Popularity and Ian Wishart

About Town, the blog for my flatmates was recently quoted in the New Zealand Herald for commenting on investigative "journalist" Ian Wishart.

For those who live else where in the world and obviously wouldn't have heard of this gentleman (and I use the term somewhat loosely), Ian Wishart is one of those long term reporters who realised that he didn't need to tell the complete truth to make money as a reporter.

Now don't get me wrong, Ian Wishart puts a lot of work into researching his articles... it's just that he takes a particular position and alters the way the facts read to support his pre-supposed opinion.

This is a common practice, but Wishart seems to have a thing for conspiracies and generally sacrifices objectivity and ethics to acheive this.

Recently, Ian Wishart basically managed to score himself an interview with Maori Politician John Tamihere. Unfortunately John seems to have thought that the interview was off the record - showing that he isn't exactly the best judge of character - and said a number of politically suicidal statements about his colleagues. *sigh*

The thing that gets my goat is that Ian Wishart is selling himself as the defender of truth by revealing these statements. He constantly decries that he's the good guy.

Bollocks.

He got lucky and took advantage of a situation to raise his profile. His magazine - Investigate - rarely contains solid facts, and his constant claims of being followed and watched tend to be a little too contrived.

The fact that he publishes all this tripe and sells it goes to show how much popularity there is for belief that everything that is going wrong in the world is someone else's fault.

Isn't really time for us to all take a little responsibility for our own mistakes? I know it's hard. Heck, I sometimes try to find someone else to blame when I feel I can get away with it - we live in a society that sort of promots this way of thinking. But then I tend to always leap on this bandwagon. :D

Anyway, it's a sunday and I have the day off work - so excuse me while I go chill out for the rest of the day.

Catch y'all later!

Conan