As we say goodbye to 2022 and welcome in 2023, it’s a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our
Damien Venuto: The sad spiral of Liz Gunn down the Covid conspiracy rabbit hole
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Former TV newsreader Liz Gunn used her social media channels to spread her views. Photo / Supplied
Opinion by Damien VenutoLearn more
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The young reporter does her best not to engage, but Gunn is so persistent that a person understood to be a member of TVNZ’s security team has to step between the pair and encourage maintaining a 1-metre separation.
What makes this video so uncomfortable is the glimpse it offers at how conspiracy theories can leap out of Facebook pages and into the real world – you don’t even need the metaverse to make this happen.
Perhaps the most alarming section of the video comes right at the end, when an off-screen supporter of Gunn tells the member of the TVNZ team to “come out West and we’ll have a chat, buddy”.
It’s easy to brush this off as just an example of anti-vax male bravado, but we now have enough international examples to show thinly veiled threats of violence shouldn’t be disregarded too quickly.
From the Capitol Hill storming to the Pizzagate attack, the powerful emotive force of online conspiracy theories have been shown time and again to motivate behaviour that’s difficult to fathom.
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NZ about to find out the real value of ‘low-skilled’ workers - February 16
Those who look after our elderly, serve us in restaurants, check out groceries, move our goods, pick our fruit and clean our messes will bear the brunt of the Omicron outbreak.
As the highly transmissible variant rips through New Zealand, these workers, deprived of the privilege of working from home, will start to get sick.
As a country, we will quickly come to see the true economic value of workers politicians love to disparage as ‘low skill’.
Read Damien Venuto’s full column here
Why TVNZ needs to front up on the Kamahl Santamaria crisis - May 30
The fallout from TVNZ revelations on the departure of Kamahl Santamaria is almost annoyingly familiar in the media entertainment industry.
We once again have allegations of an older male in a position of power engaged in inappropriate behaviour with a younger member of staff.
TVNZ has absolutely bungled its response to this PR crisis.
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The phrasing “family emergency” in crisis communication is usually good cover in PR because it offers a hint that something serious might be wrong with a member of the family. Deployed effectively, it can dissuade journalists from digging into the life of someone going through tough circumstances.
What this initial statement didn’t say was that this “family emergency” was because of something Santamaria allegedly did.
The fact that the line has now been updated to the equally inexact statement saying that Santamaria is currently dealing with a “personal matter” shows that TVNZ knew that the original phrasing was off.
The catchphrases have gone stale - January 20
A social media alert yesterday served to remind the roughly 1 million New Zealand citizens and residents abroad that there wasn’t yet room for them in the team of 5 million.
The reasons for the cancellation of the latest MIQ room release are justified given the growing presence of the Omicron bogeyman in New Zealand, but the delivery of the message left a sour taste in the mouths of Kiwis who miss their mums, brothers, sisters, grandparents and friends.
This social media faux pas offered a hint that a Government once praised for the clarity of its communication was perhaps not quite as resonant with Kiwis as it once was.
Read why the one-liners like ‘be kind’ quickly went stale
The dangerous sentence in the TVNZ-RNZ merger legislation - July 4
When the draft legislation revealed the legal name for the new public media entity, it felt like an attempt to keep everyone happy. There was a bit of Aotearoa, a bit of New Zealand and an initialism that went on for days.
By the time it landed, no one was particularly enamoured with what they saw.
The concern now is that this is a prescient glimpse at an organisation that ends up leaving no one satisfied with the end product.
There are certainly signs things could become messy.
