by Redbaiter
As a taxpayer you’re donating $130 million to NZ’s news media. $75 million of that has been spent under Covid-19 relief provisions. Today we discovered the socially destructive separatist purposes the remaining $55 million is being put to.
The $55 million is being distributed by NZ on Air under the “Public Interest Journalism” scheme, and they have set up a new division to distribute your money to approved recipients.
Raewyn Rasch is in charge of distributing taxpayer money under the Public Interest Journalism Fund
Newly appointed head of the scheme is one time TVNZ producer and Massey academic Raewyn Rasch. Ms Rasch is well known for launching a campaign encouraging NZ women to wear scarves on March 22 to show their solidarity for those affected by the terror attacks in Christchurch.
Raewyn has made grants worth $9.5 million today to 34 approved projects, and a large part of the money was of course handed out on a race basis. The Herald, Newstalk ZB, Māori Television, Newshub and Pacific Media Network receive $2.4m to hire and train 25 cadet Māori, Pasifika and “diverse” journalists. (Maori TV and PMN are already taxpayer funded so its a bonus for them)
Stuff gets $300,800 to train its journalists in “cultural competency” or what is really just brainwashing. There is very little chance that any Stuff journalist isn’t thinking the way Ardern wants them to think, but just in case, this three hundred grand course funded by your taxes should get them thinking right. The Stasi [the State Secret Security Intel of the former East Germany] are spinning in their graves.
Leaving aside the separatist, divisive nature of the grants, the real issue here is that the government is pumping taxpayer money into an industry that the man in the street can easily voluntarily support by tuning in to their broadcasts, buying subscriptions to their sites, or buying their newspapers.
So why is the Ardern government giving them money? It can only be to manipulate the media into producing news and entertainment to suit the Jacinda government’s aims, including setting up a huge propaganda apparatus to support the socially divisive objectives of He Puapaua.
Stuff gets $214,360 for a multimedia series investigating what life was like for New Zealand’s first Asian immigrants and descendants and the issues facing Chinese New Zealanders. Jacinda clearly wants division and strife in our communities and as anyone still silly enough to read Stuff knows, they’re determined to deliver it for her.
Compulsory funding from taxpayers is not enough. Stuff has no shame asking you for donations.
Just to rub it in, Stuff also received $591,465 for something outrageously called The Whole Truth which is a project designed to “counter misinformation where it occurs about Covid-19”. Stuff and the truth? Yeah right.
An amount of $806,135 went to the politically suitable outlet Newsroom who produce a podcast called the The Detail (how many people listen to that one wonders). All you people out there who didn’t receive any money for your podcast, well, you’re clearly not talking about the things the government wants you to talk about.
Comments by Karl du Fresne
The online news service BusinessDesk reported the result of the first round of funding handouts under the $55 million Pravda Project, officially known as the Public Interest Journalism Fund. They include:
More than $2.4 million to NZME, Maori Television, Newshub, Pacific Media Network and 11 “support partners” to train and develop 25 cadet Maori, Pasifika and “diverse” journalists. The latter category will presumably include those who identify as transgender or non-binary and other aggrieved minorities that we haven’t got names for yet.
$300,000 to Stuff to produce a “cultural competency” course (could there be a more ideologically loaded phrase?) for journalists which will later be shared across the industry “to fundamentally shift representation in NZ media”.
$207,000 to woke-friendly digital platform The Spinoff for a podcast series “to explore Maori issues”.
$433,000 for Paakiwaha, a bilingual current affairs show to be produced by UMA Broadcasting for waateanews.com. UMA, which was established in 1999 by Manukau Urban Maori Authority and Te Whanau a Waipareira Charitable Trust, operates Auckland Maori station Radio Waatea.
BusinessDesk reports that NZ on Air received 123 applications for the first funding round and recommended 34 for approval. Forty percent of the money will go to Maori journalism projects.
The biggest single allocation is to RNZ, which already receives roughly $48 million a year from taxpayers and will get an extra $806,000 for its podcast The Detail.
As for those other allocations, I predict most of our money will end up being spent on advocacy journalism. As with the $3.5 million Three Waters propaganda campaign, taxpayers will be paying for their own indoctrination.
The line that once separated journalism from activism is being erased, and it’s happening with the eager co-operation of the mainstream journalism organisations that are lining up to take the state’s tainted money. We are witnessing the slow death of neutral, independent and credible journalism.
As usual good stuff from Redbaiter