Green Councillor worries about Dom Post

Iona Pannett blogs:

The story on the creation of call centre jobs does seem to have the overtone of promoting a certain mayoral candidate. I hope that The DomPost will uphold the ideals of the Fourth Estate and ensure that reporting is unbiased and balanced.

WCC Watch responds:

Lambton Ward councillor, Iona Pannett has blogged that she hopes that all mayoral candidates get equal coverage following John Morrison’s front page coup announcing the 300-500 call centre jobs he brokered for Wellington.

I totally agree – in fact I would go further and say that any candidate whether they be in the mayoral race or standing for a ward seat, should get a front page story if they bring over 300 jobs to the city in a single deal. Wellington needs job growth and new business Pannett is totally right that we should celebrate that – no matter who brokers the deal.

Yep. And it is rather churlish to be seen complaining that someone who brings so many jobs to Wellington gets publicity for it.

But something tells me the Greens are actually just wanting the Dom to give Celia Wade-Brown more coverage.

In fairness to the Dom Post, Pannett does just call for equal coverage and the paper has dedicated a lot of column space to Wade-Brown this year. But naturally those have largely been about the calamities and cock ups around the out sourcing of jobs, protests against central government policies, luxury office refits and the dumping of a CEO.

Well that is equal coverage!

I think its pretty simple – Morrison did good work and got a good story. Wade-Brown didn’t know why her hands weren’t on the steering wheel and got slammed for it. Acting like there is a conspiracy is just daft.

Indeed.