Hobson’s Pledge Trust
Our petition calling on the Prime Minister to delete any reference in official communication to any name for our nation other than New Zealand has drawn a big response and has shown the extent to which the mainstream media blacklists anything other than the approved narrative.
We sent the media release announcing the petition to 87 media outlets and only three picked it up, with one, Scoop, being the repository of all media releases sent out. The two other outlets to pick it up were The BFD, published by Cameron Slater, and Sunlive in Tauranga, which referred to it in an interview with Simon Bridges who is the city’s MP.
By contrast, the Maori Party’s petition to change the name of our nation to Aotearoa, as well as the names of every city, town and place that does not have a Maori name received blanket coverage.
Censorship of news and blacklisting unapproved information is a basic problem for any democracy.
This is because the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life is one of the four cornerstones of democracy.
The other cornerstones are a system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections, the protection of the human rights of all citizens, and governance based on the rule of law.
Once “unapproved information” is censored from public discussion, citizens are prevented from active participation in civic life, and one of the four pillars of our democracy crumbles.
Our petition gathered more than 16,600 signatures in the first week. We could double the number of signatures if all who have signed encourage another person to sign. Please share this email with others and ask your friends to sign.
Click here to sign https://www.hobsonspledge.nz/new_zealand_not_aotearoa and like and share the petition page.
Please share this BFD article so others can discover The BFD.