Island Life: Let’s learn English, with John Key.
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So, it's now a "smear" to actually speculate on the identity and motives of the (still anonymous) person who covertly taped a third person without their knowledge or consent.
It is a smear when they bandy around "Labour did it" without any basis whatsoever...
I'd certainly love him to, and then he can face some hardball questions about where he actually got those e-mails
I don't think that we should be demanding journalists reveal their sources to be honest...it kinda hampers a desire to 'whistle blow'.
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I'd certainly love him to, and then he can face some hardball questions about where he actually got those e-mails, and how his sources obtained them.
Nicky Hager is no more obliged to give up his sources than any other journalist.
Craig, I don' t recall you demanding that Audrey Young tell everyone where she got her Mike Williams scoop; or Phil Kitchin reveal who's feeding him the Peters scuttlebutt (which appears to be supported by sundry "stolen" documents).
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Yes, Kyle, and the legislation requires whistle-blowers to clear a slightly more stringent bar than "it's a matter of public interest cuz I say so".
The policy positions and long term policy plans of political parties around election time are clearly a matter of public interest. And if you think they're not, you're not a democrat.
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I don't think that we should be demanding journalists reveal their sources to be honest...it kinda hampers a desire to 'whistle blow'.
Well, Daivd, I think it might also hamper people who are using journalists to prosecute an agenda of their own (or are totally imaginary). I'm just cranky enough as a consumer to want to judge for myself, and when I'm implicitly told by a journalist "you're just going to have to trust me" my instinctive response is "you'll still respect me in the morning and mean it when you promise to call, right?"
The New York Times significantly tightened up its standards regarding the use of anonymous sources in 2004, after the Jayson Blair scandal, which included stories partially or even wholly based on anonymous sources that didn't exist.
NYT public editor Clark Hoyt outlined the paper's policy here:
Bill Keller, the executive editor, and Allan Siegal, then the standards editor, wrote a policy declaring, “We resist granting sources anonymity except as a last resort to obtain information that we believe to be newsworthy and reliable.”
The policy requires that at least one editor know the identity of every source. Anonymous sources cannot be used when on-the-record sources are readily available. They must have direct knowledge of the information they are imparting; they cannot use the cloak of anonymity for personal or partisan attack; they cannot be used for trivial comment or to make an unremarkable comment seem more important than it is.
Although the purpose of the policy was not explicitly to reduce the number of anonymous sources, Keller said last week, “If you tell the editing system to be more challenging of anonymous sources, it ought to reduce the number.”
Not long after I arrived as public editor last spring, I asked a class at Columbia to study The Times’s use of anonymous sources to see how well the newspaper was living up to the 2004 policy.
A group of 17 students under the direction of Professor Richard C. Wald, a former president of NBC News, read every word of every article in six issues of the newspaper published before the policy and six from last fall. Here is what they found:
The number of articles relying on anonymous sources fell by roughly half after the policy was introduced.
Most anonymous sources — nearly 80 percent — were still not adequately described to readers. How did they know their information? Why did they need anonymity? But that was still better than before the policy, when nearly 90 percent were inadequately described.
The use of anonymous sources to air opinion, not fact, increased after 2004, even though the policy would seem to discourage that.
Anonymous sources were much less likely to appear on Page 1 under the new policy, perhaps because front-page articles got more scrutiny from editors.
The use of anonymous sources declined in virtually every part of the newspaper, except the Business section, where they inexplicably shot up. Stories from Washington, where anonymity is bred into the political and government culture, accounted for roughly a third of all anonymous sources in the newspaper before the policy and declined to roughly a quarter of them afterward.
The findings suggest that The Times is policing the unnecessary use of anonymous sources better than the students or I expected — but that it still has a long way to go to help readers understand the reliability of an unnamed source and why that source cannot be identified.
Now, it might make a damn interesting Media 7 whether media outlets here have any policy at all regarding anonymousing - let alone one as rigorous and monitored as the NYT's.
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Kyle, this is for you.
Craig, for or against Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat?
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Nicky Hager is no more obliged to give up his sources than any other journalist.
Of course he isn't, but he's also not entitled to cry foul when speculation fills the gap. And I don't intend to apologise for saying there's a direct correlation, at least for me, between Ian Wishart's disdain for on the record sources and his somewhat wobbly relationship with objective reality. It does help if you know from the start where the din of axe-grinding is coming from.
And, seriously, Russell how much store do you put in a story that doesn't have a single named, on the record source? For me, the answer is: It's fiction until proven otherwise.
I'd also suggest that if Phil Kitchin and Audrey Young aren't extremely scrupulous and sparing in their anonymousing, then I've no sympathy for the consequences that come down. Does anyone know where Winston's threatened defamation action against Kitchin and the DomPost is at?
The policy positions and long term policy plans of political parties around election time are clearly a matter of public interest. And if you think they're not, you're not a democrat.
I'm not even going to dignify that with a response, Idiot.
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The New York Times significantly tightened up its standards regarding the use of anonymous sources in 2004, after the Jayson Blair scandal, which included stories partially or even wholly based on anonymous sources that didn't exist.
Sure. We have recordings here though, and Hager had emails. Nobody seriouly suggested that either were forged (okay, they did briefly earlier today with the recordings but soon changed tack).
I agree that the sanctity of a journalist's sources leaves open the possibility that the source may be the journalist him- or herself. But it's a tradeoff that an open society needs to live with, I don't want to have to contemplate the alternative.
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And can I just for a moment on this subject plug the fifth series of The Wire? One of the main plot lines is about the very thing. And the treatment, as usual, is sublime.
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Craig, for or against Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat?
An interesting question indeed. To be consistent, he'd have to be against. And that makes it very clear that he is no democrat.
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Craig, for or against Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat?
Thank you, David! I don't actually think the Watergate story would have been one whit less credible with the disclosure that W. Mark Felt (who was later convicted of felony civil rights violations) was not exactly a savoury character himself, and was less than pleased about being passed over, twice, for the FBI directorship by Nixon after Hoover's death. He also flat out lied about being Deep Throat.
All of which, I guess, you may dismiss as irrelevant but don't you think people had the right to come to their own conclusions long before his Vanity Fair self-outing in 2005?
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An interesting question indeed. To be consistent, he'd have to be against. And that makes it very clear that he is no democrat.
Thanks, Idiot. Perhaps you can STFU and let me speak for myself?
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Thanks, Idiot. Perhaps you can STFU and let me speak for myself?
Actually, Idiot, I want to withdraw and apologise for that. If I am "no democrat" in your book, that's your honestly held opinion and you're entitled to express it.
I wear that label with the same pride as those of the numpties on the rabid right who think I'm a soft on crime, terrorist-loving TINO (Tory in name only) because of my absurd attachment to flaky concepts like privacy, due process, the rule of law, the distinction between 'the public interest' and 'what the public happens to be interested in' and all that wet liberal pussy wah-wah.
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Good grief. Bill Ralston has another column for yet another media company.
See National, Labour & those secret recordings
Also ...
Nats may call in police over secret tapes
By TRACY WATKINS - The Dominion Post | Wednesday, 06 August 2008
LATEST: National leader John Key says the party may go to the police over secret recordings of MPs at a cocktail function.
Mr Key said National would also seek to obtain security footage of the event to try and find the culprit behind the covert recordings. -
Oh good god. Lay. Complaint. Or. STFU.
You can just imagine the complaint
Dear Mr Police,
I'm not happy 'cause Bill said I'm not so bright to some people who've told the media and I don't know who they are and Bill's not telling me.
And he said we'd do what Labour did but when I said I want to lead a Labour government and he said I can't. Crosby too, he said I can't. But then Crosby said we should do what they do so maybe that's ok?
Plus then Lockwood said we do some different things too, different from what I'd said. And that's also been in the media and I still don't know who they are that told.
The only thing I do know, is that apparently they were the same people who broke into Diane Foreman's place and stole our emails but then you lot said there's no evidence of that? WTF.
Look, either way, I think you should look into this and if you can't find the blokes who keep telling the truth about us, can you find out something Crosby or Bill or Lockwood did that might be worth some prison time?
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Craig: you can joke about it all you like, but I'm serious. This isn't sniffing Bill English's panties. It's not inquiring into what Lockwood Smith does in his bedroom or whether he gets on with his family. It's about their actions as politicians and the policies they plan to pursue if elected. That's very definitely a legitimate matter of public interest, and any claim to the contrary - i.e. that we plebs have no right to know how others intend to rule us, but just have to suck it regardless - is the worst sort of aristocratic bullshit. If you want to live in a country like that, try the UK.
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Oh good god. Lay. Complaint. Or. STFU.
Well, Paul, perhaps they're actually taking it a little more seriously than your satirical take. Or not.
Good grief. Bill Ralston has another column for yet another media company.
You worried about someone taking your title as the hardest working man in the media-biz? :)
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Craig: you can joke about it all you like, but I'm serious.
So am I, Idiot. If you find 'aristocratic bullshit' that objectionable, I'm not some vassal you can presume to speak for. You sure as hell don't have any right to caricature my views because you don't like some uppity peasant disagreeing with you. I don't eat that shit from the Redbaiters of this world, and I'm sure not taking it from you.
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Craig said:
Well, Paul, perhaps they're actually taking it a little more seriously than your satirical take. Or not.
I only wish you'd done the satire. Time will tell but in this instance, I'm inclined to invoke comparisons with Henny Penny. Perhaps had they not persisted with the idiotic pretense of email hackers earlier, they'd be more credible now?
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Perhaps had they not persisted with the idiotic pretense of email hackers earlier, they'd be more credible now?
Well, George Bernard Shaw (before whose gimlet eye and acidic pen I grovel, despite him being a diry vegan socialist - joke) put this wise observation in the mouth of one of his characters:
Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.
If I had Key's ear, I'd certainly be slapping it with one of Shaw's stouter volumes in the hope that some sense would shake out. But I certainly wonder what he'd make of the political blogisphere... Apart from a steaming pile of elegantly eviscerated offal, that is.
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You sure as hell don't have any right to caricature my views because you don't like some uppity peasant disagreeing with you.
You should so make business cards that read "Craig Ranapia, uppity peasant".
(Although somebody should probably also mention that you're a past master at caricaturing the views of others. I can't remember right now if I'm a neocon wingnut or a pinko commie, must remember to check.)
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I must remember to read more George Bernard Shaw, that is a wonderful quote. I shall use it carefully.
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You sure as hell don't have any right to caricature my views
Craig, I mean this lovingly, but: your views are hedged with a welter of negations and conditionals and hypotheticals on the one hand, and expressed with florid and vigorous imagery on the other. This means that a) sometimes it's quite hard to be sure what they are and b) no one could exaggerate them any further.
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You should so make business cards that read "Craig Ranapia, uppity peasant"
I'm thinking of getting some visiting cards made up with "Groucho Marxist", but any joke you've got to explain is a failed one.
Craig, I mean this lovingly, but: your views are hedged with a welter of negations and conditionals and hypotheticals on the one hand, and expressed with florid and vigorous imagery on the other.
Style is the man, I guess. Life is a welter of negations, conditionals and irritating contradictions. And I'm... um, florid but not vigorous at all.
Yes, I do admit to getting lost in the whichy thickets more often than I'd like, but ask and I'll do my best to clear things up.
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"This isn't sniffing Bill English's panties.'
I'm against this, it's just wrong.
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Maybe National could clear all this up and explain that we're all confused, and do this by saying: here, explained in detail, is what our policies actually are.
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