Watch those stubborn stains

Watchers in the habit of scanning the Chronic’s headlines and quickly passing over anything carrying John Maslin’s byline may have mistaken today’s front-page screamer ‘Banned and bankrupt: What council didn't know about branding man’

At the very least, they might have expected it to explain why the Mack Report was slipped onto the WDC website thirteen days earlier bearing the title: Council inquiry into allegations of improper influence.

They might have expected Senior Reporter Maslin to have included in his story the report’s excerpted email comments purportedly sent from Mr Mack to Chronic managers and editor, such as:

“We would like to see somewhat of a shift in editorial pertaining to Wanganui … We have a fundamental problem with the ‘Wanganui bashing’ that is so prevalent in your publication … for Energy Direct to be seen to support an entity that does not support their views on how Wanganui should be portrayed is not a viable option.”

AND

“As you could imagine, since the WDC is the primary stakeholder for this particular client, their opinions are rather weighted and carry some considerable clout. You must also agree that they do not hold your paper in a very good light, rightly or wrongly, that fact still remains the same and has a great deal of influence on media planning.”

But perhaps the dynamite implications of his own GM’s “allegations of improper influence” just weren’t sufficiently clear to Mas. And he clearly wasn’t able to grasp the extreme irony of omitting entirely the evidence of threats against his organ’s editorial independence. Instead, readers were treated to a SHOCK!! HORROR!! PROBE!! SPECIAL INVESTIGATION into the bankruptcy of Mr Mack – something that could be verified within seconds by anybody with an internet connection.

Meanwhile, back at this blog, a commenter fondly known as anonymickey gently reminded Watchers that ….

’ahem: Wasn't it the mayor who actually made everything public?’

We couldn’t ourselves do better than another Watcher’s swift retort to little piece of mayoral dissembling so, Dear Readers, we’ll run the anonymous Watcher’s comments in full for your edification:

Read the front page again, fool! As always the Guyton St Gobbels you call the mayor did just enough to give himself an "alibi" by slipping the report onto the council website, without comment, knowing very well that the Chron had well and truly got the message about how Mickey and Mack expect them to treat any not-good-news stories about the regime.

That's in stark contrast to the way he makes other stuff "public" like broken toes, his views on gangs etc etc.

Surely if he really wanted to make it public and didn't want the Chron to feel compromised he could have ordered that it be published in full on Community Link, written to the paper summarising the report and providing a link to the website version.

Better still, he could have turned the whole thing into a lovely glossy brochure and delivered a copy to every household, perhaps with a simple "community survey" attached, ie:

1. Do you think this incident indicates the council is
a. incompetent or
b. corrupt or
c. both of the above

2. In view of your answer to the above who do you think should be sacked:
a. The CEO
b. Claire Cilliers
c. The entire council management
d. The entire remnants of WINC
e. The gas company chair
f. The entire gas company management
g. The mayor & deputy mayor
h. all of the above

And courtesy another of our anonymii:

David Mack's cak-handed and corrupt attempt to suborn the fourth estate and subvert democracy is a perfect metaphor for Vision Wanganui.

IN PASSING

1. We also wondered why the fearlessly independent and unintimidated Chronic ran acres of excitement about the Community Views survey without asking the question that has been on everyone else’s lips: ie How did new-boy survey company Perceptive get hired ahead of National Research Bureau, the firm that has done years worth of surveys for Wanganui and other New Zealand councils; and what are the implications of its survey questions mirroring those of NRB so closely that Perceptive (and Mickey) claims to be able to make valid comparisons between the 1003 and 2007 results.

2. We note the ‘comeback kid’ is back on the Council website with the start of his election campaign, ably supported by has-been Dotty’s very own effort at using ratepayer-funded resources for blatant electioneering. Poor Dr Dave - who’d be in his shoes when he has to explain to Mickey that his arse will be on the line with the Auditor General if such breaches of election rules continue.

The screaming of the lambs

You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs – Hannibal Lecter

But there’s one thing about the media in this country. They don’t report the news any more – they interpret it. They predetermine winner and losers, goodies and baddies, and then bend the facts to fit their prior prejudice. – Michael Laws, Sunday Star Times, June 3

Without a hint of irony, Wanganui’s mayor smacked ‘the media’ in his Sunday newspaper column this week for 'not reporting the news anymore’. What’s more, they ‘predetermine winners and losers … then bend the facts to fit their prior prejudice’.

While Michael Laws was trying to refocus his reading public on his heroic dancing display with “leggy Lauren”, Watchers’ attention was elsewhere. Forget Mickey’s stumbling attempts to keep up with his Dancing with the Stars partner: on the Wanganui political dance floor last week, away from the lights and the beady-eyed judges, he seems again to have been rewarded for a perfectly synchronised media two-step that has kept from the public eye a scandal that would have aroused any self respecting newspaper to paroxysms of SHOCK! HORROR! PROBE! headlines and billboards.

By now well buried in the oxidation ponds of mayoral press releases that clutter the ratepayer funded WDC website, eagle-eyed Watchers followed the tell-tale smell to a little gem of a report titled Council inquiry into allegations of improper influence.

This, it would seem, was a scandal tailor made for Wanganui’s fearless daily. In fact, not only had the Chronic (through its GM) outed the perpetrator of the dodgy dealings to the council, but the Chronic was crying foul and casting itself in the role of victim.

With bated breath Watchers snatched their papers from their letter boxes, poured strong coffees and with trembling fingers opened their morning paper to see how big the type was that was used to break the story of the year about undue pressure being brought to bear on the editorial content of that very same organ by none other than the man whose praises the Michael Laws was singing six months ago for the cheap and nasty rebranding job perpetrated on an unsuspecting Wanganui.

But alas, as Watchers scrunched up the Chronic and used it to light their first fires of winter, they had to conclude that down at Taupo Quay our town’s fearless journos and management had, in their customary manner, decided that the citizens of Wanganui had every right to know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this scoop that they alone had set up!

Read the report, weep and Go figure, Watchers! It’s election year, after all, and clearly Ms Editor has made the bold decision to ensure nothing gets in the way of Mickey’s spin machine.

PART TWO: Michael Laws and ‘absolute sincerity’

In their weekend social intercourse around Wanganui and elsewhere, Watchers found some of the hoi polloi were a little surprised at reports in the Saturday Chronic and DomPost that Michael Laws “is reconsidering his earlier decision that he would be a one-term mayor only”.

Then Mas attempts to explain the turnaround by assuring us that, not to worry: “Mr Laws said he was being "absolutely sincere" when he said the first time and again the second time that he was not standing "but I've promised people I will take their views seriously and give a decision later this or early next". (Next what? – Ed)

Watchers who know that Michael Laws is no more capable of ‘absolute sincerity’ than Antoinette Beck is of winning Dancing with the Stars noted at the time of the Women’s Daze ‘I’m going to be Mr Mum’ scoop that a little lie (“My family comes first”), easily reversed by another little lie (“I’ve been begged by so many people to stand again”) was a small price to pay for the acres of media exposure that followed.

Just to pad out the Chronic's 'scoop', Mickey tells Mas “the approaches had come from commercial leaders, local iwi and individuals’. (When does Bob Walker count as a commercial leader? When does Rana Waitai count as local iwi? When do Bob Walker’s alter-egos count as individuals? – Ed)

A notably ungracious mayoral wannabe Dot McKinnon tried to put a brave face on the fact she’d been shafted and withdrew her candidacy, saying: "it would be a bit pointless going against Michael" in the October elections. (She obviously doesn’t think she’s got Mickey’s ability to manage the Chronic and keep the lid on the dirt! –Ed)

AND:

Randhir Dahya confided to Mas that "Everyone's encouraging me to stand, and I will do so” thus confirming his determination to ‘do a Chas’ and help deliver Wanganui into Mickey’s hands. (A fitting end to a career distinguished only by extraordinary talent for fence-sitting – Ed)

PART THREE - Perplexing poll problems

We are grateful to a LawsWatch anonymii for tipping us off about the back story to a wee morsel on the agenda for Tuesday’s 10am council meeting.

It is all around town that the Community Issues survey gives the thumbs down to the council and particularly the mayor. He tried to hide it but the CEO would not let him so if we want to be entertained we should get to the council at 10am on Tuesday and enjoy the humiliation. Dr Dave is asserting his authority and making this lame duck mayor suffer. - LawsWatch anonymous

Tucked away at the bottom of a mind-boggling (even for Mickey) piece of spin attributing what he says is a low number of submissions on the annual plan to widespread satisfaction with his regime, we’re told that the results of said community views survey will be presented at Tuesday’s meeting, at 10am, as a warm-up to Vison's yearly orgy of annual plan submitter abuse.

The survey company ,Perceptive, presumably a newcomer to the field, doesn’t list Antoinette Beck in its staff numbers but Mickey must have been hoping that by stepping outside the nationally respected National Research Bureau exercise he could escape its (no doubt invidious) comparisons with other councils around New Zealand.

PART FOUR: Meanwhile, back in Guatemala

Last week we mused on similarities between Michael Laws’ fascist mini-state and that of Dr Ropata’s Guatemala. In view of the Chronic’s failure to run the David Mack revelations, Watchers were interested to learn that media freedom is very much an endangered species in both places, but the difference is that Guatemala has at least one newspaper that isn’t prepared to keep silent:

"We can't keep silent," reads a full-page ad in El Periódico, the most progressive of the three main national newspapers of Guatemala. Fear is still very much around, censorship is alive and well, and the media in Guatemala are still subject to threats and manipulation.