Radio Awards - Leighton Smith, Newstalk ZB

So Leighton Smith was a finalist for the 'Best Talk or Current Affairs Host Award' at the New Zealand Radio Awards. Paul Holmes won. It really had me wondering, what do they base such awards upon? I can't seem to find any specific measures on the Radio Broadcasters Association's website, but clearly objectivity, intelligence, relevance, importance and understanding of issues were not among the guidelines. Before this website turns into a Leighton Smith bashing campaign, let me note this will be my final remark about him for a while. I'll stick to one example to prove my point. Week after week Leighton Smith tells listeners that immigrants to New Zealand should have to conform to 'our' values. That's fine and dandy, he's welcome to voice his opinion (which I don't share) on his Newstalk ZB morning slot. But as a public forum his show has a duty to broadcast a wide variety of views and opinions, and then proceed to discuss them intelligently. So I decided to pull Smith up on his principled stance and engage him - to see if he would accept my points as valid and engage me in an intelligent manner. I noted to things about Smith before e-mailing him. 1) He is Australian. 2) He constantly criticises new immigrants who don't conform to 'our' values, yet gets angry at any mention of government policy. To me, that seemed like a bit of a contradiction. Here is a snippet of what I said. -----Me------- Leighton, I don't share your opinion about immigrants having to conform to a state's culture upon their arrival. But, by *your* rationale you should in theory, if you don't like it, go back to Australia. Obviously, since you don't agree with the majority decision the people of this country made when they voted for a liberal socialist government then you don't conform to 'our' cultural values. But of course you won't. Because somehow you think you're different or special. Hypocracy is a nasty habit... you really should get over it. ----Smith------ Patently my missionary work has a way to go ! --------------- And later he went on air saying that he received an e-mail telling him to go home, and by goodness he was home! New Zealand is his home and he wants to make it better. Well no, that wasn't what I said nor the point of my e-mail at all. It was rather to pull him up on a contradiction in an argument he makes week after week. So, it goes to show one of two things. First, either Smith couldn't grasp the point I was making. Or second, he didn't want to engage the argument because it might've undermined his own position. Either way, the man has no business being on the morning slot on one of Auckland's major stations. He is unfit to be a broadcaster. He's either unobjective or an idiot. Either way, his poor performance as a radio host is contributing to the undermining of an important public forum. How he was nominated as a finalist for ANY award is beyond me. (I'll leave my criticisms of the winner Paul Holmes for my next post. I've set aside time to update this website twice a week - Wednesday and Saturday - so there won't be any long droughts betweens posts anymore. I was going to flag altogether, but I received a fair bit of positive encouragement.)