The Internet Party and the curious case of the missing media

It is now 39 days until the New Zealand election and the media coverage is in full swing. Policy websites are up and running. A new political party headed by a rich New Zealander is getting decent traction. The media are fawning over our preferred Prime Minister…..

It is all very 2014 if you ask me. There is just one thing missing. Where is the Internet Party? Where is the party that after all the furor of last election still got more than 30,000 votes?

For that matter, where is the Conservative Party? They got almost 100, 000 votes.

Where are the Missing Media? – Is it money?

If I go to Google News search ‘Conservative Party NZ’ I get nothing. There has been no coverage of them at all even though they had roughly half the support of NZ First in the last election.

If I search ‘Internet Party NZ’ I get three results. Two of which are a press release for their #Antispybill event. The last is a piece in Computer World. This is the sole piece of semi-journalism between two parties that accounted for more than 5% of the electorate vote last election.

Part of the problem is money. The media run on money. They support that which makes them rich. It is how their business works. The Conservative Party no longer have Colin Craig backing them financially. The Internet Party no longer have Kim Dotcom backing them financially.

You can be absolutely sure than if either party was to intimate they had a $1,000,000 to spend then there would be coverage all over the show as the media flirted and wooed their wallets. Money wins elections.

Where are the Missing Media? – Not just money

It’s not just money though. Money would be bad enough but in this case it is starting to look like a media blackout for the Internet Party at least. If you search ‘Kim Dotcom’ you will find pages of recent news items, but out of the first page of results only one mentions the Internet Party still exists.

“Speaking in an Internet Party live stream this evening, Mr Dotcom continued to slam the GCSB for allegedly hacking into his phone before raiding his Auckland mansion.”

That’s it. I know for a fact that Suzie Dawson, the Internet Party’s leader, has been doing dozens of media interviews from all over the world. The Party has launched in the U.S., and across Europe. The unmentioned guests, from the only news to reference the Party existing, included some of the most famous internet activists and visionaries from all over the world plus commentary on other FVEY member states.

To make it worse the GCSB has admitted it doesn’t control its own spying network and Greenpeace have caught Thompson and Clark surveilling them. Yet no comment has been requested from the Internet Party, in the middle of an election campaign, about front page news stories on topics they were created to deal with. That isn’t just negligence. It’s willful.

If Gareth Morgan can be asked for comment about boot camps then I think the Internet Party should, at least, be asked about our Government Communications Security Bureau systems being run by a foreign power.