Why Is Mike Hosking So Hard to Watch?
I feel sorry for Mike Hosking. Fronting a show on television may seem like a doddle but it’s not as easy as it seems.
My fellow-feeling for the beleaguered presenter of Seven Sharp does not arise because I have overlooked or have become inured to his obvious political bias. It is still there and cannot be entirely suppressed, though I suspect he has made real efforts to conceal, or at least reduce it.
These days, he reserves his overt biases for release in his other media outlets, and it is his good, or rather bad luck, that his true views are as a result well-known to most of his viewers who are accordingly alert to detect the occasions when they make their expected appearance in Seven Sharp. It is, still the case, though, that it is the sense that he cannot help but slant the day’s news to suit his social and political prejudices that no doubt explains the large numbers who have signed petitions to have him removed.
No, the problem he really faces is not an obvious political bias. I know from my own experience as a presenter of a weekly, nationally networked current affairs show on UK television, that television is a curious medium. It rewards a hard to define and unusual ability and one that has no other obvious use – the ability to appear natural and relaxed while actually performing a highly unnatural function. The skilled television presenter has to appear as though he is the man next door, or your drinking partner at the local pub, while at the same time making intelligible and conveying in simple terms items of news and current affairs that are far from easily understood.
A skilled television presenter will of course always be aware that the cameras are rolling and that every expression and grimace will be revealed to the viewer. There is no hiding place. So an experienced presenter will be aware that he – or she – cannot get away with picking his nose or looking sceptical at something said by a guest or fellow presenter.
But knowing that the cameras pick up everything only exacerbates the problem. It can so easily translate into an impossibility to escape awareness that everything – good or bad – is being transmitted to the viewer, and it is that constant awareness – or perhaps self-awareness – that, of course, is absolute death to any sense that the presenter is acting naturally.
Mike Hosking, sadly for him, is a sufferer from a disease from which it is impossible to escape. Try as he might, he cannot give the impression that he is unaware that the cameras are on him. The more he tries to appear natural, the more evident it is that he is painfully trying to appear so – and that of course destroys any pretence that he is merely a value-free reporter and transmitter of the stories of the day.
The more he tries to behave as though he is just an ordinary bloke, sharing with us the normal reactions to the items he is reporting, the more he has to act the part – hence the constant changes of facial expression, the shrugs and grimaces, the engagement with the viewer constantly maintained by always looking into – and looking for – the camera lens.
And the problem is that, once a presenter is afflicted with the disease, there is no cure. Acting being relaxed and naturally rapidly develops into over-acting, so that the viewer is increasingly delivered the message that it is not the message that matters but rather the reactions, expressions and subliminally expressed views of the presenter that are the real point of the exercise. And obvious over-acting is easily equated with pretending, so that the viewer feels he cannot believe the message that is being delivered to him and his trust is therefore forfeited.
Once the viewer twigs that it is the performer, and not the substance of the story, that is the message, the performance becomes increasingly hard to watch. In Mike Hosking’s case, it is not so much that his audience finds it difficult to accept the views he tries to promulgate, as that they want to see the story told professionally and accurately, rather than having to watch a performance by Mike Hosking whose primary purpose is to tell us what he thinks about the issue.
What can he do to remedy the situation? Sadly for him, not a lot. Once a presenter is constantly thinking only of how he appears to his audience, the damage is done and cannot be repaired. He, or his employers, could take a break and see if that could help him. In the meantime, the rest of us will find it increasingly difficult to watch Seven Sharp.
Learning About Work
The advent of November tells us that the year is nearing its end – and that means in turn that summer is about to arrive (if we are lucky) and that Christmas is just around the corner. But it also brings another annual ritual – the end of the university year and the return of thousands of young people to Mum’s cooking and the other comforts of home.
This annual migration often means the disruption of domestic calm, as large and noisy young men and women re-establish themselves temporarily in the bosom of a family that had adjusted to a quieter life without them. And the end of academic pursuits for the year does not – nor should it – mean for those returning students the end of the learning process.
For many homecoming students, the end of studies provides an opportunity, and means an obligation, to go out and get a (usually seasonal) job in their home town, in the hope of earning enough to cover their costs in the coming year – and that can offer a different kind of learning and instruction.
In my own case, and even at a time when fees were not charged for a university education, it was necessary to cover the cost of board and lodging. For me, the long summer holiday at home meant getting a job in the local dairy factory. Those months doing hard physical work taught me lessons that remain with me today. I learnt about working with mates in a team, how important it was to earn respect by pulling your weight and how tough physical work can be. And I learnt about the wider world and how milk powder, casein and butter were made, and gained an insight into what lay behind one of our most important export industries.
I learnt, too, about the dangers of working with powerful machinery. While I was working at the dairy factory, one workmate was killed and another was seriously injured. The fatal accident occurred when a workmate was steam-hosing the interior of a large steel vat which had originally been bought to make casein and was equipped with a large beater; it was however being used for the time being to store milk, and therefore had to be cleaned each day. One day, someone carelessly pushed a starter button on the wall with the result that the beater started whirring while my mate was inside.
These lessons were a valuable adjunct to what I was studying at university and could not have been available to me if I had not had to work my way through university. Perhaps the most important aspect of my education in this respect was what it taught me about my fellow-citizens. I learnt about how those of my contemporaries who were not at university but were earning a living looked at life and how they went about dealing with the obstacles in their path. This was knowledge I could never have acquired, from within “the groves of Academe”. It was knowledge that has greatly affected the way I look – even today – at contemporary New Zealand.
In a country that is, it seems, increasingly polarised between those fortunate enough to gain qualifications that open the door to a comfortable life, and those on the other hand who survive by “the sweat of their brow”, it is salutary for the former to understand the problems that face the latter.
I have sometimes heard the scornful comments of motorists as they drive past a gang of workers doing road repairs and notice someone “leaning on a shovel”. I wonder how many of those making such comments have actually spent a day on physical labour?
It is an important factor in building an integrated society that we should each have some insight into what life is actually like for our fellow-citizens and that we should each give proper value to the efforts made by others. The annual rite of the “summer job” is not only essential in financial terms for the students involved, but helps us all to share life’s experiences. Long may it continue.
Bryan Gould
19 November 2017
Is the TPPA Now Fit for Purpose?
The reaction in some quarters to the outcome of the TPPA negotiations reflects a failure to understand the import of the objections made to what was initially proposed.
There will be few who will not welcome easier access to the Japanese market for New Zealand beef, even if the big prize that was dangled before us – free access to the US market for our dairy products – was taken off the agenda when Donald Trump withdrew from the talks.
The benefits of free trade for our exporters were never contested by those who were concerned at signing up for the TPPA as it was originally drafted. If the reports coming out of the negotiations are correct (and we look forward to that being established when our new government keeps its promise to release the amended text before we sign up to it), the problems many had with the TPPA will have been substantially resolved.
Those problems revolved around the attempt to use the TPPA for purposes well beyond the normal concept of free trade. The original draft attempted to provide a guarantee to multinational corporations that their freedom of action and their quest for profits in the countries covered by the TPPA would not be restricted by laws passed by the parliaments of the countries concerned. Foreign corporations particularly had in their sights local laws designed to protect the environment, workers’ rights, and the health and safety of workers and citizens more generally – all of which they fear could inhibit their drive for higher profits.
As a consequence, the original draft threatened to allow challenges to anything that might interfere with the “free market” – encouraging, in other words, a free-for-all for big companies to do what they liked without any need to take account of other interests. Anything that departed from the normal pattern, such as marketing products through co-operatives like Fonterra and Zespri, or regulating the sale of certain products such as cigarettes, or buying pharmaceuticals through an agency such as Pharmac on behalf of the whole community, could have been challenged, in a way not available to our own businesses, as contrary to the operation of the “free market”.
Any such challenge would have meant our government being taken to special international tribunals. If those tribunals were to find in favour of the foreign corporations, they could order the government to change the law and the way we do things – even if that meant defying the will of our elected parliament and the government being forced to go back on promises made to the voters.
Little wonder that Jacinda Ardern set herself the difficult task of removing, or at least reducing the impact of, these clauses. We will be able to judge how successful she has been when we see the full amended text.
But the early reports are that substantial progress was made on these points of difficulty, and if that is so, it is entirely because she dug in her heels. If she was indeed able to get agreement to the necessary changes, she will have acquitted herself – at her first major international gathering – very well indeed.
She will have been helped not only by the presence of an experienced international negotiator, in Winston Peters, but also by the fact that her Trade Minister, David Parker, is one of the ablest members of her Cabinet.
But there can be little doubt that she herself made a favourable impression with her international colleagues. Her straight talking and the energy she brings to everything she does will have helped to show that she is not just about stamping her foot, but that she is well able to build a consensus and to persuade others of her point of view.
Her opponents at home may try to downplay what she has achieved, but if we now have a “free trade” arrangement that is fit for purpose and does what it says on the packet, we can all celebrate – and that includes especially our exporters who have a trade deal they would not have had if it had not been shorn of the obvious obstacles to acceptance. In the future, we might even be able to get, off the back of an amended TPPA, an international agreement that details the responsibilities of, and not just the concessions claimed by, those who seek to come into our country to do business.
Bryan Gould
13 November 2017
The TPPA – Not Just A Free Trade Deal
As our new Prime Minister heads for her first APEC meeting, the talk is all about the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (the TPPA) and whether or not it can be revived, even without the participation of the United States.
Our new government seems to hope so, even though there seems little chance that Donald Trump will relent on his decision to have nothing to do with it, meaning that the main benefit we were promised – free access to the US market for our dairy products – is therefore off the agenda.
Let us be clear about one thing. Those who have hitherto opposed the TPPA have nothing against free trade as such. While the benefits of free trade are often overstated, and many economies (including, for example, post-war Japan) have seen advantage in protecting, at least for a time, their developing industries against foreign competition, it cannot be disputed that free trade is in principle to be supported.
New Zealand has at times been unduly naïve in opening up our markets to foreign competition, with the result that we have little left to offer or negotiate with when a TPPA comes along – but, as the world’s most efficient producers of dairy produce, we have much to gain if we can obtain free access to the world’s biggest markets.
The trouble with the TPPA, though, is that it is not just a free-trade arrangement. As Jacinda Ardern and her ministers have recognised, it is the extra baggage it carries that is the problem.
The deal offered by the TPPA involves much more than removing tariffs and other barriers to trade. It also requires the parties to provide within their domestic economies an unimpeded level playing-field for international corporations.
This may sound innocent enough, but what it really means is that any interference with the “free market” by national governments is outlawed. The result is that the TPPA is in reality a charter for multinationals, giving them carte blanche to do what they like and able to object to any measure that limits their operations or places them at a disadvantage.
Our economy, it is clear, exhibits a number of common practices that could fall foul of these provisions. Our use of cooperatives to market some products – dairy products or kiwifruit – could come under attack, as would our use of an agency like Pharmac to negotiate, on behalf of the whole community, prices of pharmaceuticals. Regulating the sale of certain products, such as cigarettes, would be similarly vulnerable.
The TPPA goes further. Multinationals who believe that they have been disadvantaged by government action can take our government to special tribunals – and if they can show that their profits will suffer, they can force the government to change New Zealand law to suit them, even if that means that the government must go back on promises made to voters. So much for democracy, self-government and sovereignty.
This is the notorious Investor-State Dispute Settlement procedure (ISDS) that Jacinda Ardern has signalled she will try to change before she will agree to sign up to a TPPA – but she will not find it easy to secure the change and will come under great pressure to sign up even without it.
There is of course no objection to seeking agreement on the rights and duties of foreign companies that wish to trade in our country – but that should not mean a one-way advantage for those corporations at our expense. Rather than giving rights to foreign companies far in excess of those enjoyed by our own companies, such a treaty should focus on the obligation of foreign companies to comply with our laws, and to observe the rules laid down by our own sovereign government.
If the TPPA drafters insist on the ISDS provisions, it is vital that our Prime Minister takes a stand, and refuses to sign. In doing so, she could strike a vital blow, not just for New Zealand, but for everyone. Others might then have the courage to follow suit, and that could mean the end of so-called trade deals, now and in the future, that violate the principles of democratic government by allowing multinational corporations to decide what is and is not the law of the land.
Bryan Gould
4 November 2017
Trump Versus the Establishment? Not Quite
I am always surprised that, whenever I write a piece that is critical of Donald Trump, a number of people post comments that defend him, usually along the lines of what is now described, I understand, as “whataboutism”.
Such responses make no attempt to dispute the charge sheet against Trump. The defence they try to mount is to argue that any criticism of Trump has to be offset by the comparable crimes and offences of others – usually Hillary Clinton, or Trump’s predecessors in the Oval Office.
How, they imply, can it be fair to criticise Trump when others who can be similarly criticised go unchallenged? I’m afraid that I have difficulty in understanding the logic of this position.
Even if it were the case that Trump’s manifest failings could be equated with those of others, why should that invalidate in any way the criticisms that can legitimately made about Trump? He is, after all, currently in a position (whereas others are not) where his shortcomings can matter very greatly, to both Americans and to the rest of the world.
I suspect that the “whataboutists” share a particular personality trait – that they imagine themselves to be the intellectual superiors of the general run of people, and that they are therefore able, as others are not, to swim against the tide that carries others along, and enjoy being able to demonstrate that they can do so. They alone, it seems, are able to see through the generally accepted attitudes and to make their own dispassionate assessment of the true position.
They are joined, no doubt, by those who see Trump’s defiance of the usual norms of responsible and civilised behaviour as welcome evidence that he is prepared to “take on” the establishment and to “drain the swamp”. The more extreme and outrageous his words and actions, it seems, the better the job he is doing in standing up for the ordinary American – and the criticism he attracts is merely further confirmation of this analysis.
So, let us test this out. Let us cast to one side his boorishness, his evident racism, his brutish treatment of and attitudes towards women, his willingness to bend the truth, his ignorance of the rules of the US constitution, his self-obsession, his inability to build loyalty from his own staff and colleagues, his furious intolerance of criticism – the list is a long one and could be much longer.
Let us say that each of these failings is merely evidence of his willingness to break the rules, and to defy worthless conventions designed to rein him in, all in the interests of keeping faith with his “base”, who voted him into office.
We are invited, it seems, to disregard the charges usually brought against him, and allow him to get on with what is really important. So, after we have dismissed from our minds the evidence of our own eyes and ears as to the kind of person he is, what is it that wants to “get on with” that is so important?
The evidence here is incontrovertible. His central mission is beyond doubt to bring about huge tax cuts for the very richest Americans – principally the top 1%. Such tax cuts, worth billions and billions of dollars, are to be funded by denying to millions of families access to affordable health care that would allow them to escape from the destructive vicious circle of poverty and ill-health, and ill-health and poverty.
Don’t take my word for it that this is the focal point of the Trump presidency. He repeatedly declares that those who stand in his way are frustrating his determination to cut taxes in this way – and the prospect of such cuts is the only reason his Republican colleagues in Congress maintain, in an unholy alliance, their wavering support for him.
Here, then, is not the great champion of the rights of ordinary people or the courageous opponent of the establishment and the privileged. His supporters may be prepared to forgive – even celebrate – his personal ability to pollute all he touches. But are they prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with him as he fractures – along religious, racial, and above all economic lines – the society he was elected to serve?
Bryan Gould
2 November 2017