The power of online media to influence New Zealand local government politics was made clear in 2013 when a blogger revealed that Len Brown, the popular mayor of Auckland, had conducted a two-year, extramarital affair. The mainstream media picked up the story, Brown’s popularity collapsed and in late 2015 he announced he would not stand again for mayor. This media scandal was, in part, driven by the fact that Brown was a celebrity. Unlike several high-profile sex scandals involving politicians overseas, Brown’s career did not survive the controversy, perhaps because the public came to regard him as a practised liar. The media itself engaged in self-serving scandalous activity during the controversy. Today’s shock bloggers are similar to the proto-journalists of the 17 th century. Members of new and old media researching the scandal treated their secret sources very differently. The existence of the internet means such scandals can now exist in perpetuity. If the Len Brown Affair was an example of the media fulfilling its watchdog role - by exposing a lying politician - it was also an example of journalists furthering their own ends - political and commercial - by appealing to their audiences’ purient interests.

中文翻译：

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伦布朗事件：新旧媒体在新西兰政治性丑闻中的作用

2013 年，当一位博主透露，受欢迎的奥克兰市长 Len Brown 进行了两年的婚外情时，网络媒体对新西兰地方政府政治的影响力就变得清晰起来。主流媒体报道了这个故事，布朗的声望崩溃了，2015 年底，他宣布不再竞选市长。这场媒体丑闻的部分原因是布朗是名人。与涉及海外政客的几起备受瞩目的性丑闻不同，布朗的职业生涯并没有在争议中幸存下来，也许是因为公众开始认为他是一个老练的骗子。媒体本身在争议期间从事自私的丑闻活动。今天的震撼博主类似于17世纪的原始记者。研究丑闻的新老媒体成员对待他们的秘密消息来源非常不同。互联网的存在意味着此类丑闻现在可以永久存在。如果说 Len Brown 事件是媒体履行其监督职责的一个例子——通过揭露一个说谎的政客——它也是一个记者通过吸引观众的纯洁利益来推进自己的政治和商业目的的例子。