I wonder if a factor in the lack of trust in the media is journalists posting highly partisan things on their personal social media accounts. I've seen this a number of times. Some social media posts I've seen are like the equivalent of private pub conversations in days gone by, among close media colleagues, when a right-wing politician may be slated; but putting it on social media for all to see, without the context of private personal views being expressed to a close circle of colleagues, does give the impression of bias.
Journalists have always had opinions and they do tend to be leftist. But I don't think that's what's caused the loss of trust in the media. When you know something about a topic that's important to you and you can recognise that very pertinent facts are not being included in news stories on that topic, you tend to wonder what else that particular media outlet isn't telling you. I think that's far more damaging than posting opinions on social media.
Spot on Jenny - thank you for articulating the dismay that I think many people feel, especially when watching & listening to tv and radio “news”. And for demonstrating with your comments on Tim Hunter’s LinkedIn piece that it’s possible to respect someone while disagreeing with some of their views!
I know that this isn't the main thrust of your piece, but in respect to puberty blockers I'd like to add that the lobby group InsideOUT knows very well that there are risks associated with puberty blockers. They acknowledged it in their Submission Guide for Puberty Blocker Restriction, when Health NZ invited public submissions on the matter, by stating -
"The identified potential risk of bone density development happens when there is a lack of sex hormones in one’s body. This risk can be mitigated for trans young people by putting them on sex hormones that align with their gender as soon as possible (if this is something the young person wants and can give informed consent to), not simply puberty blockers long term."
This makes for very uneasy reading for various reasons, but one is that if young people are quickly moved off puberty blockers and onto cross-sex hormones, will data then show a 'decrease' in puberty blocker use here in NZ?
Off topic but something I think and read about a lot.
The whole idea of puberty blockers came from autogynophiles fantasising about how much better they could pass as “real” women if they hadn’t gone through puberty. The very concept just revolts me and I still struggle to understand why supposedly sane adults think it’s good to give these drugs to children.
Hear hear, common sense and honesty prevails. Journalists have been the authors of their own demise and still refuse to accept the facts that the public know are true. Doubling down on untruths and outright lies won’t make them acceptable, this is fanaticism. I also think that the description of your average journalist should also include ‘not very bright’.
Jenny, I have great respect for you and while I disagree vehemently with your social views, your business analysis is excellent and that's why I subscribe. But to talk about Grenon, Crump and Du Fresne as being non-partisan is in itself disingenuous. DF's column being picked up by the Spectator tells you all you need to know about where his views lie. Furthermore, he has not been in a newsroom for years and hasn't the faintest about the 'average' journalist that he likes to opine on, and shit on, so much. Philip Crump is not a journalist and has barely work in a newsroom but will somehow be directing editorial policy at the country's largest news service, which blows the mind. It suits them to promote themselves as 'centrist' (even calling a right wing aggregator of news "Centrist' as if its curation isn't plain to see) but this is just baloney. Tim Hunter is a celebrated, working journalist who genuinely has not declared a political perspective on anything over decades in the business and his views have 1000 times more weight to them than Crump or DF will ever have.
Hi Dita. I welcome dissent. It’s the only way democracy and a free society works for all. I think too many media outlets are trying to suppress dissent.
I became a journalist because I believe knowledge is power and I think our primary role is to present readers with facts, not tell them what to think.
I daily witness media outlets telling us what to think and I don’t like it.
But you say you vehemently disagree with my social views - some things you might want to consider. I came of age in the late sixties/early 70s and the first political movements I was involved in were anti Vietnam war marches - I still oppose one country invading another, as Russia has done to Ukraine, and abhor might = right as a principle - and opposition to apartheid in South Africa. I continue to oppose any kind of race-based discrimination. I was inspired by the US civil rights movement in the 60s and believe with Martin Luther King that people should be judged on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Or their sex, for that matter, for I’m a life-long feminist and was one of the group in Auckland that established NZ’s first feminist refuge for women who had suffered from domestic violence. That was the foundation of the Women’s Refuge organisation. My views on women’s rights haven’t changed.
Including that women should have the right to control their own fertility, including the right to abortion.
I agreed with homosexuality law reform and continue to support marriage equality.
But I think the LGB parts of the alphabet soup don’t belong with the TQIA parts of the alphabet soup because their interests are different and often clash.
Homosexuality is intensely based on biology and I don’t believe humans can change sex, nobody is born in the “wrong” body and sex is not “assigned” at birth but is determined at conception. This and my intimate knowledge of male violence against women is what informs my belief that men claiming to be women have no place in women-only spaces or sports. And I do think otherwise healthy children should not be medically interfered with in the name of the lie that humans can change sex.
So, do you really “vehemently disagree” with these views?
Jenny, I agree with almost everything up until the point you say "nobody is born in the “wrong” body". This is your opinion, but not a fact, and something people in this situation feel and have every right to feel in my view. I acknowledge your experience of male violence against women and many of us share this, but for me that doesn't equate to whatsoever to transwomen, from whom I feel no threat, or not any more than from fellow women. As far as sports go, I admit that is something medical science can answer better than me. As for children 'medically interfered' with, I have known adolescents given access to these drugs who would have likely otherwise been at high risk of suicide. To me, that trumps medication given, that can be reversed, usually overseen by loving parents. D
The supposed suicide risk of gender confused children is a myth - Britain’s Cass report covers this well. There is a long history of children who were gender confused but who resolved this through going through puberty. Most but not all such children turn out to be gay and their wish to become the other sex is rooted in negative societal views on homosexuality.
I believe trans ideology is fundamentally anti gay and anti women because it reinforces sexual stereotypes. I’d like to see those stereotypes destroyed.
The data shows more gender confused kids commit suicide after transitioning - possibly because they come up against the reality that humans cannot change sex.
Are you really saying that a “feeling” of being born in the wrong body justifies drugging and mutilating kids?
What about a Pakeha kid who thinks they were really meant to be Chinese?
An analogy I often make is with white men wearing “blackface which is now rightly viewed as racists.
None of this means I want to see trans identifying people discriminated against in any way. I absolutely don’t. I’m a firm believer in live and let live. Adults should be free to live however they choose but that cannot mean trampling on the rights of women and children.
But why don’t you read the Cass report for yourself - it’s readily available online. While you’re at it, why not read the WPATH files too? That will show you that healthcare providers are well aware that children are not equipped to give informed consent to “gender affirming healthcare.” And yet they keep providing this barbarous “treatment” to kids in every county that still allows it.
One more thing: I don’t accept that it is possible for anyone to be born in the “wrong” body and I dispute that this is just my “opinion.” What are the facts supporting your view that this is possible? Feelings? Is that evidence of anything?
The Cass report was a politically tarnished exercise with a predetermined outcome overseen by a strongly anti-trans minister Kemi Badedoch. The studies about more suicides after transitioning are also suss in my view: this one for example (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10027312/) looked at 23 studies and found the majority indicated a reduction in suicidality following gender-affirming treatment. I believe in general there has been a moral panic created and sustained by people who have no genuine involvement in this issue at all, nor genuine concern for women (ie Rhys Williams etc). I can see no good reason why supporting trans rights takes anything away from women.
Hilary Cass and the only people who have discredited her work are trans activists.
Cass is a well-respected paediatrician and was president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. Her review of “gender-affirming healthcare” took four years. Badenoch did not commission her work, the NHS did. Cass reviewed all the available evidence for and against “gender-affirming healthcare” and found no good evidence justifying the drugging and medicalising otherwise healthy children exists.
The current Labour government of Britain has upheld her work and banned the use of puberty blockers
Is the British Medical Association a bunch of 'trans activists'? Just wondering, as their members voted in favour of a motion to ‘publicly critique the Cass Review’, after doctors and academics in several countries, including the UK, voiced concern about weaknesses in the methodologies used.
Apparently the great unwashed don’t align with your condescending views, wow inconvenient.
De Fresne is old school and his views matter, more so that he is not working as a mainstream‘ journalist’. Tim Hunter is arrogant and condescending, smearing and sneering at your enemies doesn’t win any arguments except pander to people like yourself and other fellow travellers. You’ve lost the battles and now you’ve lost the war.
I had not seen Tim Hunters opinion piece on LinkedIn. I completely agree with you.
I wonder if a factor in the lack of trust in the media is journalists posting highly partisan things on their personal social media accounts. I've seen this a number of times. Some social media posts I've seen are like the equivalent of private pub conversations in days gone by, among close media colleagues, when a right-wing politician may be slated; but putting it on social media for all to see, without the context of private personal views being expressed to a close circle of colleagues, does give the impression of bias.
Journalists have always had opinions and they do tend to be leftist. But I don't think that's what's caused the loss of trust in the media. When you know something about a topic that's important to you and you can recognise that very pertinent facts are not being included in news stories on that topic, you tend to wonder what else that particular media outlet isn't telling you. I think that's far more damaging than posting opinions on social media.
Spot on Jenny - thank you for articulating the dismay that I think many people feel, especially when watching & listening to tv and radio “news”. And for demonstrating with your comments on Tim Hunter’s LinkedIn piece that it’s possible to respect someone while disagreeing with some of their views!
Thanks, Susan. I believe in free speech and that does mean listening to people I don’t agree with.
I know that this isn't the main thrust of your piece, but in respect to puberty blockers I'd like to add that the lobby group InsideOUT knows very well that there are risks associated with puberty blockers. They acknowledged it in their Submission Guide for Puberty Blocker Restriction, when Health NZ invited public submissions on the matter, by stating -
"The identified potential risk of bone density development happens when there is a lack of sex hormones in one’s body. This risk can be mitigated for trans young people by putting them on sex hormones that align with their gender as soon as possible (if this is something the young person wants and can give informed consent to), not simply puberty blockers long term."
This makes for very uneasy reading for various reasons, but one is that if young people are quickly moved off puberty blockers and onto cross-sex hormones, will data then show a 'decrease' in puberty blocker use here in NZ?
Off topic but something I think and read about a lot.
The whole idea of puberty blockers came from autogynophiles fantasising about how much better they could pass as “real” women if they hadn’t gone through puberty. The very concept just revolts me and I still struggle to understand why supposedly sane adults think it’s good to give these drugs to children.
Hear hear, common sense and honesty prevails. Journalists have been the authors of their own demise and still refuse to accept the facts that the public know are true. Doubling down on untruths and outright lies won’t make them acceptable, this is fanaticism. I also think that the description of your average journalist should also include ‘not very bright’.
Jenny, I have great respect for you and while I disagree vehemently with your social views, your business analysis is excellent and that's why I subscribe. But to talk about Grenon, Crump and Du Fresne as being non-partisan is in itself disingenuous. DF's column being picked up by the Spectator tells you all you need to know about where his views lie. Furthermore, he has not been in a newsroom for years and hasn't the faintest about the 'average' journalist that he likes to opine on, and shit on, so much. Philip Crump is not a journalist and has barely work in a newsroom but will somehow be directing editorial policy at the country's largest news service, which blows the mind. It suits them to promote themselves as 'centrist' (even calling a right wing aggregator of news "Centrist' as if its curation isn't plain to see) but this is just baloney. Tim Hunter is a celebrated, working journalist who genuinely has not declared a political perspective on anything over decades in the business and his views have 1000 times more weight to them than Crump or DF will ever have.
Hi Dita. I welcome dissent. It’s the only way democracy and a free society works for all. I think too many media outlets are trying to suppress dissent.
I became a journalist because I believe knowledge is power and I think our primary role is to present readers with facts, not tell them what to think.
I daily witness media outlets telling us what to think and I don’t like it.
But you say you vehemently disagree with my social views - some things you might want to consider. I came of age in the late sixties/early 70s and the first political movements I was involved in were anti Vietnam war marches - I still oppose one country invading another, as Russia has done to Ukraine, and abhor might = right as a principle - and opposition to apartheid in South Africa. I continue to oppose any kind of race-based discrimination. I was inspired by the US civil rights movement in the 60s and believe with Martin Luther King that people should be judged on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Or their sex, for that matter, for I’m a life-long feminist and was one of the group in Auckland that established NZ’s first feminist refuge for women who had suffered from domestic violence. That was the foundation of the Women’s Refuge organisation. My views on women’s rights haven’t changed.
Including that women should have the right to control their own fertility, including the right to abortion.
I agreed with homosexuality law reform and continue to support marriage equality.
But I think the LGB parts of the alphabet soup don’t belong with the TQIA parts of the alphabet soup because their interests are different and often clash.
Homosexuality is intensely based on biology and I don’t believe humans can change sex, nobody is born in the “wrong” body and sex is not “assigned” at birth but is determined at conception. This and my intimate knowledge of male violence against women is what informs my belief that men claiming to be women have no place in women-only spaces or sports. And I do think otherwise healthy children should not be medically interfered with in the name of the lie that humans can change sex.
So, do you really “vehemently disagree” with these views?
Jenny, I agree with almost everything up until the point you say "nobody is born in the “wrong” body". This is your opinion, but not a fact, and something people in this situation feel and have every right to feel in my view. I acknowledge your experience of male violence against women and many of us share this, but for me that doesn't equate to whatsoever to transwomen, from whom I feel no threat, or not any more than from fellow women. As far as sports go, I admit that is something medical science can answer better than me. As for children 'medically interfered' with, I have known adolescents given access to these drugs who would have likely otherwise been at high risk of suicide. To me, that trumps medication given, that can be reversed, usually overseen by loving parents. D
The supposed suicide risk of gender confused children is a myth - Britain’s Cass report covers this well. There is a long history of children who were gender confused but who resolved this through going through puberty. Most but not all such children turn out to be gay and their wish to become the other sex is rooted in negative societal views on homosexuality.
I believe trans ideology is fundamentally anti gay and anti women because it reinforces sexual stereotypes. I’d like to see those stereotypes destroyed.
The data shows more gender confused kids commit suicide after transitioning - possibly because they come up against the reality that humans cannot change sex.
Are you really saying that a “feeling” of being born in the wrong body justifies drugging and mutilating kids?
What about a Pakeha kid who thinks they were really meant to be Chinese?
An analogy I often make is with white men wearing “blackface which is now rightly viewed as racists.
None of this means I want to see trans identifying people discriminated against in any way. I absolutely don’t. I’m a firm believer in live and let live. Adults should be free to live however they choose but that cannot mean trampling on the rights of women and children.
But why don’t you read the Cass report for yourself - it’s readily available online. While you’re at it, why not read the WPATH files too? That will show you that healthcare providers are well aware that children are not equipped to give informed consent to “gender affirming healthcare.” And yet they keep providing this barbarous “treatment” to kids in every county that still allows it.
One more thing: I don’t accept that it is possible for anyone to be born in the “wrong” body and I dispute that this is just my “opinion.” What are the facts supporting your view that this is possible? Feelings? Is that evidence of anything?
The Cass report was a politically tarnished exercise with a predetermined outcome overseen by a strongly anti-trans minister Kemi Badedoch. The studies about more suicides after transitioning are also suss in my view: this one for example (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10027312/) looked at 23 studies and found the majority indicated a reduction in suicidality following gender-affirming treatment. I believe in general there has been a moral panic created and sustained by people who have no genuine involvement in this issue at all, nor genuine concern for women (ie Rhys Williams etc). I can see no good reason why supporting trans rights takes anything away from women.
Facts, Dita, facts.
You are baselessly maligning
Hilary Cass and the only people who have discredited her work are trans activists.
Cass is a well-respected paediatrician and was president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. Her review of “gender-affirming healthcare” took four years. Badenoch did not commission her work, the NHS did. Cass reviewed all the available evidence for and against “gender-affirming healthcare” and found no good evidence justifying the drugging and medicalising otherwise healthy children exists.
The current Labour government of Britain has upheld her work and banned the use of puberty blockers
Incidentally, the journalist who wrote that story Ilinked to, Hannah Barnes, is an excellent journalist and well worth following.
Is the British Medical Association a bunch of 'trans activists'? Just wondering, as their members voted in favour of a motion to ‘publicly critique the Cass Review’, after doctors and academics in several countries, including the UK, voiced concern about weaknesses in the methodologies used.
Apparently the great unwashed don’t align with your condescending views, wow inconvenient.
De Fresne is old school and his views matter, more so that he is not working as a mainstream‘ journalist’. Tim Hunter is arrogant and condescending, smearing and sneering at your enemies doesn’t win any arguments except pander to people like yourself and other fellow travellers. You’ve lost the battles and now you’ve lost the war.
I’ve had a look at Tim Hunter’s piece. Arrogant and condescending.