Thursday 5 January 2012

Chutzpah Indeed

 Very Smelly

The poor old NZ Herald.  It claims to be New Zealand's Fishwrap of Record, but these days it is smelling decidedly stinky.  When anyone attempts to cloak naked self-interest by conjuring high moral principle the stench of decay usually becomes overwhelming.  And so it is in this case.  

Our Fishwrap of Record is continuing to beat up on the Crown seeking to recover costs from one over litigious journalist.  The "story" has been framed not just as a David versus Goliath struggle (although there has been plenty of that) but more importantly a struggle between individual freedom versus overreaching government power.  Now it is democracy itself which is at stake.  Wow.


The Fishwrap publicly has not just sided with the little oppressed guy (their reporter) but then wraps the whole package up with  "greater good" principle of the government having a duty to face up to legal challenges from its citizens and pay for them! Tomorrow doubtless world-peace will be at risk.

The events being pontificated upon are now a long-gone-news-dead story.  An aggressive reporter secretly tapes a private conversation between the Prime Minister and a politician of another political party; the PM refers the matter to the police, and the Fishwrap is injuncted against publishing the contents of the tape.  Whereupon, aggressive reporter goes to the High Court seeking summary judgment that the conversation was not private, therefore privacy laws did not apply.  The High Court tosses the matter out.  The aggressive reporter had incurred $40k worth of court costs (largely due to the Court having to treat the matter with urgency); the Crown seeks $14k in costs.

"Wrong!" fulminates the Fishwrap.  How so, asks the Innocent.  Surely the Fishwrap stood to gain money from a salacious scoop.  There are vital principles at stake here, apparently.  Our advice: never get in the way of a MSM organ trying to cover naked self-interest with high principle.  The attendant stench will induce inevitable nausea.

Key's claim, that a conversation between two politicians who had invited the news media to a crowded and stage-managed public event was private, was wet but it accomplished what he wanted: it kept secret the details of a matter of important public interest while the election campaign was on.

That alone was offensive to democracy but the latest move has a much worse stench about it, of an executive branch happy to use its power to penalise people who, implicitly or explicitly, ask inconvenient questions.
Go the Little Guy being persecuted by Big Brother.  But, says the NZ Herald--let's put this in perspective.  It is democracy which is offended.  Yes.  Democracy itself.  

No, the stench here is the Fishwrap trying to make itself righteously indignant appealing to the "bigger principles" all the while wanting to be able to act like the guttersnipe News of the World.  Now, we believe firmly that the bigger principle really is the issue of privacy versus illicit publication.  The bigger principle is one that brings the media itself into judgment.  And that principle is being tested, one way or the other.  The NZ Police will eventually conclude their investigation; charges will be laid or not.  Society will have an opportunity to consider carefully whether the current law has the balances right.  All well and good.

Why, then, the urgency of seeking a summary High Court declaration?  Because headlines were at stake.  And that has nothing to do with democracy and protecting the little guy or the freedom of the press.  And that declaration cost the taxpayers.  Costs have to be met by those who instigated the reckless legal action that was motivated, not by ethical or democratic principles, but by the commercial interests of the aggressive reporter.  And it also had everything to do with the NZ Herald's commercial interests.  Trying to cloak it by arguing high principle is odious in the extreme.  Just fess up, declare your interests, and move on.  The Fishwrap is embarrassing itself. 

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