Kiwiblog

Fun summer reading can be decisions of the Broadcasting Standards Authority. Some recent decisions:

1. They reject four complaints against TV3 for Ali Ikram’s satirical piece of Maori TV getting the Rugby World Cup rights. It wasn’t that funny a piece of satire, but no way should it be illegal!
2. They also turn down two complaints against TVNZ and Paul Henry over his comments re the Maori flag.
3. ACT member Peter Taskhoff is sucessful against TVNZ for a story at an arms show than unfairly portrayed him in a negative light.
4. Kerry Bolton wins against Radio NZ for Chris Laidlaw’s programme which made holocaust denying accusations against him withotu verifying them.
5. Henk van Helmond loses against TV3 for door stopping him at is home in relation to threats about Sue Bradford.
6. A complaint against TV3 for coverage of the Boobs on Bikes parade was not upheld.
7. A complaint fron a Patty Towl against Solid Gold FM for the joke that Ellen DeGeneres is the second most powerful lesbian on the planet, and Chris Carter being the first – was not upheld.

Am amusing profile of Paul Henry in the SST. The part that made me laugh the most was this:

The morning we visit the studio, he uses the expression “donkey deep” on air. A viewer wonders about the etymology. Maybe, muses Henry, it is derived from the days when donkeys pulled carts through muddy roads. “Did you just make that up?” asks co-host Alison Mau. “Because it’s brilliant.”

Unfortunately for Mau, during the break, Henry is handed an actual definition from the urban dictionary. He is gleeful, delighted, like a small boy who has just discovered the word “poo”. He faces the camera and tells his audience the expression refers to (drum roll) a donkey’s HUGE member.

Later, seconds before Paula Ryan goes live to tell viewers what not to wear while holidaying in Muslim countries, Henry leans across to the fashion doyenne: “Did you know that? About a donkey’s cock?”

Heh classic. Urban Dictionary does indeed say:

New Zealand slang for being heavily involved, usually in a contentious matter. May be a reference to either a stinking pile of donkey shit or a reference to the length of a donkey’s huge cock.

I did not realise it was a unique NZ saying.

I was on Breakfast TV this morning talking about the issues I (and others) might face around potential contempt of court and the Weatherston case. I’m glad I got invited on, because I thought it unfortunate the segment on One News last night didn’t mention that I had taken immediate action to remove any problematic content the moment concerns came to my attention. I don’t want to be seen as someone saying that laws don’t apply to the Internet. They obviously do. There are of course significant issues around the practicality of certain laws, but that is an issue for the future – and the Law Commission has a discussion paper out on related issues such as suppression orders and the Internet.

The Breakfast interview I thought covered the issues quite well. You can view it here. Also a story based on it here.

I was highly amused to get a call from friends a bit later in the programme, telling me that my name came up during discussions on what gift Paul Henry should take with him to New York to give to Helen Clark. They are running a poll on it.

You can view it yourself at around 1:15 through this video. A transcript:

PAUL (reading an e-mail): Paul Henry, can you take Phil Goff with you as a gift to Helen Clark and just sit Phil Goff on the edge of the table there.

PAUL: Actually David Farrar would be a nice table weight. He’s such a sweet man isn’t he. He’s the blogger we just had in.

ALI: He’s somebody you just want to have sitting on your desk constantly so you can just ask him for an opinion on stuff.

PAUL: I’ve got David Farrar in a little box out the back. Let’s open the lid and ask him a question.

PAUL: He just seems very cuddly doesn’t he. He’s just a nice … I don’t know if I should be saying that about another man. Possibly not actually.

ALI: It’s too late now

I was very amused. I would have preferred it was Ali calling me sweet and cuddly but hey you take compliments from anyone

The HoS looks at all the complaints against Paul Henry and Michael Laws:

They’re among our most controversial presenters, but Paul Henry and Michael Laws remain unrepentant about their on-air behaviour.

I suspect they actually get paid bonuses for every complaint they attract

Laws said the decision was an example of the authority stifling freedom of speech. He said defamation laws offered safeguard enough and the authority was wrong to apply news reporting standards to talkback.

“The BSA should be disbanded. There is no need for it.

“My job’s not to offer balance, it’s to offer strong opinion. I never, ever go too far. I’m not a namby-pamby left-wing liberal commie journalist.”

As a commenter said, there are some days you can really like Michael

Henry has triggered a catalogue of complaints since the start of 2008.

They include accusations of bias in an interview with John Key, describing people with obsessive compulsive disorder as “crazy freaks” and a suggestion that obese children be taken away from their parents and put in car compactors.

None were upheld.

The suggestion that obese children be put in car compactors is so Henry.

Pippa Wetzell was responsible for the only complaint against Breakfast upheld by the authority for an interview this year with Garth McVicar of the Sensible Sentencing Trust found to have breached the standard of balance.

Now that is funny. Henry gets a dozen complaints – none of which is upheld, while poor Pippa actually gets her complaint upheld.

Henry didn’t know why complaints against him were on the up but said it didn’t bother him. “I think it’s an indication that I say what I think and in television that is not overly common.” He thought there were “a lot of people that don’t have much of a sense of humour” and “a large number of people who have nothing better to do than complain”.

A lot of complaints come from the same people. I reckon they should look at limiting the number of complaints one individual can make!

The Herald reports:

TVNZ has upheld viewer complaints against Breakfast host Paul Henry after he commented that a female guest had a moustache.

I’d take that more seriously if it wasn’t the same TVNZ whose staff very quickly got the comments out on You Tube, so 100,000 extra people could see them.

Henry had been spoken to and told on-air editorial decisions were not his to make and that he must adhere to the executive producer’s decisions.

That must be the “I’ve got a voice in my ear telling me not to read them out”!

Oh dear – as I type this he may have just done it again – but accidentially. They had a reporter in a lawyer’s office – in the photocopier room and they were talking about if any items of clothing had even been found in there. Henry then said he is sure all sorts of shenigans happen in there and that if you lift up the photocopier lid, there is probably a crack on the glass.

It took only a second for the possible second meaning of this to strike Henry, but his reaction was nothing compared to Ali Mau who absolutely lost it on screen.

Brian Edwards joins the blogosphere and asks what to do with Paul Henry. He looks at how Paul is loved and loathed, and I really like his conclusion:

Who’s right – his critics or his defenders? Both. Henry is an obnoxious prat.  His ego is out of control and, as a broadcaster, so is he. He has done  more than enough to deserve the boot.

BUT he is also one of the most intelligent, most incisive, most accomplished, most polished, and most entertaining broadcasters this country has ever seen.

Can’t live with him, can’t live without him.

Edwards is right. Paul Henry is offensive and at time obnoxious with an ego that could fuel a fleet. But he is also a genius broadcaster.

You have to accept both sides of Henry, to reconcile how you react to him.

On the issue of Stephanie Mills, there can be no doubt Henry behaved appallingly towards an invited guest. If you knew Mills personally, you would especially be outraged by what Henry did (interestingly Mills herself very sensibly did not lash out, but said it is about her issues, not her or Henry).

But while intellectually I know Henry was a brattish prat twoards Mills, I also had tears of laughter as I watched the clip of the show. When you don’t know the target personally, offensive humour can still be very very funny. And for me it wasn’t so much about Mills, but about the train wreck it caused as Henry ignored Ali and his producer, and them seems bemused by the hate mail, and even then his “Oh go from a group” reotort. It was like an episode of Borat.

I’d been having trouble reconciling my intellectual dislike of what Henry did, with my instictive hilarity at the situation. You feel guilty for laughing so loud.

But Edwards get it right, as I said. Henry is both an obnoxous prat and a great broadcaster. Don’t pretend he can be one without the other.

So what does Brian Edwards propose be done:

So what should be done with Paul? Well firstly he should be fronting Close Up. Mark Sainsbury may be a nicer person, but he isn’t a patch on Henry as a broadcaster. He stumbles his way through the programme, is often barely articulate and his interviews are a shambles. But he’s responsible and safe and Henry isn’t.

So here’s my solution.  Mark goes back to his previous job as a political editor. He was extremely good at that. Paul takes over Close Up where he is likely to beat the pants off the much nicer John Campbell. But there’s a proviso. Henry’s contract includes a ‘penny in the jar’ clause. Every time he breaches the Broadcasting Act’s standards of balance, fairness, decency or good taste, $10,000 is deducted from his salaryand donated to the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards. Should work.

Heh, I quite like that idea.

This is very funny – Paul Henry taking the mickey out of Murray McCully.

Hat Tip: Whale Oil

Helen Clark has distanced herself from Mike Williams and basically called him a liar for his performance on Agenda, yet says he will remain President as the Party conference elects him and has confidence in him.

Some quotes from Clark on Breakfast on TV One:

Clark: “I certainly can’t understand why he made the comment on Agenda yesterday Paul. I watched it with some disbelief because of course after I spoke to you last Monday I did when I got to Wellington speak to Mr Williams and established the facts of the matter both from him and in the course of the day and that led me to go to my press conference and say there had clearly been a misjudgement. That was only compounded by what was said yesterday.”

Henry: Did he tell you the truth, because it appears he has not been telling us the truth.

Clark: He told me the truth, and that’s why when the tape was run on TV last night I knew that was what I had been told six and a half days before. Really what possessed him on Agenda I do not know, I can only put it down to confusion.

Clark has all but called Williams a liar with her comments that she has no idea what possessed him to deny what happened on Agenda, and watched it with disbelief.

Clark generously puts it down to confusion but she knows he was not confused on Agenda. He didn’t like the fact he had been reprimanded and tried to rewrite history on the basis no-one could prove otherwise. He claimed it was all a media beat-up and grossly misrepresented what the delegate said, and what he said.

Tumeke: “Liz gets fucked by Paul live on breakfast”

When I saw the headline in my RSS feed, my first thought was what about Diane. Then I realised that this was not some new ratings stunt from TVNZ, but a commentary on the performance of NZUSA co President Liz Hawes.

I didn’t see it myself, and no video online yet, so can’t comment on how fair or otherwise Bomber’s commentary is.