Voice Of the Conservative Mouthpiece
By the end of October, The Ministry of Truth will have aired 191 hours of open-line programming for the month.
Excluding commercial and news breaks, that works out to about 140 hours of caller time.
Over the course of at least eight calls, fully 107 minutes — a little over one and three-quarters hours — were taken up by Glorious Leader.
Twenty-two minutes, early in the month, were occupied singing the Sovietesque praises of the new official provincial deely-boppers.
Three minutes on October 5th were dedicated to a grovelling apology to Judy Foote.
The remaining time, over 80 minutes, including over half an hour of Danny's "spontaneous" appearance with the fawning Ambassador Comrade-Citizen Bill Rowe, was used up on or since October 17th.
Not at all coincidentally, the Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi by-election was called on October 10th.
Perhaps then Danny wasn't joking about abolishing the House of Assembly.
Why bother real with real accountability to the elected legislature, when you can have fake accountability, for a fraction of the price, by Government Through Open Line?
posted by WJM @ 1:37 AM
8 Comments:
Ahhh, the open line talk forum. Non democratic to the core and borrrrrrrrrrring. This is why it works. after folks on the other side of the airwaves listen to Bill Rowe and his cronies ( pick a name out of the political hat ) drone on and on reiterating the same brain washing point over and over again, most of us would agree with anything just to get them to shut the hell up and move on. The house of assembly is a joke. A stupid sad pathetic joke on everyone in this province. Apathy Newfoundland be thy name.
VOCM is notoriously LIBERAL. To the point that the evening talkshow host is nicknamed "Liberal Swain". Open-line host Bill Rowe, was himself the former leader of the Liberal Party of Labrador.
As for the idea of abolishing the HOA, POPPYCOCK! But we should go with a great idea you and I concocted: Bi-cameral for NL!
24 MHAs and 24 NL Senators.
That idea had merit.
1) I think my number was 10 "Senators", and I don't know that that's what I called them off hand. (Legislative Council?)
2) Bill Rowe, like yourself, is a convert. ;)
3) Liberal Swain? If you Tories think she's Liberal, then triangulating from where I find she comes down, she must be non-partisan!
4) If VOCM is that Liberal, why do they seem to let so many callers spontaneously call in to spontaneously read off spontaneously created scripts singing the praises of Glorious Leader? (Hi, "Liz".)
I don't know if VOCM is so much pro-Tory - it seems to have adopted a policy some time ago of simply repeating whatever press release is issued by the government. But I don't think that policy was adopted starting in '03. And "planned participation" in and monitoring of the open line shows has been going on for God knows how long.
VOCM seemed to have that kind of relationship with the previous govt - I seem to recall the NL PC's getting upset because Tobin was given an uninterrupted bloc of time once a week, and the oppo parties weren't.
(Given my present location, I can't often listen to the open-line hosts, so I won't comment on whether they, as individuals, are Liberal, PC or whatever.)
Don't get me wrong, I do agree that VOCM has adopted the "Ministry of Truth" role in many respects - I just think that it did so before the current govt was elected, that's all.
Ward:
Perhaps you need to seek therapy.
Seriously.
Wally and everyone else:
On the overall point, VOCM's approach applies equally to whatever government is in power irrespective of colour.
This particular administration has raised the Open Line massage to an artform, however, and that's what makes the difference.
There's a lot of energy, time, people pushed into the Open Line thing but it doesn't seem to translate into votes. Yes it pushes popularlity up, but that isn't directly connected to votes.
There's a lot of energy, time, people
money?
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Media tend to apply their lips to the bottoms with the most power and money. The word 'sycophant' comes to mind. I wonder if it's possible that some of the advertisers used on VOCM are somehow connected in some way to some individuals in government. Nahhh, that's just far too cynical. Everyone in government is above board, honest and noble. ;)
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