Facing Off at 11

I’m on Newstalk ZB’s face off panel today from 11 to 12.  Always a fun event.  One of the othre three panelists is Charles Chauvel who I will have to tease about announcing his own promotion before the PM has confirmed it 🙂

Had fun yesterday on the TVNZ Good Morning political panel.  We mainly talked reshuffle but diverted briefly into the Mallard issue, and how the PM kept defending Mallard, despite supposedly reprimanding him.

I pointed out that the PM’s story had changed over the last week from Tau provoked Trevor,  to Tau grabbed Trevor’s tie, and then the latest was Tau grabbed Trevor’s tie and neck.  At this rate I expected by next week the story to be that Tau had delivered a flying kick to Trevor’s head, which is why Trevor punched him. Tau has pointed out that he only grabbed Trevor’s tie after Trevor hit him, and what is most telling is that Trevor himself isn’t publicly claiming the PM’s version of events is right.  This is just Clark spinning. If Tau really had grabbed Trevor by the throat first, then it would have been a cold day in hell before Trevor would have apologised for whacking him.

Anyway getting back to media stuff, I was also on ZB news yesterday morning commenting on the reshuffle. Many friends have complained to me how distuurbing it is to wake up to my voice 🙂

What I found interesting was how my comments were used.  When they interviewed me an hour or so after the reshuffle on Wednesday I played it pretty straight and listed what I thought was the positive aspects and the negative aspects.  Then on Thursday when I read a summary on NZPA of the ZB story, I thought hey they’ve only gone with my negative comment on how Mallard was really promoted not demoted.

But ironically, the actual audio, seems to have gone with mainly my positive comments.  I haven’t heard it myself but had a string of e-mails and calls semi-complaining that I was the only commentator saying positive things about the reshuffle.
So I thought it was rather ironic, that the web version seemed to emphasise my negative comments, while the audio version emphasised my positive comments.  This is of course a normal part of any sub-editing process.

Anyway need to now go and think about who to award Bouquet of the Week and Brickbat of the Week to.  Always the most fun part of being on the Faceoff panel.