If they say things like 'The media needs to...' and 'It's all the media's fault', they're going to have to be a little more fucking specific, because that's a goddamn huge net they are throwing there. There are multiple levels of media saturation in the 21st century, and while it's all part of the noise, some voices are louder than others, and some are more worthwhile than others.
Big media is the first, most obvious level, and the one this site will be mostly concerned with, because it's the most interesting, and the one we're usually talking about when we all blame/congratulate the media. It's the places that measure daily website hits in the tens of thousands, and reach hundreds of thousands of people with TV broadcasts, radio shows, newspapers and magazines.
The next level are the things like minor news sites, significant blogs and B2B publications. Less news, more analysis, and more blatant shilling. They're still a loud voice, especially in their own community, but are too focused to really influence the wider media scene.
The lowest level are people who leave comments on news stories and create their own sites to 'tell it like it is'. Nobody gives a flying fuck what these people think, no matter how loudly they yell in caps lock.
This site is obviously in this category, an irony that has not been overlooked by its creators.
But even putting these things into easy-to-define categories like that is a gross simplification, as there are parts of the media world that don't fit into nice little boxes, or great institutions that become sad jokes.
And they are all part of a vast, swirling and magnificent media mess, even in a relatively small country like New Zealand. You can't talk about it in absolutes, because it incorporates multiple points of view and objectives, and is too big and ever-changing to pigeonhole into easy categories.
Even in a comparatively tiny area like 'radio show host', you can't compare the urine-stained fear-mongering of Larry Williams and chums at Newstalk ZB to the social pleading of John Campbell at RNZ – they're both technically doing the same job, but have different views, goals and audiences. Even Guyon Espiner, on the early morning shift at RNZ, is doing very different things to Campbell later in the day, and getting very different results.
Blaming the media for everything that is wrong with the world is easy, but you really need to clarify which part of this glorious mess you're talking about, or you're not saying fucking anything.
- Steve Lombard
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