While our media waxed lyrical at Jacinda Ardern’s awful speech to the United Nations, the rest of the world is showing increasing alarm at Ardern’s waging war on free speech. It can’t be honestly described as anything other than an attack on free speech.
Neil Oliver knows precisely what he heard:
So too does the writer of The Times‘s leading article yesterday:
Freedom of speech is the essence of a free society, the freedom from which all others flow. The right to express dissent or advance views that may clash with those of the majority or of those in power is what differentiates a democracy from an authoritarian state. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that comments by Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month have caused alarm. She urged fellow leaders to take action against “misinformation and disinformation online”, which, she said, were being used as “weapons of war” to attack societies. “The weapons may be different but the goal of those who perpetuate them is often the same . . . [to] reduce the ability of others to defend themselves.”
The alarm is not unfounded. An example that Ms Ardern gave of the sort of misinformation and disinformation she thinks need to be suppressed was climate change denialism. There is certainly a broad scientific consensus on climate change. But although those who deny it may be wrong, they should be heard. Science advances by testing hypotheses and weighing evidence in open debate. The same goes for those who doubt the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Their views are wrong. Reputable publishers are not obliged to give them a platform. But they should not be banned.
Times
Yet that is precisely what Ardern is suggesting. She wants to suppress dissent, but has described it as “disinformation”.
The danger is that trying to suppress dissent, rather than confronting misinformation openly, will only deepen mistrust, which itself is corrosive to democracy. Neither is it only from governments that the threat to free speech arises. The recent attempt by PayPal, a digital payment platform, to block anti-lockdown groups from its services was troubling. Companies should not discriminate against customers on the basis of their political opinions. The government’s proposed online harms bill would have imposed a requirement on social media platforms to remove content considered harmful even if it was legal, obliging companies to act as gatekeepers on what constitutes permitted speech. This has now rightly been dropped. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Times
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and that is why the media are called the fourth estate. Except that in New Zealand, our media have abrogated their responsibilities. They have become shills for Ardern’s increasingly corrupt and draconian Government. Why else would there have been utter silence from them over Ardern’s alarming speech at the United Nations? They either agree with her stance or have been bought and paid for so as to not criticise the regime.
You only need to look at a recent article at Newsroom, a media organisation supping from the Public Interest Journalism teat, explaining how it is perfectly OK for Stuff to run hit jobs and lop-sided crusades against “bad people”.
The Media Council adjudicates on complaints about print and online journalism in New Zealand.
It will soon consider complaints against Fire and Fury, a Stuff Circuit documentary on the tactical use of disinformation by far-right agents of social disruption, in particular the group that calls itself Voices for Freedom.
Presumably, many of the complaints to the council will focus on the documentary makers’ decision to not offer a right of reply to the subjects of their film.
Complaints to the Media Council must allege the story at issue has breached one or more of the 12 principles that make up the council’s code of ethics for print and online journalists.
The absence of a right of reply in the investigative documentary will no doubt catalyse allegations that Principle One, which insists on ‘accuracy, fairness and balance’ in reporting, has been ignored.
Complainants are likely to ask the council to rule a piece of journalism cannot be accurate, fair and balanced if it silences those who are the subject of its allegations.
Such a finding, despite any immediate logic to it, would be simply unthinkable.
It would allow purveyors of disinformation to cast themselves even further as victims of the “mainstream media” and perhaps even force Stuff to provide a platform for their mistruths and conspiracies.
It would open the gate wider to proto-fascist movements seeking to pollute our public sphere and thereby wound our democracy.
Instead, the Media Council may decide there has been no breach of Principle One, that the documentary, despite the lack of right of reply, is indeed accurate, fair and balanced.
After all, the documentary contains regular and substantial repetitions of the views of the disinformation agents as they attempt to cajole New Zealanders to join their uprising on social media platforms.
Newsroom
Think about that tirade, essentially an attempt to circumvent complaints about the so-called documentary, and weep for the state of our media in New Zealand.
The only proto-fascists that exist in New Zealand are actually in Ardern’s Government and in their media adjuncts. They do not cherish freedom of speech, and in fact, are building ways to actively suppress dissenting views.
Shed even more tears when you realise that the author of that article, Dr Greg Treadwell, is the head of journalism at Auckland University of Technology. He’s teaching the next generations of journalists that hit jobs are actually accurate, fair and balanced. His article is excusing Stuff‘s crusading as public-interest balance; it is a call to change the rules. What a good little foot-soldier in the totalitarian regime.
Jacinda Ardern and her increasingly totalitarian Government are heading us slowly but surely down a divisive path that if not abated, curtailed and stopped will inexorably lead us not to an antipodean nirvana, but rather to a costly and debilitating civil war.
Jacinda Ardern is not the epitome of kindness. She is nothing less than dangerous. Her view of the world is increasingly dystopian, where Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four aren’t erudite warnings but instead have become manifestos and how-to manuals for tyrants.
While our media remain silent, they are in fact enablers of an increasingly fascist regime and are part of the problem. They are not in any way part of the solution to our predicament.
The solution calls for more competition and more speech, not less. Let the market decide. Let you the readers decide. Do you support, read, advertise with or subscribe to the tyrant’s mouthpieces? Or do you support, read, advertise with and subscribe to organisations that live and breathe freedom and have it at the core of their ethos?
Make no mistake, we are in a war right now. There may not be any bullets or bombs flying about but our way of life is being blockaded, banned, silenced, othered, de-platformed, de-monetised and regulated right before our eyes.
Next year is election year, and this Government has made it plain that they wish to utterly and comprehensively silence dissent.
Are you going to let them do that? Or are you going to fight? You can help us bring the fight on your behalf. Put your money where our mouth is. You can subscribe, or you can donate. It all helps us take the fight to those who seek to take your freedoms.
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