I had not paid much attention to this little saga given that I’m pretty much a skeptic of all things supernatural, (as I had perceived this issue to be), and found the whole scenario pretty uninteresting. However today in a moment of idle curiosity I watched the video of John Campbell’s interview with Ring. An overpowering display of unprofessional conduct.
I was impressed by Ken Ring’s honest demeanor. He was different to what I had expected. I also watched Campbell’s apology to Ring the following night. Campbell looked like he didn’t want to do it. The apology didn’t seem sincere. Campbell, without explaining why specifically, said that Ring had refused to come back on the show. The viewer was left with the impression that Ring did not want to return because he was still angry with the unprofessional way Campbell had behaved. In fact this wasn’t so, and later I read a press release by Ring where he explained why he had refused to re-appear.
Campbell’s major point of contention with Ring was that he was the only person who believed the moon had any kind of bearing on earthquakes and that the “legitimate” scientific community rejected this idea.
Ring had known Campbell would be taking this approach, so before the show had emailed Campbell a series of links to studies that showed various scientific bodies were researching moon/ tide links to earthquakes. The links are in Ring’s press release here. Here’s the bit from Rings press release that deals with it-
These are what is called “peer review” articles They show the international science community is very actively linking moon positions to earthquakes. To deny this, as Campbell did after being sent these links before the first interview, is to completely fabricate truth. When the request by the TV3 producer was made to me to reappear on the programme for the next night’s apology, I asked her for an admission to be made by Campbell that he had lied and that he knew scientific studies at a high level linking moon+earthquakes had indeed been done and that were ongoing. They refused.
Campbell should have fully explained this when saying why Ken Ring would not come back on his show. That’s three strikes for Mr. Campbell. 1) The unprofessional interview, 2) The incorrect assertions made about scientific studies linking the moon and earthquakes, and 3) The failure to be specific about why Ken Ring had refused to return.
What a shambolic, disastrous and deceitful display of incompetence in broadcasting. Campbell should be fired. If TV3 wasn’t a fifth rate excuse for a broadcaster anyway, he probably would be.
TrueblueNZ 
12 responses to “John Campbell Should Be Fired Over The Ken Ring Affair”
Campbell is a disgusting, dishonest little man.
He did a feature on Pansy Wong’s “achievements as an MP” where he ran around with a microphone and camera asking a bunch of gormless, uninformed people (mostly TV3 workers) if they new what she had achieved. It was the most unbalanced, hateful piece of “reporting” I’ve ever seen. Don’t watch him now ………ever. In fact I’ve given up on TV3 completely.
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I agree, Red – Campbell should go over this. But of course we know he won’t.
I had the misfortune of seeing Campbell interview (if you can call it that) Ken on Campbell Live at the time. And like Campbell, many so called scientists simply write such theories off out of hand, and without even considering correlations between dates and events. This would tend to fly in the face of the scientific method as I understand it.
And like you just said above, Campbell appears to not even have looked at the information Ken forwarded to him prior to the interview. Pathetic!
If the moon affects/causes the tides, then there has to be at least some influence on subterranean magma, and therefore the earth’s crust. The jury’s out on whether this influence is adeqaute to trigger quakes, but it certainly seems at least a possibility.
And I don’t think Ken Ring has ever linked his earthquake “predictions” to anything other than science, and certainly not the supernatural. But I do note your above qualification; that that was only your perception.
Your General Debate back on the 12th of March covered this well from a scientific angle, I thought, and considered how moon cycles may indeed be linked to at least some quake activity. Well worth a read by others as a good background to this line of thinking.
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“PM’s chief scientist hits out at quake forecasters
Nobody can predict when an earthquake will strike, the Prime Minister’s chief science adviser says.
The Government and the Royal Society of New Zealand today released a scientific paper at a briefing in Wellington, looking at earthquake predictions and future earthquake risks for Christchurch and New Zealand.
During the briefing, Sir Peter Gluckman hit out at Ken Ring’s controversial prediction that another big quake will hit Christchurch on or near March 20.
“There’s no added risk of a quake on March 20 or any other day and I think people do not realise the disharmony and the discomfort that is being given to a lot of people in the Christchurch regions by (predictions),” he said.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10712870
That’d be the same “Chief Scientist” who believes that increasing taxes- in one tiny Pacific country- will prevent global warming.
Honest prostitutes walk the streets, selling sex.
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And so far, of course, we haven’t had even one “scientist” or “geotechnical engineer”, tell us WHY Ken Ring’s theories are as ridiculous as they say they are. Of course pure probability can explain yesterday’s aftershock coming at the point of the lunar confluence, the same sort of probability that connects CO2 levels and changing average earth temperatures. One of the most amazing things of all this “science” we have nowadays are the appeals to raw emotion, one of the best indicators that we aren’t dealing with science, but with shamans. (or charlatans, take your pick)
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Bez,
I think your term “shamans” (for our science Gurus) is actually closer to the mark, especially when one considers the religious fervour with which many (the great unwashed) worship at the altar of “science falsely so called”.
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I do not know anything of the science but due to the CHCH earthquake I subjected myself to scraps of the MSM. I saw the odious little creep blast Ring. This was not an interview it was an ugly display of bigotry loudly pumped by Campbell. I cannot begin to imagine why anyone would watch this garbage on a regular basis.
Campbell won’t get tossed out for this. He is a show=pony who attracts the kind of viewer who espouse mindless nasty shit!
NB Whale’s post on The Minger. She is from the same level of the swamp as Campbell.
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Yes Campbell should go.
I think media have latched on to the ‘predict’ label because of his website.
His forward weather predictions are very good and I have many friends in the productive area that look out a month or too to plan for harvesting.
(And the person who advises Campbell to wave his arms around all the time needs a rocket too.)
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I was once interviewed by a TV3 reporter on Republicanism, during which he talked about how supportive he was of the cause and repeatedly stated it was a serious piece…
When the segment appeared on Nightline it was a lampoon of the issue and consisted of the reporter walking around Mission Bay asking good looking girls what they thought of Republicanism…
It was the lying that frustrated me, not the ridicule – I can take ridicule, but to blatantly lie to an interviewee, well I lost any respect I had for TV3’s journalistic integrity at that point…
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I bet Campbell believes in AWG.
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Y’know I don’t know much about the earthquake prediction scenario. As I said I’m a very healthy skeptic in such areas. I do know that Ken Ring has been right before in his weather predictions. He does not seem to be alone in his ideas that the moon ifluences earthquakes. It is dishonest of John Campbell and the rest of the mainstream media (and other bloggers) to imply this.
What annoys me most about this event is that the mainstream media, those utterly contemptible elitist scum who appoint themselves our carers, and the political class, that other group of mainly contemptible likewise scum, latch on to a POV and designate that POV as the only legitimate one.
Anyone who does not abide by this adjudication is written off as a nutter or an outlier. This kind of framework is manufactured far too often in the information business today. Mostly by odious leftist scum posing as journalists and reporters,a nd their quivering yellow backed acolytes in the blogosphere.
As you might guess, its an event that causes me some chagrin. We should have free and open discussion on any issue, and it is wrong for these would-be- controlling self appointed elitists to decide right from square one that there is only one legitimate viewpoint.
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Chuck, Campbell has long ago outed himself as an Alliance supporter. He’d be into any means to attack capitalism. His colleague Carol Hershfeld (?) is likewise an extreme lefty. TV3 are traitors to employ these people in their frontline current affairs division. The company needs to go broke. I hear its well on the way to that destination.
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John Campbell should not go. It would not be what Ken Ring would want. Not to mention cause him even more Animosity. The Best Converts are the Greatest Skeptics to begin with. According to Scientists our Planet looks like it maybe in for a bit of a rough ride in the next few months so eventually everyone is going to have to admit things are far from Normal.
I think all the media in NZ should be reprehended really. They tried to detract from the credibility of Ken Rings predictions by calling him derogatory names such as the moon man, then blame him for people leaving Christchurch as if their was no other reason why anyone would want to leave, then they make him look like he’s putting unwanted phsycological harm as if the residents of Christchurch weren’t already phsycologically harmed from the events of the last six months. Even now that Christchurch did experience the strongest Earthquake since Feb on the very day that Ken Ring Predicted Mark Quigley, Bob Parker say that it has nothing to do with Ken Ring’s Prediction. Mark I just have one thing to say to you their is a Hell of alot more credibility been Ken Ring’s science than their is yours.
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