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TVNZ Enslaves Men (five times updated and slightly edited)

Peter Zohrab 2019-2020

• Is The Only Good Journalist a Dead Journalist? No!!

• Letter to TVNZ

• Reply from TVNZ

• Email to Ombudsman

• Reply from Ombudsman

• Letter to Ombudsman

• Second Letter from Ombudsman

• Second Letter from TVNZ

• Third Letter from Ombudsman

• Fourth Letter from Ombudsman

1. What factors led to your decision to run that story?

2. What factors led to your decision to use a headline which emphasized that the Law Society was being attacked, rather than headlining the nature of its dress-code? For example, your headline could have been: “NZ Law Society’s dress code, in comparison with barristers’ dress code and TVNZ’s dress code.”

3. The reason that you ran the story was apparently that one individual, Mark Ford, put it on social media. How many other individual people had you seen on social media complaining about separate issues on that day, without you bothering to run stories about them?

4. How many times have you reported the views of Men’s Rights Activists on Feminist issues as a headline? (The above is obviously a Feminist issue, which therefore is also a Men’s Rights issue).

5. How many times have you asked me to comment on a Feminist issue? (I note that you are very well aware of my existence, since you have interviewed me – but never as a commentator on Feminist issues which you reported the views of Feminists about).

6. How many times have you asked other Men’s Rights Activists to comment on a Feminist issue? (Never, as far as I am aware).

7. Does your treatment of this issue indicate that you agree with the criticism of the Law Society’s dress code?

8. As a Government-owned organization, is it a proper function of TVNZ to censor views that it disagrees with and to proactively push certain socio-political agendas?

9. Is the newsworthiness issue involved in this story the fact that female lawyers would be wearing party dresses, or that men might have some part in deciding what they would be wearing?

10. In the view of your staff who created the news item, has the issue been resolved by your story’s final sentence, which was,

    “As for the Law Society's anniversary dinner, attendees are now being told to wear whatever they like”?

11. In other words, is it alright if women wear sexy clothing – as long as they decide individually to do so? Your news item did not discuss that issue.

12. Your news story features a photograph of your reporter talking to a woman (presumably from TVNZ’s own costume department) who is holding what presumably is a cocktail dress and the two women are looking archly and knowingly at each other. Can you please confirm that what is special about cocktail dresses, in your view, is that they expose a lot of skin – specifically cleavage?

13. Can you confirm that you think that men generally like looking at women’s skin – especially cleavage?

14. Can you confirm that you think that it was wrong of the Law Society to ask women to wear cocktail dresses, because that would attract men and give them pleasure?

15. Judging by your article’s final sentence, TVNZ thinks that it is alright for women to choose to wear clothing that attracts men and give them pleasure – but not for men to play any part in the decision whether they wear that clothing. Is that true?

16. Are men’s “everyday business suits” less sexy than more formal attire, such as dinner-jackets? If so, why?

17. Why does TVNZ think that it is alright for women to expose more skin (especially in the chest area) than men do when working as newsreaders, or in other office or work or formal situations?

18. Do female TVNZ presenters who show their cleavage, or even more of their breasts, get some exhibitionist pleasure out of doing this?

19. Why is it that female presenters on the 6:00 PM News are generally well covered-up, but female presenters on Breakfast often show their cleavages, or even more of their breasts. Part of the reason may be that the main weekday female presenter has an unattractive chest, which is seldom exposed. For example, I have noticed exhibitionist behaviour on the part of Melissa Stokes, when she appears on Breakfast, whereas she is usually very conservative in her dress and behaviour when presenting the 6:00 PM News at weekends. For example, on Breakfast, I once saw her bounce hard onto her chair, when sitting, down, which made her breasts bounce visibly.

20. The TVNZ attitude to cocktail dresses makes it clear that the purpose of cocktail dresses is to attract men, who are then forced (in most cases) to make the first move. I myself experienced this traumatically as a young adolescent, when I was rejected by a girl purely for failing to make a move when she clearly (in retrospect) expected me to make a move. And now the #MeToo movement is treated by TVNZ as Gospel. TVNZ has never allowed any Men’s Rights Activist to comment on the #MeToo movement on-screen. The #MeToo movement treats any overt move by a man as a potential sexual assault – even though the woman might have provoked that move by her dress or behavior.

21. Is TVNZ deliberately pursuing a policy of enslaving men?

In due course, I received the following reply:

On 27th November 2019, I wrote to the Ombudsman as follows:

Dear sir/Madam,

Could you please investigate and review TVNZ's refusal (in the forwarded email below) to answer any of my Official Information Act questions?

Thank you in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Zohrab

In due course, I received the following reply from the Ombudsman:

I replied as follows:

23 February 2020

Michael Cleary
Senior Investigator
Ombudsman’s Office
michael.cleary@ombudsman.parliament.nz

Dear Mr. Cleary,

In your letter dated 21 February 2020 you state:

Before an Ombudsman would consider a complaint of this nature, the complainant would need to set out why they consider this information is held by the agency.

Television New Zealand is not a Government department, which (certainly in my experience) is the usual target of an Official Information request. Since it is a media organization, the kind of information which it holds is different from that which is typically held by a Government department. Television New Zealand decided to produce that item and its reasons for doing so constitute Official Information.

I now set out why I consider that the relevant information is held by Television New Zealand – question-by-question, from Question 3 onwards.

3. It is obvious that Television New Zealand holds information about (at least approximately) how many other individual people its staff had seen on social media complaining about separate issues on that day, without bothering to run stories about them – unless it had discarded that information. Its computer system is presumably monitored by IT staff for such web browsing issues as legal and illegal pornography being downloaded and so on.

4. Obviously, Television New Zealand must have an archive which is indexed and which therefore contains information such as how many times it has reported the views of Men’s Rights Activists on Feminist issues as a headline.

5. On my Question 5, you comment as follows:

You appear to have responded to your own request, and it is not clear why you are disputing TVNZ’s decision on it, given you appear to already know that it has not interviewed you about a ‘Feminist issue’, then it is not clear why you are complaining about its decision on it. We would welcome your clarification on this point.

I understand why you made that comment. However, the point is not what I myself know. I know how many times TVNZ has asked me to comment on a Feminist issue (zero times), but my question was what their records showed as to how many times TVNZ has asked me to comment on a Feminist issue. In a previous Official Information Act matter (see: min4men.html#om241219), you forced me to accept an answer from the Minister of State Services which was (to my mind) completely off-topic, on the grounds that my complaint was with the quality of the official information provided – not with whether the information had been provided.

Therefore, in this case, I don’t see how you can simply assume that the information which they would hold on this would be the same as I myself hold (in my head). The quality of their information on such topics may be poor, for all I know. Once I know what their information on this issue is, I will be in a position to follow this issue up with them at some point in the future.

6. I don’t see how you could possibly deny that asking “How many times have you asked other Men’s Rights Activists to comment on a Feminist issue?” is a request for Official Information. As I stated above, I am sure that Television New Zealand has archives.

7. Similarly, I think that Television New Zealand definitely has Official Information on this topic. It must know the ideological mindset of the Producer of that programme with respect to the issues involved in the item which the Producer decided to create.

8. This is an extremely important issue, on which Television New Zealand must have information as to its views and practices. None of my questions are frivolous. They may well be vexatious to Television New Zealand, because it is a vicious organization which is always seeking to oppress men and does not want to be subject to the Official Information Act.

9. I have a Diploma of Journalism. Newsworthiness is a key journalistic value and Television New Zealand certainly has information as to what the newsworthiness of this item was that caused it to produce it.

10. Television New Zealand decided to create this item and the point of this question is to get some insight into why it did so. Obviously, Television New Zealand must know why it produced it and finished it in that manner.

11. This question has the same sort of aim as the previous one.

12. The item made a big issue of cocktail dresses, so Television New Zealand must know why it did so.

13. This question follows on from the previous one.

14. This question also follows on.

15. This question also follows on.

16. This question also seeks to discover Television New Zealand’s reasons for producing the item in question.

17-21. These questions aim to discover what Television New Zealand’s policies are with respect to the issues raised in the news item in the context of its own workplace. It is obvious that Television New Zealand must have a dress code. As you point out, Question 20 is not a question. It is merely a preliminary statement to Question 21 and they should have been merged into one single question.

Your ruling out of most of my questions as being frivolous or vexatious is nothing short of Fascist censorship. You provided no detail, because you have absolutely no case and are simply colluding with Television New Zealand on political grounds. You focused on Question 20, although it is clearly not frivolous or vexations, but simply a mistake and not an actual question.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Zohrab

In due course, I received the following reply from the Ombudsman:

I did not immediately follow up on the above letter.

Later, I received the following reply from TVNZ:

I did not immediately follow up on the above letter either.

Later, I received the following further letter from the Ombudsman:

I did not immediately follow up on the above letter either.

Later, I received the following further letter from the Ombudsman:

To date, I have not taken any further action on the above letters.

-- Hamill, Jasper (2019): "Men are more disadvantaged than women in the UK, US and most of Europe, scientists claim." Metro, 4 Jan 2019.

See also:

• Ban the news company "Stuff!"

• Erotic relation as power game

• Passive Power of Female Domination

• Sequence of Letters to the Broadcasting Standards Authority on Feminist Bias and Sexism

• Dyke TV Up to its Compulsive Lying Again!

• Devious Media Strategies

• The Lesbian Mainstream Media and Education System

• Building Lies Atop Lies

• Privatise Television New Zealand !