Manufactured outrage

Looks like the Herald has been taking tips from Labour on manufactured outrage:

A Tui billboard that apparently pokes fun at the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs is an unfortunate coincidence, the brewery says – but it won’t be coming down until Monday.

One of the offending billboards – which reads “Job’s done. Yeah Right.” – is visible to thousands of commuters on Auckland’s southern motorway as they pass through Ellerslie.

Jobs died today aged 56, after a long battle with cancer.

Tui said Jobs’ death and the choice of words on the billboard were a coincidence.

Spokeswoman Jo Jalfon said the billboard was put up on Monday and referred to the All Blacks beating Canada recently.

“At long last we’ve beaten the French, so that job was done – it was really sort of a play on a Rugby World Cup theme,” she said.

She accepted that the billboard was “somewhat ironic or unfortunate” given Jobs’ death.

“Someone at work mentioned it to me and said, ‘Do you know we’ve got that billboard’ and went, ‘Oh, right, yes I see – someone could actually think it was in reference to Steve Jobs.’

“It certainly wasn’t put up in any reference to him, because obviously he died this morning.”

Among those who found the billboard offensive was One News reporter Ruth Wynn-Williams, who took to Twitter to say it was “perhaps the most bad taste Tui billboard yet”.

“Unreal. Have a little respect,” she wrote.

And of course they can’t get facts straight saying the billboard was put up in regards to the Canada game, even though they have a direct quote stating that it referred to the win over France. This billboard has been up for nearly two weeks, how anyone could think it was to do with Steve Jobs?

And of course the only person they could find that found it offensive… well another ‘reporter’ how shocking!

 

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  • sthnjeff

    Stupid fucken bint… exemplifies the quality of people working at tvnz.

  • frosty

    If the moron reporter knew some basic spelling / grammar then they wouldn’t have made the mistake.  Where is the apostrophe reporter?  Maybe now the board could ironically relate to that persons position at the Herald.  But I doubt it.
    Campbell Live will be onto this next – he loves inflating non existent stories.

  • Anonymous

    Frosty beat me to it.

    The way its written means “Job is done”. To say “Jobs is done” is written “Jobs’ done”

    • Bunswalla

      Slightly incorrect rouppe, but you’re right about the first part. The surname Jobs is not a plural, and the statement includes a contraction (Job is becomes Job’s) rather than a possessive. If you wanted to state that Steve Jobs is done (which of course we don’t), the correct way to write the statement would be “Jobs done”. Other examples might be: Goff done, King done, Mallard fucked.

  • Anonymous

    Give me fucken strength…. 

  • Petal

    Perhaps I should respond with manufactured apathy?

  • Ephbeemac

    MORONS

    And if I say anything else I’ll just be repeating Frosty

    Give me strength

  • Agent BallSack

    Since it’s a female apparently offended by it and it has obviously been there for weeks, is this the definition for a storm in a D-Cup?

  • ROBBO

    Maybe Tui’s next billboard should “Those Apple shares are a safe bet”

  • Dutyfree

    Clearly tweeting can make you into a twit.

  • thor42

    A fuss over nothing. 

  • Luigi

    This is just another example of slack ‘journalism’ from the breathless airheads at State owned TV. I can totally understand why Head of News Tony Flannery has pulled the pin to move to Oz – if this silly tart is an example of the calibre of personnel within the Newsroom, then Flannery has made the right decision to jump. Only surprise for me is that this woman works for TVNZ and not TV3 – I’d thought that TV3 had first call on the morons…            

  • middleagedwhiteguy

    I think this would have made Jobs laugh.

    • phronesis

      Bad taste, but funny!

  • Anonymous

    Great post Cam, well written :) I see they have corrected the Canada/France error. Pity they didn’t just replace the whole story with ‘Sorry we are morons’