Sometimes you wonder if the big players on Silicon Valley exist in a parallel universe.
Google, of course, is a firm that makes little sense to me: one that usually says one thing and does another, in almost every encounter I have had with it. And you know they canât be that smart if, for many, many versions of Google Earth, they had no idea what was at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC.
Facebook, naturally, observes these same traditions. Last year, I lost access to the website for 69 hours, when it decided posting, liking and commenting were no longer necessary features, and withdrew them. No one really seemed to mind when they couldnât write on my wall: other than a few exceptions, folks just shrugged it off. We are, it seems, extremely accepting of having a buggy website where nothing works.
Fast forward one year, and posting, liking and commenting are things that occasionally work on Facebook when it feels like it; most of today, they didnât. But thatâs nothing compared to a friend who has had her entire profile deleted.
The story shows once again what geniuses must work at these firms.
First, she found some photos of hers on another profile, so she complained through the usual channels. Instead of deleting the piratesâ photos, Facebook deleted her account instead.
When she appealed, Facebook asked for proof of identity. She provided her New Zealand passport.
But, according to Facebook, New Zealand passports are not a valid form of government-issued ID. Her other forms of identity were invalid, too.
Iâm interested to know how the brainsâ trust of Facebook works. If a passport is not a valid government-issued form of identity, then what is? Is there something Facebook knows about that far exceeds the power of a passport? Am I to believe my American friends have held out on me all these years about this mystery form of super-identity?
Or, of course, Facebook believes, and we have had proof of this, that no one lives outside the Pacific coast of the United States. This explains its ongoing bugs at the 1st of each month where the siteâs functionality is severely reduced because it isnât the 1st of the month in California. So if your passport doesnât âlook Americanâ, it canât possibly be valid.
Here is a woman with over 50,000 fans in her business and who has been planning her wedding via the site, who has now been shut out.
It does seem that Facebook is doing this willy-nilly. We also know its apology for shutting drag queensâ accounts last year to be insincere, when LaQuisha Redfern found herself locked out with no means of appeal.
And yet, proven spammers (people who have spammed, and their spams reported to Facebook) are allowed to maintain their accounts. Spambotsâand I found a bot net of over 90 recently (down from 277 a day, so Facebook is getting better)âare OK, too, because Facebook staff cannot tell the difference between a legitimate human being and a bot. While it deleted most of the 90 I identified, it strangely left a handful up, even though a pattern had been established. A few were old accounts that were hacked with their identities changed, but apparently thatâs enough to fool Facebook into thinking they are legitimate human beings. A bot net I uncovered last year took multiple, repeated complaints before Facebook realized that they were actually bots that wrote random things on each otherâs walls; never mind that what was written was incomprehensible. Literacy, it seems, is not a requirement at Facebook.
If Facebook is deleting real humans, or, in my case, limiting its functionalities to us (although I would have thought posting, liking and commenting were pretty fundamental to the site), and maintaining bots (because, as we know, Facebook uses bots to make money), then itâs only a matter of time when itâs just a massive bot net communicating with each other, there to con companies into paying for more bots to follow them.
Facebook it has done a lot of things right when it came to IP protection and enforcement when I have approached them. Generally, I don’t find them as offensive as Google. But just how it could have got this case so wrong is beyond me.
Posts tagged ‘corporate culture’
Five or ten years, your Kiwi passport is not a valid government-issued ID, says Facebook
26.05.2015Tags: corporate culture, Facebook, New Zealand, Silicon Valley, spam, USA
Posted in business, internet, New Zealand, USA | 1 Comment »
The Rongotai years
05.02.2014This came up today at Victoria University where an old client of ours asked about my 2013 campaign. I remembered there was something about education that I wanted to address at the time.
One of the stranger emails during 2013 came from a former classmate of mine at Rongotai College. A brilliant guy at his sporting code, and from memory, a fair dinkum bloke. Unfortunately, he gave a fake return address, so I was unable to get my email to him (even though I wrote one of those ‘Hey, great to hear from you after all these years’ replies). He’s not on Facebook, either.
His message went along the lines of why I never mention Rongotai College in my biographies, and criticized me of snobbery and being ashamed of the place.
Those who know me know that I have little time for snobbery.
It was odd since in my publicity during both elections, Rongotai College is mentionedâno more and no less than the two private schools I attended. You only had to go as far as the third line in the bullet points in my bio to find Rongotai there. That was the case with all my 2010 brochures and in my 2013 Vote.co.nz profile. (My 2013 fliers had less room and my schoolingâanywhereâwas omitted.) And it regularly came up in speeches, especially at my fund-raisers, which were held at Soi, co-owned by an old boy.
I admit that sometimes I say, in conversation, that I was ‘Dux at St Mark’s and Proxime Accessit at Scots,’ simply because ‘School Certificate at Rongotai’ doesn’t say a heck of a lot about me. It’s normal just to talk about where you finished each stage of your education.
For the same reason, I skip my Bachelor of Commerce degree since I did honours and then a Master of Commerce and Administration. I also skip Man Kee Kindergarten in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where I won the tidiness award at age three.
I’m sure I wouldn’t find his fifth form sporting achievements on his CV.
I assume he didn’t check the footer to this website, under ‘Connected organizations’, since he didn’t make it to the third line in my bio. There, I only mention St Mark’s and Scotsâfor the simple reason that these are schools I still work with: I serve on the alumni associations of both. My hands are full now with two upcoming centenaries, but: Rongotai College has simply never asked me.
I’m wondering whether the writer himself has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the place. Might he have reason to believe it was inferior if the other two were “ĂŠlite”?
Rongotai College did, let’s face it, have some issues in those days.
On the plus side, the sporting record is decent. The fact that opera singer Ben Makisi came out of there during that time is another proud moment.
Rongotai College showed me the importance of being my own man, and understanding peer pressure, to which it is unnecessary to succumb. I never did.
The first guys to help me out in business were my mates at Rongotai, such as Matthew Breen and Andrew Bridgeâand Andrew and I have stayed in touch.
Rongotai College also showed that for every racist dickwad there was a rugby-playing Samoan or Tongan student capable of metering out justice.
However, and I hate to say this, it also demonstrated leadership dysfunction in those days. There were serious senior management problems that filtered down to the rest of the place, which I witnessed, though some teachers thankfully remained steadfast.
During that era, Rongotai was less than nurturing despite the best efforts of some of its teachers, such as Will Meehan (who helped shape my writing style in my fifth form when I began thinking about working in media, and endured my extra practice in my exercise books) and Dave Reynolds.
So when I was offered a half-scholarship on the strength of my School Certificate marks, I took it.
However, the ĂŠlitist tag, for either St Mark’s or Scots, is inaccurate.
While I enjoyed St Mark’s and Scots more than my time at Rongotai, it’s daft to call either ĂŠlite. There were many parents, who did not come from money, who worked hard to send us there. At any of the private schools I attended, none of my contemporaries felt they were above the others. I did, interestingly, encounter this behaviour at Rongotai, where being in the A-stream went to a few lads’ heads.
My time at Scots was better for me, since there was a culture where each student should seek out his own path and excel at the things they loved the most. That’s not a function of money, it’s a function of leadership and education. There was also greater camaraderie,.
Headmaster Keith Laws may have his criticsâhe hinted as much at the leavers’ assembly to meâbut these aspects of Scots remained firm. Perhaps it was cultural, or perhaps he engendered them. Regardless, I thank him for his decisionâthe buck stopped at the head’s officeâfor granting me that scholarship.
Finally, if I was trying to bury my Rongotai connection, I certainly wouldn’t have been seeking out a lot of the lads on social networks over the years. Or attended the funeral of the father of one of the old boys in 2013.
So, for the record, no, I’m not ashamed of my past.
Tags: 1980s, 1990, Aotearoa, corporate culture, dysfunction, education, history, Jack Yan, leadership, management, mayoralty, New Zealand, politics, Rongotai, Scots College, St Markâs Church School, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
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Google tracks your searches, and uses them, even when your web history is turned off
22.01.2014My dislike of Google is no secret, and, as a precaution, I have every known Google tracking setting turned off. I even block the Doubleclick and YouTube cookies. However, I have to manage a page at Google Plusâand Google cleverly tracks you through its Plus service.
It doesn’t lie about it:
When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. This may include:
details of how you used our service, such as your search queries.
But you wonder why they bother having a web history page. My web history is turned off, but it needn’t matter: Google is still tracking me and giving me useless information.
How do I know? Its friendly Google Plus suggestion, asking me if I know a Senger Ralf:
I don’t. I run a few Facebook groups, and as most Facebook users know, the site is plagued by fake accounts. It’s not uncommon for me to need to block a dozen a day. Senger Ralf was one of the borderline cases, so after searching on DuckDuckGo, I tried Google.
It also claims that I have downloaded 39 apps. This is BS. I logged into Google Play recently and without any move on my part, 30-plus apps started coming down. Thank goodness none of them got installed, but Google now inaccurately thinks I am into a whole bunch of useless games. A blessing in disguise, then: the less accurate the data on me, the better.
The documentary, Terms and Conditions May Apply, is great to watch if you ever come across it. Google’s spying is revealed there, along with that of others. The documentary maker even reveals that Google covered up its original privacy policy on its site, deceptively passing off that its earliest dated from 2000, when there were ones before that. The 1999 policies, which are now on the site (Google has a habit of stopping dodgy behaviour when it is busted), included terms such as:
Googleâs policy on our wholly controlled and operated Internet sites is to respect and protect the privacy of our users.
and:
From time to time, there may be situations where Google asks you for personal information. When we intend to use your personal information, we tell you up front. This way you can decide whether you want to give us the information or not. In case you change your mind or some personal information changes, we will endeavor to provide a way to correct, update or remove the personal data you give us.
Upon your first visit to Google, Google sends a âcookieâ to your computer. A cookie is a file that identifies you as a unique user. It can also store personal preferences and user data. A cookie can tell us, âThis is the same individual who visited Google two days agoâ but it cannot tell us, âThis person is Joe Smithâ or even, âThis person lives in the United States.â
How times have changed. (In 1999, I was a Google fan. Understandable if that was their privacy policy.) Now it tracks you when you have turned off your web history, which gives you the false impression that Google no longer looks at your searches, and it uses your name and avatar for advertising purposes, even when you have turned off Google Plus endorsements.
It pays to be extremely wary of this firm, because it never says what it means.
Finally, if you are a Wordpress user, and you have Google concerns, then be aware that the big G is tracking you there, too. The Wordpress dashboard uses Google fonts. The way to fix this is to download a very small plug-in called Disable Google Fonts (hat tip to Fontfeed). If you like the look of the fonts, just install them on to your own hard driveâthey are open source.
Tags: corporate culture, culture, deception, Facebook, Google, law, privacy, trading, USA, Web 2¡0
Posted in business, culture, internet, technology, USA | 8 Comments »
Open the shop and strip away the jargon
05.01.2014I’ve been reading this Grauniad interview with Rory Stewart, MP, referred by Jordan McCluskey. I’m told that Stewart, and Labour’s Frank Field are the two worth listening to these days in British politics. On Stewart, someone who can speak with a Scots accent and has lived in Hong Kong must be a good bloke.
Two quotations resonated from this interview, which I posted on Tumblr this morning.
Our entire conceptual framework was mad. All these theoriesâcounterinsurgency warfare, state buildingâwere actually complete abstract madness. They were like very weird religious systems, because they always break down into three principles, 10 functions, seven this or that. So theyâre reminiscent of Buddhists who say: âThese are the four paths,â or of Christians who say: âThese are the seven deadly sins.â Theyâre sort of theologies, essentially, made by people like Buddhist monks in the eighth centuryâpeople who have a fundamental faith, which is probably, in the end, itself completely delusional.
And:
We have to create a thousand little city states, and give the power right down to all the bright, energetic people everywhere who just feel superďŹuous.
The second is familiar to anyone who follows this blog: my belief that people are connected to their cities and their communities, probably as a counterpoint to how easily we can reach all corners of the world through the internet. We want that local fix and to make a contribution. Power should be decentralizing in the early 21st centuryâwhich is why I thought it odd that the majority of my opponents in the mayoral election took the line of, ‘We should cosy up and further the cause of statism,’ even if they did not express it quite that way. In every speech. Yes, a city should work with central government, but we do different things and, being closer to the action, we can find ways of doing it more effectively and quickly. With statism being an aim, then the regular entrepreneursâor even as Stewart says, ‘bright, energetic people’âcame further down the list. For me, they were always at the top.
But the first quotation is more interesting. In my work, especially in brand consulting, I’ve harboured a dislike for the manuals that get done but are never referred to. Better that a lot of work goes into a 15 pp. report than scant work going into a 150 pp. one. The former might not look impressive but if every word in there is filled with substance, then it can help get an organization into high gear. And the shorter one is usually harder to write because more preparation goes into it.
In short: take out the wank.
Strip out the wank and you can see the truths for what they are. And if they don’t apply, then try to find ones that do.
Yet to make ourselves look smartâremember, I did law, and that area is filled with a lot of itâwe bury things in jargon so that we keep everything a closed shop. Every profession has such a tendency. However, when things are actually revealed in plain language, does it make the specialist look superfluous? On the contrary, it makes them able to connect with an audience who come to appreciate their expertise. (On a side note, in terms of car repair, this is why I go to That Car Place.)
So when we start dealing in international geopolitics, we want to keep the power among a closed shop. The words that Stewart used served to highlight the gulf of the occident in its dealings in Afghanistanâthat is the context of his remarkâand it connects with a story I remember about a certain US policy institute when I was studying law. Our lecturer said the failure of the institute in the countries it went to was its expectation that a US solution could be imposed, whereby everything would then be all right. Use enough jargon to make it all sound legitimate to the casual observer. The consequence of this (whether this was his conclusion or mine, I do not recall): blame them when it doesn’t work.
Without understanding the cultural context of why things are the way they are in a given systemâand lacking the knowledge to analyse it and quickly localizing your knowledge and gaining the contextâmake for a disadvantage. It must be said that even some within a system don’t realize the context! But you can strip away the mystery by simplifying the language, removing the jargon, and understanding things the way they are. Progress comes from understanding, not from creating mysteriesâand Stewart is wise to have come to the conclusions he has, thanks in no small part from a global, well travelled context.
Tags: Afghanistan, Aotearoa, branding, Conservative, consulting, corporate culture, culture, England, globalism, globalization, Hong Kong, Labour, language, law, London, mayoralty, media, New Zealand, newspaper, policy, politics, public policy, Rory Stewart, Scotland, statism, The Guardian, UK, USA, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara
Posted in branding, business, culture, globalization, Hong Kong, leadership, New Zealand, politics, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
Getting ready for global
27.05.2013I’ve known of this for some time through Medinge: the globalizing of The New York Times. This has meant the retirement of The International HeraldâTribune name, one which brand experts are divided on.
On the one hand, the NYT doesn’t have it wrong. There are global newspaper brands already, namely those that have taken the opportunity of the internet, viewing it was a chance to build their goodwill, rather than as a threat. The Guardian comes to mind, and even the Daily Mail has become a well known international news source. The snobs must hate it. It’s obviously worked out that The New York Times‘ brand is stronger than The International HeraldâTribuneâs, and in this globalized era, it wants to push only one.
Others, meanwhile, seem to have regressed. The Timesâs momentum has been lost, thanks to its paywall experiment, at the precise time others went on a growth spurt. The Daily Telegraph, which for the 1990s and a part of the 2000s was the source for online news, has fallen behind other dailies.
What this century has shown us is the realization of global businesses, regardless of how large or small you are. If you don’t capitalize on things at an international level, you risk becoming an also-ran. Everything you do potentially reaches the whole planet, so why not build on that as part of your strategy at the very beginning?
I may be affected by talks with my father at a young age about how foreign exchange worked, and my godfather first introduced me to the currency conversion tables in the newspaper each day when he wondered about my converting prices of cars from Motor into what they could cost in New Zealand. I must have been around seven at the time. From there, you get the inevitable idea that exports are good, just as valuable as selling to a loyal domestic market.
As of today, as the image above shows, The New York Times is advertising its global edition to New Zealanders. That’s a Kiwi-targeted ad in the pic above from one of our advertising providers on Lucire. Yes, it is selling its tablet and smartphone accessâand why not? Again, it makes perfect sense to capitalize on the available technology.
The numbers say that portable devices outnumber traditional desktop ones. My feeling that things will converge even further, and later this decade, the ĂŚsthetic will be such that you won’t be able to tell the difference between the app and a traditional print publication in terms of the look.
If older businesses hadn’t begun down this route earlier, then it will take a massive corporate cultural change to make it happen. Newer ones may well be at an advantage. The message remains clear: if you don’t treat all people, regardless of nationality, as someone connected to you, then you’re missing out.
Tags: business, corporate culture, export, foreign exchange, globalization, Jack Yan, Lucire, media, Medinge Group, publishing, The International HeraldâTribune, The New York Times
Posted in branding, business, culture, globalization, internet, marketing, media, publishing, technology, USA | No Comments »
Vodafone sends me invoices and spam (and I’m not even a customer)
29.09.2012I recently posted this apt quotation on my Tumblr:
Itâs marketing 101â[Vodafone New Zealand] seem to breach the rules quite regularly and youâd have to hope that these signiďŹcant ďŹnes are a signal to them that they canât continue to do that.
It’s from Sue Chetwin, CEO, Consumer New Zealand, on how Vodafone is cavalier about staying within the letter of the law in the Fair Trading Act.
I can believe it. Because Vodafone sent me an invoice for 22¢ on September 7:
And it is the principle: because since 2006, I have not been a Vodafone customer. And since 2009, one of my companies has not been a Vodafone customer. In fact, since March 2009, I have no ties with Vodafone whatsoever, either personally or as a director of a company that uses Vodafone.
On the same invoice is an ‘Opening balance from last statement’ for $4¡21, which they debited from my credit card on February 25, 2011. But that time, I received no invoiceâthey just went ahead and did it.
When I called Vodafone, I was told that the charges were made on a calling card that was still valid. Problem: I have never had a calling card with Vodafone.
And now, today, they revealed that they took $24 in 2010.
But as Vodafone is guilty of 21 breaches of consumer law in a July case aloneâand was found guilty of misleading customers over Vodafone Live and its $1 a day services the year beforeâyou can summarize that something is very rotten there.
I’d swore I’d never go backânek minnit, they’ve acquired TelstraClear. Oligopoly much?
At Vodafone’s request via Twitter, I have emailed them the following. It does contain the usual pleasantries at the beginning and the end, omitted here for brevity. This summarizes the entire case so far.
This is further to SS’s request on Twitter that I send you these details. I will note that two customer services’ officers on the call care centre have also been investigating.
Attached you’ll find a bill that I was sent via email on September 7. You’ll see it’s for 22¢, and that in April 2011, another $4 was debited from my credit card. A phone call to Vodafone today revealed that over $20 was taken in 2010.
The problem with all of this is that I have not been a Vodafone customer since March 2009. If you want to split hairs, I actually haven’t been one since 2006, I believe, but one of my companies was between 2006 and 2009.
Here’s what I recall.
⢠Became an Ihug customer in 1998, but left Ihug for Saturn in 2000. I kept some toll calls with Ihug but switched back to TelstraClear some time during that decade. Your records show the account was closed in 2006âalthough I was also told a contradictory statement that the account was not closed.
⢠Lucire Ltd. was a Vodafone customer on a three-year contract between March 2006 and March 2009. I am a director of that company.
Here’s what I understand from Vodafone (gleaned from conversations on September 8, 9 [I think] and 29).
⢠In 2010, Vodafone debited over $20 (I believe $24) from my credit card. In 2011, it debited $4. In 2012, I get a bill for 22¢. (Note: I’ve never received a bill from you since I left except for the 22¢ charge.)
⢠I have been told various things. On September 8â9, I was told that the 2011 and 2012 charges were due to a calling card. (Note: I have never had a Vodafone calling card.)
⢠Today I was told that the charges were due to toll calls. (Note: TelstraClear has handled all my toll calls since 2006, if not before.)
I was promised a refund of the $4 in one of the early September phone calls. My credit card statement shows no such refund. I have confirmed that the credit card details you hold are correct. Worryingly, they are also currentâwhich they cannot be if I left you in 2009 and my credit card originally expired that year.
I also began receiving spam from you this week for a cellphone number that was with you, but has not been with you since 2009.
Here’s what I don’t get if I was still a customer:
⢠I don’t hear from you guys for three years. All of a sudden I start getting spam from you;
⢠I’ve never received a single invoice from you for the money you’ve takenâat least not till September 7, 2012.
So I’m pretty sure you know that I’m not a customer of yours.
Now, I’m willing to take my share of the blame. I should be reading every line of my credit card statement. But, I’d also like you guys to refund what you’ve charged since I ceased being a customer.
There’s also the buggy Air New Zealand site where they shifted the blame to me for not clearing the cookies or understanding how the back end of their website works, but I’ll leave that for another day. What they didn’t figure was my taking screen shots of what I did.
PS. (October 15): Vodafone has just emailed me asking that my credit card details be updated. So much for ‘We have made sure your account is cancelled.’ But since they updated them unilaterally in 2009, I imagine they will just do it again. Air New Zealand, meanwhile, sorted out its bug and apologized, so there will be no post about that.âJY
P.PS. (October 15): I’ve been on the phone with Vodafone. Now I’m told that in June 2009, I was charged $116¡30; in July 2009, $43¡43; in August 2009, $63¡51. All for toll calls. All while not being a Vodafone customer. The amounts appear to have been debited from my credit card each time. No invoice was ever received this end though Vodafone claims that they sent them to me via email. This is dodgy already since I have never opted for emailed invoices, and that they had always come in the post prior. Lucire Ltd. was a Vodafone cellphone customer till, I recall, March 2009, and up till then, I had invoices mailed to me. I was an Ihug customer (allegedly till 2006) and also had invoices mailed. So why the change? I still find this very, very hard to believeâit’s as though Vodafone cheekily took money knowing that I was not a customer and is using email as an excuseâjust as it originally claimed that I had a ‘calling card’ and that that was the reason I received my 22¢ bill.âJY
P.P.PS. (October 15): TelstraClear says I have been with them for tolls since May 6, 2008, which is later than I thought, and also later than the 2006 date Vodafone gave in the last September phone call. It doesn’t change the core argument though, but it does give us a precise date on which to start any inquiry.âJY
P.P.P.PS. (October 16): Chris from Vodafone calls and can find charges almost every month from May 2009, a few in 2010, and one in 2011. He’s promised to get them refunded. It really sounds like I’ve paid for tolls twice. He’s as puzzled as I am why I have never been posted bills since that was how Vodafone always did it while I was a customer till March 2009. Apparently the 2011 refund was never done.âJY
P.P.P.P.PS. (October 27): No sign of any refunds on my credit card statement.âJY
P.P.P.P.P.PS. (October 27): AimĂŠe says she has organized a refund of NZ$433¡11, which appears to be the total debited from me without notice between May 2009 and April 2011. (More disturbing is that my previous credit card expired in November 2009, so how they managed to continue billing without my updating my details is beyond me.)âJY
P.P.P.P.P.P.PS. (November 3): Vodafone emails me a PDF credit note for $433¡11. Is it over? I hope so!âJY
Tags: antitrust, business, corporate culture, customer service, ethics, law, New Zealand, telecommunications, Vodafone
Posted in business, culture, New Zealand | 3 Comments »
The Murdoch apology does not let us off the hook
16.07.2011Above is Rupert Murdoch’s apology for the actions of the News of the World, to run in the UK in the wake of the resignations of Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton.
They’re great words, and they’re straight out of the PR 101 playbook.
Some might say they’re a trifle too late, as was Mr Murdoch’s meeting with the parents and sister of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Some might question whether this apology would even have been issued if the Murdoch Press could have kept a lid on the scandal, if the Metropolitan Police had not rediscovered its bottle, and if The Guardian had not been persistent.
More telling about this apology’s sincerity is whether real steps will be taken to change the culture within the Murdoch Press.
We still have an organization with nearly half a century’s worth of bullying tactics, skirting the boundaries of the law and allegedly breaking them, and a culture of the ends justify the means.
Shifting that culture is going to be a tough call, not while so much of the behaviour has been institutionalized.
It is going to take some effort on Rupert Murdoch’s own behalf, because, like all organizations where the boss’s personality is so strong, it’s going to rest on him to lead a cultural change. Allowing an insider who has always tolerated such behaviour to take the helm is not going to do an awful lot: you don’t get change by reinventing the past.
I remain sceptical when I think back to all the scandals that the Murdoch Press not only uncovered, but had a hand in generating.
I remain sceptical when I think back to the victories Murdoch has had over earlier controversies, and whether he believes he can weather this one simply with the passage of time.
The world is a different place, and he may just be compelled to see this out.
He may be 80, but he still has young kids by his third wife. Let’s hope he understands that he needs to do right by the 21st century, when people in the occident are more alert to corporate moves and their unsavoury hand in our daily lives. Given that his youngest children won’t have him around for as long as his oldest ones, what he has is his legacyâand unlike Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, Grace and Chloe will spend more of their lives hearing about their Dad second-hand than first-hand.
I think back to when we wrote Beyond Branding, and how we forecast that consumers would drive integrity and transparency through their demand. It looks like this is being played out now.
The question I have is this: is this merely the first salvo in everyday people taking back their power, and will we sink back into disinterest in a month or two?
Rupert Murdoch would not be in this position if we didn’t have a love of the gossip in The Sun and News of the World. We, the people, made this man rich.
If the Murdoch that critics write about is the real man, he’s betting the farm on disinterest being the order of the day come the autumn.
In my own world, I recall that last September, when the Fairfax Press reported on the possibility of the resurrection of the Wellywood sign, the silence on even the anti-sign Facebook group was deafening. One person even said he would vote for my rival and eventual winner, Celia Wade-Brown, because I did not do enough to fight the sign.
All it took was five months for one man to forget that I was the only mayoral candidate who actively fought it. I am not picking on him alone, because I don’t believe he was the only one to suffer from a short memory. We all do it.
Instead, this one issue alone, trivial by the standards of the Murdoch story, took 14 months before anger subsided enough for it to resurface in force with a new news report.
This is the defence of the bully boss and the pompous politician: the hope people forget, thanks to our lives being harder during a recession. The tougher the economy gets, the more they think they can get away with, since they hope our attention will be swayed. Without a comfortable life, will we have the luxury of monitoring those in power?
It’s up to us to get wiser and realize there’s more important news than what the tabloid press tells us is interesting.
It’s up to us to realize that celebrity news really does not affect us, unless it’s truly inspirational. And 99 per cent of it isn’t.
It’s up to us to understand that ‘sources close to’ do not constitute the truth, nor are those sources capable of the mind-reading of their subjects.
And it’s up to us to remember the past, rather than look fondly on it with rose-coloured glasses.
Corporate misbehaviour alone can fill a newspaper, as can the incompetence of our leaders. Yet we see little of either since advertising is affected by blowing the lid on the first, and a power base is affected by blowing the lid on the second.
The first is what killed the News of the World, not a sudden crisis of confidence by James Murdoch, who put his name to the announcement of its closure.
The second contributed to the delay in a Murdoch apology, in the hope that the Murdoch Press’s close ties to the Conservative government would be sufficient to weather it through the scandal.
Look around, especially in this election year in New Zealand, and you see very similar forces at work.
Regardless of what Murdoch does, real change starts with us.
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