Hard News: Criminalising Journalism
318 Responses
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
are crime rates decreasing?
Yes, they are, and have been for a lot of years. An ageing population tends to do that, because males aged 15-45 are the majority of criminals. As the Boomers age out of that bracket, crime rates reduce. It’s a trend right across the western world.
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Did three just put the knife in there, or was I dreaming?
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Paul Williams, in reply to
As I said on the other thread, the trade and youth policies released yesterday (by National & Labour respectively) may have been a big yawn to Russell. They certainly weren’t considered worth any airtime on Morning Report (allegedly a flagship morning news program on a public broadcaster) today.
I accept your point entirely Craig, this is a distraction but it's not an unimportant one, which is what I think others are saying. On the one hand, it's just theatre, but on the other it has relevance to far more significant matters including, as I've said previously, asset sales (to saying nothing of Russell's argument about press freedoms).
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Sacha, in reply to
our pm is in real trouble
Apparently not. One News/Colmar Brunton polling over the last 5 days shows no impact on National or Key's popularity. Shit like roses; can govern alone.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
who cares what’s in the detail if you need to question the veracity of the salesman, and our pm is in real trouble in this context
Really? Some people would consider adultery a mark of bad character, and if had come out in the 1928 New York gubernatorial campaign that the Democratic candidate’s wife had offered to divorce him so he could live with his mistress American political history would have been very different.
The man’s name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt by the way. I think history would consider the details of the policies he enacted a little more important than his appalling treatment of his wife.
To quote a wonderful line from The West Wing, voters get to decide the yardstick they use to measure candidates - and "character" is one of them. I'm just suggesting that media outlets also need to be asked a few hard questions about the news judgement being shown.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Apparently the Herald's polling may contain quite a different picture tomorrow. I'm giving iPredict the most heed myself.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Chris Trotter made an interesting observation on The Panel about the possibility of cops being filmed raiding news organisation offices and what a disaster that would be for Key/National.
I think that's a certainty. National should hope that the organisations going to court delay the execution of the warrants until after polling day.
Thing to watch for tomorrow is Bradley Ambrose going for his declaratory judgement that the conversation was not private under the law. That would sink the whole thing.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Apparently the Herald’s polling may contain quite a different picture tomorrow. I’m giving iPredict the most heed myself.
Or not. I think Tim Murphy was teasing with that tweet.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Thing to watch for tomorrow is Bradley Ambrose going for his declaratory judgement that the conversation was not private under the law. That would sink the whole thing.
Golly, you mean Bradley Ambrose exercising his right to seek recourse under law? Scandalous!
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But surely that is the point, the integrity of the person trying to sell the policy is crucial, who cares what’s in the detail if you need to question the veracity of the salesman, and our pm is in real trouble in this context
Given National's decision to promote Brand Key as the identity of their government, I think it is critical that we know if it is real or simply a carefully orchestrated false persona. It appears that the tapes may give us some insight on this.
Did three just put the knife in there, or was I dreaming?
They went hard, didn't they? Note to National: Honeymoon with Garner and Gower is officially over.
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Sacha, in reply to
Apparently the Herald's polling may contain quite a different picture tomorrow.
Someone just tweeted that 3 news had a different conclusion too.
And here's the transcript of Winston freestyling in Invercarrrgil.
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Thing to watch for tomorrow is Bradley Ambrose going for his declaratory judgement that the conversation was not private under the law. That would sink the whole thing.
Or launch the whole thing -- depends how you look at it! ;-)
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Sacha, in reply to
Bradley Ambrose going for his declaratory judgement
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A very nice reference to Roosevelt, he certainly was America for a considerable time, and i agree, however has this not become, by design potentially, an issue of integrity firstly, and a quite distinct issue on ‘media’ to simply deflect from the initial issue?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Someone just tweeted that 3 news had a different conclusion too.
Been fascinating flicking back and forth watching One News and Three putting radically different editorial top spin on damn-near identical polls.
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Kracklite, in reply to
It would be nice if they tried, just a little… etc
All true, but democracy is messy and often good is done by accident. While the specific event of a tape of a conversation over a cup of tea is turned into a national soap opera, pushing out discussion of other policies, the essential constitutional matter is actually of vital concern. These individual policies are indeed more important than cups of tea and who has the best-placed deck-chair on the White Star liner that is ACT, but the constitutional matter of a Prime Minister, who will seemingly by accident, use the police to suppress investigation of his electioneering are more important.
It’s all very well to talk of the abstractions of constitutionality (specificially, the importance of press freedom), but if that narrative doesn’t carry, then I’m satisfied to see it conducted in such vulgar terms in preference to it not being presented at all. It does represent an universal, timeless and essential principle. In the absence of Cicero (or Spider Jerusalem and his trusty bowel disruptor), I’ll settle, however reluctantly, for Ron Burgundy.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Russell’s argument about press freedoms).
I'm genuinely angry about this.
It is a terrible thing to be happening a week out from a general election for news organisations to be subjected to a police search -- which may well mean the seizure of some of their computers, with all the sensitive information on those -- because they covered a campaign news story.
The decision to make the complaint speaks of stupidity, entitlement, or both.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
It's an interesting question though: Would FDR's adultery and Churchill's heavy drinking and severe depressive episodes make them both unelectable today? And would the world have been a better place if the media then was more like it is now?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
All true, but democracy is messy and often good is done by accident.
Well, that's nice - media outlets don't make their editorial judgements by accident. That's not some airy-fairy abstraction but a simple reality I'm frankly sick of repeating. And I'm sure everyone else is sick of listening to me do so, so I'm out for the evening.
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BenWilson, in reply to
It's an interesting question though: Would FDR's adultery and Churchill's heavy drinking and severe depressive episodes make them both unelectable today? And would the world have been a better place if the media then was more like it is now?
Yes, and yes. Many things that happened might not have happened, if people had been widely aware that they were happening. Most especially, this is the case within the Axis countries.
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Kracklite, in reply to
I’d imagine that they’d kill their campaigns and the world would be a poorer place… if FDR and Churchill campaigned as they did then, but both were highly intelligent and charismatic people. What sort of context would they construct about each other now, if they were around now, fully aware of the state of the media as it is now?
The 1930s weren’t a more innocent time of politics (outside of Germany and the Soviet Union) by any means – both H. G. Wells and George Orwell were making a lot of jokes in their novels about the compromises, corruption and manipulation of the media in their own times. Wells’ Men Like Gods parodies Churchill, (who was a friend of his and even quoted his work in speeches) and Orwell… made his broadcasts during the war from Room 101 and the head of the BBC, Brendan Bracken, was nicknamed “BB” (just a hop to "Big Brother").
My roving vote right now is drifting towards Hubertus Bigend, by the way…
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Sacha, in reply to
Do you really believe adultery is as central to a politician's trustworthiness in office as say lying is?
Unless a politician is taking a public stance on the scanctity of marriage, it doesn't seem equivalent to more obviously political underhandedness and deceit.
This was not after all some private personal chat between chums, but a highly stage-managed political event with invited media. And the content of the conversation appears to be at odds with other statements made by the same people both before and since.
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Ana Simkiss, in reply to
Interesting development, but I really doubt a civil proceeding of this kind is the appropriate procedure. My sense is that the High Court might agree and/ or it will get spun out beyond the election. Let's see.
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What I do not understand about the allegations of soap operatic-ism is that the alleged contents of the tea tapes are (a) a discussion of the future of the Act Party indicating they are a wholly owned subsidiary of National, and (b) a discussion of the electoral prospects of another party based on demographic trends. Sounds pretty much like important political news to me.
Then we follow up with the Prime Minister refusing to talk about it, and the police searching the premises of the leading national news organisations a week out from an election.
Those are real issues that matter to Kiwis.
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Our political humiliation goes international.
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