What the hell is with the self-importance of media in this country, pretending that they are important and making themselves news? This whole issue with One News anchor Judy Bailey not getting her contract renewed is a prime example.
The newspapers are referring to Bailey as "the mother of the nation." I guess journos' mothers must do nothing more in the way of parenting than read the newspaper aloud to their kids at the dinner table - that's all Bailey does for New Zealand. If she's really our mother, it's long past time for CYF to remove us from her care.
Bailey's $800,000 salary was minor news because it was a frivilous waste of public money. Her departure from her job is not news at all. People in the media have an over-inflated opinion of their own worth. The truth is that they do very little positive for us. Their agenda is simple: get as many people looking at them as possible, by any means necessary. That's entirely what this bullshit is all about.
To fuckery with Judy Bailey. It doesn't matter in the slightest which hand-puppet is mouthing the lines designed to keep us watching through the next commercial break.
Posted by pearce at October 8, 2005 3:59 PMWell said man - couldn't have put it better myself. That whole 'mother of the nation' thing just throws me - I was trying to think of a good angle on it to satirise for the Babylon Express, but I couldn't, because I simply couldn't fathom where the fuck they were coming from with that bullshit. The bloated self-importance of the media is something else. I heard Paul Holmes giving a tribute to Judy on the radio last week -truly nauseating. I reckon all those newscasters should wear fucking tiara's when they read the news - it would suit John Campbell down to the ground.
Posted by: scottk at October 9, 2005 12:39 AMSpeaking of Paul Holmes's tribute - aren't those supposed to be for dead people? I think she might be able to stretch that $800 grand a little further before keeling over from starvation...
Posted by: Pearce at October 10, 2005 6:31 PMPrior to all this firing malarkey, I have never heard of Judy Bailey being called the ‘mother of the nation’. No one at our office has, nor has anyone on a 450-strong Yahoo! group on New Zealand. Too right, Pearce, but journos that wrote this and the newswires that carried it aren’t too fussed with the facts.
Posted by: Jack Yan at November 17, 2005 2:12 AMYep, I agree, $800,000 for reading the news is way over the top, the row with Susan Wood should never have gone as far as it did, even $400k is too much. Why are they paid so much? Too full of their own importance I reckon! TVNZ needs to be a lot more responsible what it does with the shasreholders - the taxpayers of NZ - funds and look at putting more into producing decent programmes.
Posted by: Donovan Gee at November 21, 2005 2:03 PM