Posts by Russell Brown
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This might actually be this week's weirdest media thing.
Sean Plunket's bizarre cold-call to Patrick Gower implying that Gower was privy to the hacking on the basis of what a handful of listeners thought they recalled hearing him say.
It's staggeringly unprofessional of Plunket to not even try to find the original audio before calling a journalists working for the same company live on air and taunting him. WTF?
This copy of the audio was retrieved by one of my Twitter followers because it's been deleted by Radio Live. No wonder.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to CJM,
Jordan Williams was on last week on the afternoon of the Hager launch. Be very interesting to see if/when he next appears.
His boss, Stephen Franks, was hilarious today. He kept saying that he'd been away skiing and missed it all, so he might as well just pass on the whole thing.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Pete George,
Sorry if I've missed it Pete, but have you at any point devoted any of your unending outrage towards the actual hideous content of that rape conversation? Or expressed sympathy for the young women being targeted by these creeps?
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Hard News: Friday Music: A Strange Road, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
3 News has an interesting article on Watson’s decision to remove “Planet Key” from the web.
That is useful.
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Hard News: Friday Music: A Strange Road, in reply to bob daktari,
I’m picking Caribou for one of the best albums of the year, dudes a wicked producer
For the longest time I assumed they were an indie band I probably wouldn't like.
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Sigh.
Moreover, Hager’s supporters are no more entitled to claim the Whale Oil hacking was justified by Slater’s “feral” comments than those on the right could claim a Labour candidate’s recent despicable “Shylock” comments about Prime Minister John Key could ever justify such an action on their side of the ledger.
One odious comment in a Facebook thread, withdrawn, apologised for and condemned by the party leader. Versus: callous headlined vilification of an innocent and inhuman hurt to his family, neither apologised for by the author or actually condemned by the Prime Minister.
Indeed, this is what Slater told the Greymouth Star:
At 7.21am on Saturday, Mr Slater’s Whale Oil blog site carried a brief story on the crash under the heading, ‘Feral dies in Greymouth, did world a favour’.
When contacted by the Greymouth Star today, Mr Slater accepted that he did not know Mr Hall or his family, but justified the “feral” description by saying: “It is Greymouth, isn’t it? Didn’t Helen Clark say that you are all feral?”He said anybody travelling at 140kph in a car in a 50kph area was ‘feral’, whether on the West Coast or in south Auckland.
He did not regret the headline and would not be apologising for it.
“It’s a tragic situation but where is it written in the rule books that you have to take into account people’s feelings?” the blogger said.
Also: I’m not aware that many people are actually claiming justification for the hacking, even though Slater brags of the same in the book and is currently embroiled in a defamation case where he’s fighting to avoid revealing the source of stolen computer documents.
The point is that it has happened, and no investigative journalist would refuse these documents as evidence. Furthermore, the legal position is clear: public interest justifies the use of such material.
That editorial is a trainwreck.
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Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to Kumara Republic,
As with some recent past Listener editorials, it’s possibly either Pam Stirling, Jane Clifton or Bill Ralston. Joanne Black fits, but she bolted some time ago.
Not Pamela. She doesn't write them, but will have a a view on its conclusion.
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Felix Marwick has now released a second letter to him in the matter -- the one from the Ombudsman -- that clearly refers to Tucker having "a discussion with the Prime Minister" about the OIA release.
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Tucker has clarified that he briefed the Prime Minister "through his office", not the PM himself.
So we're back to to the scenario of a Prime Minister who is innocent of any and all doings in his own office, even where they involve the Security Intelligence Service, an extremely sensitive agency for which he is directly responsible.
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Great post by Paul Buchanan on the "everyone does it" argument.
