Wednesday, September 19 2001

Derek Fox's appointment to the board of the new Maori television channel shows the lengths this Government will go to, to control their opposition.

"This is a drastic move to silence Derek Fox. Labour has effectively removed the biggest challenge to their domination of the Maori vote.

"New Zealanders are sick and tired of appointments being made for cheap political reasons. We've seen it with the People's Bank, and now we're seeing it with the ill-fated Maori television channel.

"The Government is wasting millions of dollars on this channel when it was offered a much cheaper and more effective option by private broadcasters. They're going ahead with this for the worst possible reasons. The saddest thing is that the channel will do nothing to help those Maori kids behind with reading, or in trouble at school," Penny Webster said.

Ends

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>