Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Dirty Politics: Coming To A TV Station Near You

Oh dear. Not content with caving in to Prime Ministerial pressure in getting rid of John Campbell, MediaWorks has now managed to go from really bad to almost inconceivably worse by headhunting former Herald gossip columnist Rachel Glucina.

You know, the woman outed in Dirty Politics as an active agent of Cameron Slater.

The one who got called in by the Nats to run snowjob interference over #PonyTailGate in the most dodgy piece of "reporting" this year.

The alleged "journalist" who wasn't above tricking a victim of workplace harassment into an interview using the most deplorable of false pretenses.

Yes. THAT one.

Well, she's announced that she's quit the NZ Herald after being "head-hunted" by MediaWorks.

Truly, as Sophocles wrote in Philoctetes: "Nothing evil ever perishes; the gods somehow give them most excellent care - they take their pleasure in turning back from the gates of the Underworld, the villains and the tricksters."

Between this and Paul Henry (him of the abysmally low ratings and former National Party candidacy for Parliament) ... it isn't hard to view TV3 as descending into perhaps the lowest pits of iniquity possible for a serious mainstream broadcaster.

This is pretty bad. And from a cursory examination of the comments offered by MediaWorks chief executive Mark Wheldon, it looks like the idea is to use Glucina's talents for sensationalism and muckraking to produce viral videos lambasting the right wing's preferred choice of targets.

"Snackable, shareable content", eh?

Well dine out on this.

Unless TV3 and Mediaworks put some serious investment - not just money, but actual credibility - into resurrecting their brand and its scruples, it is going to continue to nose-dive into the volcano of public sentiment.

Replacing quality investigative journalism (a la Campbell) with tawdry gossip-rag rumourmongering is NOT what the people want!

No matter HOW useful it might be to National and Glucina's shadowy paymasters.




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