Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to BenWilson,
Man this is quite hilarious. Talk about getting made an absolute fool of on camera. Banks, you're toast. No one like slippery evasion, memory loss, sudden memory clarity when presented with a transcript, stonewalling, and a walk away.
It was brutal -- especially the tottering-off-into-the-distance shot at the end.
But it did need Banks to come to the party, so to speak.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Meanwhile, I thought Morning Report was supposed to be a quality news source.
Just listened to three party leaders – Goff, Brash and Peters – and not one policy related question.
Labour did release its youth affairs policy yesterday, so I suppose that could have been discussed. Perhaps it will be later in the programme. They've been pretty good on that score.
National also released its trade policy, which was profoundly unsurprising apart from the volume of cheerleading for TPPA. Although Key fronted that.
But they're hardly going to ignore what has become the story of the 2011 campaign. Especially when the new Fairfax poll suggests it's really going titsup in Epsom.
If teapotgate is a “distraction” from “real issues”, perhaps National Radio could try focusing on its basic responsibility as a public broadcaster? This is beyond ridiculous and it can’t all be put on Key.
Peter Goodfellow withdrew from Morning Report today after promising to come on and talk about Epsom. He burped up what is now clearly the agreed line: that he was only interested in talking about "issues that are important to New Zealanders".
Yeah, well, funny he should be saying that to Radio New Zealand, whose policy Q&A was disgracefully snubbed by National.
And how odd that they won't talk about something they staged a media event about just last week. I have no sympathy whatsoever.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Key’s popularity has partly been based on his appearance of being above politics, an affable, likeable chap, not a politician really. Nothing could be more fatal to that image than a tape of him talking hard politics to a politician. That’s why it doesn’t matter what the details of the tape are. What matters is that it will show he’s a politician like all the rest.
I think so.
And the response has been to double down by pretending that he's some poor citizen -- a parent! of children! -- cruelly bugged by the evil media, rather than a political leader doing a media stunt. In doing so they've basically bet the farm on continued public faith in Key's persona.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to PaulC,
Hooten, farrer and slater, the three hobbits, will be going out of their minds to spin this, seriously, has there ever been a worse election campaign anywhere?
Other countries have election campaigns where people get shot, so yes.
But this is certainly turning pretty bloody weird for what was supposed to be a stroll to victory.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Ana Simkiss,
It is possible Mr Hosking has very strong feelings about privacy and the like given the trouble (and cost!) of his unsuccessful case for breach of privacy against various media (Court of Appeal decision available here for the masochistic). I would not blame him at all if he had a bit of an axe to grind.
I would have thought he'd be able to spot the difference between a tabloid snapper stalking his family in the street and an open mic at a media event. And between that and some fictional conversation about a suicidal child, or the hacking of a dead girl's phone in a way that caused unfathomable distress to her family.
I remain of the view that it was an idiotic comment.
PS: I should note that I was vocally on Hosking's side in the paparazzi case, back when I was hosting Mediawatch. I just think he's pathetically wrong on this one.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to merc,
Oh and I got the feeling that the media wanted to stay but realise Key’s (Joyce?) gameplan to bait them then pillory them. Sort of mad brave.
Key told the journalists he would answer questions on the tape, after the trade issues were discussed.
When they eventually did ask those questions, he refused to answer and did his walkout. The widespread believe now is that it was planned, to, as Tracey Watkins puts it, drive a wedge between the public and the media.
If it's a stunt, it's a bloody risky one. And even if they win the battle, this is the press they will have to deal with for the next three years. They really do think they're bulletproof.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Steve Barnes,
ETA2: I can’t think of a policy more likely to cause an instant spike in crime than to put people who not only haven’t got a job, but now are even more unlikely to get one, and who have a drug habit to support, to have no means to support themselves.
+2
And me -- with the proviso that it's not really new policy because people who fail to get to job interviews because they're off their faces are already marked down as failing to attend interviews.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Sacha,
Not if the whole thing is successfully being played to his talkback base as being “principled”.
I think there's a lot of professional bitchiness going on around this.
How hard is to to grasp that the contents of the recording could fall short of damn-the-torpedoes public interest and still be a bloody good story?
The idea that it's binary -- if it's not "overwhelmingly public interest" is must therefore be "nothing" -- is really silly.
Also: fuck knows what Hosking's on. But I don't want any.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
(And before anyone starts waxing conspiratorial, I do not feel the presence of Darth Joyce. Smells like a good old-fashioned media sledge-fight to me. Ambrose was just unlucky enough to be a good hook.)
Nah, quite. This'll be one they cooked up from ingredients already to hand.
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Hard News: The perils of political confidence, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
One might also think Mr. Joyce should be very careful about defaming anyone while wearing his campaign chair hat. He only has the tax-payer picking up his legal bills for defamation actions when acting as a Minister.
There's zero chance of a newspaper taking defamation action in such circumstances -- or, indeed, at almost any time. Like Joyce himself, the HoS doesn't lack for a platform to put its views,