"A million ad impressions being served onto websites is the equivalent of a return flight from London to Boston in terms of the [carbon] emissions being given out. If you think about how many billions and billions of impressions are being served on a daily basis, we do have a problem..."
#WillieJackson, Minister of Broadcasting and Media, comments on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, that will force one set of media corporations to pay another set of media corporations, to link to or quote from their stories.
"Any right thinking person or right thinking party would support this, because you don't want to get offside with the media do you..."
Anyone who's already calling the election for the NatACTs is pushing propaganda, whether they mean to or not. For one thing, the polls are swinging as wildly as a compass needle in the Bermuda Triangle.
Certain forms of theft and violent crime have been running rampant in NZ. In other news...
Shock, horror! When you put 20 rats in a cage with only enough space and food for 10, they'll fight and steal from each other in an attempt to survive. But new research reveals, this is not a consequence of "rat nature", and can't be blamed entirely on the behaviour of a minority of "bad apples" among the group of rats.
"If you're only prepared to make popular decisions as a leader though, then what is the point of leadership? It's not really leadership is it. It's just focus-grouping. It's just polling. Instead of laying out a platform, debating its merits, and pursuing a really distinct vision, you might as well just have a smartphone app or a website, on which everyone votes for every little policy."
Who are we talking about here Kerre? Because I'm Pākeha, and it makes me extremely unhappy that people like me have been prioritised over people of Māori and Pasifika ethnicities. For generations. With horrific consequences for their health and longevity.
"But if what we're being served by are these international, enormous companies that are not paying attention to the needs of individual countries, then the time has come to build a public interest internet that serves NZers. Or serves different countries needs. In ways that respects their right to the truth."
#DrJoanDonovan, Research Director, Shorenstein Center on Media and Politics, Harvard University
Today FM recently won a number of awards for its digital news and current affairs productions. All of these went offline when the station's owners abruptly shut it down after only about a year on the air. This is a good example of why we need properly-funded public media organisations. We simply can't rely on profit-seeking corporations to do public interest media work, nor to keep it available for posterity if they do: