A Frenzy Of Self Righteousness

>> Crude emotional blackmail / marginalise and demonise / woke indoctrination / activism / garbled and overheated report / hit job / flagrant misuse of power / attack on free speech / malignant / woke code / ambushed / ego-driven / naked and explicit abuse of power / threat to free speech / patronising / threatening / hubris-afflicted media. <<

 

These words and phrases are all from a recent blog post.  What major issue drove the writer, Karl du Fresne, into such a frenzy? 

It was a bizarre claim by former Radio NZ journalist and wanna-be shock jock, Sean Plunket, that the Christchurch mosque murders were not an act of terrorism but were committed by a “lone nutter with a gun". Furthermore, the killer's manifesto did not prove he was motivated by political aims, ie Islamophobia, and the government's framing of the killings as terrorism was politically motivated.

 

Du Fresne acknowledges the obvious fact that Plunket got it woefully wrong on the question of the killer's political motivation, but claims Plunket “said nothing that minimised the enormity of what Tarrant did”. 

Furthermore, reporting Plunket's comments on Newshub’s 6pm news bulletin, was a “naked and explicit abuse of power”, a “threat to free speech” and to the very foundation of our democracy from a “hubris-afflicted media”.

Not content with defending Plunket's decision to nail his colours to that particular mast, du Fresne also goes along with the claim that the framing of the mass murder as an act of terrorism was politically motivated, and he indulged in a fit of hyperbolic character assassination of the political editor of Newshub, featuring the now de rigeur accusation of being “woke”, aka politically correct.  

 

What Plunket has done, according to du Fresne’s logic, is not to offend and distress the Muslim community by making the sort of claim usually only heard in the bowels of the internet, but merely to express a legitimate, if incorrect, opinion.

 

Without the ability to express such an opinion without fear of being held to account, he warns us darkly that the very foundations of our democracy are at risk. 

 

Frankly, even if all Plunket was guilty of was bad journalism - ie allowing his personal opinion to change the widely agreed facts of a story, it would be worthy of comment by others in the media. 

 

Whether he did it for publicity for his news platform, or to provoke a response he could use to claim to be a martyr to wokeness, or to cosy up to those sections of the far right which also deny Tarrant’s ideological motivation – it is not just worthy of journalistic comment, it demands it, and the media would be remiss not to report it.

 

It is disturbing if these two seasoned journalists can genuinely not see how their comments minimise the enormity of the act. It is even more disturbing if they are engaged in the very thing they accuse the government and Newshub of doing – making political capital out of mass murder.

The motivation of the murderer does not make the victims any less dead or harmed but there is a political and personal difference between being a tragic victim of circumstance by being in the line of fire of a deranged gunman, and being deliberately targeted and gunned down by someone who hates you for being who you are. 

 

That difference matters hugely to the survivors, and to the families of the dead and the wider community which was so targeted. It should matter to all of us.

 

I might agree that Plunket has the right to make such claims, I also agree that others have the right to call him a poor journalist, an insensitive oaf, or a crude, right wing dog whistler for so doing.