Posts by Russell Brown
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Speaker: On the upland road, in reply to Pharmachick,
I agree Craig. I think this post is really excellent and an eloquent attempt to put into words things a lot of us feel. However, I personally just cannot get past the fact that these e-mails were illegally hacked/stolen. Everyone lost the high ground when the hacker resorted to crime to make a point.
"Unofficial information" is vital in a democracy and almost all of it -- leaks or whatever -- is to some degree stolen or shared without permission. But yes, the way this information was accessed does appear to be criminal.
And Mr. Hagar resorted to benefiting from the proceeds of a crime – and he’s done it before to Don Brash and to Helen Clark. EVERYONE needs to do better, including the author of the politics book.
No, no and no. There are very clear legal precedents with respect to using such information if it is in the public interest, which is very clearly the case here. Hager says the correspondence in The Hollow Men was not hacked and for all the noise and a considerable amount of investigation, there's no evidence that it was. He had sources.
Also, we need to dispense with the myth that Hager gets rich off what he does. The receipts from the sale of his books add up to considerably less than what a working journalist earns, and that's saying something. Whatever you think of him, he's not doing it for the money.
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The latest Whaledump covers the Food and Grocery Council stuff, implicating Katherine Rich.
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Hard News: Show some decency, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
We also need media outlets, and their proprietors, to be doing a serious and very public examination of conscience. Because media corporate brands have a lot of their value in intangibles like credibility and authority which aren't enhanced by "defamation for hire".
I thought Matt showed great honesty and ethical spine in personally apologising to Feeley for using Slater's attack lines against him. I'm happy enough with what Fran has written too, and of course Fish. Bernard Hickey this week greeted the news that Oders et al discussed targeting him as a badge of honour.
A few others may still have some accounting to do.
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Speaker: On the upland road, in reply to simon g,
Sean Hughes of the Financial Markets Authority was interviewed by Kathryn Ryan. He came across as a conscientious public servant, who had been hounded out of his job. It made me more angry than anything else I've heard in this whole business.
I've written some more on this.
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But we also have to ask how media and bloggers, (disclosure: I’m an occasional blogger) should be required to make clear their allegiances and their motivations, to prevent, or at least shine a light on, their abuse of others. Some of the core allegations of Dirty Politicsare that bloggers were presenting others’ copy as their own, often because they were being paid to.
Political blogs don’t have to be balanced, we all understand that. But perhaps we need to find a way to make them subject to at least a basic level of transparency and fairness as the media are, as recently proposed by the Law Commission.
David Slack and I discussed this yesterday on Firstline. Most of it really is just behaving decently: don't run anything under your own name that you haven't written, declare your interests, don't be a hateful bully.
You don't need to join OMSA or anything else to conduct yourself ethically.
I would have joined the overarching regulator proposed by the Law Commission -- and duly smacked down by Judith Collins -- but I don't think OMSA is actually the right body.
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Hard News: Why we thought what we thought, in reply to anth,
I’ve been phoned to do a poll by Curia, David Farrar’s company so probably on behalf of National. The question that I found interesting was being asked to give scores to party leaders, with a list of Norman/Peters/Key/Cunliffe/English.
It included English? Interesting! Anything else you can recall?
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Hard News: Why we thought what we thought, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
Not at all Paul. I made it public on Facebook so fair game for anyone in a sense, although disappointed the PM appeared to bring it up in his press conference – just a little higher profile than I expected! – which is why I did a brief press statement on it.
Best wishes with it, Matthew.
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Hard News: Why we thought what we thought, in reply to James George,
Everyone seems to accept that the Maori Party are firmly tucked into National’s back pocket come hell or high water. Is this a solidly based perception or would continuing revelations unglue them from their colonial masters?
The Native Affairs polls -- which consistently show that Maori electorate voters would strongly prefer the Maori Party to go with Labour if there is a choice will presumably not be lost on them.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to Angela Hart,
Once again Winston is able to take advantage of events to raise his profile and attractiveness to voters http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10450053/Peters-bottom-line
We need the inquiry he’s demanding.I tend to think this is quite significant. The highly evasive Peters has put down a bottom line that seems very likely to guide his choices after the election. Labour would be delighted to organise a Royal Commission and National would not want a bar of such a thing. It would be a massive dead rat to swallow.
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Hard News: Why we thought what we thought, in reply to Greg Dawson,
Agreed, the fb leaks are a new front unsupported by Hagers book – need someone to tell us whether we can just ignore all the fb ones as forgeries, or if it really is as bad as they make it out.
No – this is a very widespread misconception. The conversation is quoted in Hager’s book, on page 46. It’s noted as “Cameron Slater, Facebook messaging to and from Judith Collins, 11 September 2011.”
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