a press release he doesn’t like from a National MP as “mad”.

My growing impression of late is Russell is suffering from the Listener syndrome (irony is that his computers column in the Listener is one of the reasons I buy it). Bu this I don’t mean he is left wing, but becoming absolutely predictable. The NBR has the same problem. What I mean by this is one can be told any topic the Listener is doing an article on, and know before reading it the exact line they will take. There never seems to be any independence of thought.

I am finding that Russell is more biased in favour of Labour than I am of National, and I have been a staff member working for the National Party leader for the last eight years!!! I mean I actually try to say nice things from time to time about Labour Ministers when I think they are doing something right – one can find compliments about Cunliffe, Tamihere and ironically Dalziel just as late as last week. When was the last time Hard News said something positive about a right wing MP?

I’ve just had a quick check and can’t find anything in the last few months.

And on the topic of letting Ministers off lightly, the NZ Herald’s John Roughan gets weirder by arguing that there is nothing wrong with a Minister lying to the media, and in fact it is unfair she is being painted as deceitful. Good God what planet is the man on.