Wednesday, 05 July 2023 11:06

Paying off!

Written by The Hound

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OPINION: Your old mate reckons there is no mystery why Newsroom journalist and bicycle-riding, whinging pom Rod Oram and climate catastrophic recently wrote a scathing article criticising the Nats' new ag emissions policy, which was widely circled by Government ministers and Labour party apologists.

One notes that Oram's employer - the Newsroom website - has been a huge beneficiary of the Labour Government's controversial $55 million (Public Information Journalism Fund (PIJF).

Over the six rounds of PIJF funding, Newsroom took $2,377,356 in taxpayer handouts - over 4% of the total fund.

With some media outfits sticking their noses so deeply into this dodgy trough of state funding, it's no wonder the public are losing trust in these media outlets, especially when they cuddle up so closely to the Government so they can suckle from the taxpayer teat.

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OPINION: Mike Chapman, former chief executive of levy-funded HortNZ, has thrown out a challenge to farmers and growers to put their levy-funded industry organisations under the same scrutiny as fertiliser, electricity, labour and freight.

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The canine crusader always has his nose in the air for more media maleficence, so was pointing as soon as he saw the Stuff headline: ‘Wellington residents respond to PM saying he doesn’t need his job!’.

Civil Circus!

OPINION: It really is getting harder to lampoon government bureaucrats when they do such a good job of it themselves.

Anyone in the primary sector will know about the clowns covering the countryside in the red tape we all have to wade through.

Spare a thought then for media outfit Stuff who were threatened with fines up to $200,000 by a snivelling civil servant from the MoH for illustrating a quiz question with a photo of part of the cover of a 45-year-old copy Playboy.

As Stuff notes, “It wasn’t the Playboy cover which caused offence. No, it was the back page which… featured an advert for a cigarette brand”.

As Regulations Minister David Seymour notes, “The real scandal here is, well, no wonder we’ve got problems in healthcare when they’re doing the Stuff quiz during work time.”

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