Justin Knight
Freedom of the press is the right to circulate opinions in print without censorship by the government. An independent press is one of the essential pillars of democracy. It’s the people’s protection against secret government, against authoritarianism and against tyranny. Without the press, the concept of a democratic system of government starts to weaken and after a while, the democracy crumbles. With their role to inform, criticise and stimulate debate, an independent press preserves the freedom of the people.
Jacinda Ardern must have been grateful when another crisis rolled in to take the spotlight away from the fact that she was miserably failing at government. She badly needed this crisis. In late 2019 Jacinda was exposed as a hypocrite of gigantic proportions given her self-appointed anointment as a champion for women’s rights and equality. She denied knowing about a staffer being sexually assaulted, contrary to a wave of evidence that she had known for a very long time.
I was relieved that we had such a free and independent press to kick the tyres around all the other little details she may miss in this “crisis”. It was already obvious to me through numerous examples that Jacinda looked after Jacinda and that she was a narcissistic, out of control force with little respect for democracy, fuelled by lazy overseas journalism fawning over what’s turned out to be a one-trick crisis pony.
Thankfully though our free and independent press would ensure Jacinda wouldn’t miss little details like a sexual assault happening under her watch and make sure that the validity of the information being rolled out was accurate and requisite actions appropriate. There was little to no chance of an authoritarian tyrant running our shores under a wave of secrecy, unilaterally making massive decisions affecting everyone’s lives. Our excellent independent press would take care of that.
As the first days passed by and the Government started taking extreme measures, deciding which businesses could stay open and telling people what they could and couldn’t do in their bubbles while also throwing in scenarios of catastrophic death, I waited for the press to add some balance. I waited for them to show the other side so that Kiwis would be able to make their own decisions around the legitimacy of the government’s actions.
The nonsensical rules funnelling people through supermarkets when other food options weren’t allowed to open, no swimming, no fishing, no greenkeepers. The tragedy of not being able to see dying relatives and intergenerational businesses being ruined wasn’t enough to get any balance in the press. I waited and waited but a very compliant, state-friendly press wouldn’t do their job.
There was a lot of clapping from the press and not much informing. There was no criticising and there was no debate. The lies from Ardern kept coming with it becoming as blatant as claiming that a week’s level 4 extension was two days and that she was unaware of roadblocks manned by gangs.
When Mikhael Gorbachev was overthrown in August 1991, signalling the end of the Soviet Union, the very first thing Gennady Yanayev and the eight-member Emergency Committee that took control did, was to issue Resolution No. 1, which banned strikes and demonstrations and imposed press censorship. A controlled press does not allow a democracy to function, and when you add in a Government-sponsored dob-in-your-neighbour site, the combination is a dystopian farmyard of compliant miserable animals.
Concerned that Jacinda Ardern was heading the same way, I contacted the opposition politicians voicing my concern that the media were coerced by and beholden to the Government and that one of our fundamental pillars of democracy was being lost. They were well aware of the fact and their solution was the select committee chaired by Simon Bridges shown live on Parliament TV.
Effectively the alternative viewpoint was being forced into the media through pertinent questions around the lockdown and health response although that wasn’t getting many column inches, and when Simon did what he’s meant to do as an opposition leader, which is to ask questions, his family received death threats.
Do I have proof of the Government directly meddling in the media? I believe I do.
On the 14th of April Stuff finally ran a story with an alternative viewpoint to the boringly rolled out narrative of we are all going to die and people were ruining lockdown by driving or exercising out of their bubble, whatever that meant.
As Jacinda sat down to talk to the country like an episode of playschool, an excellent and well-balanced article written by Dr Simon Thornley, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Auckland, and backed by a multitude of health professionals in New Zealand, presented a plan B. Essentially it pointed out that the Government’s strategy was not proportional to the threat posed by COVID-19 to New Zealanders’ health and that it was likely to substantially harm the nation’s long-term health and well-being, social fabric, economy, and education.
They proposed a plan B separating the low-risk people from the high-risk people and opening the country domestically with immediate effect. It was a brilliant and well thought out plan by a cross-disciplinary group of academics concerned about the welfare and futures of all Kiwis. As a democracy, New Zealand deserved that viewpoint and it was the number one trending article on Stuff that day.
At the peak of the trending of that article, Stuff editor Mark Stevens removed the entire text of the Plan B story and replaced it with a completely different story about how dangerous it would be to open the country and how we would all die and how reckless it was for anyone to suggest anything else such as a move out of our virtual house arrest. The link did not change so immediately the new text became the new number one trending story.
Read that again.
The Stuff editorial team removed an entire story by a group of New Zealand academics and replaced the text with Government propaganda on exactly the same link.
The hilariously scary thing is just days later, on the 21st of April, Stuff sent everyone an email asking for donations with this text:
“Today, open and robust public discourse is under great threat. Together, with your support, we can continue to play our role in safeguarding a free and open society, and fostering a democracy that’s accountable to all its citizens.”
I wrote to Mark Stevens expressing my disgust at his government sponsored propaganda machine and am still awaiting a response.
I would ask that the next people brought before the select committee be the editors of the major newspapers with the above example being the first issue probed.
We need to understand as a nation the level of control the Government has exerted over our free and independent press and why the level of compliance exists. The control of the press woven in with the doubtful legality of the lockdown and the dubious basis of the “death forecasts” used to corral the citizens paints a pretty complete picture of authoritarian tyranny.
Jacinda Ardern must be held to account.
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