The Ofcom Files, Part 4: Ofcom Rides Again
https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/12/04/the-ofcom-files-part-4-ofcom-rides-again/
#HackerNews #OfcomFiles #Ofcom #Rides #Again #DigitalRegulation #TechNews #MediaWatch
"What's I'm doing is focused very much on my job. As I keep saying; polls, commentariat, rumours, my job is to get on with the country, and getting it sorted for people."
#CLuxon, speaking to Ryan Bridge in 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=8e7b038f-039b-4c10-86c4-cb2a67ad34af
Oh dear. The political truism regurgitation machine has started stringing random clauses together into vaguely sentence-shaped objects, which don't really hang together (they also don't mean anything but that's not new.
(1/?)
Lithium ion batteries can be a fire risk, yes. But cheap ones in household devices (phones, charging packs, *toys*) are much riskier than the ones in EVs, according to Colin Peacock;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=0fc8e854-476a-4b94-a849-ecfac17b8e35
Lithium ion EV batteries are probably no riskier than a tank of extremely explosive fuel. Certainly not risky enough to justify a regressive crusade against EVs in general, which these days may have nonexplosive sodium ion batteries.
Yesterday's Midweek MediaWatch covered the decision by police not to prosecute Stuff for publishing anonymised audio of the cops during the final minutes of Tom Phillips' life;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=22b39814-2065-4113-a6bd-587235737567
I guess the cops haven't heard of the Streisand Effect. Because the first thing I did upon learning that they didn't want it published, was to go listen to it;
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360819884/police-audio-end-tom-phillips-chase
I doubt I'm the only one who did.
#podcasts #RNZ #MediaWatch #Stuff #StreisandEffect #DeathByCop #TomPhillips
A fascinating discussion on Midweek MediaWatch about whether or not Sean Plunket's digital soapbox The Platform is under the jurisdiction of the Broadcasting Standards Authority;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=7308019f-a654-4741-b3db-b6f3edb1fce2
Plunket is a contemptible human being who platforms hateful concern trolling, in the style of Cameron Slater. So on one level I'd love to see the BSA throw the book at him. But as with the case against Slater, there are deeper principles at stake here.
(1/?)
This week's MediaWatch dived into the online safety debate. Starting about 23 minutes in, after a story about news coverage of Silver Ferns coaching drama, and a roundup of the midweek edition;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=33fb446b-4f18-4f7d-8327-ddd5cf4bf4ab
It's a mixed bag. As with so much commentary on this, our genuine concerns about civil liberties and human rights kind of get lumped in with the self-serving opinions of reputation launderers for DataFarms (including ACT MPs).
(1/?)
The enshittification of commercial news media continues apace ...
"So you need human journalists. AI will not replace them. It might make one journalist do the work of 10, but you still need that journalist.
We're ... moving into a full newsroom based on AI."
#PeterFowler, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=4df8ef6b-aef5-4a92-9f6a-44a3d314ae09
*shudder* Oh the hubris. This is exactly the wrong way to use any kind of AI. But especially the current crop of Trained MOLEs.
As Tech Won't Save Us (@techwontsaveus) explained in their Data Vampires series, scAmazon doesn't want to build datacentres in Aotearoa to benefit us. It's a way of mining our country for cheap renewable energy, and cheap labour (remember the infamous "Mexicans with cellphones"?). Which they can then extract from the country in the form of dollars.
Their extractive logic was laid bare when our energy prices went up, and they massively scaled back their plans.
MediaWatch did a good segment on the datacentre-related reputation laundering by scAmazon and NatACT First, and its Useful Idiots in news media (notably Mike Hoskins);
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=18fdbc07-39b4-4deb-96ba-1d9809b54c6f
(1/?)
@leighelse
> Moving Radio New Zealand's "centre of gravity" to Auckland is an ill-considered strategy.
I had the same concerns based on my first impressions. But after listening to the interview with Paul Thompson on yesterday's edition of MediaWatch;
... it doesn't sound like the plan is for RNZ to become "Auckland-centric". Just to focus for a while on making sure it's serving the needs of (50+) radio listeners in Tamaki Makaurau.
Complaining about of "maorification" of media, because they're starting to reflect the unique cultural mix of Aotearoa, is like complaining about "pacification" when institutions start taking meaningful action to prevent domestic abuse.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=e6bc82e6-bcc8-42bf-915c-f27d859a21df
"[IDF] have admitted it was deliberate attack, but it claimed that [Anas] al-Sharif was Hamas operative. They called him a 'mouthpiece of intellectual terrorism'..."
#HaydenDonnell, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=36b8bb92-d72c-404b-8948-5850ce600cf6
"We can't have this namby-pamby stand in education where we don't like winners and losers, we just like winners."
#BarrySoper, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=199b86ae-c200-4075-ab0c-f5dec7f2b80f
Why not? Why would we choose to structurally frame people struggling at school as "losers"? Why choose to make education a zero-sum game, when there's no evidence that moving away from that toxic framing does any harm?
"... politicians [are] going to put more pressure on supermarkets, we've heard that for years. Fundamentally the problem is that we've only got two big players in the country."
#LiamDann, Business Editor-at-large, #NZHerald, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=29744fe6-be1b-4bde-94ce-89aee9f80581
Wrong. The fundamental problem is lack of pro-competition regulation and enforcement.
(1/2)
Who watches the MediaWatch? I do!
"Bitter butter battle, Saudi cash chaging the picture for sport on screen"
"Chaging"?
This is the talking point #CLuxon pulls out when asked about health system failures;
"Basically I think that's the hangover of a Labour government that didn't care about Auckland, focused on Wellington, shut the joint down for 2 years."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=7c69e0c3-ba0e-47f7-a4fd-7b37a9e604d1
I'm just imagining the next tory PM blaming the previous government for health failures in Otago. Blatantly ignoring consecutive tory governments delaying and defunding the Dunedin Hospital rebuild.
Journalists seem to finally be realising that #MOLE Trainers selling "AI" are selling us a bill of goods;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=d6af8e05-b61a-4f80-ace5-e9b00a408999
But they're still buying into the "hallucination" line. The MOLE is not "hallucinating", it's just generating plausible sentences. Just like when it outputs a sentence that happens to be accurate.
Either way, it's not "answering" your questions, it spitting out plausible sentences. Because this is all it can do.
(1/2)
"Sports influencers and celebrity influencers or whatever it is that's driving this craze, they should be thinking and reflecting very strongly about [Run it Straight] now. But it's not something you can practically ban at a government level. But it's just calling for people to exercise individual responsibility."
#ChristopherLuxon, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=13bfab36-a20f-4a61-8f3f-575d334abce0
(1/2)
Anyone need more bad news? MediaWatch this week is full of it.
For a start, there's the govt cancelling a focused tax on international online services making money from Aotearoa. A sensible policy I hadn't even heard was on the cards. While continuing with a link tax on currently dominant platforms - an unprincipled, short-term policy that has mostly failed in Oz, Canada and elsewhere - and the online age verification farce;
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=3b55abf5-5b70-408a-8d70-c7d1514d875d
(1/2)
Colin Peacock did a good segment on the bill proposed by National MP Catherine Wedd, aping the Australian government's attempt to ban under-16s from social media (with the head-scratching exemption for YouTub);
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=3ad7cf4e-6f76-4fcc-8d74-de5fc080f878
Like all such laws, it would require anyone using social media to identify themselves to service hosts, so they can verify age. Corporate DataFarmers would love to have this information.
(1/2)
"[Pattrick Smellie says of future news outlets] they'll be smaller, driven by editorial concerns rather than advertising imperatives. Today's ... news publishers he said, both in Australia and NZ, have in practice now become real estate advertising platforms, with newsrooms attached."
#ColinPeacock, 2025
https://www.rnz.co.nz/podcast/mediawatch?share=a2db3e6a-d412-44ff-880b-c9c90f7a449f
Burn!
For those who can afford to vault the paywall, Smellie's full piece can be read here;
https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/opinion/the-future-of-news-yet-another-reckon