For many years New Zealand news website Scoop has provided a free service for anyone to post media releases online, now the National Business Review has started offering a similar service - the Horse’s Mouth - for corporate and political party releases.

The good thing about both services is that the media releases go online unedited letting your message reach the world as you intended it to. Both sites also have good search engine visibility, so your media release gets a good headstart for people searching online.

NBR publisher Barry Colman said the move would allow a free flow of information  from which readers could draw their own conclusions. “Some of these releases would otherwise head straight for the can in a newsroom, or be edited down,” he said.

After my earlier post this week about News Corporation deciding to restrict access to their news websites unless people pay to view them, it’s great to see initiatives in New Zealand that are promoting greater freedom of online information.

It’s been interesting to read the media furore today over New Zealanders getting antsy with Canadians getting antsy with New Zealanders eating sweets called Eskimos, which are shaped as, well, Eskimos - er, make that Inuits.

Last year Kiwis ate nearly 19 million of them, making the Eskimo one of our most-loved lollies. Some Canadians have called the sweets offensive, saying Eskimo is no longer used as a term and, regardless, eating sweets shaped as Inuits is just not on and carries hints of cannabilism.

NZers have voiced their opinions in the hundreds on web and news sites, largely telling the Canadians to bog off. Email discussions at the client where I have been working this week were busy with with similar sentiment.

Pascalls, the makers of the Eskimo, has been reported saying they don’t plan to change anything.

Makes you wonder, though, what would happen if Canadians started eating lollies shaped as a person in a grass skirt called a Hori.

Controversial Australian former politician Pauline Hanson, who has made and lost a career on race-based policies, is trying to make her umpteenth political comeback - this time on an anti Muslim and African platform. Er, is that a vote winner, Pauline?

While on the campaign trail, she has reportedly been shocked by nude photos of herself from the 1970s being published in newspapers and websites around the world after an old boyfriend sold them.

But one wonders if, given the nature of her policies, she should stop being embarrassed by the photos and realise that they may be the only (ever-so-slightly) positive and widespread publicity that she will get!

Update (16 March): Some commentators say it a deliberate political ploy. Pauline says it is not her in the photos. Whatever the story, she certainly knows how to play up the publicity!

Update (22 March): Pauline wasn’t elected. The Australian newspaper that broke the nude photo story has apologised to her saying the photos were of some one else and they had been fooled by a con-man.

The government’s ‘tough guys’ image seen in John Key’s handshaking with a broken hand of 120 rugby league players (see yesterday’s post) has been boosted by social development minister Paula Bennett’s successful intervention recently in a teenaged girls’ street brawl.

Whether this impromptu ’street-wise’ branding will serve them well going forward remains to be seen.  But it’s certainly a positive look in what it says about the minister as a person and perhaps a signpost towards the government’s intentions towards its proposed ‘boot camp’ youth policies.

New prime minister John Key has been somewhat missing-in-action since coming to office in November but it has been interesting to watch the media ruckus over his broken right arm and the repeating of the fact that Mr Key shook hands with 120 rugby league players soon after breaking his arm and before getting medical treatment.  A nice bit of mythology in the making.