Unfortunately this pattern occurs again and again and again. The legalisation of prostitution would never have occurred if it had not been for a compliant media. The civil unions bill is another egregious example. Outside of the chattering classes, and I accept they are overrepresented in this blog, most New Zealanders are still uncomfortable with homosexuality, particularly homosexuals marrying, and were opposed to making prostitution a legal activity.

However the compliant media — who share the basic “anything goes” world view of the current Labor Party — rolled over.

This is why John Key has to be very careful. The media are hopelessly left-wing and hopelessly secular. Thank goodness for blogs and the Internet. Other views are beginning to come through. The counter revolution will begin.

Isn’t the median the half-half one?

‘FOMENTING HAPPY MISCHIEF FOREVER’

Long may your arsehole point to the ground and may you be five minutes in heaven before the devil knows you are dead.

CHEERS DAVID

running up to the last election ..and flying in the face of insurmountable evidence to the contrary..

..the media just kept parrotting that fantasy put out by both labour and national..

that ‘the recession is over..!”

(how many times has bollard/treasury said that now..?..)

and if it is the role of the media to both inform and warn..

in this case..

how could they be more of a dismal failure..?

phil(whoar.co.nz)

My impressions of media are usually based on their reporting of things that I know something about. If they report wrongly something that I know about, then I assume that the rest of their reporting is similarly incorrect. Note here that I don’t necessarily mean whether their opinion matches mine, but just whether they represent the facts correctly, cover the opposing arguments, get the basics right.

The older I get, the more things I know something about. Therefore the more opportunities I have to identify things that the media have wrong. Further, the more experienced I get, the more easily I spot obvious fallacies in the reporting – reporting percentages on things that clearly aren’t usefully reported as percentages, reporting dollar amounts without include the time period, breathless reporting of the statistically obvious (e.g. half of NZers have below average literacy). So I can see why older folks would be more likely to be sceptical of the media.

Having said that, there is very little media that I would trust any more. Even the Economist, who to me are pretty much the gold standard of clear and accurate reporting, I would still estimate have about half of the content right. They at least usually get the gist down pretty well, and to the lay reader (as I am on most articles) it is enough. But for the things I have good knowledge on, I’d usually say they were omitting some important information, presumably in the interests of brevity or understandability.

As such, I usually put my trust in reading a few different sources and balancing the competing arguments myself.

I wonder if the 25% who think media reporting is inaccurate are conspiracy theorists and chaps who talk about ‘bankers’ and multinational corporations as being responsible for their lot in life?

It does seem a bit strange that a quarter of people watch the news yet disbelieve what they are seeing…ha ha!

http://www.nightcitytrader.blogspot.com

Over 60s have the lowest score for accuracy – 23% compared to 43% for under 30s

Try the same test of 15yr olds. Far too many probably don’t know which way to hold a newspaper, let alone how to extract meaning from all those little two-syllable words.

Yeah, it would be good the one-sided question broken down by political leaning.

Here’s a stab at how I see the media
Main newspapers 70% accurate
TV news – 30% accurate – too much omission, to much arbitrary emphasis, to much jacked up and arcgive video
Blogs – I’d better not say but overall their accuracy and balance are not great, too many are too full of their slight importance (not referring to Kiwiblog on the last point)

And how I rate the parties (as they are now):
National – 80% – generally positive about what they are doing, have to see what they do when they get cranked up
Labour – 33% – showing signs of getting their rebuilding together on some things, work in progress
Act – 50/50 – some good ideas, some populist pandering, judge them better in a couple of years
Maori – 66% – don’t always agree with them but seem to be doing ok for their constituency
Green – 25% – they have a lot of work to do to show they have credible leadership and party
The other parties aren’t parties