Sunday Star Times

Apparently, all you need is a false story and the outraged reaction of three left-wingers.

Take this one.

We have failed Labour candidate Michael Bott, the stupid head of the Corrections union, and of course, the usual human rights garbage, all commenting on the “strip-searching” of a guard.

The Corrections Department is facing legal action after it allegedly strip-searched a staff member at Rimutaka Prison during a botched sting operation.

In early March, security manager Wayne Andrews and staff from the intel unit, complete with drug dogs, stopped the prison guard as he entered the gatehouse to start his shift.

Believing he had been smuggling contraband into the prison, they strip-searched him on the spot. Finding nothing, they then took him to the staff gym and strip-searched him again, but failed to find any incriminating evidence.

The guard, who had worked at the prison for more than three years, was sent home, but resumed work the following day and has continued working since.  Read more »

Yesterday the Sunday Star Times released their 20 People of Influence and Effect. One of them is supposed to be Air New Zealand CEO Christopher Luxon:

There is a slight problem…the photo they have used isn’t Christopher Luxon at all. It is Air New Zealand’s Vice President Engineering Mike Sinett. The photo that they used from Setford Photo News Agency, that they would have paid good money for even has all the people in the photo named for their convenience.

Read more »

In their rush to slam Coca Cola as an evil global corporate monster the Sunday Star Times has not managed to even use a correct photo of the outgoing CEO.

You think they could have got the right photo…that person, who ever it is only resembles George Adams from in the remotest possible way….they both wear glasses.

There is a recent photo of George Adams in the NZ Herald inside their anti big business, anti-American corporate attack piece.  Read more »

The answer is pretty low.

Shayne Currie is pretty low rent himself, but he tweets about how low the Sunday Star Times has fallen under the “guidance” of David Kemys. If you thought the NZ Horrid was a shocker then check out this:

We wonder, if by chance, these are related… twitter.com/ShayneCurrieNZ…

— Shayne Currie (@ShayneCurrieNZH) August 6, 2012

by Winslow Taggart
WOBH Business Correspondent

The once behemoth Fairfax group are relying on a quasi-DotCom business to prop up their failing business model. In reality, this is selling the golden goose to fund the paper that absorbs the goose’s droppings in the cage.

In five years time, our children will laugh in amazement when we tell them, that once upon a time, people would get information by having someone wake up at 5 in the morning to walk out in the cold to drop bundles of paper into letterboxes. That the news was cluttered with stories that we weren’t interested in, ads that didn’t appeal to our dollars and opinions we didn’t like.

So, the obvious joke is “What do you call the sacking of 1900 journos…. a good start.”

Here’s hoping it’s the Sunday Star Times they butcher over the BusinessDay and Fairfax online folks who tend to get the big picture.

At least Fairfax has TradeMe to help prop up their balance sheet. APN NZ don’t have that luxury despite the cleverness of Shane Bradley and his APN Digital division.

The move to tabloid format for leading Fairfax Australian papers and a paywall for their online papers will be a real eye opener.

As for the Herald, well they’re likely to turn to tabloid format, which is just as well because they’ve been a tabloid in content for long enough. Layoffs in the APN media team won’t be far behind either.

It seems the media are trying to manipulate an election, and they will stoop to extremely low levels including using dodgy polls that have been hijacked by political parties.

The editor at the Sunday Star-Times must have balls the size of basketballs for banking the reputation of his paper on the results fo the dodgy Horizon Poll.

I have pointed out just how easy it is to manipulate the poll. I know of several folk with up to 15 logins who are doing the poll.

David Farrar points out just how out of whack their methodology is.

The spreadsheet above compares the Horizon poll to the weighted average of the five main pollsters. The differences are huge and massive. The SST would know this. Yet they still made this poll their front page, without even disclosing the difference in methodology.

Even worse the SST (at least online) doesn’t disclose the actual percentages for the big parties. I assume this is deliberate because they know if they said National is on 35% only, everyone would laugh.

There are going to be some very embarrassed people come Sunday morning and some professional media reputations will be in tatters, especially when they devote front pages to dodgy polling methodologies.

Or so the Sunday Star-Times says:

In the whole country there are only 24,000 men in the prime marrying slot. These men are straight, single, have no children and earn at least $60,000 a year. They have their pick of at least 50,000 single women, aged 25-39.

…FindSomeone, New Zealand’s leading dating website, asks singles to fill in preferences for potential partners.

Men between 20 and 40 were generally relaxed about these preferences, except when it came to children. The area deemed most important to men was whether future partners had existing children, with 75% of men saying they would prefer a potential partner to have none.

Yep no one likes SOCKs.

Last Saturday this blog published an article:

Saturday Synopsis — Likely New Ministers

Today the Sunday Star Times Neil Reid basically copies the content of this article, and mentions a source but does not attribute his work to this blog.

It identified the MPs likely to make a step up in the next National Government. They are remarkably similar to the MPs mentioned in my article.

Such a direct copy of an article without attribution is wrong but not surprising for a decidedly average newspaper (Slowly Sinking Tabloid) that is struggling to work out how to survive as more and more people get their news online.

So the following letter has been sent to the Sunday Star Times editor, David Kemeys, and a complaint will be laid with the NZ Pres Council if they do not address this to my satisfaction.

By Blog & Email
August 7th 2011

Re: Plagiarism of a Blog Post

Dear Sir,

Please refer to the following online articles:

Whaleoil Beef Hooked    Published Saturday 30th of July
http://whaleoil.gotcha.co.nz/index.php/2011/07/saturday-synopsis-likely-new-ministers/

Sunday Star Times           Published online Sunday 7th of August
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/5402657/National-fosters-new-talent

Neil Reid plagiarises the content of my post without attributing it to me or my blog. Could you please inform me of what you intend to do about this, and what action you intend taking against Reid.

In the event you choose not to address this issue I will complain to the NZ Press Council.

Yours faithfully

Cam Slater

The Slowly Sinking Tabloid is indeed sinking. The statistics show that.

Unfortunately the pinko editor David Kemeys, who likes to run intereference for all his Labour pals including Len Brown is also deluding himself.

In todays newfangled Slowly Sinking Tabloid they published this little self congratulatory piece (below). Except it only barely mentions the real statistics that show that they are a slowly sinking tabloid.

No wonder they are having to resort to making sure bad stories about Labour and Len Brown never appear online and simply making shit up about Mark Hotchin, along with bullying of media commentators and pushing bogus polls in order to try to staunch the leak in the dam of readership figures.

I wonder how long it will be before Fairfax calls David Kemeys in for a meeting with the bosses about his crap newspaper. Probably about the time they start getting the legal letters about their defamation of Amanda Hotchin.

The Prime Minsiter was castigated for saying that people who use food banks make poor choices. The Slowly Sinking Tabloid pinko hugging editor decided that this was a good excuse to hook into the government this week and so they produce as evidence,“Jack” (not his real name). (No link to actual story due to Bloggers Union action)

BACK AT the Downtown Community Ministry, “Jack” (not his real name) outlines his weekly expenses. From the $240 he receives in benefits, he pays $120 in rent, $50 for cigarettes and $20 on beer. Power is automatically deducted at $25 a week. “By the time I have a bit of fun, that’s dole day gone.”

Nearly a third of his ‘income’ is spent on piss and fags. If that isn’t poor choices then what is?

Next thing we will hear form the pinkos is that the government forces him to drink and smoke more than a third of his ‘income’.

I’d say that most people would look at “Jack” (not his real name) and suggest he get a grip. He is choosing to go without food so he can have beer and ciggies, that is demonstrably a poor choice. The Prime Minister is right.