Posts by B Jones
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I understood begging the question to mean jumping over a logical step - politician X's promise to end public spending on widgets begs the question of what if anything the public actually spends on widgets."
But people use it to mean someone didn't answer something important: Tony said he lashed out, begging the question "what DID you do to her..."
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I agree the field of presenters is small. But reading a newsy kind of script isn't a doddle - I had a go at it for an amateur video once, and it's hard not to look like an idiot. It's like public speaking, but with every tic and flaw magnified.
I love how the old school legends like Dougal Stevenson and Philip whatshisname still appear on the Primo Extremo and Corolla ads as newsreaders.
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they readily hoisted the Team NZ petard
It seems clear to me that the author was thinking about hoisting a standard in the archaic sense of flag or emblem, but got sidetracked onto the wrong cliche. It happens, but that's what you have editors for.
My own personal favourite was a real estate agent a couple of years back who described a property as having the penultimate kitchen. I eventually worked out that must meant "the kitchen you have immediately before you transform it into the one you want."
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Carol - given the way people use "quantum", there's a lovely irony in the fact that in its other context it means "things that are very very very small".
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I think "there but for the grace of god" forms our opinions far more than most rational people would like to admit, on this case as well as many others.
Thing is, it's a question of where that "there" is. For most of the people round here, that's the victim's shoes we're worrying about inhabiting, given the prevalence of domestic violence and its disproportionate impact on women. It takes a slightly different mindset to look at the perpetrator's shoes and get concerned about what it would be like to be in them.
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Kyle - Suing a media outlet for getting something wrong is a long term response. If the media say something incorrect and damaging about you, the short term strategy, public relations wise, is to correct it hard and fast, before it sinks in.
If there was something pertinently wrong, say "he kicked her resulting in four fractured vertebrae" was instead "she fell down the stairs', every bit of good sense would suggest making that known as soon as possible, with the only delay in taking legal advice to make sure that was ok. If it was not pertinently wrong, say "resulting in only three fractured vertebrae", then it doesn't serve your interests to be explicit about what's incorrect.
A press conference, presuming you have the status to pull one, is the best medium for getting your explanation out there exactly how you want it. Veitch has years of media experience and access to the best legal and public relations advice money can buy. If his side of the story was that different, we'd know it by now.
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I meant Danielle, and apologies to both Deborah and Danielle for stuffing that up.
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Although the restraint can be trying.
That actually sounds like you're looking for sympathy for the terrible burden of not having committed domestic violence. No wonder Deborah's getting annoyed.
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taking it back from the script written part though, how would you have handled the actual event though?
Most people, having committed a serious crime, would rationally try to avoid taking responsibility for that, whether it's by covering up the offence or minimising their role in it. That's not the right question, though.
The right question is what would you expect someone to do about a situation like that in order to retain your respect. I'm not sure if it's possible. People I respect don't do that sort of thing in the first place. Perhaps if they accept responsibility for it (without being forced to), work towards understanding what they did wrong, make it impossible for them to do something like that again, and do something about stopping other people from either committing violence or getting away with it, that's a start. Those guys in the violence ads have the right idea. "I understand the impact I had on X's life and there's nothing I can do to undo things, but I want to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem from hereon in", rather than "I didn't mean it, it was the medication." Hell, even Earl Hickey has the right idea.
It's not easy - the cognitive dissonance between "I am a good person" and "Good people don't commit serious assaults" tends to generate "unless they have a good reason."
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Put that way, Ian, it does sound a little Wishartian. But unlike Investigate, the Dom Post is an ideal target for a keen defamation lawyer with a financially comfortable client - well-funded and with a respectable reputation to defend. Assuming the Dom Post makes an honest report based on a credible witness is different from assuming a random person on the internet has done so.
It's not enough to convict, but it is enough to discuss, especially since we've heard the unmediated other side of the story.