Tova O’Brien was feted worldwide for her vicious interview with Jami-Lee Ross after voters forced him out of parliament. O’Brien came in hard and fast with a sucker punch that left Ross gasping for words.
She accused Ross of “being part of a political movement which has been peddling misinformation during the election campaign”, without taking breath, asking him if he had any regrets?
This was a no-win question for Ross who has to defend the Advance Party’s controversial stance or appear fickle. O’Brien calculated his response, the inevitable quiet “No” and when Ross attempts to debate the “misinformation” she shuts him down. “I don’t want to hear any of that rubbish” she says, doing her job to protect the public interest from unauthorised information. Free speech be damned!
O’Brien then suggested that Ross “sold his soul for political ambition” by joining the Advance NZ party when he recognised their rise in public support.(I bet international media loved that). But we could ask O’Brien the same thing. She is a pale distortion of humanity who burned her own soul on the alter of media ambition, and her reward for bullying a guest is worldwide media acclaim.
“CNN’s Jake Tapper said O’Brien “had some fans in the US” as a result of her skilful political interviewing, while journalist Glenn Greenwald called it a “masterclass”.“An absolute masterclass in interviewing a politician by New Zealand’s @TovaOBrien – one of the best interviews of a politician I’ve seen. Also one of the most entertaining,” Greenwald tweeted.”
Media around the world salivated over O’Brien’s command of Ross’s misfortune.
The interview doesn’t tell us anything about Ross that we didn’t already know, so if the object was to inform then O’Brien failed miserably. We did discover that Tova O’Brien is a very competent bully and that bullying works extremely well to control the narrative, which drew the international media applause. The Labour Party should put her on their payroll because of her aptitude for defending the narrative on issues close to its own heart. She got away with biased pre-election reporting so nothing will stop her now.
“At one stage during the interview O’Brien held up her hand as Ross was talking about the mortality rate of Covid-19 compared to the flu, telling him she would not allow him to spread lies on her programme.”
O’Brien demonstrated what a tosser she is but the biggest loser was freedom of speech — and media around the world applauded. How far have the media fallen and how ignorant are we about the loss of a most basic human right?
We should be rising to our feet and challenging this vicious little upstart! Whatever mistakes Ross has made (there’ve been a few), 14 years of public service does not deserve such an ignominious send-off. O’Brien should remember John Campbell, a classic example of public rejection when a media figurehead got too big for his boots. He’s back oozing fake humility, perhaps he’s learned his lesson, although not endearing after developing a case of piteous grovelling sufficient to challenge Gollum the master groveller.
Media can attain cult-like status and it’s not easy to stand up to to them. President Trump is a good example of someone who does stand up to them by refusing to worship at their feet. Trump has a tendency to explore ideas out loud which gets him into trouble. Media love the opportunity to misconstrue and deride him. How dare Trump challenge the status quo by deviating from the media written playbook, they say.
Nikki Haley touches on her relationship with Trump in her book, “With All Due Respect” so when she resigned in 2018 she was very careful to point out that she was not eyeing up the presidency in 2020. The Washington Post printed the exact opposite because the facts did not fit into their anti-Trump narrative.
““For all of you that are going to ask about 2020: No, I’m not running for 2020,” I said. I pointed at President Trump. “I can promise you what I’ll be doing is campaigning for this one. So I look forward to supporting the president in the next election.
I should have known it wouldn’t be enough. The next morning, the headline in The Washington Post was ‘A RISING STAR’: HALEY POSES A POTENTIAL THREAT TO TRUMP EVEN IF SHE DOESN’T RUN IN 2020. You can’t win with the Washington press corps.”
What an indictment on the media that we can no longer trust them to pursue the facts. Then again, we are not without guilt either because we let them get away with destroying our freedom of speech. If a politician in an interview can be censored and shut down by a so-called journalist for an opinion that the journalist disagrees with, then what hope do we poor mortals have of exercising our freedom of speech? We already have Stuff censoring all points of view not in lockstep with their approved climate change narrative and now we have Newshub only allowing one point of view about COVID-19 to be aired.
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