Hard News by Russell Brown

Question: Is TV3 News the television front end for the Whaleoil blog? If so, where does it fit?

I thought the Whaleoil blog was a side bar for the Heralds entertainment column.

When you have a large business with substantial assets you have to use unusual methods to get risky stories out there . Especially those involving people with a litigious reputation

I thought they were all wholly owned subsidaries of National Inc?

National Inc?

Ha! National Ink.... geddit ;)

The Press Council having more say over where compelled notices of correction/retraction are published is a great development. No more hiding the retraction in two column inches on A8 below the fold when the original sin was the whole front page.

Groucho Marx.

Clubs.

'Nuff said?

The Press Council having more say over where compelled notices of correction/retraction are published is a great development.

That is very good news. Having had that experience, another common one is to put it in a couple of lines at the end of an editorial. Complete waste of time for all concerned, except the lawyers.

My experiences with the Press Council is that they are weak as shit when it comes to inflammatory material eg when I registered a complaint about ACT acolyte Garry Mallet running a series of columns fostering race hatred under the guise of a 'Paid Advertisement' in a local community newspaper. The PC acknowledged that the columns were unfair and unethical but declined to do anything about them.

This certainly shows Fairfax and TRN in their true colours. I'm not sure how independent and free of obligations to their news sources holding love-ins with the National party in the venue of one of the Nats favourite pork recipients is.

If the Press Council is toothless, then what about the Commerce Commission?

In particular, Justice minister Judith Collins and Broadcasting minister Craig Foss rejected the Commission’s central proposal: that existing media standards bodies – the Broadcasting Standards Authority and the New Zealand Press Council plus the broadcasters’ new online standards spawn, OMSA – should be rolled up into a single, independent cross-media regulator.

Pity, that.

they oft prefer a liquid diet :)