Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to andin,
But as a New Zealander I wonder why john Key is inserting himself into the funeral process and going, it feels wrong somehow.
“Inserting himself”? I really really get that you don’t like the man, but that’s a pretty offensive characterization of the duly elected Prime Minister of this country attending a state funeral he doesn’t exactly need to crash.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Kracklite,
This is about Nelson Mandela. Forget me, honour him.
Please do, Kraklite – I’m glad if you’ve never done or said anything in your life you later had cause to regret, because Nelson Mandela did. One thing I admire Mandela for is his frank admission that during his tenure as President, the government he lead tragically dropped the ball when it came to HIV-AIDS. That should never be forgotten (or forgiven), but neither should this.
In 2003 Mandela began to speak out plainly and forcefully about AIDS. And he acted. He created a foundation to fight HIV/AIDS, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and began a fundraising campaign to support HIV prevention and public health efforts called 46664, his identification number when he was imprisoned by the apartheid government on Robben Island. For the rest of his life he urged people to talk about HIV/AIDS “to make it appear like a normal illness.” And he used his reputation to make HIV prevention and AIDS treatment an international issue. In his retirement, he put AIDS at the top of his personal agenda.
And then Mandela personally experienced the horrible price of his early stumble against AIDS.
On Jan. 6, 2005, Mandela shocked the world when he summoned the media to his Johannesburg residence to announce his sole surviving son, Makgatho, 54, had died that morning. Mandela was forthright about the cause: “My son has died from AIDS.”
It not only took sheer decency to do any of that, but it really mattered within South Africa that someone with the mana of Mandela was not only directly confronting lies and myths about AIDS, but clearly calling out the lethal AIDS denialism within his own party, and coming from his own hand-picked successor.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Kumara Republic,
While bollocks is being called on those who originally blacklisted Mandela but now memory-hole/rewrite history
Hey, let’s hope the same vitriol is being poured on Robert Mugabe’s who only this May was attacking Mandela for "being too saintly” towards “non-black communities". Just don't have words that would be fit for the occasion or this thread.
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Only Matthew Hooton could use Mandelas’ death to give respect to Regan, Thatcher and de Klerk.
You know what, William, I know a lot of expat South Africans who were absolutely convinced that apartheid’s end was inevitable – in an unspeakably brutal civil war. (I’d recommend doing some reading, and try to grasp that a peaceful transition from apartheid was very far from inevitable. That's down to the good faith and political courage of both Mandela, de Klerk and many others on both sides.) Mandela was no plaster saint – he was a flawed human being who made plenty of mistakes, and its going to take some time and distance to see his complex, ambiguous exquisitely human legacy clearly – but everyone who played a part in avoiding what would have been a humanitarian disaster deserves our gratitude. And a little of Mandela’s grace.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to DexterX,
The judgment here is not the end of the world, it would be a twisted world that casts Slater as a champion of the rights of others.
Oh, FFS, Dexter. It would be really nice if the freedoms we enjoy had been won -- and defended -- by saintly people with pure motives we'd all like to hang out with. They weren't, and I doubt that's ever going to change because people don't work like that.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to WH,
Blomfield puts it this way:
[WhaleOil] doesn’t check facts. He doesn’t research, investigate, or otherwise seek balance. He has no regard for anyone’s rights except his own. He has no time for anyone whose views don’t accord with his own. […]
Mr Slater is no more a journalist than he is a brain surgeon.
And I’d most disrespectfully suggest Mr. Blomfield take the proceedings of the Leveson Inquiry to whatever beach he intends to holiday at…
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Keir Leslie,
And I don’t think that if you call up Slater and say “here’s some slanderous stuff I can’t say, but you do it and I’ll make it worth your while” (which is definitely a thing that people seriously claim Slater to do, and which would be outrageously scandalous if the NBR or the DomPost did) you should be protected by media shield law.
And nor do I think a plaintiff should be able to force a journalist to disclose a source just by alleging that happened. I think someone should be thinking a little more deeply that Blackie about whether that's a desirable precedent to set.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Matthew Poole,
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.
It is a perfectly reasonable question. But surely, when you have the staff and resources of a New Zealand Herald or a New York Times they should be held to a slightly higher standard of oversight and accountability that those eeevil blogs? Or is the new normal not “too big to fail” but “too big to be responsible for anything”?
Oh, and out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can be made but yeah... you think someone at the Herald on Sunday could have saved themselves a lot of angst (and an unusually strongly worded and signed retraction/apology) by asking Sharon Shipton herself if she had separated from her husband.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Matthew Poole,
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.
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 (or just making it up) is like being a little bit pregnant. Look, I'm not carrying any water for Cameron Slater, but I really that much of the "real" media is sitting too comfortably atop that moral high horse.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
How about: “a medium for the responsible dissemination to the public or a section of the public of news and relevant observations on news”
Well, Ian, find me a tabloid scumbag who won’t argue until the heat death of the universe that that fits them like a bespoke Saville Row suit.
It would be nicer if it were more developed and clearer but I think he’s gesturing towards a reasonably good principle that if you’re an abusive unprofessional dickhead, you can’t shelter yourself and your sources behind a profession you aren’t part of.
You know, this could be a fascinating precedent. 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.