Shock horror, Simon Wilson got it wrong

The Blue Review writes at Patreon:

The media bites onto its preferred narratives with the determination of a Staffordshire bull terrier. Such seems to be the case with Simon Wilson’s story about Christopher Luxon’s public meeting at the Birkenhead Bowling Club.

The story being sold? That supporters of the National Party are solely preoccupied with issues of race.

“Last week at Chris Luxon’s mtg in Birkenhead, MOST questions were on one theme: ‘What’s he going to do about Maori’?“ (emphasis Wilson’s)

“[Luxon] fielded about an hour of questions. Nearly all of them were about race.“ (emphasis ours)

“I have notes of 11 questions, 6 of them complaints that Māori get special treatment they don’t deserve.” (emphasis ours)

So Wilson reported that somewhere between most and nearly all of the questions were about race.

However the Blue Review obtained an audio recording of the meeting, and the actual situation is:

Did the treaty and related issues come up? Yes, they did. It would be a lie to say otherwise. There was a question about Te Reo taking precedence over English and another person touched on bilingual road signs in the course of an unrelated question. The work of the Waitangi Tribunal was the subject of two questions.

But to suggest that these few questions characterise the overarching sentiment of the audience is an exaggeration. To the point of being a profound misrepresentation. Wilson’s “6 of 11” looks more 3 or 4 of 15 at worst, less than halfway to “most” and a million miles from “nearly all”.

So 20% to 25% of the questions were on Maori issues and this got reported as nearly all.

And again we wonder why trust in media is so low.