Spitting the Dumby

I was wading through the newspaper (NZ Herald) the other day and growing increasingly grumpy with what I was reading. This has been happening to me for a while now. Maybe years. Yes, definitely years.

I see story after story that leave me wondering "What's REALLY going on?"

What's bothering me is the overt and strongly presented opinions of the editors and reporters with little or nothing to provide what I think of as "balance" (acknowledgement and recording of diverse views) that might lead me to something approximating a whole picture and thereby 'the truth'.

I've been around a while. I guess I've finally spat the dummy over what seems to me to be the blatant propagandising of many New Zealand media outlets - Left or Right. The print media, in particular, who now also happen to be almost entirely foreign owned, which ties in nicely with the example below.

Let's look at the fuss over the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board take over bid for a chunk of Auckland Airport. There are views on both sides as to whether or not it is a good thing, and I had hoped to get some idea what the underlying values behind each view might be and marry that up with some facts, so I turned to the newspaper.

Weekend Herald, 2008-03-15, page C6, "Lack of Harmony on Canadian Deal", subtitled "Why veto the Auckland Airport sale for populist and xenophobic reasons?" The author is Herald business editor, Liam Dann.

With a heading like that, right away the needle on my "truth-o-meter" began twitching. What ultimate authority is it Mr. Dann has access to that determined the government was absolutely without question acting on motives that are only "populist and xenophobic"? In context, I readily can understand how a writer for a foreign-owned newspaper like the NZ Herald might find it difficult to take a doubtful stance on the benefits of foreign ownership. It would be a brave thing to do.

It's obvious enough to me why New Zealand's primary and only (major) international air transport hub should be operated in a way that is guaranteed (rather than accidentally or temporarily) to maximise the chances of best serving the interests of New Zealand. The world is full of examples of what can happen when a country does not ensure that transactions are in its wider interest. "Fiji Water" anyone?

The language used throughout is rich with Mr. Dann's barely concealed contempt for the current government and the major players in it. I get the message loud and clear. My truth-o-meter doesn't like pejorative terms much as they tend to obscure the truth rather than reveal it.

After several times asserting the primacy of property rights over the national interest, Liam Dann ends his piece by asserting (by implication) that people who oppose the foreign control of Auckland Airport are "stupid" and see assets sales as "black or white" because the "centrist voters" he claims to know the mind of would not be these things.

Even as opinion goes, that doesn't sound like the truth to me. Far from it. That's exactly the sort of thing that made me spit the dummy.