They might as well hire Jack Tame or Mike “Contra” Hosking.
RNZ National, Sunday 13 March 2016
RNZ National, Sunday 13 March 2016
The alarming vacuity continues on National Lite radio this morning. Wallace Chapman is obviously under management orders to “engage” his audience; this results in him repeatedly exhorting listeners to text in their opinions about whatever pop phenomenon he happens to touch upon during a particular programme. So in recent weeks we’ve been urged to send in our “all time favorite David Bowie song”, our “all time favorite movie”, our “all time favorite summer reading”, our “all-time favorite holiday spot”, our “all-time favorite beach”, et cetera,ad tedium, ad nauseam.
Super-alert listeners will have noted that Chapman doesn’t really seem to be putting much, or indeed any, effort into meeting these audience engagement targets. He seems to be simply going through the motions, like a reluctant teacher being coerced into delivering his lessons in a way he knows is dull and counterproductive.
This morning, for some reason (perhaps the death of Sir George Martin) someone on the program mentioned the Beatles. I’m quite sure I was not the only person to predict almost exactly what Chapman would say next….
WALLACE CHAPMAN: I’ve always been a Beatles fan. ….[long pause]….. Here’s an interesting thought: what is your favorite Beatles song? Text us….
But, when all is said and done, it is unfair to blame Chapman for this. Without a doubt, when he makes these appeals for text feedback, he is (by the sound of it reluctantly) just carrying out orders.
Where Chapman is culpable, however, is when he is covering more serious topics. Interviewing ostensibly “serious” people, he has, time after time, failed to hold them to account, even when they make the most bizarre, provocative and offensive statements. [1]
This morning, a short time after half-heartedly soliciting votes for all-time favorite Beatle songs, Chapman interviewed Canadian-born “social entrepreneur” Marilyn Garson, who has spent some time in Gaza. She made sure to speak disparagingly of “the militants” of Gaza’s Hamas government but, in spite of criticising the illegal blockade of the territory, she did not mention Israel or its chief arms supplier and sponsor the United States even once. As usual, Chapman never so much as demurred at a single thing she said, not even when she repeatedly described Israel’s massacres of the captive population of Gaza as “wars”. [2]
I sent him the following email….
Marilyn Garson’s careless use of the word “war.”
Dear Wallace,
Marilyn Garson talked about being in Gaza “during the last two wars.” A little later she referred to Gaza having “several full-scale wars” happen to it.
In fact, the imprisoned citizens of Gaza are defenceless. There was no “war” in Gaza in 2008-9 (what Israel boastfully called “twenty-two days of madness”) or in 2014; there was mass slaughter by Israel.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
Northcote Point
[2] Anyone interested in what an informed and rigorous scholar, in contrast to the likes of Marilyn Garson, has to say about this matter should read the following…..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-mutch/finkelstein-amnesty-gaza-israel_b_7786388.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-mutch/finkelstein-amnesty-gaza-israel_b_7786388.html