Posts by Craig Ranapia
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OnPoint: "Project SPEARGUN underway", in reply to Paul Campbell,
I don’t think that Dotcom’s reveal is necessarily a fake, I just don’t think there’s good evidence either way, without some other conforming evidence it doesn’t particularly stand alone.
M'kay... I guess we're talking about Hollywood, hardly the home of sharp and convincing dialogue so who knows? But come on... for months, the media were being teased with the promise of irrefutable evidence that Key not only lied but was donkey deep in some convoluted immigration honey trap. To put it crudely, the moment of truth was one hell of a letdown after all the foreplay and trying to shut down questions is, at the very least, bad politics when you're trying to paint Key as someone so crooked he can't lie straight in bed.
Anyway, looks like Laila Harre is going to be on Nine to Noon soon, and it will be interesting to see how she plays this out.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to mark taslov,
You’re right about this too Craig. I should just zip it. Everyone deserves a second chance and David owning up to his involvement with Slater was one of the better things to come out of Dirty Politics.
No, I don't think there's a need to install a zip anywhere. Though no judgement if that's your bag, :) But, in the end, The Herald and David Fisher fairly reported a legitimate story -- one Dotcom himself had been talking up for months -- & it's not as if Greenwald et. al. have exactly been disappeared in that august organ or anywhere else. Everyone else gets to decide whether they're interested in it or not, in the end.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to nzlemming,
Agreed, but more important anyway.
Again, and with all due and sincere respect, I actually think it's very important that our immigration processes are not subject to blatant political interference at the behest of foreign governments and multinational corporations. Dotcom made incredibly serious claims, and for months has been promising he had irrefutable, rock solid evidence the Prime Minister lied and was complicit in such a conspiracy. He didn't deliver, and while it might be political inconvenient for Internet Mana to have that pointed out "do[ing] a Team Key" (as Keith put it) isn't good enough. Or it shouldn't be.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to mark taslov,
Visual. 4 days, there’s no public interest in this narrative. The driving concern for almost everyone who tuned in is mass surveillance of New Zealanders.
With all due respect, Mark, there's a lot of people in this country -- not least political refugees -- who'd really like to know their immigration status is not contingent on blatant political interference from the highest levels of government. Helen Clark used to be fond of saying that the secret to political success was to "under-promise and over-deliver." It's advice Dotcom should have taken, and I'm sorry if it's politically inconvenient for you that Fisher reported on that but I think the intemperate smack was unfair and out of order.
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Hard News: Dirty Politics, in reply to mark taslov,
David Fisher launches into his own spot of character assassination Dotcom turns up empty-handed to ’Moment of Truth’
Well, is our own Keith Ng a character assassin too, because he was… somewhat underwhelmed…
Let’s get this out of the way: The Warner Bros email was a complete clusterfuck. Faced with claims that the emails were fake, TeamDotcom did a TeamKey – they got Hone to send it off to the Privileges Committee then flat out refused to talk about it because, apparently, it needs to work through that process and talking about it would somethingsomethingsubjudicelookoverthere. They refused to talk about where it came from, and when asked whether it was fake, Kim Dotcom could only manage a “to the best of my knowledge” response, and said they weren’t there to talk about that email (contrary to what he’s been saying for months, right up to yesterday).
Basically, they have no confidence in the veracity of that email – and so neither should we.
Sorry Mark, but you don't get to have it both ways.
And he’s entirely correct, why would we? It’s marginal. 4 days out from an election and you’ve got 550 words to waste on someone who’s not even standing for Parliament. We read that news yesterday, find something of genuine public interest to do with your time you Slaterised hack.
So, it's not longer a matter of genuine public interest that Dotcom has been claiming for months he had irrefutable evidence that the Prime Minister not only lied but was donkey deep in a conspiracy to engage in political interference in immigration matters at the behest of a foreign corporation and the White House? Yeah, right...
In terms of political theatre, I’ve got to say The Moment of Truth was a gig where the support acts blew the headliner out of the water.
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Speaker: The End of Trust, in reply to Russell Brown,
Consumer PR companies pretty much hammer the producers of the 7pm shows every day with pitches for stories on products, events, ideas. There's nothing in particular wrong with that -- apart from the fact that lay viewers don't know how the stories came to be there. When you're trying to tell the world about your thing, it makes sense to pay for someone with the skills to do the telling.
With all due respect, Russell, I think there's everything wrong about it because it erodes the distinction between editorial and advertising. If you're treating some consumer product as a news story, then I think "lay viewers" shouldn't have to be media hep cats about where the story is coming from.
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Hard News: 2014: The Meth Election, in reply to SteveH,
One of the things I dislike about the Key government is the degree to which they’ve used urgency. I suspect it’s partly due to Key being an outsider to the system. But it also goes back to the arrogance: “we know best and we’re not going to bother listening to anyone else’s opinion”.
Which is terrible – then again, I’ve always been a bit of a purist about urgency only being used when… you know, there’s some degree of urgency like passing the Budget so the Government can pay the bills. That said, Steve, I really don’t think anyone who was terribly keen to retrospectively amend under extreme urgency the Electoral Act to avoid a by-election nobody really wanted (or could afford to contest) could be characterized as “outsiders”.
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to Sacha,
Those outlets are being stifled from publishing by continued legal action and their own corporate caution.
Oh, pardon me if I can't must too many crocodile tears for large media corporations who don't appear to have any problem whatsoever lawyering up and defending themselves against legal action -- which, you know, they're not actually immune from.
And who is paying Slater’s legal bills?
Does that actually matter? I'm sure there's plenty of people hereabouts who'd chip in if it was Nicky Hager taking legal action,
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Hard News: Privacy and the Public Interest, in reply to startswithj,
If 3 news, the NZ Herald and Fairfax are restricted from reporting issues that could be considered to be within the public interest, where does it stop?
I could flip the question and ask if you've got any problems with court-ordered name suppression -- a restriction responsible media outlets and bloggers operate under every day of the week. Not everything the public happens to be interested in is a matter of public interest.
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Speaker: Telling Our Own Tales, in reply to BruceR,
But the post by Gerard is about ‘national’ media (primarily television), that happen to be based in Auckland. Not about regional newspapers or regional radio or regional television.
True -- but that's a complaint that's been around a long time before the Christchurch quakes. Plenty of people in South and West Auckland could say with some exasperation, and more than a grain of truth, that they barely register on the "national" media radar unless there's photogenic property damage or a corpse involved. I certainly don't mean to be glib or dismissive of the thoughtful and heart-felt contributions made by Gerard or anyone else from Christchurch here, but they're not the only people ill served by the "if it bleeds it leads" mentality of too much media, let alone the thought processes that turned the Duchess of Cambridge's morning sickness into the most important news story in the world. Congrats to Willkat and all, but really?