Category: Uncategorized

A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple person eater

New Zealand’s media must stop pandering to over-sensitivity about gender identification.

I am becoming annoyed by ongoing reports that “a person” has been the subject of this or that, with no indication that it is man, woman, boy or girl.

The only plausible reason for the nomenclature is that “person” avoids the possibility of giving offence to someone who may no longer identify with their sex at birth.

How likely is that?

I am not a statistician but if less than five percent of the population identify as LGBT+ (according to Statistics New Zealand estimates), that means there is at least a 95 per cent chance the ‘person’ in the story would not be offended by reference to their birth gender. Continue reading “A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple person eater” →

Churchillian view of public media’s future

 The New Public Media Entity has turned into a Churchillian quotation, and it is not “their finest hour”.

Following last Thursday’s Budget, the project to replace Television New Zealand and RNZ has become “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”.

The Budget told us the project would receive $327 million of Government funding over three years in roughly equal annual instalments. The total appropriation for the “Strong Public Media” project over the next four years is $370 million, meaning $43 million will be used to establish the new entity and for the Ministry for Culture & Heritage to “monitor’ it.

That is a sizeable chunk of money, but the Government does expect some pay-back from the commercial operations of what is now Television New Zealand. It estimates a dividend of $306 million over six years.

And that is where the detail ends. Continue reading “Churchillian view of public media’s future” →