Has another week passed you by with nary a fleeting glance at the weird and wonderful world of online content? Get the goss with another handy installment of Keeping up with the Kontentsphere.
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TONY VEITCH
Everyone lost their collective ish this week when Tony Veitch, veteran sports broadcaster and convicted domestic abuser, announced his forthcoming return to television on Sky’s new “a hard-hitting, opinion-led show that does not shy away from controversy”.
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Scheduled to appear as a guest (though initial reports claimed he would be presenting it) the public outcry quickly saw Veitch ousted from the show.
While the circumstances remain a wee bit mysterious (why did Veitch announce it like that if he was only going to a guest?) we can but take Sky at their word and sigh in sorry relief that they had enough good sense left to dial this one back.
It’s a victory, but a small one when you consider that Veitch was allowed back into to the pantheon of sports broadcasting celebrities in 2014 - five years after his conviction for the assault - where he inexplicably remains the presenter of his own weekend sport radio show 'Veitch on Sport' which, as Sky TV noted, “boasts one of the most significant sporting audiences in New Zealand with a loyal on air and online following.”
Le sigh.
JACK TAME v JACINDA
Whichever side of the fence on which you sit, it would be hard to argue that our new Lorde-hugging, Cat-enabling, Secret Santa participating Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern doesn’t seem like a nice lady. Even protesting farmers agree, she’s a “pretty communist”! But where does that leave the ever vigilant, totally objective, perpetually yapping watchdog that is the media?
This question was raised this week when sprightly Breakfast news lad Jack Tame asked Ardern about a story told by comedian Tom Sainsbury that US president Donald Trump had mistaken her for the wife of Canadian Prime Minister during their recent meeting at Apec in Vietnam.
While Jacinda said that it was a story she heard second-hand and that she regretted repeating it, Tame took it upon himself to really get to the bottom of this suspicious little anecdote, asking a bunch of questions and annoying a lot of people including beloved NZ thespian and social media star Sam Neill.
Who exactly is that plonker talking to @jacindaardern the PM on @Breakfaston1 . A little respect eh , sonny ? @TVNZ
— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) November 19, 2017
Z on @Breakfaston1 . A little respect , sonny ?
Was Tame too harsh? Would we feel the same if it was Bill English? How much more news can we milk from Jacinda briefly meeting Donald Trump?
I just don’t know.
ODT
Ok, maaayyybe I jumped the gun a couple of weeks ago when I called Otago Daily Times the “best news publication in the country”.
In what is maybe the worst take of the year, a Dunedinite named Dave Witherow has penned an op-ed for the ODT about how “inflicting te reo on the entire population is contemptuous.”
I found a winner. Behold, Dave from Dunedin. Take a bow @odtnews, you have officially published the most racist thing of the year. ? #bestof2017 https://t.co/NOW2BSYz8U
— Leonie Hayden (@sharkpatu) November 23, 2017
Apparently incensed that my own employer, RNZ, staff are "obliged to dispense their daily dose of te reo”, Witherow takes aim at “the keener young grovellers” who “now begin and end their spiels with expansive swatches of a lingo understood by only a minuscule proportion of their audience.”
Thanks for your racist feedback Dave!
LORDE NME ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Wow, Lorde’s Melodrama album was named album of the year by prestigious music magazine NME!
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Congratulations!
