press

What’s Stealing?

An interesting little tale has come up today, starting with Lance Wiggs complaining that a site is syndicating his blog headlines. He labels it stealing and discussion ensues.

My friend Dylan also contributed to the discussion and I left a largish comment on his post during lunch, which was consequently munged into an unreadable wall of text So I decided to post my reply here…

Firstly, in my defense, I left Stuff because of it’s content. Now the stories I want to read are aggregated with Google News. I still visit Stuffs site regularly to read the stories I want.

I would also argue that Jobs.org.nz (and by extention Google News, digg, techmeme and any other aggregator) are not stealing content. They’re using a headline and a small excerpt of the post (permitted under copyright “fair dealing”), and giving a perma-link to the content hosted on his blog. If they were using his entire post as content, referenced or not, I’d understand his anger and would agree that was “stealing content” because that would be copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Jobs.org.nz is obviously a questionable looking site, and I’m not saying that Lance is beyond his rights to ask his feed to be removed. I probably would as well – I wouldn’t want to be associated with that site as it has potential to damage your brand.

Dylan said:

Google News takes traffic away from publishers by “stealing” and republishing content within a news aggregation site where the original publisher has no opportunity to make revenue from ad sales.

I don’t understand how he came to this conclusion. Google uses a headline and sometimes a 20 character excerpt. If you want to read the story you have to link out to the publishers site (except for AP content which Google pays for syndication).

Dylan Said:

In conclusion I’d argue that Google News takes traffic and eye balls away from the publisher…thus reducing their revenues. If I were a publisher I’d be nervous.

I would agree that Google News takes eyeballs away from publishers front pages, but that’s simply because Google do a better job at providing a portal for content the user wants to see.

And of course publishers are nervous. So were the other industries when they realised that they had to change.

We’re entering a stage in our society where consumers want to pick and choose what they consume. The music industry is realising that some people don’t want to pay for an album for a few good songs (iTunes, other digital services). The television industry is realising some don’t want want to watch the endless river of shitty reality TV shows to get to the good stuff (TVNZ on demand, Hulu). The print industry must realise that some won’t want to wade through their quagmire of crap to get to the stories which are important to them.

Commentators Miss the Mark

As with any tragedy, it seems the usual media commentators almost have pieces pre-written to whip up their usual brand of hysteria. And no different is the tragedy of Nia Glassie, a recent case of terrible child abuse.

Here’s a recap:

Garth George blames New Zealands horrific child abuse record on abortion. Then he seems to get confused, takes some medicine and switches tack to blame kiwi bloke acting out his frustration, for he has been emasculated by the feminist movement. Riiiiight.

Michael Laws seems to hop off his “PC gone mad” and nanny state bandwagon and instead seems to briefly understand what those shrieked buzzwords actually stand for, going to the extent of saying “At such times you can appreciate the sensibilities that drove Sue Bradford to intrude on family life.” before he suddenly reverts back to form and begins to advocate the death penalty.

Deborah Coddington takes it a step further, recommending that the state abduct children at birth from the people deemed not fit to parent. This is a big step from an ex-ACT MP, but she appears to miss the mark.

Danyl from the Dim Post hits the nail on the head:

Well thank god we’ve gotten rid of that horrible nanny state Labour party and the government can get on with the real work of confiscating people’s children off them at birth.

He goes on to assert that Laws et al. dreaming up these policies is all well and good, until someone decides it should apply to them as well (Sue Bradford, anyone?) and then we’ll barely be able to breathe but drown in the moral outrage.

I look forward to reading Bob Jones’ opinion piece on it, but hopefully he’s crawled back under his rock now his crusade against Labour and the Greens has suspended as they’re relegated to opposition.

Michael Laws Has Had an Election…

Oh, and National won. Thanks for playing.

Here’s a few tips, from the inexperienced youngster to a battle-hardened old git:

• Don’t try to call an election result based on poll results.
• Especially ones that are undergoing rapid change
• If you pre-write your column for delayed publication, please try and correct your factual errors before going to press.
• Never, ever, EVER write off Winston Peters
• If you imply that Labour are poisoning National in the next term in your headline, try and elaborate on how it’s the scum sucking socialists fault and not the last decade or so of baseless banking speculation, free market capitalism and greed that you fight so hard to defend.

And don’t remind me about Bob Jones’ column, I mean… ah I give up.

Dirty Stuff

Took a copy of this list yesterday morning, Stuff’s Most Read Articles:

1. Eva Mendes’ nipple too hot for TV
2. Eva Mendes strips for Peta (explicit image)
3. Eva Mendes’ nipple too hot for TV
4. Nude Anne Hathaway pics seized by FBI
5. Student shocked to star on club’s loo-cam
6. Spice Girl traumatised by ‘Sex’ film
7. Were Brangelina’s twins pics touched up?
8. Olympian to bare all in fur protest (explicit image)
9. Alarm as pregnant mothers stay svelte
10. Inside NZ’s biggest leaky home project

Kind of concerning that there’s only one actually non-sexual/non-metro story in that list and it’s about Government House! And it’s at the bottom! (hehe… bottom)

Crime, Damned Crime and Statistics

The Fundy Post, in a confused state, writes:

Oh dear. In an effort to make everyone, but especially members of our Asian population, feel better about crime, I decided to do some research. So I googled. And sure enough, we score really low on the World murder rankings, just above the Scandinavians, Hong Kong and Japan (which has few murders but interesting ones).

Then I took a look at the total crimes per capita and found, to my horror that we are second from the top, just ahead of the Scandinavians.

Whoops! Above the USA? Above South Africa? Above Zimbabwe?!?

The clue, of course, is at the bottom of the page…

Note: Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence.

New Zealand has the second highest reported crime rate of countries surveyed. Obviously not something to be hugely proud of, but you can not even start to track and fight crime without having accurate reporting. Take a look at the comments section for an interesting view on the actual crime rate, not the hugely inflated “spree” being run by the mainstream media.

Granny Herald Sinks Lower

New Zealands most prestigious, respected and widely circulated news outlet gets its grubby little hands on a copy the lost corrections dossier. Bad News. Even worse is they decide to continue their plunge into tabloid-isim by shirking journalistic responsibility and printing some of the sensitive information contained within.

Corrections Minister Phil Goff was alarmed by the dossier incident. He said the information could be misused.

Really? You mean like published in the nations largest newspaper?

Keith Ng Cuts the Cheese

Keith Ng has been running a series of posts disputing and correcting facts spurted by our beloved politicians. The basic premise being is that our ministers and spokespeople have research units to deliver them the facts which they frequently ignore and “pull the figures out of their compost heap”.

This morning, Keith delivers a severe fisking to the Greens and other cheese-mongers with the morning milk.

Trumping the Herald’s “28% price rise”, Jeanette Fitzsimons has taken whinge-mongering to new heights with her claim that there has been 60% rise in the price of milk (and that Fonterra and the supermarkets are to blame).

It’s not true. It’s really, really not true.

According to StatsNZ’s Food Price Index, the average price of 2 litres of milk in April 2008 was $3.22. The price in April 07 was $2.62. That gets us to 28% — let’s chalk that other 32% up to rounding error, eh? But how about we look over the slightly longer term?

2008: $3.22
2007: $2.62
2006: $3.15
2005: $3.12
2004: $2.96

Even ignoring the fact that Fitzsimons pulled the 60% figure out of her compost heap, her claim is still fundamentally bullshit. If we choose *any* point of comparison other than 2007, the current price of milk is completely and utterly un-goddamn-remarkable.

There needs to be more of this kind of fact checking to keep our politicians honest. Unfortunately, this kind of analysis frequently gets swept under the rug and doesn’t get to the people that were influenced, further adding to the axiom “A lie can run around the world before the truth gets it’s boots on”.

This is the work the mainstream media should be doing. This is the job of a journalist or a reporter to fact check information before they regurgitate party press releases to the people in extenso, not the job of a blogger with the reach of a small-town rag.

Young People vs. Rugby Culture

photo credit: Hijeje

The Dominion Post says that a report by a Wellington Rugby Union asserts that less kids are playing rugby and therefore are lazy and apathetic. Well, if they’re not playing rugby it’s obvious that they’re sitting around in front of the TV and therefore don’t care about anything. Pull the other one.

Perhaps they’re a little sour that while Rugby numbers are down (31,000 to 29,845), Soccer numbers are UP (20,667 to just over 22,000)!

I can’t find the actual report anywhere, but The Dom Post actually have a reasonably balanced article on it – with quotes and questions to a lot of other sports figures and organisations (SPARC, Danyon Loader and some others) to balance out the junk from the report. An interesting piece but to jump from “Kids are playing less rugby” to “Generation Y should be ‘Y Bother’” is ridiculous and makes it sounds like it was written by a bunch of NZ First voters.

APN is Rotten

photo credit: K Shehbaz

Colin Espiner blogs today, wondering why the Bay Report is apologising to the National Party leader. Fingers are pointing at APN upper management publishing a correction to a politically damaging story about the National Party – when the hard evidence transcript, journalist and the editor all backed the article. Although this seems like an out of context attack, for all those following along at home here’s the story…

The Bay Report ran a story about how John Key would “love to see wages drop” when asked about the wage gap between Australia and New Zealand. In my opinion it wasn’t such a big deal. National do not want to raise wages – their plan is to cut taxes and costs. This tripe was also fed to us previously by Dr. Brash. However, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, especially the left-wing, but I think that a lot of people were caught up in the “I can’t believe he was caught saying it”.

Key then went through his usual set of denials – “I was misquoted”, “I was talking about Australia” and the old National Party standby: “I do not recall”. Mr. Key also went on to attack the journalists credibility and other angles around the quote. The fact that he was telling the national media one thing and his business audience another is fairly worrying, but we know how John Key gets when he’s put on the spot.

Just as things look to be calming down, we learn via. Bill English that “the newspaper concerned is going to publish a retraction”, then via the Herald that “The Bay Report will say it accepted that any impression its report gave that Mr Key wanted wages to drop was incorrect.”.

Hmm, in fact that goes against what the publisher, Northern Publishing, had to say when asked about the issue…

Northern Publishing stands by the story published in the Bay Report on December 20, 2007 in which National Leader John Key was quoted as saying “We would love to see wages drop.”

Our reporter was at the meeting with the Kerikeri District Business Association President Carolyne Brooks-Quan and recorded the conversation.

We have a transcript of the meeting and we are happy that the quotes printed in the story are an accurate record of what Mr Key said.

Seems pretty clear-cut to me. Quite strange that they decided to print a correction now. Also, why was the “correction” touted in the Herald, before it even went to press in the Bay Report – with silence from the Bay Report’s parent paper, the Northern Advocate?

The common denominator in this dirty little equation is APN. Perhaps the fact that the Key is on record as having discussed the matter with APN senior management, namely Martin Simons, has something to do with it – although they vehemently deny it.

Andrew Little, EPMU secretary says:

At best this looks like political mismanagement and at worst like serious pressure has been exerted on the editors and the journalist involved by senior APN management at the behest of the National Party.

If this gets any worse, there are some serious questions that will need answering and will shed new light on the Herald’s “Democracy Under Attack” campaign as it may come to light that they are the attackers, the suppressors of free speech and shitting in their own media freedom garden.

Par for the Course

Heh, over at WhaleOil’s there’s a post on Phil Goff, wholly, categorically, in a way that not even the most skilled spin doctor could twist his words, denying any intention or wish to see Helen Clark out of office:

“I have absolutely no aspirations in that direction at all. I am 100 percent behind Helen Clark as prime minister of New Zealand. I think she has done an absolutely superb job. I have no criticism at all.”

Hearing that, I think it’s natural to jump to the conclusion that “She’s screwed, it’s just a matter of time”

Although it’s fun and easy to pick on him, it’s the same all over the place around the sphere. Both left and right wing bloggers picking apart news releases, from sources they apparently don’t trust anyway. If some don’t say what they like, they’re liars. If they do, they’re an irrefutable unbiased and non-partisan source

The Standard report on the U-Turn executed by Colin Espiner, previously championed by the right for his damning of Labour now with his guns pointed squarely at National, surely to only be damned by the blogs singing his praises but a week ago – if not flat out ignored. Unfortunately this is only contributing to the idea that political debate by partisans is hopeless…