First John Banks starts to rant and rave about new takatapui HIV/AIDS prevention strategies, and then Challenge Weekly whines about civil unions. Why can't they find mainstream media outlets? Have we entered the age of disorganised homophobia and discredited antigay sources? John Banks is an ex-Cabinet Minister and ex-Auckland Mayor, reduced to ekeing out a living on gutter talkback radio. It would be most interesting to contemplate Radio Pacific's demographics, as I have my suspicions that they're not particularly high. As for Challenge Weekly, I've noted their re-employment of discredited ex-Maxim Institute 'researcher' Bruce Logan as a journalist beforehand. Why did they do it? And why are they concentrating on civil union stats, when the Maxim Institute proper (now based exclusively up in Auckland) has ignored it? It's almost as if the ghost of Maxim past resides at Challenge Weekly's South Island offices, where it can now be itself, free of having to pretend that it's 'not' really conservative Christian in origin and audience, while the current Institute moulders on its way to irrelevance and oblivion. But is anyone listening to Challenge Weekly anyway? Not really, not even other fundamentalists. And quotng discredited and marginalised sources as if they were reliable sources of public opinion or credible and valuable originators of news is overly flattering. It's not real newsgathering, it is pretend journalism. To put it brutally, Johns Banks and O'Neill can rant all they want about the homer-sexual conspiracy because no-one is reading, or listening. Not Recommended: Challenge Weekly: http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz Broadcasting Standards Authority: http://www.bsa.govt.nz If you've read the above news item about Banks latest outburst, then contact this lot with when you heard it, after you've been through Radio Pathetic's complaints procedure. And make sure you've recorded it, with the time as well as the date. Craig Young - 6th April 2006