“Isn’t it time you packed up your tent and went home before everything turns nasty?”

February 17, 2022

By NZB3

Kerre McIvor’s talkback editorial calls for Freedom Protesters to “pack up their tents” before “everything turns nasty.” That style of threat reminds me of a viscous old school mistress I had as a kid of Kerre’s same generation. Come to think of it, she had the same hair that probably comes from the same bottle. Mistress used to threaten her pre-teen class by prefixing her favorite line: “And that’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”

McIvor appeared to be running a paid advertisement favoring New Zealand Police Commissioner Andrew Coster. She played a montage clip of Coster’s “calm and reasonable” performance on the radio earlier that day and repeated and repeated what he had said about how calm and reasonable he was: “He has been very reasonable as you’d expect. But he has also warned that the protester’s time is running out.”

Kerre simply repeated and expanded upon what Coster had said as if they were reading from the same Police PR briefing document. “Police have been taking a measured response to the crowd on the lawn,” both told the audience. “Riding” in with “guns blazing” is what the police didn’t so, so goes the script. This is a blatant attempt to re-write history as anyone who has seen the brutal broadside assault and abduction maneuvers by Coster’s army  last Wednesday (9th Feb) is witness to. The propaganda device employed here is called Gaslighting. Saying “We have been taking a measured response” is another version of the Prime Minister’s standard way of starting a sentence by saying “I have been very clear that..”

Who can tell when NewstalkZB, or any media, is running advertising or propaganda or opinion or news these days? It’s an interpretive exercise every time. It has been decades since our media separated content from advertising.¹ It’s hard even to know if talk-back callers are real people or are they voice actors? Every show has its sponsors and at times lapse into taking a “call” from some businessman or woman as if it’s not an infomercial. On ZB in the weekends presenters such as Francesca Rudkin have entire shows full of people who are products who can pay to address the ZB audience. Food, wine, furniture, health, gardening advice, legal help, parenting, retirement homes, sleep drugs, life coaching, tourism, etc. etc. All disguised as if the person with the product is doing ZB a favor sharing their knowledge. The true flow of value is that these advertisements disguised as magazine journalism are selling the ZB audience to the commercial world not them to us! If I wanted to set myself up as a Natropath Mental Health Guru I’d call up ZB Sales and buy some air time and, hey-presto! I’d be one. If I wanted to be a Public Scientist all I’d have to do is out-bid someone like Doctor Michelle Dickinson and find a way to leverage that bought reputation into revenue so I could afford to keep paying the likes of ZB.

Coming back to Andrew Coster and the Police PR Branch, the trouble really begins with this media formula because The State uses these media services too. One of the largest and most blatant Government media purchases ever happened 12 months ago this month: “Taxpayers to pay $55m for better journalism” (do you feel like journalism has been “better” this past 12 months? No, me either. The advertising disguised as news, this Kayfabe, is performed by political parties as well as government departments and even our army and police. After all, why shouldn’t TV and radio stations take taxpayer money too? It’s all revenue to them. Who are they to draw a line separating commerce and interference with our very democracy if it means missing a big pay day?

I wonder, too, how little of Kerre McIvor’s content is her own idea. Her producer, handlers, and ZB executives probably wind her up and let her go to shill for whoever is paying. In Kerre’s case her niche is to be a hostess and cheerleader for The State and its various parts. I’m sure she is under the impression that she is in charge of her own life and that it’s her radio show. I’m sure ZB paid for her to sit next to me in a political studies course at Auckland University years back to help cultivate Kerre’s self-image as being politically educated. In reality people in this job tend to be dumb raw chaos aimed expertly by others in a lucrative direction just like Ron Burgundy in Anchorman or Mike Moore in Frontline. 

* * *

Suck it up

Whatever you think about anything really

Reckons, opinions, theories..don’t count for a tin of beans

It doesn’t matter what you think

We have to follow the rules

We think our own “little lives” matter more than Government edicts

* * *

Ref. Newstalk ZB 10:48am today – Anarkiwi, March 2020

The Kerre and Coster show today was a two-pronged message. Apart from being threatening to the Freedom Protest it was a bit of PR apologetics to the Conformity people out there and to reassure them that the police are on the job. Without any help from NZB3 the people are doing just fine at seeing this as nonsense propaganda and as they do Kerre’s Statist hospitality services career is more and more passing away. If it helps make up your mind on that point just listen to 2020 this clip of Kerre telling her audience to Obey The State and Follow The Rules and put your “little lives” out of the way because “it doesn’t matter what you think about anything.” She’s been at this for a long time now and becomes more conspicuous every time she opens her mouth up.

—
1 This phenomena was instituted by Newstalk ZB when first created: “..all sorts of things that crept in that I really didn’t like, like the way they commercials into a programme. In which manner they were absolutely right but I objected to.” – Merv Smith, Ref. 1987: Newstalk 1ZB, AHNZ

Ref. Kerre McIvor: The protesters have made their point, now time to go home; Newstalk ZB (16/2/2021)

Image ref. Kerre Woodham getting down with Labour 4.0 Prime Minister in 1989, NZ On Screen; Digital New Zealand

Like    Comment     Share