Friday 14 April 2023

Restoring The Narrative: The Political Logic Behind The Campaign Against Disinformation.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Political Narratives: A sovereign state is not characterised solely by the monopoly it enjoys over organised violence. Of equal importance (some might even say of greater importance) is the monopoly it is also supposed to enjoy over the creation and control of the stories that the nation tells itself. A state that loses control over these core political narratives hasn’t long to live.

PERHAPS JIM MORRISON’S HOSTILITY toward Establishment America was born out of his father’s role in the notorious Tonkin Gulf Incident. Not many people know that The Doors’ lead-singer’s father, George S. Morrison, was an admiral in the United States Navy. Even fewer realise that he was one of those commanding the US naval force patrolling off the North Vietnamese coast in 1964. The very same naval force that was “attacked” by non-existent North Vietnamese gunboats in an “incident” that never happened, but which served as the pretext for Congress’ “Tonkin Gulf Resolution”. The very same resolution that gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority to escalate American involvement in South Vietnam to the level of full-scale war.

Jim Morrison wrote about “weird scenes in the gold-mine”. Today, we’d call the completely fabricated story that kicked-off the vast American tragedy of Vietnam “disinformation”. And the thing to remember, right from the start, about the Tonkin Gulf Incident is that it was official disinformation – i.e. deliberate lying by the state.

Too long ago? Ancient history? Okay. So, let’s bring everything right up to date.

Elon Musk buys Twitter and discovers that for years its previous owners had been operating hand-in-glove with the United States security apparatus in a massive effort to rein-in what the state deemed to be “bad actors” using social media to spread misinformation (unintentional lies) and disinformation (deliberate lies) across the Internet. Musk copies the celebrated American investigative journalist Matt Taibbi into “#Twitter Files”, and pretty soon the whole world knows what Establishment America has been up to.

Which is what – exactly?

Perhaps the easiest way to characterise what the United States Government has been engaged in is “patch protection”. Because a sovereign state is not characterised solely by the monopoly it enjoys over organised violence. Of equal importance (some might even say of greater importance) is the monopoly it is also supposed to enjoy over the creation and control of the stories that the nation tells itself. A state that loses control over these core political narratives hasn’t long to live. Exposed in #Twitter Files are the lengths to which the American state was prepared to go to shut-down the purveyors of alternative political narratives – to protect its patch.

Controlling the narrative was obviously of enormous importance in the circumstances of a global pandemic. Alternative versions of the significance of Covid-19 raised the spectre of large chunks of the population becoming convinced that the demands of the state, especially the measures it mandated to keep the population safe and to protect the public health system from being overwhelmed, were, in light of their “research”, unreasonable, unwarranted and unwise. For the scientific community, in particular, it was vital that this sort of misinformation and disinformation be countered with all the resources at the state’s disposal.

But, if the Covid Pandemic was the proximate cause of the US Government’s full-court-press against misinformation and disinformation, it was far from the only one. Those responsible for maintaining the national security of the United States were becoming increasingly uneasy about the capacity of the Internet – especially social media – to empower its adversaries. By making it possible for non-state actors to engage in the same sort of subversive and destabilising activities that had, hitherto, been the sole preserve of the US Government, social media was fast becoming an enormous and existential threat.

Brexit, and Trump’s election as President, had a worryingly familiar smell to them. Both countries’ spooks began to suspect that the United Kingdom and the United States had been subjected to something alarmingly similar to the sort of “colour revolutions” the US had unleashed on Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. In the case of both Brexit and Trump, the state had lost control of the political narrative, with dramatically and irrevocably destabilising consequences. Cui bono? The Americans and the British were convinced that the bodies responsible were in some way linked to the Russian Federation – they just couldn’t prove it.

What they could prove, however, was the extraordinary impact that well-directed hate could have upon the minds of the ideologically and psychologically vulnerable. The exploitation of the Internet and social media by the ISIS terrorist organisation set new bench-marks for hateful propaganda. In the name of its “holy” cause, ISIS demonstrated repeatedly its followers’ willingness to carry out the most daunting atrocities. Hate proved to be a great mobiliser. Hate made things happen.

The ingredients had been gathered for the worst sort of state-sponsored stupidity.

Before the arrival of the Internet, both the British and American states had been superb manipulators (and, if that failed, intimidators) of the news media. Publishers were courted, editors were co-opted, journalists’ careers advanced (or retarded) by stories planted and details leaked. Certainly, there were always small outfits digging away in places they had no business sinking their little spades, but they could be handled. A bloke in a bar would suggest to his “reputable” media contact that the offending muckraker was an unstable “conspiracy theorist”. That usually did the trick.

But, the Internet – the f**king Internet! Now there weren’t just a handful of publishers to get on side. Now any fool could become a publisher – free, gratis, and for nothing. Now there were no properly-briefed editors to spike “irresponsible” stories, no ambitious journalists to steer into safer pastures. Now every bastard and his brother was a “citizen journalist” with audio and video capabilities yesterday’s hacks would have given their eye-teeth for. It was out of control!

So, of course, the spooks decided to set up special misinformation and disinformation entities to identify and neutralise the offending misinformers and disinformers. Matt Taibbi’s stories set out in jaw-dropping detail how the US national security apparatus recruited a small army of academics and techies to staff a host of “arms-length” research facilities and think tanks. Using the “data” amassed by these bodies, the spooks then attempted to turn the equivalents of the publishers and editors of yesteryear, Google, Facebook and Twitter, into their secret censors. And, God help us, it worked!

Even in the Shire, even in little New Zealand, the long arm of American spookdom – operating through the Five Eyes Network – found mischief it could make. The trusting Kiwis bought the warnings about the danger of misinformation and disinformation during a pandemic. That made sense. It also seemed sensible, at least to some, that following the Christchurch Mosque Massacres, something needed to be done about hate. In the absence of ISIS, Action Zealandia would have to do.

Following the American model, our very own “Disinformation Project” was set up by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Once established, it was shucked-off to the University of Auckland, from which it could take on an “independent” academic lustre. The Americans had warned their Kiwi mates that too close an association with the state would only encourage the conspiracy theorists to (rightly) accuse the government of abrogating the civil and political rights of its citizens. Suitably separated from the powers that be, however, this sworn enemy of unacceptable political narratives would find it pathetically simple to sell its wares to a new generation of journalists who had never heard of the Tonkin Gulf.

And how eager they were to buy them! When the genuine victims of misinformation and disinformation turned up on Parliament’s front lawn, filled with anger and consumed by hate, the Press Gallery’s terrified journalists couldn’t heap enough dirt on the unruly protesters and their shadowy sponsors. Or do enough to ensure that the New Zealand state’s monopoly over the creation and control of the nation’s political narratives was restored.


This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 13 April 2023.

21 comments:

John Hurley said...

You are unlikely to hear Eric Kaufmann's version of Trump and Brexit because it makes opponents look bad: human nature is not something to be blithely dismissed.
Much more likely to hear Paul Spoonley: "they have that racial thing" (forget the real world outcomes of mass-migration and the perceptions of people; place and belonging).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckdzejrc0z8&t=2863s

DS said...

And how eager they were to buy them! When the genuine victims of misinformation and disinformation turned up on Parliament’s front lawn, filled with anger and consumed by hate, the Press Gallery’s terrified journalists couldn’t heap enough dirt on the unruly protesters and their shadowy sponsors. Or do enough to ensure that the New Zealand state’s monopoly over the creation and control of the nation’s political narratives was restored.

Enough with the gas-lighting. The New Zealand media had relentlessly campaigned against the Government's Covid Response at every turn, relentlessly and breathlessly citing the warnings of business (and it was always business) about lockdowns and mandates. Having done so much to feed the nutters, those journalists did as much to lay the groundwork for that protest as anyone. The icing on the cake was that commentators who ought to have known better (Bryce Edwards, Martyn Bradbury) behaved as though the protest had some sort of noble and legitimate point, when in reality it was the dregs of sociopathy.

Brendan McNeill said...

A tightly controlled narrative promulgated by the ‘single source of truth’, the censorship of dissenting voices directly by Government agencies or other institutions of State, and by a complicit media that was either already ideologically onboard, or brought and paid for through advertising, or like Twitter intimidated into compliance -

This has been our experience as New Zealanders over the last three years.

For this reason it is no longer possible to take any statement or pronouncement from Government or its agents, or the media on face value. Our entire society is predicated on trust. This Government perhaps more than any other has destroyed that precious commodity and trust once broken takes a very long time to restore, if ever.

This more than anything is our former PM Jacinda Ardern’s enduring legacy.

Madame Blavatsky said...

“Dis/misinformation” simply denotes anything that contradicts what the government wants people to believe. Objective truth or falsity is irrelevant to the application of these words.

As you state, the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident (a conspiracy par excellence with massive real-world repercussions) didn’t need to have happened as a matter of fact – the narrative just needed to have its intended effect on public consciousness, which was to justify America’s involvement in the Vietnam war. Truth had nothing to do with it. In fact no doubt those who questioned the Gulf of Tonkin narrative at the time were probably written off as “conspiracy theorists” who were spreading “dangerous dis/misinformation.” Who was proved correct? To think that this affair was either the first or the last time that a government would lie to achieve an agenda is delusional.

The principle was thus empirically demonstrated and the precedent was firmly established: governments can and will lie to the public as and when it suits their agenda, even if it leads to hundreds of thousands or millions dead (as in Vietnam). The situation was repeated vis the Iraq invasion of 2003, using the same public manipulation tactics. And these are just two instances that we know about for sure. No doubt these official deceptions and the creation of false self-serving popular narratives are something approaching the rule, rather than being the exception. Yet, probably for reasons of psychological self-preservation, so many people still stubbornly refuse to countenance the idea that their governments do not have their best interests at heart, and will lie to their faces any time it suits their agenda (often disguised under some publicly acceptable pretext). Do they lie 100% of the time? Doubtful. But are we justified in withholding the benefit of the doubt in cases where words do not match facts, and pronouncements do not match actions? Absolutely. Given the “Gulf of Tonkin Principle” you’d be crazy to accept narratives at face value.
The most consistent and revelatory trend among those in positions of power claiming “dis/misinformation” with regard to any proposition of fact or of logical inference that contradicts whatever narrative they are peddling at the time, and doing so in their own self-interest or institutional interest, is that they NEVER give any concrete example to make clear what it is they are referring to.

Instead, all we ever get are vague allusions, insinuations, and/or personal attacks aimed at the source of this so-called “dis/misinformation.” The claim is never addressed head-on, because it’s often much better to avoid an argument completely, than it is to lose an argument so someone who contradicts your preferred narrative.

And there is a very good reason why they are never explicit – because, once they’d presented a curious public with “item X” as their alleged dis/misinformation, then anyone can then go out and investigate the veracity of “item X” themselves. This is an unacceptable possibility. Of course the terrifying danger is the prospect that, if the public don’t simply take a politician’s or a journalist’s word without evidence, then the public may conclude that “item X” is in fact the case. Best to completely avoid any specificity, then.

At bottom, Power (the government and other agencies who wield social and political control) are not at all disinterested and unbiased purveyors of objective truth. On the contrary, they have no reason to be – they are completely self-interested in promulgating any narrative that strengthens or maintains their power, and preventing any challenges to their legitimacy and their authority. Power therefore cannot simply let truth speak for itself, because what if, in speaking for itself, truth made them look very bad? This cannot be allowed to happen, so the narratives friendly to Power must be projected and protected from any contradictory narrative. The only consideration of Power is “does it help or does it hinder our interests?” If it is the latter, it is dismissed as “dis/misinformation.”

Madame Blavatsky said...

"The icing on the cake was that commentators who ought to have known better (Bryce Edwards, Martyn Bradbury) behaved as though the protest had some sort of noble and legitimate point, when in reality it was the dregs of sociopathy."

This is the power of the narrative, simplified to the extreme and incessantly repeated and repeated until it takes on the appearance of representing factual states of affairs.

A lot of official effort has gone into deliberately mischaracterising and misrepresenting the core motivation for public opposition to government Covid policies, and for good reason: the point of the protest was a rejection of the idea that the State can disregard people's universal right to bodily sovereignty and biological integrity whenever it feels like it.

To most reasonable and thoughtful people, this is an eminently fair objection. In fact, it is an objection that is institutionally affirmed in the basis of our codification of crimes against the person (rape, assault, murder etc.). The same principle applies to these crimes as that which applies in vaccination without consent.

But because this is a completely legitimate objection that is very hard to rebut in any society that like to call itself a free and open society (and grounds for objection affirmed, as I have said, by Parliament itself in various laws long predating Covid), it was always something else, and usually something completely irrelevant, that was the preferred focus of MSM coverage.

The tactic of Power, then, whenever its legitimacy is being called into question by the public, is to distract, to avoid, to slander, and to label its opponents, but NEVER address the important issue – because that would be to lose the argument.

DS said...

A lot of official effort has gone into deliberately mischaracterising and misrepresenting the core motivation for public opposition to government Covid policies, and for good reason: the point of the protest was a rejection of the idea that the State can disregard people's universal right to bodily sovereignty and biological integrity whenever it feels like it.

Fun fact: you don't have a universal right to bodily sovereignty. You can't legally commit suicide, or sell yourself into slavery. Society deems there are certain things that trump the individual's right to behave like a sociopath. Thank goodness.

(That's the nice thing about being an old school majoritarian socialist. No need to stay awake at night quibbling about how the basic concept of rights can be twisted for anti-social ends. Liberalism can be incredibly self-defeating).

Refusing the vaccine was, of course, a conscious choice on the part of the protestors. That's fine. But whingeing about (justified) consequences, when they knew full well what those consequences would be? They're the moral equivalent of criminals whingeing about having to serve prison time after assaulting someone. But unlike garden-variety criminals, this lot had avid political support from a part of the political spectrum that, once upon a time, actually believed in basic scientific principles.

Alas, the protestors got their way, and there's been a significant drop in everyone's life expectancy as a result. I hope the pro-virus lobby enjoy their victory. Maybe there needs to be a new virulent antibiotic-resistant strain of bubonic plague before the anti-vaxx muppets and their cheerleaders learn their lesson.

Gary Peters said...

"when in reality it was the dregs of sociopathy"

All I can reference is

"At the start of the seventies, Kim Beazley Senior told an ALP conference “When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now, all I see are the dregs of the middle class.” "

"My body my choice" when you want to kill a foetus.

Not an acceptable argument for a pfizer injection though!

Come on Chris, nobody actually supports the silliness deep down any more, they just pretend so as to not curdle the cheese at their wine and cheese affairs ......

David George said...

Thanks Madame B., well said.
DS: "the dregs of sociopathy". You're claim's already been well rebutted above but to come out with that after all that has happened, all that's been revealed and the anti-mandate position supported by our courts of law is weird at best.

David George said...

Thanks Brendan, the collapse in trust and faith in the government and media continues apace. According to a recent survey 59% of us are actively avoiding legacy media as a consequence. I'm one of them. The lies and manipulation has lead many of us take the view that nothing they say is to be trusted; that's a huge problem for them and for us. Even more concerning is the unwillingness to confront the root cause of the problem; their own BS.

Here's the utterly clueless Dr Merja Myllylahti, co-director of AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy and leader of the centres’ trust in news project. The problem, apparently, is the MSM label:

"When alternative media keeps labelling the news media as ‘mainstream media’ for political purposes, we have a problem that needs to be solved.

This peddling of false narratives about news media has to stop, and perhaps it will as news corporations fight back. It is refreshing to see that".

"On social media platforms and in news media outlets’ comment sections, the narrative of ‘mainstream media’ as corrupt and ‘woke’ continues to flourish. In reference to the appearance of Posie Parker in Auckland’s Albert Park and the related protests, one person commented on social media that the event exposed how “corrupt and biased” the mainstream media is and how it only pushes “politicians’ agenda”.

The term ‘mainstream media’ has been highly politicised and weaponised by those who don’t believe in a news media that values verified facts and information. I believe that it is time for that term to go.

I recently discussed with my colleagues what term we should use instead of ‘mainstream media’. There is no simple solution to de-weaponise the ‘mainstream media’ rhetoric, but perhaps we should just talk about news media and journalism. What is wrong with that?'"

See the problem? They've actually convinced themselves they're the inviolable purveyors of truth. They're mad and dangerous.


Madame Blavatsky said...

DS

Wow, you're making some really poor arguments there.

If you sell yourself into slavery, then you are, by definition, NOT a slave (i.e. you’ve sold yourself, you haven’t been forced). Moreover, I cannot possibly imagine what the punishment would be for someone’s committing suicide – they’d be dead, and so far beyond the reach of the law.

The argument is this: if person A assaults person B (i.e. applies force without consent), then A has breached B's bodily sovereignty. However, if B consents to A's force, then no assault has occurred. It is irrelevant if A felt that he was justified in assaulting B (perhaps it was "for B's own good" or "to protect persons C, D and E from person B" or some other such implausible excuse). Naturally, none of these "excuses" or "justifications" would override B's right to withhold consent for the application of force.

By contrast, someone cannot decide to drive on the right hand side of the road (i.e. citing their sovereignty), because doing so will clearly kill or harm other road users. Everyone needs to submit to the same common requirement, in other words. But remaining unvaccinated is much more analogous to not wearing a seatbelt – you may injure yourself, but, you aren’t going to affect anyone who IS wearing their own seatbelt. See the distinction?

You talk of "justified consequences" for refusing vaccination (i.e. the government's application of force to your body). The "you knew the consequences so live with them" argument is like saying "well, person B wouldn't perform a sex act on person A (despite person A really desiring it), so therefore person B should have to live with being beaten by the frustrated person A – these are the foreseeable consequences of B's decision." Only a complete fool would accept this argument as being valid, but this is the principle of the "justifiable negative consequences for non-vaccination" argument.

So there are no "justified consequences" for declining vaccination, mainly because person A's refusal of the vaccine has no effect whatsoever on vaccinated persons B, C, D or E. How could it? Persons B, C, D and E are themselves vaccinated, and thus (one assumes) protected from people like person A. Why do they care about A's being unvaccinated? It’s hard to see why they’d care. This is the equivalent to the seatbelt analogy above.

For these reasons, it is a completely spurious argument to say "get vaccinated to protect others" – another analogy is one's putting on a woolen hat in order to keep others warm (i.e. a completely illogical proposition).

Tom Hunter said...

"DS" must truly live in an alternate reality.

The reality I and everyone else lived in saw a MSM sucking on $55 million of government money and repeating every nostrum of this government's claims about General Tso's Lung Rot, and every claim made about the responses, whether lockdowns, mask mandates or vaccine mandates.

Oh they did report the occasional "whinge" of some poor bastard who's small business was going under but such were overwhelmed by the "Do this or Grandma will die" message.

Alas, the protestors got their way....
Actually what happened was that the government simply became exhausted in trying to maintain and justify that degree of control over our society.

Obviously that's a great disappointment to illiberal old school majoritarian socialists but then they never do understand the limits of control, and when it all falls apart they demand more control as the solution.

DS said...

"My body my choice" when you want to kill a foetus.

Not an acceptable argument for a pfizer injection though!


Funny you should mention that. I've always believed "my body, my choice" was a stupid argument from abortion activists, on the basis that it justifies anti-vaccine nuttery. And, well, look where we are...

(Abortion is actually a complex balancing act of interests, far too complex for sloganeering. Frankly, I think the best argument for legal abortion is that the alternative, of back-street abortions, is worse. Ideally, the state should play a more active role in supporting young mothers, but for some reason the Socially Conservative Right loses interest in children the second they are born).

DS said...

DS: "the dregs of sociopathy". You're claim's already been well rebutted above but to come out with that after all that has happened, all that's been revealed and the anti-mandate position supported by our courts of law is weird at best.

Hardly weird. You're talking to someone who mourns MIQ, and thinks NZBORA needs to be repealed before the (unelected) courts can do further damage. The Government's response should have been to amend the primary legislation, rather than folding like a wet paper bag.

Archduke Piccolo said...

If it is a crime for a citizen to lie to the Government, is it not the greater crime for the Government to lie to its citizens? If a democracy is government with the consent of the governed, how can the mal-informed governed be said to have given consent, proper and informed?

That a government reserves to itself the right to misinform its citizens is simply an exercise in creating ruling class privilege, that is to say, private law. Whatever you call that, democracy it ain't.
Cheers,
Ion A. Dowman

Madame Blavatsky said...

DS
"Frankly, I think the best argument for legal abortion is that the alternative, of back-street abortions, is worse."

A couple of points on abortion:

1. "My body, my choice" doesn't work at all with abortion – a baby has DNA that is distinct from its mother, so a baby is necessarily not identical with its mother, so the baby isn't "my body". The baby is its own entity, although dependent on its mother (and arguably remains dependent until its teens, at the earliest). By contrast, vaccination IS a matter of "my body, my choice" because it affects nobody else.

2. The "alternative" to abortion is where the female's choice comes in – the choice to have sex and thus conceive a child. Don't want a baby? Then don't have sex and risk pregnancy. Almost all abortions (96% plus) are a result of personal choice related to inconvenience flowing from bad decisions. The problem, then, is extra-marital sex and promiscuity. Solve these issues by young women getting married, and the question of abortion solves itself.

https://www.hli.org/resources/why-women-abort/

David George said...

Here's a brilliant essay, the best overview of the creeping totalitarianism according to Michael Shellenberger: Jacob Seigel on Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation

Excerpts;

"The message from the U.S. defense establishment was clear: To win the information war—an existential conflict taking place in the borderless dimensions of cyberspace—the government needed to dispense with outdated legal distinctions between foreign terrorists and American citizens.

Since 2016, the federal government has spent billions of dollars on turning the counter-disinformation complex into one of the most powerful forces in the modern world: a sprawling leviathan with tentacles reaching into both the public and private sector, which the government uses to direct a “whole of society” effort that aims to seize total control over the internet and achieve nothing less than the eradication of human error."

"In a technical or structural sense, the censorship regime’s aim is not to censor or to oppress, but to rule. That’s why the authorities can never be labeled as guilty of disinformation. Not when they lied about Hunter Biden’s laptops, not when they claimed that the lab leak was a racist conspiracy, not when they said that vaccines stopped transmission of the novel coronavirus. Disinformation, now and for all time, is whatever they say it is. That is not a sign that the concept is being misused or corrupted; it is the precise functioning of a totalitarian system.

If the underlying philosophy of the war against disinformation can be expressed in a single claim, it is this: You cannot be trusted with your own mind. What follows is an attempt to see how this philosophy has manifested in reality. It approaches the subject of disinformation from 13 angles—like the “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace Stevens’ 1917 poem—with the aim that the composite of these partial views will provide a useful impression of disinformation’s true shape and ultimate design."

David George said...

Thanks DS, while the government could have legislated the lockdown and mandate issues away, some very important questions, questions that go to the heart of the relationship between the state and it's people, would remain. Justice Cooke in the case bought by the teachers:

“the right in s11 [the right to refuse medical treatment] is well recognised in both legal and medical terms as being fundamental. It is associated not only with the concept of personal autonomy that is at the heart of the relationship between the state and the individual, but also the concept of informed consent that is deeply embedded in the principles of medical ethics and practice.”

The appeals will be interesting, especially so since it now appears the government withheld vital information (basically lied) in the original case.

In paragraph 17 of his affidavit, Dr Town (for the government) states, “Medsafe will only recommend that a medicine is approved if it meets international and local standards ..”. Town omits to state that Medsafe did not recommend that vaccine be approved.

In fact, in its final evaluation, Medsafe concluded, “Due to the unresolved concerns and additional quality, safety and efficacy data to be provided at the time of completion of the evaluation, Medsafe is unable to recommend that this product be granted consent. It is therefore recommended that the application be referred to the Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC) under section 22(2) of the Medicines Act 1981 for their consideration.”

Indeed on 28 January 2021, the Group Manager of Medsafe, Chris James, wrote to Pfizer Australia and advised it of his decision: “Having reviewed the information supplied in your initial application and in your further responses, I am not satisfied that I should give my consent to the distribution of the product.”

Thanks to Cranmer for this great wee piece on the appeals and their background.
https://cranmer.substack.com/p/court-of-appeal-to-hear-appeals-on

Guerilla Surgeon said...

“the right in s11 [the right to refuse medical treatment] is well recognised in both legal and medical terms as being fundamental."

Wrong. Numerous courts both national and international have established the fact that you can in fact force people to have medical treatment in times of emergency, particularly during an epidemic.

Anonymous said...

What a fascinating study you must read . ! Have never heard those statistics before . I would love it you could share that study with me .

David George said...

If you're asking about my reference to the trust in media survey, Anonymous, here's a link to an RNZ article about it https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018885345/mediawatch-turning-off-the-news

And another with links to the Acumen survey itself - the actual survey is not directly accessible. https://thebfd.co.nz/2023/04/11/trust-the-media-nope-and-trust-is-waning-fast/

John Hurley said...

1. It will be clad in pre-rusted corten steel in a reference to shipping containers and the port.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/the-rebuild/122211218/plans-for-new-lyttelton-museum-revealed

2. https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/131752803/lyttelton-to-get-new-125m-contemporary-museum-after-building-gets-the-goahead