[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the dispatches, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
Hi everybody. Welcome along to the Friday Freebie episode of the Dispatchers podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again in today's topic of conversation. Why, oh why, does the mainstream media keep shooting itself in the foot? Before we get into that, just quickly though, if you're new here, welcome aboard. If you like the content, why not subscribe? If you've been listening for a while and you haven't done this already, please give us a rating. If you're listening on a platform that allows you to do that, all of that really, really helps the show. And last but not least, if you want to get access to a daily episode of the Dispatchers podcast every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, not just the Friday freebie, then why not become a
[email protected]? Leftfootmedia if you become a patron with $5 or more per month, then you will get access to an episode, an exclusive episode of the Dispatchers podcast every single day of the week. You know the deal. The link is in today's show notes or go to patreon.com leftfootmedia. And a huge thank you to all of our patrons. It's thanks to you guys that we are able to keep making this content available. Alrighty. So recently there was an AUT Auckland University school of Technology here in New Zealand for those who are listening overseas. Annual survey that was conducted about public trust in the mainstream media. This is a survey that is conducted every year. It has been conducted, I think, now for five years straight. And what the survey has continually shown over that five year period is that trust in the mainstream media is tanking. It is consistently been decreasing. But this year's survey result in particular was extremely bad. Effectively, the support for or trust in the mainstream media completely fell off a cliff. And we now find ourselves in a situation where over two thirds of the New Zealand population don't trust the mainstream media. Now, in one sense, because this was presented as a great and extremely serious crisis of, you know, almost apocalyptic proportions, but in one sense, this actually isn't a crisis. It's really a beneficial opportunity. You see, there's never been any such thing really as pure journalism right from the very beginning journalism was established as a practice to represent political philosophies and political ideologies. The original papers were organs of a political nature. They were there to try and present political ideas in their coverage of things that were happening in the world or the local community. So there never really has been such a thing as pure journalism, even in the modern era, where more of an effort was made to try and encourage, you know, a deeper, more responsible, more ethical and balanced type of journalism. It's always been the case that you had to go to multiple sources just to actually get a true and accurate picture, the full picture of events. Or quite often you would also have to go to the original source material that was being reported. So a speech someone had given, or a study or whatever it was, to actually really, truly, fully understand, to get the full picture. So that's always been the case. And what that means is that it's always been true that just engaging with the mainstream media, like listening to one outlet or reading one newspaper or one article, it wasn't enough. Generally speaking, there were exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, that has always been the norm. And so there's never been a pure journalism where you could just rely on journalistic outlets, outlets and single stories to actually give you the complete and full picture. And it's always been effectively a tool that has been slanted in one way or another by the bias of those writing or funding the stories that are published in particular media outlets. The cultural Marxists, by the way, were very, very aware of this fact. Karl Marx, the original grandpappy of Marxism, described religion as the opiate of the masses. And he was hostile to christian belief. And what he meant by this was that religious belief is effectively like a drug that you would give to a patient in a psychiatric institution to keep them dumbed down, to keep them stupefied and drooling out of both sides of their mouth. So they're sort of constantly wandering around in a daze. And Marx claimed that religion, and he was thinking of Christianity here, was a tool of the oppressive classes that kept you stuck in your place. It's like a drug that you give to a psychiatric patient to stop them from escaping the shackles of the institution. And so he believed that religion was a tool that was used by the powerful to prevent us and to stop us from wanting to rise up and to throw off the shackles of the people he deemed to be our oppressors. Well, the cultural Marxists, who arrived a few decades after Karl Marx and are trying to explain why his promised global revolution, economic revolution didn't actually take place because he claimed that capitalism wouldn't just be thrown off if people sort of rose up and chose to do that. He claimed that this would be an inevitable outcome of history, that history was moving towards the total revolution against and the abandonment of capitalism. And that didn't actually happen. And so the cultural Marxists are trying to explain why this is not happening. And they expand things. And for them, they describe the mainstream media, which was known back then as mass media, and this is starting to become more of a thing like broadcast radio in particular. These new technologies that are starting to emerge as tools of actually getting information very quickly to a very big audience. They described that as the new opiate of the new masses, effectively. So this was also part of the problem. This was a tool that was being used by the powerful elites to actually keep the population dumbed down and to stop them from rising up in their rightful revolution. And this is why they were so focused on getting control of the organs of mass media. They recognised its potential and they recognised and understood that it was a very powerful propaganda tool. And so they wanted to get their hands on it to promote their own brand of propaganda. And over the success of decades, what we see happening with media is effectively, it has devolved largely into yet another form of destructive consumerism, where what is being consumed is information. And we hear terms like infotainment being coined to describe the nature of what's actually going on. We're not really growing in knowledge so much, we are being entertained by consuming information. And in fact, with social media, I think it's fair to say that we've got to the point where this destruction or this destructive pattern becomes even more destructive. And the fact that the consumer isn't just consuming information, that technology, the way it's interacting back with them, is actually also consuming the consumer. This excessive consumerism that people can fall into on social media now, it also devolved into what some have called the manufacturing of consent, basically propagandizing, because the media is the very powerful tool that those with wealth and power have used to tell stories about the world. Who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, what things you're supposed to believe, what things you're not supposed to believe, what the popular and good and humane people accept and what causes they support, and what beliefs in groups they reject and want nothing to do with. In other words, what and who you should actually vote for and get behind. So the political ideas, the political causes, the ideologies, all that kind of thing that they want you to vote for and to support. And this is what is often called manufactured consent. The idea that we are consenting in, quote, marks to giving our vote away to these various things, our support to these very things, but an actual fact that consent has actually been manufactured, by the way, we have been propagandised to. So a loss of public trust is actually, as I said, in this one sense, a very positive opportunity, particularly if you're someone who is conservative. It allows people basically, to look beyond the mere gossip about palace intrigue. What's happening in parliament today? What are the politicians doing? What's the prime minister doing? What's the leader of the opposition doing? You know, the palace intrigue, the gossip. And if it's not that, the salacious talk about all the behaviours of the new aristocrat classes, what's kanye doing today? What do the actors from Harry Potter films think about JK Rowling? You know, what's happening with the aristocrats? What naughty business have they been up to in all of the sort of salaciousness of all of that kind of stuff, the court intrigue and everything else, and also on top of that, also the narrative world building stuff, the manufacturing of consent, it allows us an opportunity to actually look beyond that. If you've got a situation where two thirds of the population say, we no longer trust this institution, this organ known as the mainstream media, then what it does, hopefully, is that it actually encourages people to be more discerning and to hopefully even to get to a point where they stop just consuming information and instead start allowing themselves to be feared and shaped by knowledge. It's important to have even a little bit of knowledge, which is much more valuable than having a whole lot of information stuck in your head. And so you need to allow yourself to be formed and to be shaped by knowledge. It's not like just consuming information, it's not like infotainment. You take your time, you have to read deeper things and you have to invest in and contemplate the world and things like that. And so it's about more than just information, which is really effectively now in the modern age, the intellectual and philosophical equivalent of junk food. It's this quick hit that doesn't really go much deeper. But with the decline in trust in the mainstream media, what this does is it actually, hopefully, allows people to start delving deeply again, to looking to other sources, to looking beyond just information consumption. Hopefully they can engage with philosophy, theology, great writings, deep conversations, people who have something a bit more substantial to say or to propose or to challenge them to think about in relation to the world and what's actually going on. Even the mere act of watching some of this style of content online or listening to this sort of content, where, say, for example, you sit and watch a conversation between two or more people for 45 minutes or an hour or so, one of those long form pieces of content, usually independent media content, which sees people discussing and talking more deeply about things that is so much more beneficial for people. And it is interesting how more people are starting to discover that kind of content that's actually a really good thing. So the complete collapse of public trust in the mainstream media is not actually a crisis from that particular perspective. If you are someone who is authentically conservative, if you care about seeing people live in a deeper and more flourishing fullness of life, to find a deepness of goodness, truth and beauty within their lives and within the world, then this is actually not a crisis. It's actually a beneficial opportunity. However, it is definitely a serious crisis for the liberal regime and for the liberal ideology, and in particular the liberal elites. Because media, mainstream media is an essential tool for narrative and world building. Like I said, it is the tool that is used to tell us and to sell us ideas about who the good guys are and who the baddies are, who the ideologies and causes are, what they are that we're supposed to support, and what ideas are we supposed to throw off and reject and consider hateful and evil and wrong, et cetera, et cetera. And so if you're a liberal and the majority of people don't trust that tool anymore, uh oh. Who are they going to vote for? What causes are the unwashed masses going to start supporting? What causes and ideas are they going to start rejecting? And even worse, what ideologies or beliefs of liberalism are they going to start questioning, or maybe even wholesale rejecting? So this is a major existential, apocalyptic crisis for liberalism, because it's built on utopian doctrines which treat modern democracy as effectively being almost like divinely mandated, an institution that we cannot simply live without. And without it, the world will destroy itself and implode as we know it. And so you've got to keep media an essential tool of that. And so without that and without public trust in that, that's a very serious existential crisis if you're liberal. Also, liberalism has these utopian and completely overblown beliefs about the fundamental importance and powers of reasoning, self choosing individuals they have established and put them at the very source and centre of all society. That's what their ideology has done. And so you need to have media, because media engages with individuals as individuals. And so when there's this massive loss of trust in all of that, all of a sudden the very fundamental doctrines of liberalism start getting called into question. You know, liberalism is effectively this utopian idea that we are going to progress towards a better, more evolved, more higher state of humanity in human society. And that clearly has not happened and is not happening. What we see now with this massive collapse in trust in the mainstream media, for the liberal mind, that shouldn't actually be going on. And it is a major apocalyptic level crisis that it's actually happening. But in another sense, it is also a crisis in a different way, in particular for journalism as an industry, or you might say as an institution. Like if you were running a business or you were in charge of an institution where more than two thirds of the public did not consider you trustworthy, they said, these people, this institution is no longer trustworthy, then you know you've got a serious problem. And if you are a serious person who is reasoning well and who has a good grasp of reality, you're gonna say, we've got to do something about this. We've actually got to fix this. We've got to work in different ways to address this, because it is a serious crisis. But instead of admitting that they actually have a problem, like delusional alcoholics, it seems the majority in the mainstream media have instead decided just to double down on their errant behaviours. And they've also then doubled down on projecting the blame onto anyone and everyone else. And they just blamed everyone and everything else for this particular crisis. Everyone but them and their institution is to blame for this complete tanking of public trust in the mainstream media. It's the Russians. It's a global conspiracy, apparently, involving the Atlas network. I kid you not. A senior political editor in this country with 20 years experience for some of our, well, what previously I had always thought of as being some of our more elite journalistic endeavours, tweeted that claim out the night that aut journalism survey came out showing this massive loss of trust in the mainstream media. That public trust had fallen off a cliff. This senior editor tweeted out this claim that it was because of this global conspiracy involving the Atlas network, who no one had even heard of five minutes ago, because they are just a minor, insignificant player. They're not part of a global conspiracy. And like you, you know the irony in this institution, the media, who for the last couple of years have been claiming and telling us that we should be very, very careful of anyone who's trying to promote conspiracy theories now out here promoting this global conspiracy theory about the Atlas network. Apparently, if it's not them, it's disinformation that's become another type of conspiracy theorising that they engage in. Or it's just the fact that from their perspective, the public are ignoramuses who don't really understand how good and important journalism really is and how valuable their work is. Basically, we, the unwashed masses, were just too dumb, really, to understand the important and divinely mandated institution of journalism. And if only we could come to recognise just how good and important and actually full of integrity all of their work is, we would awake from our stupor and we would realise, oh no, we've been wrong all this time. There is actually nothing untrustworthy about the mainstream media. They are the most trustworthy people in the world. In fact, we should treat them as the most reliable and almost maybe as our single source of knowledge. That's the way in which they have condescendingly talked about this problem and tried to shift the blame. And so basically what they've done is they've just doubled down on their errant behaviours, with no sign that they actually even see the true nature of the problem, let alone have any sort of serious commitment to actually set about resolving it. And they are on this course of implosion. And it's why I think you will start to see more independent media ventures cropping up here in New Zealand like you've seen in other countries. Because I think it will actually get to a point where serious journalists, ethical journalists who want to do a good job and who are truly dedicated to actually engaging in good, ethical, integrity filled journalism, will recognise that this sinking ship is actually about to go under and they need to get off before it sinks completely. And they'll recognise that the captains of the ship aren't actually that interested in dealing with the problem. So if they want to carry on being serious journalists, they're gonna have to look more towards the pathway of independent media ventures. And I think we'll see a bit more of that starting to happen as well. Which brings me to what we're actually going to talk about today. What you've just heard there was effectively about 18 minutes or so of introduction to today's topic of conversation, where just two weeks after this aut journalism study, which showed there is a massive tanking of public trust in the mainstream media, one news, one of our biggest media outlets, ran a political poll. We'll talk more about the specifics of this poll as we go. And that poll showed a slight decrease amongst poll respondents in support for the current government. And instead of just reporting this in a very balanced and level headed kind of way, they decided to engage in eleven minutes or so of some of the most absurd hyperbole, misleading claims and even at least one outright falsehood. And it was just so bizarre. It was a spectacle of everything that is wrong with the current state of mainstream media and why there has been such a loss of public trust. And I thought we had to talk about this today. So what we're going to do is we're actually going to respond to this eleven minute clip. We're going to listen to it together. I'm going to pause it at various places and I'm going to give you my thoughts and I'm going to critique things as we go because this is really some of the most absurd hyperbole, some of the clearest examples of the problems with the mainstream media that I've seen in a while. It was just unbelievable. In fact, it didn't take long. Within hours, this had become a standing joke on social media in this country, this piece of reporting. And this all took place, remember, just two weeks or so after this major annual journalism survey, public trust survey, showing that public trust had tanked and even identifying some of the very problems that you will see in this particular piece of reporting. But here we are two weeks later and it's almost as if that AUT journalism poll had come out and said the mainstream media is just awesome. Keep doing what you're doing. We love you. We want more of it. It truly was something astounding. So let's listen to this together. It's going to start with the host, the news reader of the show on one news introducing the poll and the poll results. And then within a matter of seconds, holy moly, the hyperbole kicks off in a really big way and we'll just respond and unpack all of this as we go.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Ten Tato Kato. Good evening. Welcome to one news. We begin tonight though with breaking news. A shock result tonight. The coalition government would be out of power. According to the latest one news varian poll, support for National New Zealand first and Act has dropped. New Zealand first slide would put it out of parliament altogether. That'd mean labor, the Greens and Te party Mori would have the majority to govern. Here's political editor Mikey Sherman with the exclusive numbers.
[00:21:02] Speaker C: Political turbulence ahead. Buckle up. Brace for impact. National is down two points on 36. Those votes gobbled up by labor back in the respectable thirties for the first time in nine months. Also up to the Green Party on 14, the Chloe Swarbrick co leadership effect in full flight. But here comes the turbulence act is continuing its free fall now on seven, down for our fourth pole in a row. And bang. New Zealand first is down and out on four. Winston Peters would not be in parliament in what could be May day for the coalition. Rounding things off, Te party Mori sterion four maintaining one of its highest results in the one news variant poll.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: First thing that struck me about this report was why are you yelling at me? Why is this lady yelling at me? It is the most bizarre form of propagandizing. It is literally like a circus performance. It is the very definition of media agitprop and it is just so bizarre. And you can almost sense this sense of glee and desperate wishful thinking when they talked about the New Zealand first, the Winston Peterson result. But here's the absurdity of all of this. Despite all of this emotive hyperbole and overblown sentiment that you hear in that little segment there, all this survey has shown is that there has been a slight decrease in support, not a major decrease at all. And here's the really important bit. This survey was a poll that found the government had dropped down by 2% in their support. The Labor Party had climbed a similar degree and they said they're now in the thirties, they're not in the thirties, they've just barely reached 30. But the key point is this, this poll, the margin of error I believe for this poll is around 3%. So they're sitting on a poll with the margin of error of 3%, which means that these numbers could actually be wrong.
And if they are wrong even by only 1%, then all of a sudden, for example, labor is not in the thirties at all, they're still stranded in the twenties. And New Zealand first is not below 5% at all. It's just such a bizarre moment of hyperbole and spectacle that is not at all congruent with the reality of what this survey is. We'll talk more about that in a second and what it actually found. Lets carry on, lets swing around this.
[00:23:37] Speaker C: Way now to see how those numbers translate to seats in the house. National would have 48 seats in blue on that side, act gets nine, thats 57. And without New Zealand first, not enough to form a government. Looking at this side here, labor in red would have 40 seats, the Greens 18. Thats one more than national. And Act and Tepati Mori with six seats. Is Kingmaker time to bring up the preferred prime minister numbers now?
[00:24:07] Speaker A: And before we get into that, that was a very impressive looking spectacle of a graphic. You can't see it because it's on video, but it's a very impressive looking graphic displaying how the seats would play out. But it is totally meaningless. This is a survey. That's all it is. It's a survey. It's not actually an election poll. It's not people voting, it's just a survey. And more importantly, it is a minuscule snapshot survey. They surveyed a total of 1000 eligible voters. Now, if we assume that all of these eligible voters actually did vote in last year's election just six months ago, then what this means is this survey and the way that they are breathlessly talking about it, is based solely on a poll of a mere 0.03% of the total number of people who voted in last year's election. Not even 0.5 of a percent, not even 1%. A mere 0.03% of the total number of voters were surveyed and they came back with this result. And remember, you've got a margin of error somewhere around 3%. And they are reporting this like it is a major crisis, like this is somehow an election night poll or that this is somehow a poll the day before an election or even an election result itself. It is nothing of the sort. This is wishful thinking from people who are desperately propagandizing with such great hyperbole and absurdity that it's just. It's actually embarrassing. I kind of feel embarrassed for that, the people who are involved in all of this. And unsurprisingly, the backlash that they've had. It came pretty quickly because ordinary people recognised that this was just not a balanced way to cover this at all. But let's have a listen to the preferred prime minister poll to see where things are at, because remember, we're being sold that this is a great crisis for the government.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: Time to bring up the preferred prime minister numbers now. And more bad news for Christopher Luxon. Down two points on 23%.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Uh oh. So this is bad news for Christopher Luxon. He's down two points. Remember the margin of error? Forget about the margin of error. We won't even talk about that with the public. So he's down 2%. He's down to 23% support now. Uh oh. This must be really bad because she's told us this is bad news. So what this must mean is that support for the opposition leader has climbed and they are now polling higher than the current prime minister. Right, that's what that must mean. Right, well, let's have a listen and see where this actually is at.
[00:26:43] Speaker C: Chris Hopkins up one on 16. Chloe Swarbrick bouncing up two points to six.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: So what you're telling me, actually, is that the next closest contender is still nine percentage points below the actual prime minister. I thought you said this was bad news for the prime minister and that Chris Hipkins, the leader of the opposition, has only managed to climb by 1% in the preferred prime minister stakes. And Chloe Swarbrick has only managed to climb by 2%. And in fact, if you put both of their support together, so you took her 6%. The Green Party, Chloe Swalbrook, as preferred prime minister, took her 6% of the vote and you added it to Chris Hopkins 16% of the vote, you would still not have enough support to be ahead of the current prime minister.
So how. Oh, how is this somehow bad news for the prime minister? If I was prime minister, I'd actually be like, well, that's actually a pretty good result. It's pretty solid. It's not glamorous. I'd love it if everyone was growing in their support for me, but you know what? I'm still way ahead of the other guys, so I'm ok with that. This is not bad news. I'm sorry, it just isn't bad news. And remember, all of these results still fall within that margin of error, nudging.
[00:27:58] Speaker C: Ahead of David Seymour, who's up one on five. And Winston Peters is plummeting with his party down to. So there it is, a nightmare poll for the coalition government, which.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: No, it's not. It's absolutely not. Clearly, you can see they've got their sights set on Winston Peters. The media intensely dislike him because he's just such a rogue with him. He doesn't put up with their nonsense and he is almost like Teflon. He's like the Teflon Don. The media, no matter what they try and do, he just keeps coming back. He is like a political terminator who cannot be killed. He gets booted out of parliament and he just comes back. And not just that, but he refuses to play the media game. He just does not treat them like the little gods that they wander around thinking that they are. And so they clearly dislike this man. And so that's why she's claiming his support has plummeted. All this poll shows that his preferred prime minister numbers have dropped by a mere 2%. That is not plummeting. And here's the key. Bit. If you take David Seymour's support 5% and Winston Peters support 4%, that's 9%. And then when you add that to Christopher Luxon's support sitting on 23%, you've got 32% support for these various people who are leading the coalition right now. That definitely puts them well ahead. That is ten percentage points. It's almost ten percentage points right ahead of where the opposition parties combined are at. When you tally up these preferred prime minister numbers. This is not disastrous, this is not a nightmare poll. This is absurd hyperbole.
[00:29:44] Speaker C: So there it is, a nightmare poll for the coalition government, which has been in power for just five months. Is the honeymoon period over?
The prime minister may well reach for a bowl of hot noodles tonight. Winston Peters, a super wine biscuit with a cup of tea. David Seymour, some golden, greasy fish and chips. Exactly what we're looking for, coalition comfort food. After a pummeling in the polls.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Can I just say again with the absurd hyperbole, this is not a pummeling in the polls. No sane, rational person, it doesn't matter which side of the political aisle they're on, could claim that this is a pummeling in the polls. It does not represent that. Even if this poll is an accurate representation of the true mood of the whole electorate, not just 1000 eligible voters, this still does not represent a pummeling. At best, you could say this is a slight dip in the polls. And can I also say just how vacuous that introduction piece right there was with these three party leaders tying them to comfort food. This is another one of the problems with a lot of mainstream media reporting now. It is just vacuous. It's so superficial. This is very much the infotainment mode of how the mainstream media conducts itself now on a regular basis. Polls will go up and down. We're not that fixated on them. What we are focused on is delivering for New Zealanders.
[00:31:03] Speaker C: He says, give it a sec, New Zealand.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Ultimately they will judge us in three years time.
[00:31:08] Speaker C: It's not the coalition, it's you.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Oh, look, I acknowledge it's a tough time for New Zealanders, but just. Did you hear that? That was a complete falsehood. She just told a lie there. What she claimed was she started by claiming at the end of that little segment was that Christopher Luxon was blaming the New Zealand public for this poll result. It's not us, it's you. It's the New Zealand public. That's not what he said at all. So first of all, you notice that his full comment is missing typical media editing down instead of actually giving us the full context. And all he was indicating in that brief little snippet of a comment we got from him was he stating the fact that right now we are in an economic downturn, we're in a situation where things aren't good for a lot of people. There is a global financial mess that has come right on the back of COVID and also particularly in New Zealand, there's a mess that has been created by the errant mismanagement of the previous regime. And so that is affecting all of us. And what he's highlighting there is that for ordinary everyday people economic stability really matters. And when people feel that they are in a state of economic uncertainty and when things are tough, the natural inclination is that they blame whoever happens to be in power. Doesn't matter what flavor of politician they are, the people in power get the blame. And he's just pointing to that fact. For a lot of people it's tough out there right now. Effectively we're not miracle workers as politicians is what he's really saying there. And every honest politician doesn't matter, again, what side of the aisle that they're on. They will tell you that. They'll admit to that fact, that they're not miracle workers and they are the victims effectively, often of powerful forces like market forces that often at times can be beyond their control. So he's making these kinds of points. He is not saying it is the New Zealand public, the New Zealand public are ignorant or the New Zealand public, it's their fault. That's not what he's saying. But that is exactly what she has claimed there. Let's have a listen to what she said again into his response.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: He says, give it a sec, New Zealand.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Ultimately they will judge us in three years time.
[00:33:14] Speaker C: It's not the coalition, it's you.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Oh look, I acknowledge it's a tough time for New Zealanders. He did not say it's the fault of the New Zealand people. The New Zealand people are ignoramuses or something like that. That's the implication of what she's saying there and it is absolutely untrue. That is not what he said at all.
[00:33:30] Speaker C: But just five months in the driver's seat, nationals hitting speed bumps, New Zealand first is booted from parliament.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: No, New Zealand first has not been booted from parliament. Again, that is completely untrue. But you can hear almost the glee in the voice too about all of this. Again, they are really, really excited and salivating about this poll result that puts Winston Peters, beneath the 5% it's quite a fascinating little insight into the mind of the media right now and who they really dislike within the current government.
[00:34:05] Speaker C: And the ACT party.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: You might be finding that there's a.
[00:34:08] Speaker C: Difficulty in continues to take a licking.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: I remember year after year I used to bang away and seven was a dream. If you're trying to tell me that's now a nightmare, that I'm a pretty happy guy and he's right, that's exactly the right response. They are not taking a licking. They are sitting on 7%. For a minor party to be sitting on 7% support. And by the way, let's not forget they are also in government right now. But let's pretend that they weren't. Even if this was leading into an election, they would be more than happy to be sitting on 7%. No one is taking a licking here. This is just such absurd and dishonest hyperbole.
[00:34:51] Speaker C: Winston Peters has arguably outworked most of cabinet, leading a gruelling overseas schedule as foreign minister.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: The situation in Gaza is an utter catastrophe.
[00:35:03] Speaker C: But along with positive global headlines, he's also made negative ones.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Their DNA made them somehow better than others.
I've seen that sort of philosophy before.
I saw it in Nazi Germany. We all did. No, no, that's not a negative headline for the majority of New Zealanders. If you don't know what that story was about. A member of the Mori party suggested that Mori had superior DNA to non Mori people. And Winston Peters rightly called that out for the racially supremist idea that it is. The majority of New Zealanders would agree with him. So no, this was not a controversy. And the other article that you can't see, they brought up briefly on screen, was the absurd supposed controversy involving british pop band Chumbawumba and their song tub thumping. Remember, he was using it. And the absurd claims that were made about that. That was a five minute controversy. It lasted for 5 seconds precisely because it was actually a media manufactured beat up. And that was it. That was the extent of it. And what that actual piece indicates, and this is quite important information that you're receiving there in that little clip, was that Winston Peters has actually been working hard and doing what he is very good at. By all accounts, from across the political divide in New Zealand. He is a very good foreign minister and he is doing his job faithfully. And guess what? That means he's overseas now. When Winston is overseas doing his job, guess what? He's not here. Constantly engaging with the New Zealand public and so you know what will happen to a party when their leader is not seen as much in the mainstream media? Guess what? Their poll numbers will dip slightly. That's actually a common and well established fact. If you're not getting any oxygen, then you're not going to flourish in the polls. It's just that simple. Now, on the flip side, who has been getting a lot of media attention of late and who had the media really, it seems at times gone out of their way to promote and to put in front of the New Zealand people? Well, none other than Chloe Swarbrick. And what do you see? Oh, surprise, surprise. Her numbers have gone up slightly as a result of the oxygen that she's getting. That's how this works. That's actually quite an important point. But they don't focus on the important point. Instead, they are still using it to build this misleading, hyperbole driven narrative about the poll result for national.
[00:37:23] Speaker C: It's been a case of underperformance with two struggling ministers. If only. If I was a magician, if I could actually just snap up a solution, that would be fantastic. Christopher Luxon had a solution.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: I make interventions when I need to, to make sure I had good senior cabinet ministers dealing with those issues. So what you're telling me is if you've got two underperforming ministers, you've actually got a major issue. Well, what does that say about the previous labor regime and the behaviours and the various sackings that went on of their MP's? All we had here, and this is quite a fascinating case study, is we had two MP's, two ministers who were deemed to be underperforming after a mere six months. And so what happened? Christopher Luxon took very speedy action and moved them out of those portfolios and gave those portfolios to other ministers. This is exactly what you would actually hope you would see from leaders, right, when they recognise there's a problem and there's a leadership issue, they actually address it. Now, whether or not six months was actually truly long enough to get a sense of whether these ministers were underperforming or not, you could debate that point. But there's no denying the fact that he perceived there was a problem and so he took quick action to address it. He acted strategically to try and fix the problem. That actually is what good governance looks like. And maybe the fact that we've had the previous couple of regimes or a couple of terms with the previous government, which was woefully mismanaged, maybe we're just not used to seeing good management and we're not really recognising the wood for the trees anymore because. Yeah, that example she cites is not really proof of government failure at all. It points to how a good leadership regime should actually act. It should address problems and act quickly to address problems when they arise.
[00:39:14] Speaker C: Since coming into power, the government scrapped, cut, tightened and reduced austerity in absolute overdrive.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: I'm not sure why, but if you saw the footage, you would have seen this. But as she's talking about making cuts in austerity, there were multiple different bits of footage of criminal gang members, actually patched motorcycle gang members.
I'm not sure why they were the people tied to that little statement there. That's very odd. How dare they take austerity measures against gangs and cut their numbers? It's a very, very odd comparison. But again, this is also the fruit of the previous regime, which overspent and which over committed the country in various areas was very wasteful and went on a bit of a hiring bender, actually, in the final months of their regime. And the national party inherited a massive problem and they've had to try and fix it. It is a problem that we're in now where if you overspend and you are wasteful and you are not prudent in your spending, then guess what? Someone has to wear the cost of that somewhere. That's the sad reality of the situation. Now, I don't agree with every policy that this coalition and certainly the approach that national, has been taking on some areas, but the simple truth is that they have done a lot of things that they've really had to do. Their hand has been forced and if we want to avoid tanking economically, then some of these tough decisions, sadly, had to be made. We face a hangover from the last guys borrowing and inflation. We now have to come away and take away the punch bowl from the party that's gone on too long.
[00:40:54] Speaker C: Speaking of parties, the coalition's not always been a good time. With David Seymour accused of undermining the.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Prime minister, some people would say that he's undermining me or I'm undermining him and actually, I don't listen to either of those people. What New Zealanders can be reassured about is there is massive unity and single minded purpose.
[00:41:13] Speaker C: So you and him are all good.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: We are dangerously united from the point of view of our opponents.
That's a brilliant response. But did you hear that question? So you and him are all good, are you? That's a journalist talking to a politician. Now, what's going on here. This is a very interesting moment in this little report. What's happening now is we've shifted from a poll result into piling on bits of information to try and build a narrative. What they're trying to do now is something that they're not actually qualified to do. They are now. This is a major piece of editorializing and it's propagandizing. It's trying to convince you why they are right in this hyperbole that they are engaging in about this poll. They're trying to convince you why the poll numbers have dipped. They've only dipped slightly, but they're trying to give you a reason for the dip. They don't know that, though. And so what's happening is this is propagandizing. They are now building a much more comprehensive narrative that is not contained within the poll numbers. The poll numbers just tell you what a thousand people think right now. At that given moment, if you surveyed a different thousand people a week from now, you might get a completely different result.
But regardless of that very limited and very small window of opportunity, they are now branching out into this very broad and wide sweeping narrative building exercise. This is why trust in the mainstream media is tanking, because this is well beyond just reporting facts now.
[00:42:50] Speaker C: They just need to convince the public and regain voter confidence.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: This is blatantly misleading, if not downright false. All this poll has shown is a slight dip. And all this poll represents is a snapshot survey of a mere 0.03% of the total number of people who voted in an election just a mere six months ago. That's all it is. So there is no indication that they've actually lost public confidence to that degree at all.
As I said, you survey a different thousand people in one week's time and there's a really high chance that you'll get a very different result out of that survey. That's why you don't treat these polls the way in which this journalist, this media outlet is treating this poll.
It is nothing more than a snapshot survey of a small number of people. And it doesn't matter whether it goes up slightly or down slightly, you don't treat them. This is a mistake. I thought that we had actually learnt from after the 2016 us election results, one of the big learning points from that was that polling had actually become an unreliable sport for all sorts of reasons. But I thought we'd learnt that. But clearly some people have not bothered to take that lesson on board.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: As we know, Mikey, polls are a snapshot in time. How big a deal are these poll numbers?
[00:44:12] Speaker A: That's an interesting question. Right? So he starts by telling you the truth. This poll is a snapshot in time. It is a minor, very, very small snapshot, a very brief window. And yet he immediately turns around and says, but how serious is this poll? In other words, tell me, convince me, give me a narrative that actually convinces me, well, really the public about why they should treat this poll with the same level of emotive hyperbole that we are engaging in on tonight's bulletin.
[00:44:37] Speaker C: Well, look, I've said this once already to but this poll will absolutely rock the entire parliament. You will have MP's from political parties across the spectrum sending OMG WhatsApp messages to their caucus group chats right this very minute.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: So she's making claims there that she cannot possibly know. She's got no way of knowing whether any of this is going on. And secondly, it is just not true at all to claim that this poll will absolutely rock parliament, the whole of parliament. It just won't do that at all. It shows a slight dip in support. And political parties who are in parliament are there because they are much more serious about the business of politics. And they will know that this poll will not rock parliament at all. At best, what the Labor Party and the Greens might be hoping for is they might look at this poll and they might say, okay, hopefully, maybe this is the start of a trend. We need to see more of this. That's how they would be talking about it. They won't be sitting there popping champagne corks and going, this is it. We've won. We were going to win the next election, which is two and a half years away. There is no way any of that will be happening. And the current coalition parties definitely will not be sitting there in parliament thinking to themselves, oh my gosh, it's all over, we've lost. We're done for. What are we going to do? We've got to change everything quickly, quickly make wholesale changes. Whatever you do, we've got to fix this. No one will be thinking that way because rightly they are sane and rational people. They are serious people, unlike this media outlet. And they clearly know that this is a slight decrease in a 1000 person survey. And so serious people don't govern based on one off polls. They just don't. They look for trends. That's what you need to see. And this poll does not represent a trend.
[00:46:24] Speaker C: And the reason is that this is largely unprecedented. To have a new coalition government just five months into power essentially polled out of power is almost unheard of.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: This is important. So first of all, no one has been polled out of power. That is a completely false claim. This is a survey, not an election result. So nobody has been polled out of power. That is not what this represents at all. Secondly, and remember this, this is important. She has just made the claim that this is unprecedented. So in other words, this has not happened before. This is a never before seen phenomenon where you have a new coalition government and just six months into this new coalition government having been established after an election, they are polling in a downward direction. That's what she's claimed is unprecedented. Well, have a listen as she right now, then immediately turns around and completely refutes and proves her first claim wrong by showing us that this is not actually unprecedented at all.
[00:47:30] Speaker C: Now I've looked back at previous one news variant polls in the past and the last time a government party was voted out in a poll this soon.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: After being elected was again, no one is voted out or was or has been voted out in a poll. It's an election and only an election that has the power to do that. Polls don't do that. This is blatantly misleading.
This is not what's going on. This is editorializing. This is narrative. This is propagandizing, whatever you want to call it, it is a motive hyperbole and it is blatantly dishonest. It is misleading. That is not what surveys do. They don't actually have any bearing at all on an election. Only people voting in an election actually votes. Governments in or votes governments out, candidates in, candidates out, et cetera, et cetera. But she keeps using that language. This is narrative, world building language.
[00:48:27] Speaker C: Now, I've looked back at previous one news varian polls in the past and the last time a government party was voted out in a poll this soon after being elected was John Key's government of 2015 and Helen Clark's government in 2006.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: So what you're actually telling us is that in actual fact, despite your initial claim about how unprecedented this was, and this has almost never happened before, it's actually happened twice before with a Labor coalition government and a national, different national coalition government. And I guarantee you if we went back and looked through other polling companies, not just your polling company, we'd probably discover that this is a lot more common than you're claiming to have poll results that actually dip and show a drop in support. So basically she's just refuted herself there. This, my friends, is the current state of the mainstream media and it is exactly why public trust has dropped off a cliff.
[00:49:23] Speaker C: But the big difference there is that was third term governments. This new coalition is only just getting started, so it will certainly hurt. Now, the big question is, is this buyer's remorse? Are voters sitting at home tonight thinking, oh, I'm not too sure, seeing cuts after cuts, crackdowns after crackdowns, day after day, and wondering exactly what they may have signed up for?
[00:49:48] Speaker A: Now, that's interesting. That little moment that there is, again, it's propagandising. She's engaging in there. It is blatant editorializing. It is one of the very problems that was identified in the automotive journalism survey. It was talked about in the reporting and the coverage of that, which even the coverage of it was woeful. They didn't go and actually speak to the owners of these media outlets or the senior editors and say, hey, clearly you've got a problem. What are you going to do about it? But one of the things they did identify rightly was that editorialising was a problem. And that's exactly what she's engaged in here. Now. When you ask a question like she did, she starts by saying, is this a question of then what you should do is you should actually put a couple of options on the table. Right? Is this a question of buyer's remorse or is it just a snapshot poll that's not really reflecting the true mood of the nation? That would be an accurate question to ask people. But of course she doesn't. Instead, she only puts one question before the general public. Is this a matter of buyer's remorse? And then she lists a whole lot of reasons why, effectively, she probably thinks this is by his remorse and then leaves it hanging. And what that does is that is a type of, I guess you would call it information seeding, you might call it psychological priming. You are being encouraged to think and believe certain things about this poll and this government. This is not journalism. It is clearly a partisan way of addressing, again, a survey of a mere 0.03% of the voting public who voted in last year's election.
[00:51:31] Speaker B: In your report, we heard from Christopher Lachson and David Seymour. What's Winston Peters saying?
[00:51:36] Speaker C: I spoke to Winston Peters this morning. Now, he notoriously hates political polls. In fact, he said to me this morning he doesn't give a rat star.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: A year about that is the laughable moment. And good on Winston. That's the right response. Doesn't mean anything.
[00:51:52] Speaker C: Results. And look, I think we need to remember that Winston Peters, he is the comeback king. He clawed his party back into contention, back into power at the last election. There's no reason why he cannot do that again at the next election.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: So do you see what she's done here? She's just completely refuted again all of the build up hyperbole that we heard. So apparently this poll, which is supposedly a nightmare, which is rocking the parliament, which shows, quote unquote, they've been voted out, they've been polled out of parliament. In actual fact, Winston Peters, it doesn't really actually mean that much because he proves and has proved time and time again that if you campaign well, the real poll, the only poll that matters, which is polling day when people vote, will see you come back into parliament. So this poll has not done anything, it hasn't changed the makeup of parliament and it is not an election result. And Winston Peters proves that what you shouldn't do is you shouldn't take a mere snapshot of a mere 0.03% of the voting public who voted in the last election as anything more than that, a mere snapshot of a mere 0.03% of the total number of people who voted in the last election. But have a listen to how she immediately tries to spin this into the negative after an actual fact, saying it doesn't really mean that much. Here's her now trying to refute herself and trying to spin it back into being a negative for the coalition. Have a listen.
[00:53:21] Speaker C: There's no reason why he cannot do that again at the next election. The problem is that is three years away.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: In actual fact, I think it's two and a half years, not three years. But leaving that aside, two and a half years till polling day and you're confronted by a one off snapshot poll that has shown a slight decrease in support and you've got two and a half years to fix that problem. In politics, that's a lifetime. There is no problem with that. Those words do not legitimately belong together. The claim. The problem is they've only got two and a half years or three years. Has she claimed to fix the problem? That is not a problem in political terms. A problem would be. The problem is they've only got two weeks to fix the problem and turn this around. Or the problem is they've only got three months to turn this around. That would be in the territory of a problem, politically speaking. But saying you've got two and a half years to fix this and then calling that a problem is just not true. It is nonsensical. But you see what she's doing. She's trying to get back to the original dishonest, misleading spin. She's already claimed and told us that this poll was a nightmare poll and it was bad news and they've been polled out of parliament. And so she's got to get back into that mode. And that's why she just said that.
[00:54:45] Speaker C: One news polls consistently and if the coalition cannot turn its numbers around, it will be death by 1000 cuts to its confidence.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: So you see what she did there? She's back into pure wild speculation. If the government can't turn its numbers around, this is one snapshot poll six months after an election with two and a half years to go before the next one. There's just no justification for speaking that way about this poll result if they can't turn their numbers around. That's the kind of thing you say a couple of weeks out or a month or two out from an election, not two and a half years out from an election. This is just not grounded in reality. And what do you mean death by a thousand cuts? That's an interesting turn of phrase. Who's holding the knife in this metaphor? I suspect it will be certain people in the media possibly holding the knife. But what do you mean death by a thousand cuts? And what's so revealing about that is clearly in her mind. She thinks there's already been, regardless of who's holding the knife, she already seems to believe that there have been lethal cuts that have been applied or have happened within this coalition. So there's a bias being exposed in that particular turn of phrase that she's chosen to use there in that moment. So we've had all this hyperbole from one side attacking the current coalition. We are now about to be introduced. Another journalist is about to join the hyperbole fest and bring their little contribution to the fray. And we are now about to hear some hyperbole in favour of the labor party. So let's have a listen to what happens next.
[00:56:18] Speaker C: Now, speaking of confidence, the opposition parties will be celebrating tonight. For more on labor, the Green Zantepati Mori, his senior political reporter Benedict Collins.
[00:56:30] Speaker D: For Chris Hipkins, it's all about trying to win back trust.
[00:56:34] Speaker A: You stay too. Now, you can't see this, but I can. This is so hilarious. After saying it's all about Chris Hipkins winning back trust and after telling us that this poll is major good news for the opposition and for the labor party in particular. They have this video footage of Chris Hipkins walking up to a Shetland pony on some farm somewhere. And as soon as he reaches out and touches the Shetland pony to pat it on the head. It freaks out, spins around and runs in the opposite direction.
Now, my friends, in the world of PR, that is not the imagery that you are looking for. If you are trying to convince us that you are a trustworthy candidate. Really? Even the animals know. Get away. Get away. So it's a very odd choice of footage. Again.
[00:57:27] Speaker D: And convince voters he's a safe pair of hands. Today's pollution means Labour can dare to dream again.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: When I first heard that, you know what I thought of? I thought of this scene from the movie dumb and dumber. Have a listen. This is Jim Carrey talking to another character in the film who he has become absolutely besotted with. He's totally infatuated with her and it's just delusional. She has no attraction to him whatsoever. But he thinks there is a possibility of the two of them becoming involved in a romantic relationship. Have a listen to this. This is what I thought of when I heard that statement in the. In the one news article. Just give it to me straight. I came a long way just to see you, Mary. Just. Least you can do is level with me.
[00:58:11] Speaker E: What are my chances?
[00:58:15] Speaker C: Not good.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: You mean not good like one out of 100?
[00:58:22] Speaker C: I'd say more like one out of a million.
[00:58:27] Speaker A: So you're telling me there's a chance.
Yeah, I read you.
That's exactly what I thought of when I was watching this one news article and particularly that point. So you're telling me there's a chance.
[00:58:44] Speaker C: It's like.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: No, that's not what that poll is actually indicating at all.
Oh, just so out of touch with the reality. Anyway, let's carry on with the news article.
[00:58:53] Speaker D: Today's poll means labor can dare to dream again.
[00:58:57] Speaker A: Our supporters and our MP's are out working very, very hard and I think they'll be encouraged by this. But we all know that we've got a lot of work to do.
[00:59:04] Speaker D: Just months into opposition, they're up now out of the dreaded twenties and closing the gap on national.
[00:59:10] Speaker A: I think this should be a real wake up call to them. The direction that they are taking the country in is not the direction that New Zealanders were looking for when they voted for change at the last election. If you go up by one or two percentage points, of course you've closed the gap. And if you go down by even half a percentage point, the gap is widened. You can make that claim technically, but realistically, when you are polling nine percentage points behind Christopher Luxon, and I don't actually think Christopher Luxon is a particularly charismatic prime minister and he has a lot of people who just really struggle to, I guess you'd say, like him, not personally, but to sort of get on board with his whole Persona and everything else. And he's still nine percentage points ahead of you. So you're saying there's a chance.
Oh, man, it's just crazy stuff. No disrespect, but Chris Hipkins had six years in government. He left an unholy mess for our government to pick up the government's misfortune.
[01:00:05] Speaker D: Music to the green's ears.
[01:00:07] Speaker A: Excuse me, what are you listening to?
[01:00:08] Speaker C: We've got Pink Floyd, another brick in the wall.
[01:00:12] Speaker D: Their take on the poll.
[01:00:14] Speaker C: It's pretty cool.
[01:00:15] Speaker A: Now, what was very interesting about that little piece of footage, and this is exactly what I was talking about when I talked about earlier, the way in which the mainstream media has really promoted the cause of Chloe Swarbrick, because here she is. And this footage comes to us from record store day. And I'm a bit of a vinyl buff myself. I have a vinyl collection. And on Record store day it's a pretty big deal. The record stores have all sorts of festivities and events and specials and stuff like that that go on and people generally on record store day and the special releases of vinyl and all sorts of stuff that happens. And so they filmed some footage of Chloe Swalbrook on record store day in a record store. And what is she doing in this footage that they chose to broadcast on the news? She's djing. Now, what does that call to mind? Well, the previous prime minister, the young female dj, Jacinda Ardern. I don't think that that's an accident that they've chosen to go with this kind of imagery and footage. They're trying to clearly cast her in the mold of Ardern. There's already such a clear mood, you can see happening within the media where that kind of approach is being taken. And it was fascinating. The record that she grabbed was Pink Floyd. Another brick in the wall. And I'm a bit of a fan of Pink Floyd. I have a few Pink Floyd albums in my vinyl collection. And one of my favourite Pink Floyd songs actually, is the Fletcher Memorial home. Let me read to you some of the lyrics from the Fletcher Memorial home. Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere and build them a home, a little place of their own. The Fletcher Memorial home for incurable tyrants and kings. And they can appear to themselves every day on closed circuit tv to make sure they're still real. Its the only connection they feel. So yeah, thats what I thought of when I saw Chloe Swalbrick grabbing a Pink Floyd album. Anyway, thats a totally unrelated side note. So lets just carry on with the rest of this reporting being rocked by.
[01:02:21] Speaker D: Political scandals this year. Theyre up two points to 14.
And Chloe Swarbricks own popularity is rising too. Shes now third in the preferred prime ministers stake.
[01:02:33] Speaker A: Sure she's third, but a total number of five people in this race. So third out of 100 is awesome. Third out of ten is actually pretty good. But third out of five means that you are middling. You're sitting in the middle of the pack.
So the way which this coverage continues again, is painting a narrative and it is a very partisan narrative. It's just crazy. It's so blatantly partisan in what's going on here.
[01:03:01] Speaker D: So what did the opposition put this result down to?
[01:03:04] Speaker C: Based on the sentiment that I've heard out there from New Zealanders, they are frankly fed up with the lack of respect that this government shows for people on the planet.
[01:03:12] Speaker A: Why do you think the government is tanking?
[01:03:14] Speaker C: I think it's tanking because it's got some mates on it that are just dragging it backwards into the 18 hundreds, which nobody wants to be a part of.
[01:03:23] Speaker A: This is such a bizarre coincidence that the progressive left wing opposition parties all seem to hold the same opinions and ideas about why the government is tanking as the supposedly independent media outlet does. The journalists on that seem to be presenting the same ideas. That's strange. I don't know how that's a weird coincidence because clearly the media outlet wouldn't be biased in any way. So that can't be the reason why they are both presenting this homogenous view on the current state of affairs. And what a strange question to ask. Why do you think this government is tanking? That's not what the poll shows you at all. But again, I don't think there's anything untoward going on here. These clearly are objective, impartial, ethical journalists just doing their best to report information in a very balanced, fact based and non hyperbole driven way. So let's hear more from them. Are you surprised? I mean, they're six months in.
[01:04:20] Speaker C: No, I'm not surprised at all. We don't want to go backwards and accelerate climate crisis for a quick buck. We don't want to see the wealth distributed to the rich and not look after those who are struggling.
[01:04:34] Speaker A: So you see what's happened there. What's happened is the coalition government. We were fed a narrative about how they are failing, about how they are losing public trust, and about how this poll has, quote unquote, polled them out, voted them out of parliament. And then what they do is they go to the opposition parties and they just give them an open platform, a blank check. Now you tell us what you think is wrong with this government and why they suck. You tell us that and we'll just broadcast that on air.
There's no serious business of journalism going on here. I would be asking questions like, don't you think after six months and all of the opportunities and the controversies that have happened that you should be polling higher than that, that you should have climbed more than 2%? Chloe Swarbrick leaders bump is only 2%. That doesn't represent much, really. Like where's the probing questions to them? There are no probing questions because this is not balanced journalism.
[01:05:27] Speaker D: We asked the public today how they think the government's going.
[01:05:30] Speaker C: I don't think it's going very well at all, actually. I just think that there's too much, well, probably in house bickering going on and decision making is a bit too slow. Not happy with fast tracking legislation, but average.
[01:05:45] Speaker A: So they polled a total of three people on the street that we know of. Maybe they polled more and they had other people saying actually they're doing a pretty good job, but they just chose not to show those people. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. But they polled three people in total. The first person says, I'm not happy because they actually aren't working fast enough. So they're not opposed to the coalition, they just want more action. The next person talks about fast tracking and obviously that's been the sort of the big narrative of late. And the fast tracking really relates to them having to undo quite quickly a lot of what the previous government had done, the mess that they'd made. And then thirdly, we get someone who just sort of says, oh, I'm just not that impressed. But there's no explanation given. That's it. That's the extent of the public polling. Great in depth coverage here. Nothing vacuous, folks, nothing vacuous. This is definitely the place to come and consume deep and meaningful information, that's for sure.
[01:06:42] Speaker D: This feedback leading labour to believe there's life in this old dog yet.
[01:06:47] Speaker A: So you're telling me there's a chance.
And secondly, did you notice what he said here? Because what he claimed here is absolutely false and easily disprovable. He just said that this feedback that they received from those three people, that they interviewed on the street has led labor to believe that there is life in this old dog yet. In other words, there's a chance. But hold on a minute. How would labor even know that you polled those three people on the street? And again, let's assume that they only polled those three people and didn't choose to selectively edit out those other people who might have said, in actual fact, we're okay with this government. But let's presume that there's only three people polled and that's the total feedback that they got. How would the labor party know about that feedback? Did he take it to the Labour party and say, hey, guys, I just want to let you know, I've been on the street, interviewed three people, and this is what they told me. What do you think? Oh, well, I'll tell you what we think. We think there's life in the old dog, yet there's hope. This is a really good sign. This is hilarious. This is just.
I mean, come on, guys. At least do the fundamentals correctly. Just tell the truth. That's the very least that we expect from the media. Holy moly and Benedict.
[01:08:04] Speaker B: Labor's pretty happy with this boost, understandably. But there's also something else going right for them. Tell us more.
[01:08:11] Speaker D: Yeah, that's right. Well, we all know that the labor party got a bloody nose at the last election, but one of the areas where they really took a political beating was in the Auckland area. Now, when Labor's ministers began to miss fire last year and also, coupled with high crime in the Auckland area, Labor's support there really began to evaporate. That cost them a lot of votes and also quite a few seats in the Auckland area. Now, what Labor's telling me is that they're starting to see this support come back. That's what their political polling in the city is telling them. And that's also what they're hearing on the ground, that they're starting. Voters are starting to come back to them in this key battleground area. So we can expect to see a lot more of the labor party in Auckland, a lot more of Chris Hopkins in Auckland as they really target the Auckland area because they just see it as crucial if they have a chance to win the next election.
[01:08:55] Speaker A: Now, did you see what's going on there? First of all, this is what my kids and I would call captain obvious reporting. This is just totally vacuous, what he's just told us. There is a blatant and self evident truth. You don't need a journalist to tell you that if you want to win an election, you need to win big and you need to get votes secured and you need to be polling hard in the biggest population center in the country, which is Auckland. That's all he's told us there, that we can expect to see more of labor polling in Auckland and that if they do well there, then, you know, that's where the chances really lie.
Yeah. And our kids call this captain obvious because last year we were all sitting down together as a family watching a live netball game and we had a captain obvious commentator came on and he literally was saying things like, during a netball game, he's saying things like, the team that scores the most goals here is definitely going to win this match.
Yes, that is true. So what you're telling me is that the party that focuses its resources in the biggest population centres is actually more likely to get a better outcome, right? That's what you're telling me? So that's point number one. But point number two again, this is the partisan nature of this coverage he has just repeated back to the public. Totally unverified, totally un fact checked claims from inside the labor party. Did you notice that? He just reported them as if they are beyond reproach, as if there's no questioning them. And not just that. He's not just talked about internal polls, he's talked about the labor party is telling me that this is what they are hearing on the ground. This is another one of those really interesting moments. And again, it points to the partisan nature of this eleven and a half minutes of coverage that we have been exploring in today's episode.
[01:10:38] Speaker B: Kia Ora Benedik. Thank you for that. Let's bring Mikey back in. A tough result overall for Christopher Luxon, his personal popularity dipping slightly as well as preferred prime minister. How do you expect he'll respond?
[01:10:48] Speaker A: Hold on a minute. No, this is, again, his personal prime minister. In this snapshot poll of a mere 0.03% of the people who voted in the last election has shown a slight decrease, 2%. But he is still nine percentage points ahead of the next closest rival, the big opposition party, Chris Hopkins. In the preferred prime minister stakes, he's nine percentage points ahead. And even if all of Chloe Swarbrick's support went to Christopher Hopkins, then guess what? They would still be one percentage point behind the current prime minister. Why are we even talking about this like it means anything? Why have you dedicated a full eleven and a half minutes to this?
This, my friends, is the media crisis in a nutshell.
[01:11:35] Speaker C: Well, look, Christopher Luxon is competitive by nature. He doesn't hide that fact. So despite putting on a very brave face today, you can bet that he will be absolutely gutted by these results.
[01:11:46] Speaker A: And again, why would he be absolutely gutted? And why are you engaging in wild speculation here? He has not told you that. There is no indication that that would be the case. There is no legitimate, sound reason to claim that on the back of a snapshot poll of 1000 people that has shown a slight decrease, that you can be making these kinds of wild speculations about what actually is going on. This is a classic example of what the media does and why more and more people are just tuning out, because this is not journalism, this is propagandising. And it is so blatant.
[01:12:27] Speaker C: You know, he's the prime minister, it's his coalition and it's his government's reputation on the line. As you mentioned, his personal popularity in those preferred prime minister rankings has also taken a hit.
[01:12:38] Speaker A: And that's it has not taken a hit. It has decreased by a mere two percentage points within the 3% margin of error. And most importantly of all, he's still streets ahead of his closest rivals. Even if they combined their support, they still wouldn't be beating him or even neck and neck with him, despite his.
[01:12:59] Speaker C: Social media campaign going into overdrive. He's on Instagram, he's on TikTok, he is pushing hard in those areas, and yet he isn't getting the cut through that he is looking for and that he is intending on getting.
[01:13:12] Speaker A: Now, I kind of agree with this. I think Christopher Luxon's TikTok and social media type campaigns, some of them are quite cringey, but most politicians do this nowadays. But here's the point. Again, this is another lesson that clearly has not been learnt in the last couple of years, because this has been raised time and time and time again. Social media is not where elections are actually won or lost. Social media is a place where you go to an echo chamber and you find other people who agree with you and you all spout the same political views and you reinforce each other. Generally speaking, that's the general trend. And what happens is, and what had been happening is people had been looking at these echo chambers and wrongly thinking they represented the genuine and real widespread views of the actual voting public. And it turns out they don't. They miss most of the voting public, actually. And so come election time, come voting time, whatever the actual election is or the referendum is, surprise, surprise, the result doesn't go the way that it was supposed to. Go based on social media trends. So we've known this for a long time. Social media is not the place, it's not an indicator. So her even raising this points to the fact that our media aren't really cognizant of the very fundamental landscape, the fundamental essentials and factors in these various areas where they're supposed to be experts on, they're supposed to be reporting and giving us the big inside oil so that we can be better informed. If someone was properly informed, they wouldn't even go there, because they would know that social media doesn't really mean anything and it has no bearing, therefore, on a telephone poll.
[01:14:54] Speaker C: In his defence, you know, national will argue the coalition overall has a big difficult job ahead. They've inherited some massive challenges from the last labor government, and that requires some tough decisions and some tough love. But even where nationals should be providing some reassurance, some comfort to voters, perhaps in the economic outlook, our poll shows pessimism has jumped by seven points to 26% and optimism in terms of the economic outlook has dropped three points to 36%. So the confidence there is waning and there'll be plenty of self reflection for the coalition government tonight.
[01:15:33] Speaker A: Now, did you notice what happened there? Again, she starts by claiming, in defence of the prime minister and the coalition. In other words, I'm about to actually present their side of the case. And then she does nothing of the sort. What she does instead is she says, here's what they would claim in their defence, and then she goes on to dismantle that supposed defence that they might mount. So they would claim, we're in a tough economic situation, we're under this massive economic burden. And so this is having a bearing on how people feel about the world. And that is exactly what is happening. And that is exactly true. People are feeling the pain, the economic pain right now. And absolutely, when that happens, people reflect that back onto their political leaders, rightly or wrongly. Sometimes rightly, sometimes not. But they always will say, our politicians are failing us. If they are in a state of great economic uncertainty or economic hardship, that is true. That is exactly what happens. But you see what she's done there. So she said, that's their defence. And then she proceeds to immediately say, here's why that's not correct, because our poll shows this and this. But again, that's got nothing to do with them. That drop in optimism about economic outlook and that increase in pessimism, that is a reflection of a situation. But who's to actually blame for that? That's a whole separate issue. She's trying to tie that to this pollution. And more importantly, as I said, she starts by claiming that she's about to make a defence in favour of this coalition. And hey, you know, don't misread this poll too much. That's the implication. And then she proceeds to do nothing of the sort. She just presents what she thinks their argument might be, and then she proceeds to try and present more evidence as to why they would be wrong. This is just so blatantly partisan and lacking in balance. This entire piece is a hit piece from start to finish.
[01:17:25] Speaker B: Ah, me. Mikey, thank you for that analysis. And make sure you join the breakfast team tomorrow. They'll have further reaction to the numbers, including more from the prime minister. That's from six in the morning.
[01:17:34] Speaker A: Eleven and a half minutes of hyperbole, of falsehood, of misleading claims, of partisan hackery. Eleven and a half minutes of the 06:00 p.m. Bulletin was dedicated to that.
That, my friends, is exactly why the mainstream media is tanking. And very quickly after that little report was broadcast, people rightly got on social media and they were tearing it to bits and they were pointing out the absurdity of it. And then what happens the very next day after the public push back and say, this was just shocking, this is not good, the spin off comes out and one of their reporters publishes an opinion piece, basically saying that those of us from the unwashed masses, we were totally out of line. And it was totally wrong of us to actually get upset by this eleven and a half minutes of media madness that happened on Monday night. Apparently, we're the real problem, us dirty proles. We're actually just supposed to sit there and wait for our betters from the Ministry of truth to tell us what we can and can't think and what kind of reactions we're allowed to have. Again, this is why the mainstream media is absolutely losing public trust. Not just because of all of the madness we saw and heard in this eleven and a half minutes we've just dissected, but also because of this overblown sense of entitlement. How dare the public get upset when the media engage in this blatantly out of order conduct. How dare they?
Holy moly. And as if that wasn't glorious enough to cap this whole incident off, approximately. In fact, it might have even been less than 24 hours later, another completely different political poll was released by Roy Morgan Polling, and here's what they found. Yep, there had been a slight dip in the support for the government, but here's the really interesting bit. Roy Morgan's New Zealand poll for April 2024 shows the new national led government with a majority of 53%. Now, that's down 3% from March from last month, but 53% support. And more importantly, let me quote again, with a large lead over the Labour Greens multi party parliamentary opposition only on 43%, and they have climbed a mere 2.5%. So it's showing a similar trend, but the gap is wildly different. Not just that, but the Roy Morgan government confidence rating increased 4.5 points to 85.5 in April as sentiment improved after it plunged in March. So last month they saw a dip, but this month the government confidence rating increased again. So you got a different poll with a completely different result. This is precisely why you don't treat polls the way that these people are treating polls. Now, having said all that, I thought it might be appropriate for us today to finish on a slightly lighter note. So I'm going to leave you now with a famous incident that happened in the world of american professional wrestling a few years ago, where a couple of wrestlers decided that they would try and present to the world a lesson in statistical analysis and what the data actually means. And I could not help but think of one news and their polling expertise when I watched this video the other day. So I'm going to leave you now with this video. Don't forget, if you're not already a daily subscriber, go to patreon.com leftfootmedia and become a $5 monthly patron to get an episode, an exclusive episode of the Dispatchers podcast every single day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The link is in today's show notes right, I'm going to leave you now, so please enjoy this humorous little clip from the world of professional wrestling. Were two blokes who were absolutely not qualified, engaged in a whole ton of hyperbole all about statistical analysis.
[01:21:58] Speaker E: See, normally, if you go one on one with another wrestler, you got a 50 50 chance of winning. But I'm a genetic freak and I'm not normal. So you got 25% at best at beating me. And then you add Kurt angle to the mix, you, chances of winning drastically go down. See the three way at sacrifice, you got a 33 and a third chance of winning. But I, I got a 66 and two third chance of winning. Cause Kurt Angle knows he can't beat me and he's not even gonna try. So, samoa joe, you take your 33 and a third chance, minus my 25% chance, and you got an eight and a third chance of winning at sacrifice. But then you take my 75% chance chance of winning. If we used to go one on one and then add 66 and two thirds percents, I got 141 and two thirds chance of winning at sacrifice. The numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for you at sacrifice.
[01:22:58] Speaker A: Oh, I love that clip. And on that happy note, my friends, that's where I'm gonna leave you. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the dispatches.
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