Manipulative editing and mis-information
Yesterday Stuff carried an article by Martin Kay – entitled ‘By the right: a march into battle‘ , a review of the proposed changes to employment law. Overall not too bad a treatment of the matter, though perhaps more union friendly than government, but hell as written for the DomPost in a unionised town, Wellington, not too bad either.
However, if you had read the article in the print edition of the DomPost you might well have taken away a very different impression. On Page 27 , the main opinion page in the Weekend edition, you would have seen and seen is the operative word this when you opened the page:-
Now the size of the headline is much larger than the article print, but the revised headline is now much more strident and one sided:-
Whip hand shifts towards bosses
Martin Kay - Dominion Post - Page A27 July 24
By the way the article text is the same as that on the Stuff web-site, but the immediate impression given is of extremely negative law changes in favour of those evil people the bosses. This headline might as well have been written by Helen Kelly and her CTU cohorts.
The biased impression given by the headline is then heavily reinforced by the large caricature of Key as a capitalist, chomping on a cigar and whipping, a chained and enslaved worker.
Consequently, Adam has no doubt that those who saw the article in the print edition will have taken away a completely different impression of the article content than those who read it on line.
The editing of the headline and the use of the illustration being the reason for the perception.
This is just one example, albeit more egregious than most of how some in the media seek to manipulate issues.
Small wonder that so many in NZ are so anti-business.
Then of course we get to the lies and falsehoods being put about by some in the unions on this issue, of which more later.
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“This headline might as well have been written by Helen Kelly and her CTU cohorts.”
But it wasn’t.
You seem determined to demonize them Adam.
No I am not seeking to demonize Kelly.
I am pointing out how the DomPost, presumably the sub-editor, changed the article headline in a manner which conveyed a different perception from that in the online version, especially when considered in conjunction with the accompanying illustration.
My post pointed out how in consequence it can be postulated that the editing was manipulative and when coupled with the illustration mis-information and possibly deliberately designed to distort.
I would be as upset if the instance had been from the opposite point of view, though one finds those more rarely in the NZ media.
Its happening worldwide. Saw a Senator (Democrat) campaigning for Novembers elections (USA) on a platform of the internet must be controlled by government because if it isnt ‘corporates will brainwash the population”