Thursday 4 January 2018

Colin Peacocke, defender of John Key, and champion of Karl Du Fresne (Aug. 7, 2011)

Colin Peacocke, defender of John Key, and champion of Karl Du Fresne—WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Mediawatch, National Radio, Sunday August 7, 2011
Some years ago, National Radio’s Mediawatch ran a once-over-lightly item on the low standard of sports journalism in New Zealand. Such an item might seem like a good idea—the abysmal standard of sports commentary is obvious to any sports fan in this country. However, the seriousness of this item was fatally wounded by Russell Brown’s choice of guest: Martin “Moron” Devlin. When it comes to sports journalism, Martin Devlin is an embarrassment at best, and an outrage at worst. He is perhaps, along with his former boss Bill Francis and his erstwhile colleague Murray “Deaks” Deaker, the worst thing to happen to sports journalism in this country. Yet Russell Brown interviewed him as if he were a serious commentator.
Another embarrassing Mediawatch item was an “investigation” into the political slant and unfairness of the media. While that sounds like a good topic for serious discussion, Mediawatch (Colin Peacocke, actually) was simply following the lead of a couple of hypocrites, serial liars and war criminals, i.e., British prime minister Tony Blair and his brutal media manager Alistair Campbell, who had launched a bilious, self-pitying attack on “the media” (not, of course, the friendly Murdoch outlets) for daring to continually question the honesty and integrity of their government. Colin Peacocke insisted that both Blair and Campbell had “made many good points”.
Today’s programme shows that this habit of bending over backwards to indulge the half-baked and the hypocritical is still an unfortunate feature of Mediawatch.
First up, Colin Peacocke (again) was in his most indulgent mood, this time doing his best to construe John Key’s craven comments on the Norway mass murder as actually not irresponsible at all. According to Peacocke’s interpretation, we have all been way too hard on the Prime Minister, and we shouldn’t have assumed that he actually meant what he said. Since Key did not actually say that the killer was Islamic, of course (according to Peacocke) he did not imply that. So we should disregard Key’s assertion that killings by a white Norwegian Christian in Norway provide a reason for New Zealand troops being in Afghanistan.
If that was not bad enough, today’s programme got even worse. For some reason, Peacocke chose to quote the self-styled “curmudgeon” Karl Du Fresne who has written a typically vacuous opinion piece criticising journalism schools for failing to produce journalists who are “willing to challenge authority”.
Wait a minute! Last year, Du Fresne went into core meltdown after Kim Hill had dared to ask a few challenging questions of the former Australian prime minister John Howard. Far from supporting her willingness to challenge a particularly odious and repellent authority, Du Fresne damned Hill for being “relentlessly adversarial” and dismissed her and her listeners as “chardonnay socialists”. [1] Clearly Colin Peacocke is immune to the irony of Du Fresne, of all people, criticising journalists for failing to challenge authority.
I note that in the latest entry on his dismal blog, Du Fresne has written a long and sympathetic piece about Rupert Murdoch. [2]
3. And then, it got even worse (if that is possible). Playing moron’s advocate, Peacocke relentlessly tried to defend the god-awful, unfunny Jeremy Wells “documentary” about the NZSO. His guest, former Dominion music critic Lindis Taylor, dismissed the programme as a wasted opportunity, spoiled by the narcissistic and crass behaviour of Wells. The best that Peacocke could do was to repeatedly (and lamely) insist that Wells “has a substantial body of work”.
It was quite clear that Peacocke did not believe a word of what he was saying, however. So why even try to defend the indefensible?
Oh, that’s right! Balance…
  • Morrissey11.1
    Erratum
    That second link I provided was wrong. This is what it should be….
    [2] http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2011/08/w-p-reeves-saw-much-to-like-in-murdoch.html
  • Vicky3211.2
    If that was not bad enough, today’s programme got even worse. For some reason, Peacocke chose to quote the self-styled “curmudgeon” Karl Du Fresnewho has written a typically vacuous opinion piece criticising journalism schools for failing to produce journalists who are “willing to challenge authority”.
    I am so glad I missed it then!
  • Well done Morrisey for bringing this up. On the Key comments about the Norway massacre I was particularly unimpressed with Peacocke’s logic.
    The reasons that we should not be hard on Key were:
    1. ‘Everyone else’ (commenting in the media) immediately leapt on the idea of it being done by radical Islamists;
    2. They did this because they were following the ‘respectable’ NYT’s lead in highlighting some ‘expert’ who said some anonymous person in an internet chat room claimed responsibility for it for Al Qaeda;
    3. The ‘context’ in which Key made the comment made it ‘understandable’. That context was (a) having just been talking to Obama about Afghanistan deployment (amongst other things), and (b) Obama had just spoken before Key to the media and made noises about the international effort against terrorism;
    4. Key said ‘If’ and so showed – like Obama – that he didn’t know who was responsible.
    This is amazing. Every one of those points actually puts Key’s comments into a worse (and more culpable frame) yet Peacocke seemed to think it exonerated him!
    Think about it – all the headless chooks were running around in the media saying ‘definitely Al Qaeda’, ‘hallmarks of Islamist terrorism’, etc. (point 1) and, apparently, Key took his lead from these chooks despite (point 4) knowlng he did not know who was responsible?? Key apparently is so naive that he did not realise that what runs the rounds of the media (point 2) in the first hours after a horrific event (especially a human-induced one) is almost always highly speculative and, hence, inevitably flawed??
    As for the ‘context’ – that’s the whole point of his opportunism. That Obama was also being opportunistic (just as the ‘experts’ were trying to be first to jump on the Islamist bandwagon) hardly excuses Key from being even more explicit in his opportunism. And – this is the fundamental point – Key speculatively (and supposedly with complete knowledge of just how speculative it was) tried to link it to what New Zealand troops were doing in Afghanistan.
    I think what happens with people like Peacocke – the vast majority of people, in fact – is that they are so inured by the discourses that normalise and ‘reasonable-ise’ the actions of our leaders, governments and elite in general that they find it extraordinarily hard to impose some very straightforward logic onto a situation. This is particularly bad in relation to matters concerning the basic moral compass of our elite – i.e., whether what they do and say is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in a moral sense. The result is that Peacocke can list a whole bunch of reasons in an attempt to let Key off the hook without even realising he is pushing the hook’s moral and ethical barb deeper into Key.
    It is so blatantly obvious that Key was being opportunistic. All the defences for it that I’ve heard are to the effect that being opportunistic in that situation is perfectly understandable! I guess the same applies to lying, stealing, murdering … 
    He’s the PM; he’s meant to have the character and judgment to navigate these situations without making the same opportunistic leaps that ‘media commentators’ with little to lose – and with no responsibilities to anyone else – do on a daily basis.
    Too much to ask of our PM? 
    • Morrissey11.3.1
      Too much to ask of our PM?
      John Key is a politician, and a particularly indolent one. I have no expectation that he will bother to do any more study of the situation than he has already done, i.e., none. Key has just done what politicians do: blither and bluster and, of course, he has gotten away with it, largely because of the indulgence and/or blindness of “liberal” commentators like Colin Peacock. The failure here is not by the Prime Minister.
      Your detailed and perceptive analysis of Peacock’s rationale for exonerating that buffoon are impressive. I think you should send your comments to Colin Peacock and force him into making a response. Here’s the email address…
      mediawatch@radionz.co.nz

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