Overdone Egg

Self-Righteous Puffing

One can't help but be amused at the brouhaha currently playing out in NZ politics.  One one side is the pompous, self-righteous "mainstream media" (who now, we hear, have a "spokesman"); on the other is the Prime Minister.  The argument is over Key's refusal to permit the release of a surreptitiously recorded conversation while Key and another politician sat in a public coffee bar and had a cup of tea.

For the past week, the media has made it the story, as if it were the great issue of the moment.  The public is simply not interested.  But the Commentariat is indignant.  The august self-important pretension of the media has been impugned.
  The Prime Minister has compared the tactics of the NZ Herald reporter to the scandalous behaviour of the News of the World.  He is right.  It is the thin edge of a very nasty wedge.  He has been perfectly right to refer the matter to the police.

Imagine for a moment the surreptitious tape had been released and it had contained damning information.  The law-breaking reporter would have secured his career and been handsomely rewarded.  The paper would have become a lion among the ferrets.  Then every media organ in the country would have decided they had to compete.  Within months, if not weeks, we would have been subjected to our own News of the World-type corruption.  

But the current media frenzy is all about being scorned and impugned.  What is pathetic is the media's attempt to make it the great issue of the moment, all the while blaming John Key for keeping it in the headlines, by not consenting to their demand that the tape be released.  They have confused the rights of a free press with the non-right of the press to break the law.  In disemboguing the contents of the media belly they have shown their self-interest up front and centre.  It is not pretty, but it is noisome.

Where it will all go, we do not know.  One thing though is it is not likely to influence the election away from Key.  If anything it will result in a firming of committed support, because most Kiwis believe in fair play, and suspect that the media is far, very far, from being an honest broker in this story.  The best outcome as far as the country is concerned is eventually charges being laid, the contents of the tape subsequently demonstrating it was an innocuous conversation, and the media being left with some very overdone, self-interested egg all over their faces.  Not their finest hour.  But probably one of  their most shamefully revealing.