Radio 9th Floor
Sir Humphreys notes that someone flicked off an e-mail this morning praising Cullen's Budget, and critical of Brash's response. Yes, one person named Phillippa Burns. They read it on air this morning.
Fine- until you realise that her husband is the Labour candidate for Kaikoura, Brendan Burns, and is head of the Burns unit - he currently works for the Prime Minister's Office as the Manager, Government Communications Unit.
Geoff Robinson: Let's look at some of things you've been talking about. This is from ah Brendan and Philipp- from Philippa Burns in Marlborough. "I would rather live in a society that provides good health care and education for me and my family than Dr Brash's nightmare of slashed spending and borrowing which will push up my mortgage costs just to give tax back to a few wealthy people.
-interrupted-
Sean Plunkett: And we should note that Philippa Burns is perhaps the partner of Brendan Burns, who is a Labour Party candidate
-interrupted-
Geoff Robinson: For Kaikoura I think, yes.
Did they know who she was - of course they knew!
1 comment:
Congratulations to all concerned on the brilliant monitoring and reporting of the Radio NZ item of Monday 23rd May.
Of course propagandising over the airwaves by having correspondence (and even fictitious correspondence) read out is nothing new.
Over 20 years ago this was taken to art form level by former Radio Pacific talkback host Felix Donnelly, where certain supposed "letters" would be read out with relish, invariably spitefully targetting his adversaries, myself included.
I have hard and irrefutable evidence of this occurring over many years on his often notorious programmes because of consistent and dedicated monitoring and documentation. Such monitoring applied also to much other media back then.
I'm convinced that the same quality monitoring of present day corrupt media practices is the only way to obtain similarly hard and irrefutable evidence of them. The superb examples being reported certainly indicate that this is indeed happening here, and long may it continue.
Barbara Faithfull
Post a Comment