Posts by Matthew Poole
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You're assuming this was an unintended consequence.
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Even without making membership of a body a condition, it’s not a big ask to require a level of integrity and honesty in order to qualify as a journalist; which is what the judge appears to be saying. By his own admission Slater acts as a paid shill, without disclaimers of such. “Proper” media either tag such content as advertorial or, at a minimum, have disclosure statements at the article’s close. If you’re taking money to spread someone else’s lines, and not making it obvious which bits are yours and which bits are theirs, you’re not a journalist you’re an advertiser.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Sorry, if we’re going to apply the Blackie Standard let’s do it consistently and in my book getting a story a little bit wrong is like being a little bit pregnant. At least, it would be if it was my reputation attached.
Sure, but perfection is an impossible ask of humans. Media getting it wrong is not a recent development. So having established that no outlet, regardless of the level of professionalism of its staff, will ever be in a position to never publish a retraction, how would you wish to measure the inaccuracy level in a way that fairly reflects that bigger newsrooms have more humans involved so thus have more moving parts to fail? It's not an unreasonable question, Craig.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Paul Williams,
I’m going to say three times in any one calendar year. I’m not allowed to fuck up that often.
But three times per year per journalist would still be quite a lot of fuck-ups aggregated across dozens of journalists in a big newsroom. Could be a retraction a week without breaching your threshold.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
So, how many times does a journalist or media outlet have to (say) end up issuing a partial or full retraction of a story before they don’t count any more? How about a newspaper that ends up sacking a reporter for printing stories that were entirely fabricated – that’s about as abusive, unprofessional and prick-like as a journalist can get in my book.
Would that be retractions against total articles published? Because that's the only fair metric I can conceive of in the circumstances and it's going to be a pretty minuscule percentage for all the main outlets. If it's just a raw total, if I publish two articles and have to make one retraction I'm still going to come out looking much better than an outlet that publishes a thousand articles and publishes two retractions.
As for the fabricating journalist, you mentioned that they lost their job. What else, exactly, would you have the publisher do? Slater is certainly not going to sack himself from his own blog.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Paul Williams,
By this I mean consistently being a partisan hack with the odd news story mightn't meet the test and therefore not afford the protections?
Toss in being convicted for contempt after breaching a suppression order, too, which is something that "real" media treats as a third-rail issue. Slater has form for behaving in ways that actual, proper journalists don't. It's ironic that he's now begging for protection from the same courts for which he shows such disregard.
It's really hard to see this is a decision which affects PAS or Keith, to be honest. Keith isn't just a blogger, for one, and PAS isn't anywhere near as vile and partisan as WO. Slater goes out of his way to engage in personal attacks and behave in a way that is far removed from cognisant of anything that might be called professional ethics. If you want to be called a "news medium" and a "journalist", fucking behave like one.
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Speaker: TPP: Nearing Endgame, in reply to Stephen R,
Is there a link for that? I’d have thought the courts would throw that one out on the grounds of double-jeopardy (already having had one crack at it).
He's not making it up, though I don't have a supporting link. Aus has a trade agreement with Hong Kong that provides protection against such regulation, at least in theory, so after failing to bring a case for breach of the Australian Constitution around unjust deprivation of property PM shifted action to their new Hong Kong branch and brought suit under the Aus-HK agreement.
Double-jeopardy is a criminal law concept, not civil law, and is only valid for a single jurisdiction. Since the removal from the Australian federal court system to the WTO's tribunals changed the jurisdiction, even if double-jeopardy was part of the civil law it would still be the first time that the WTO had seen the case.
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Speaker: TPP: Nearing Endgame, in reply to Moz,
the answer seems to be that our parliament is not revolting.
Was more meaning the US than us, but certainly elements of both parliaments are revolting. It's just that, both there and here, it's the minorities in the empowered bodies that are revolting. In the US it's the Republicans who are gagging to seal the TPP deal, and they control the House, and in NZ it's National who are desperate to sell us out and they're the ones who control the Executive. That it's the presidentially-aligned Democrats who disapprove of the President's stance on completing the deal is merely an amusing footnote.
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Speaker: TPP: Nearing Endgame, in reply to Moz,
The only way to “win” there is to make, and keep, your laws so corporate-friendly that there’s no possible grounds for a court case. “win”.
You mean, much in keeping with the current situation, then?
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Speaker: TPP: Nearing Endgame, in reply to Hadyn Green,
And from what I understand the TPP is largely similar to that FTA
IOW, Australia is taking the position "We got fucked, so now we're going to try and make sure you get fucked too."