A New Zealander looking for local news? Please don’t go to nzoom, the self titled ‘homepage’ for New Zealanders. I usually use stuff.co.nz as my news source. It is run by a newspaper company, and while it looks a little bland, it is well coded and has good selection of news highlights. The other day I decided to start using nzoom as my NZ news source as it is slicker looking and had plenty of stories about the recent Waitangi day fiasco .
At lunchtime today when I visited the site I realised that something was wrong. The headline story related to a viewers poll conducted on Paul Holmes’ nightly show which overwhelmingly found that respondents were in favour of Don Brash’s (leader of the opposition) white reactionary policies on the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori affairs (the only Maori MP in the National Party was sacked last week), and Maori land issues.
Who is Paul Holmes? Last year he called Kofi Annan a ‘cheeky darkie’. He also once ‘threatened’ to go to Australia because he felt he wasn’t getting the respect or financial reward he believed he deserved. Luckily for the Australians he never acted on his word.
This speaks volumes about who watches the Holmes Show, indirectly a lot about the man Paul Holmes, as well as TVNZ’s editorial position.
Happily there was also a story entitled TV3 interview ruled unfair about TVNZ’s rival, TV3, and an interview they conducted with the Helen Clark. A judge ruled that the interview was impartial. In TVNZ’s eagerness to sling mud at the competition by giving a minor story greater emphasis, they have drawn attention to their own editorial hypocrisy.
I confirmed at stuff.co.nz that these were not in fact the top stories (there was no mention of either on the stuff homepage, I didn’t bother to go digging any deeper) but instead the tabloid trash that I have come to expect from TVNZ.
nzoom is not the homepage for New Zealanders. Some New Zealanders perhaps, but not the 63% who support the Prime Minister Helen Clark and her government. Like any politician, Helen Clark has her problems, but she is possibly the best leader New Zealand has had in my lifetime.
As a result of this fracas I’ve discovered scoop.co.nz – plenty of the kind of news I want to read, and at a glance, no discernible bias.