Hard News: The perils of political confidence
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BenWilson, in reply to
They can only do that for so long before all media are giving all political airtime to their opponents. Which marketing genius thought of that?
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merc,
Questions need to be asked as to the relationship between National and the media, what's with ordering the media there then ordering them out?
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Speaking of National's weird treatment of Radio NZ, the party has simply refused to respond to Radio NZ's online policy Q&A.
It does come across as unfathomably contemptuous.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
A very similar situation?
Oddly enough, I don't think it's done Sarkozy any harm is a country where criticism of Israel is not automatically seen as rank anti-Semitism. Obama makes a simple statement of fact in response, and the usual suspects on the psychotic right have a collective meltdown.
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Yes, where in the 7*24*4 = 672 hours during the campaign could they possibly find the time to pick up a telephone? Or get any of their thousand flunkies to do it.
Well, like I said, face to face. It is likely that there are things that the two Johns want to say to each other that they don't want to say over the phone, or have a flunky say. It is also likely that these things they say are not massively important in and of themselves, but serve some kind of signalling function.
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Paul Williams, in reply to
"I wasn't able to get a shot so I backed off and while I was backed off trying to get other shots we were basically hustled out of the room, told to get out."
If this is confirmed as a fact and Steven Price's analysis is correct, and I've no reason to think it isn't, then the HoS are in a strong position to defend the complaint and publish.
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merc, in reply to
Surely there is some legality as to their (NP) having to respond to the media?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Questions need to be asked as to the relationship between National and the media, what’s with ordering the media there then ordering them out?
It's one of the stories of campaign 2011, so they didn't need to do any more than announce the place and time. 40 reporters and camera people turned up, apparently.
It was surprising that they tried to turn a media stunt into a private meeting, though. I don't think anyone would have expected that.
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Sacha, in reply to
"I love you too Mr Goff"
bravo
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merc, in reply to
"It was surprising that they tried to turn a media stunt into a private meeting, though."
I think that is the hinge moment that will echo down through the ages ;-) -
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
They can only do that for so long before all media are giving all political airtime to their opponents.
And however tempting a collective editorial spite-fuck like that would be, I'd respectfully suggest both the BSA and Press Council would have quite a bit to say about that - especially in the context of an election campaign.
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Kracklite, in reply to
hubris is going to always make for an Icarus moment
Put nicely by SF writer and historian Brian Aldiss, “hubris clobbered by Nemesis”.
While I'm on a brief classical roll, despite the depravity of many Emperors, I've loved the Roman custom of having a slave ride in the chariot of a general returning in a triumphal procession, whispering in his ear, "Remember that thou art a man."
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Kracklite, in reply to
It does come across as unfathomably contemptuous.
Unfathomably?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
It does come across as unfathomably contemptuous.
It's quite fathomable to me that someone at Campaign HQ needs a good hard sucker punch for not doing the bloody simple "cut and paste relevant policy talking points into an e-mail and hit send"job that's probably been sitting on someone's task list for weeks. Sloppy, amateurish but most probably not sinister. Cock-up over conspiracy, Keystone Cop trumps Machiavelli.
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Tom Beard, in reply to
Cock-up over conspiracy, Keystone Cop trumps Machiavelli.
Not necessarily conspiratorial, just disdainful. It's not inconsistent with their normal approach to RNZ.
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BenWilson, in reply to
It is also likely that these things they say are not massively important in and of themselves, but serve some kind of signalling function.
In what Universe are these guys unable to have a face to face meeting to do whatever signalling they haven't already done with each other a hundred times? Indeed wouldn't they want to do it in private if they wanted any chance of real signals, and a meaningful discussion?
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Sacha, in reply to
they didn't need to do any more than announce the place and time
interesting snippet from that Manawatu Standard story about other campaign events:
The ministerial offices have been keeping MPs' movements on the campaign trail close to their chests in the past few weeks. Media advisories have been distributed late and publication of these has often been forbidden. This has probably been done to avoid any organised protests, similar to the one that marred Mr Key's appearance in Palmerston North before the 2008 election.
But the "cup of tea" meeting was a carefully orchestrated PR stunt by the National Party that served as a venue for Mr Key to give his seal of approval to Mr Banks, without actually saying it.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Not necessarily conspiratorial, just disdainful. It’s not inconsistent with their normal approach to RNZ.
In the same way John Howard didn't much like the ABC. Yet somehow the ABC is in a far stronger position than RNZ when there's a fiscal lasersight pointed at it.
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Kracklite, in reply to
It seems to fit in with a general strategy of hit-and-run campaigning. Get your orchestrated event publicised, say your piece in a way that can be repeated as a soundbite and never, ever be seen to be explaining or qualifying or, Geryon forbid, reacting. The recording at the cup of tea event has upset that strategy, so IMO, what we're seeing is a panicky reaction to things slipping out of control.
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Kracklite, in reply to
Indeed wouldn’t they want to do it in private if they wanted any chance of real signals, and a meaningful discussion?
The essence of all conspiracy theories is that those in power are competent.
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And I'm not one to state the obvious, but the wider point in the whole Tea Tapes affair is that forced exposure to sunlight is the fatal weakness of a comms strategy that relies on keeping the hoi polloi deaf, dumb, happy and fat. It worked for Woodward & Bernstein, and more recently Hugh Grant.
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Whether or not the tape reveals Key and Banks chanting in unison, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”, the suspicion that something was said and that it’s being covered up in some way has resulted in a serious backfire, it seems, hence the panic.
This rather overstates the case (it’s hardly a “-gate”), but the oblique style of Johns’ explanations on Morning Report recall these notes I made long ago on how the press reported on matters they were not supposed to report on in Imperial Russian times (it was called “The Language of Aesop”). In this case, it was the murder of Rasputin:
Birzhevye Vedomosti,
St Petersburg, 20 Dec 1916,A heavy frost. The waters of the capital are held by ice, silent, dusted with snow are the gardens. But over the still capital hover strange nightmares. In the depths of the night shots ring out in a dead garden, secret cars hurry across the city carrying corpses and live men… Fantastic nightmares weave a poisonous fog and turn into horrid reality. For bloodshed is always horrible and smoking blood is always poisonous.
The Kretovsky Island has come alive.
Crowds gather there until nightfall.
A watchman on the bridge is reported as saying that a diver went down into the bottle-green waters of the Neva for an hour but found nothing. The old riverman who knows how corpses drift tells them where to look. They first see a fur coat, hairs coming up through the ice. There was a lot of blood. His boot was a size sixteen says a watchman. Your reporter then went to the Moika palace and looked up at the windows. It was dark upstairs and the darkness of the wide window was just as secret and intriguing as the riddle of the secret events that have been occupying all our minds for the last three days.Mercure de France
Aug 1923,
“La Maisonette d’Ania,”
Zinadia GippiusA certain person visited another person with some other persons. After the first person vanished, one of the other persons stated that the first person had not been at the house of the second person, although it was known that the second person had visited the first person late at night.
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In what Universe are these guys unable to have a face to face meeting to do whatever signalling they haven’t already done with each other a hundred times? Indeed wouldn’t they want to do it in private if they wanted any chance of real signals, and a meaningful discussion?
Because that isn't how people work. Remember the Burger King meeting? These are just people who are in a very very stressful job, working every waking minute, and when they are in a room with each other they will talk shop.
(And remember that we are all very textual people. Politicians are not in general. They are oral, and they are physical. You have to be, to do that job.)
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Now the regular right posters on trademe are running the line that it is a "News of the World" scale scandal, which will lead to huge support for Key when he stamps out the evil lefty tabloid media....
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The police statement:
URGENT MEDIA ADVISORY
November 14, 2011, 5:22 pmPolice have confirmed that the this afternoon we have received a formal complaint from the Prime Minister Right Honourable John Key concerning an allegation that a private conversation between himself and the Honourable John Banks has been unlawfully recorded.
This is potentially an offence under s216B Crime Act 1961 carrying a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment.
Media outlets are advised that it is an offence to disclose private communications unlawfully intercepted. This offence, is punishable by up to two years imprisonment where any person discloses the private communication, or the substance, meaning, or purport of the communication or any part of it, or discloses the existence of the private communication if he knows that it has come to his knowledge as a direct or indirect result of an offence against s216B Crimes Act.
Police have indicated that they have commenced an active investigation into this complaint.
So if the recording is deemed unlawful, the HoS seems to have already committed the offence.
I'm really not sure if going to the cops was a good idea. If the police prosecute, National will be responsible for the bringing of criminal charges against a newspaper editor. That is hardly ever a good look.
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