Posts by Craig Ranapia
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__If their knowledge of Wishart is anything like ours, how could they conscionably take the information he provides and turn it into a major issue?__
You've answered your own question Jimmy. Hey, it's out there and the allegedly "respectable" MSM can peddle the poo with one hand (once a third party has given them a 'public interest' defence, however flimsy), while fastidiously pinching their noses and complaining about the smell with the other.
And much as I hate to say it, I don't think any media outlet in this country has ever gone broke underestimating the prurient hypocrisy of their audience - or failing to match it.
__Is it a) a fear of missing out if the story miraculously turns out to be true, b) a fear their competitor will take the kudos for breaking the story, no matter how crazy__
I'm sure that's part of it - hacks are humans too, and who likes to be scooped on any story? Or have the competition do it better - a fresh angle, an interview you couldn't get, a heads up on a new development.
There's such a thing as healthy competition, but the risk is that if you're obsessed with getting the story 'right now' rather than just getting it 'right' you can go with a weak piece that ultimately comes back to bite you. And I think every media outlet - print, TV, radio, online whatever - can point to examples if they're honest.
__or c) in the case of TVNZ, a fear of being labelled as biased for not exploring stories that could damage Labour?__
You want to clear a couple of days, I can tell you everything I think is wrong with TVNZ and RNZ's news and current affairs. Don't think that's the issue though.
And after watching the late news on Three, it's sad to see Clark and Cullen feed the beast - however understandable their reaction is. In the end, I don't think they've done themselves or the Police any favours - and this is one occasion I'm quite happy to put partisanship aside.
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And that would be the film that I think a generation of classmates at my high school watched.
Yamis, I suspect the most popular form of oral sex among teenage boys is still talking testosterone-rich bollocks. The map of Tasmania was more terra incognita (and terra nullius come to that) than most of us really cared to admit, and I don't think my experience was in any way atypical. (And at the risk of sounding all Clintonian, a grope is a grope, and a snog is a snog, but calling any of that 'sex' is stretching a point.)
If my memory serves, Russell, weren't you in the UK during the whole 'video nasty' moral panic in the early 80's? Apparently, the western world (among much else) was drowning in a tide of snuff films, everybody knew somebody who worked with someone whose ex- had seen one... Which is how urban myths always seem to play out.
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I just can't get morally exercised about a bunch of young men watching a bit of filth. Just like I can't get morally exercised about alot of stuff
Well, fair enough - there's enough vacuous insincerity in the world, and kudos to you for not wanting to increasing the supply. To be honest, I can't really get too exercised about "a bunch of young men watching a bit of filth" either - what porn I've seen gives me lower back pain rather than any physiological signs of arousal. It's sad and rather silly.
But I think (and am sure I'm going to get dissent from all angles) that there's a difference between being broad-minded and tolerant of the limitless human capacity for absurdity (which is a virtue, on the whole), and having your mind so wide open nothing touches the side. ANd you chuck animals and human beings into a live sex act, and my mind implodes at great speed - though that might just make me zoophobic. Who knows?
Anyway, as DPF said, I think Broad has taken the appropriate course of action and I'll call off the lynch mob until something more solid comes up. ;)
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Aaargh... Jackie before you quite properly nuke me, that should have read I know you DON'T mean it like that, but it's pretty insulting...
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The man didn't know he was going to be Police Commissioner, and you can't live your life in moral purity just because you might one day end up having an important job
I must have had a remarkably sheltered upbringing - being raised in a convent by wolves, only let out to deliver soup and prayer cards to the virtuous poor and all :) - but I'm fairly confident most poeple act decently because... well, they're fundamentally decent human beings (however flawed) not because it might FUBAR their career prospects. I know you mean it like that, but it's pretty insulting - not only to cops but men in general - to just shrug your shoulders and treat what most people would regard as an extreme form of pornography as *meh* just what went down in rugby circles in the early 80's. (Then again, being all of nine at the time I didn't have a particularly active social life.)
In a way, it's like I thought the weakest defence of the assault allegations against David Benson Pope was "well, it was a different time and everyone behaved like that." First, I'd call b.s. on that - and I know more than a few teachers who'd do the same. Second, gagging a student with a tennis ball has never been an acceptable or legal form of student discipline in this country, and it no more becomes so even if everyone did. That just means there were a hell of a lot of petty sadists in the teaching profession getting away with common assault.
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I agree that it should be, but the cynic in me wonders how Labour would have reacted if they were not in office.
Well, hose me down with holy water and roll me in garlic, but I'd like to give Labour a little credit and think they'd be pretty damn careful if positions were reversed. All may be fair in love and war - but politics is a slightly different beastie.
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he has the strong support of the Police Association
That's not always something to crow about, Jimmy.
I recognise the Police Association as a trade union which (unsurprisingly and quite legitimately) advocates for the interests of its members. However, I do wonder if the PA is too often treated as a disinterested party by the media when it's nothing of the kind. I'd also suggest Greg O'Connor - who I've always found perfectly amiable in my limited contact with the man - isn't always the most thoughtful or measured contributor to public debate.
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Who is going to participate in the tarring and feathering of the (potentially) next Louise Nicholas(s), because they happen to have been written up by Wishart?
Well, Angus, Investigate doesn't have much credibility in my books for exactly the same reason I don't read any"'news" in the New York Times or the Sunday Star Times without cranking up the BS Detector to 11. Is it fair to judge a whole media outlet on the basis of an 'Operation Leaf' or a Jayson Blair? Perhaps not, but a simple reality for anyone in the media is that corporate credibility takes a long time to buld and can all too easily be torn down, and when you print fiction as news I think a reader should treat everything under that masthead with even more extreme scepticism than usual.
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[I]if someone stated in a magazine with tens of thousands readership I sexually assaulted the daughter of a former police commissioner and I was a current senior police officer, I would be suing for defamation. Wouldn't you?
Don can speak for himself, DPF, but I probably wouldn't for these reasons:
1) Any reputation that can be diminished by a hit job in Investigate Magazine is of dubious worth in the first place. The people in my life whose regard I do value (and I'd count you among them) are made of finer stuff.
2) I'm in no kind of financial position to run the risk of being stuck with a six figure legal bill, no matter what the outcome. It's all very nice if you have the tax-payer or a media outlet with deep pockets picking up the tab.
3) And perhaps Danyl has a point: Remeber when Roman Polanski sued Vanity Fair for defamation in the UK, after it printed the claim he he tried to seduce a Swedish model days after his pregnant wife was butchered by the 'Manson Family'.
In the end Polanski won, but an interesting feature of the magazine's defence was that the plantiff couldn't be defamed because he was a perv ("not only a fugitive from justice but a fugitive from morality", as they put it) with no reputation to be injured. I bet that was bitter enough to swallow, even without considering the source - a magagzine whose stock in trade is b.j. profiles of celebrities and dishing up sin-sational scoop about the lives, deaths and crimes of the jet set.
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Heh. In a roundabout way, I was wondering if you could dance! (Stock gag sorry, I'll tire of it soon, I promise).
Ah, now I get it. If one ever reach the dizzying heights of mediocrity required to snag a berth on Dancing With The Washed Up Publicity Ho's, please hit one with a stick. Hard. (BTW, I have been known to manage a box step that won't sent my partner to A&E. Who says Catholic boarding school is just a continual round of flogging, bad food and cold water?)
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