Lets see what Face Like a Book says.......Mary Citizen.......in relationship with......ooooo I like researching......

Message to any WINZ target: Why not start imagining relationships with....um....interesting people.

Hmmm.. So it did not take very long to get from MSD…

Not necessarily. If you don't have someone in your web of contacts, you don't get to see…

The one thing that's apparently not interesting offshore is Ira Bailey's past associations – in Charles Anderson's post on the New York Times blogs, he's just "an information technology administrator". If only some locals could just let him be what he is.

"Our" own Neil Waka.......30 seconds in. Move jobs...to the dark side.

Bet the asking price really dropped in the past week.

I’d broadly agree with Hoyt – a lot less often than is the case. It’s simply absurd to see senior public servants and press secretaries demanding, let alone receiving, anonymity…

I believe that's always a press secretary, speaking with the approval of their employer, but with neither wishing to be fully accountable for the statement.

1) Was there any genuine public interest or journalistic defense for that anonymity?

2) And do you think the…

Really, Sacha – premature elision there. Because after the cut the quote continued...

to arrive at phrasing that will tell the reader as much as possible **about the placement and motivation of the source –…

You said:

You can speak truth to power, or you can choose to pimp your credibility for access

If you can't see the difference between that and this from the policy you cited:

Whenever anonymity is granted, it should…

I can't help but think that the Herald…

That’s nudging awfully close to a man-splain there, Sacha. I’ll just say I sleep perfectly well after deciding (with the full support of my editor) that I wasn’t going to be used by a local…

A major security failing at a major government department is newsworthy anywhere in the world. There's been coverage of this in Australian media (and not just the republication of my doom prophesy, either), as well as…

Yes, but I think it is my responsibility to call them on it as unethical behaviour.

(And it is arguable…

I would add that Ira Bailey — and possibly Keith Ng — knows the names of those who viewed his Linked In profile. That would be…

I don't know if…

Quite skillful use of associations by the spinmeisters, though, don't you think? Taps nicely into that broader discourse about risk and power, and trade-offs between public…

If the world were actually…

True, but I'm still convinced that if Ira had gone to a bigger outlet from the beginning, it'd be much less likely we'd have learned his name. Would it not be easy to justify not printing it…

Yep.

The name of someone leaking information is newsworthy. Ira Bailley's role in this is also newsworthy.

If someone in, for example, Radio NZ found proof that someone in the Minister's Office…

Well, two points:

1) It is possible for even the tiniest prole brain to think/care/get enormously fucked off…

She didn't have to print it, but if she got it on the understanding that she'd protect her source, she has to do that.

Once you decide Ira's name is part of the story, and you have it, if you make the…

Seems to me the distraction is still working.

Of course, part of the dance can be saying “well, I’m not going to run this unless you’re willing to go on the record and fully attributable” – which journalists do all…

But did she have to print it ? If she felt she had to, in order to ensure that she got future tip offs, then she is no longer acting as a journalist, and is merely acting…

Imperator Fish has a nice piece: A Day in the Life of Paula Bennett

I assured the media today that I have not seen anyone in this government taking a cavalier attitude towards the privacy of others. It's why I had…

Yes, it's become a National standard.

But if you're given the name, you have to justify not printing it. And if you spit the dummy and say it came from (let's say) the…

That seems considerably more likely than the source being the ministry, given Boyle's comprehensive denial, Bennett's disinclination to get to the bottom of it and the…

Kind of revealing, some might say. The part about not wanting to ask her staff directly sounds awfully familiar.. coughjohnbankscough

To me this seems like the bigger media outlets getting back at a…

Fine, and the next time her employer wants to take the editorial high moral ground about political/public sector accountability and transparency (to paraphrase Julia Gillard) they should look in a mirror first.

You’re…

I'm naive enough to think when a very senior civil servant gets a heads up that a shit-storm is about to break over his ministry, he'd be on top of the response. Then again, it seems nobody is accountable for…

I don't see how he could possibly know for certain. Chances are there were many employees who knew…

By the name alone he sounds like an axe wielding madman from the Gorbals whose very presence should be feared. But what is in a name ? a nose by any other name would smell.

Claire 'everyone else but me' Trivett does the forth estate no favours by demanding they be allowed to keep their sources secret while gleefully printing them when they aren't their own.

At least…

If the story did come from within the MSD, either Boyle (who is the chief executive of a major ministry of state) is a mendacious bastard whose staff were cold-bloodedly prepared to “out” a political embarrassment, and lied about it with impunity.

Option B: He doesn’t have a…

He sounds like a decent man. So where is his information coming from?

And that;s fair enough, as far as it goes. But…