The mainstream media have been duped
Members of the MSM are slowly waking up to the fact that the Prime Minister is not entirely for them. No doubt most think they are quite loyal to the Labour Party with their articles and TV programmes, and that Ardern will support them, but they have been conned.
Kerre Woodham, NZ journalist, Newstalk ZB radio presenter, author and columnist was on talkback last week and sympathised despairingly with a caller, that not only has MP Dr Sharma been deliberately ignored by Ardern’s office, but the media too were deliberately ignored. Woodham astonished the listeners by divulging, that the media were not getting answers to their many Official Information Act (OIA) requests.
Ardern may spend $millions bribing the mouthpiece of the Government with “kindness”, but Kiwis now know that she has no intention of running a transparent administration.
Woodham said there are a huge number of media requests, obviously being disregarded. The MSM is getting annoyed to find that it is not only the public being restricted in what information they are allowed to have but their own employees. Journalists, correspondents, and editors have come up against unprecedented delays, restrictions, and even stonewalling.
The NZ socialist Prime Minister has never been their true ally! It sends shock waves through the MSM when they realise just how deliberately controlling she can be.
The Labour Party whistle-blower MP, Dr Gaurav Sharma, alleges he has experienced sustained bullying for over 18 months. He also complained he did not like the half-day workshops on how to hide information. The MPs, he claims, were trained in intentional strategies to avoid answering future OIA requests. Apparently, Ardern did not want the Labour Party’s business being able to be traced later. It had to be virtually undetectable. From the public and the MSM.
Woodham is not the first media person to speak up. Andrea Vance reported how “the Government’s iron grip on the control of information tightened.”
A Stuff article describes the frustration:
This Government promised to be open and transparent, but it is an artfully – crafted mirage.
In her first formal speech to Parliament she (Ardern) pledged ‘This Government will foster a more open and democratic society. It will strengthen transparency around official information’. (Emphasis mine)
Andrea Vance June 21
More recently Vance said:
Any attempt of tracking statistics to know how long government agencies take to answer Official Information Act requests are ‘close to useless’.
She also asks:
So why do more than 80 pieces of legislation contain secrecy clauses – including more than 20 new laws introduced since 2019? […]
The increasing creep of secrecy clauses in new legislation ‘is allowing officials and politicians to side-step freedom of information laws, campaigners fear and not only stop kiwis, but the MSM finding out the truth.
[…] advocates are increasingly concerned about the amount of legislation which contains secrecy provisions – over riding the OIA, and the Ombudsman, and preventing the release of information.’
The OIA system is a shambles. Extracting information is difficult. Journalists have few means to get to the heart of a matter.
It comes as an eye opener to members of the media, who thought she was their friend, to find out they have been bewitched and fooled. No wonder the backlog of OIA request numbers is now a number of pages long.
The MSM are now aware, thanks to Dr Sharma’s revelations, that they will get little from her. There are probably some favourite journalists who will get some juicy material, but the rest of them will only get scraps… if they are lucky.