Hard News: The Press, Privacy and The Paps
155 Responses
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I do find it interesting. But not interesting enough to violate my own ethic on the matter, which is that giving attention to such news encourages it.
The media's obsession with and (over-)reaction to, trivial shite is interesting, for sure. But that needs to be separated, as much as is possible, from the news itself, which just....isn't.
And I use 'interesting' in the sense of 'living in interesting times'.
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No, I meant I find the question of the lesbianism interesting. The media's interest in trivial shite is not, it's long established, and easily explained - gossip sells copy. I guess it just flashed through my mind "how would I feel if details of my sex life were made public that I didn't particularly want to be?". The answer was "not very good". I don't want to be part of doing something not very good to someone innocent of anything.
For sure, my contribution to that harm is tiny. But it's also no effort to avoid. It's about as hard as not staring at a woman's breasts.
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Off Topic
I'll take a wild guess and say about 1/3 of the little girls in Dunnes could pass for that poor little girl Madeline McCann .The desperation and frustration of the parents is understandable.
The real story would be if Sensing Bullsh!t have an angle on this one.
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Just thinking, I'm intrigued that it was a store security person who had alarmbells triggered...yup, she wasnt an unusual-looking little girl (aside from her splayed pupil) but it was the *bloke's* behaviour that alerted guard...
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But if Mau is going to take a position in debates like this on TV, rather than just being a "neutral" autocue reader, does that make her outing by a woman's mag closer to the "public interest" than otherwise?
You know something, Philip, if Paul Henry is going to base his "brand" on vocalising whatever bigoted fuck-wittery flickers across what I shall generously call his brain, I'd appreciate it if his stooges would tell him to STFU more often. I'm reliably informed that there are plenty of folks at TVNZ who find Henry's mouth-farts an embarrassment, but keep their concerns to themselves. It's pretty obvious that management aren't interested in listening -- and with the prospect of another round of lay-offs, this isn't the time to get on anyone's shit list for having an "attitude problem".
This gay man would also respectfully suggest that you don't have to be a man who likes the cock (or a "lady-lover" with a vagina) to say that homophobia is not OK. And, personally, I say more power to people like Mau who aren't going to keep quiet and eat shit from arse-hats like Henry.
Finally, and just for the record, I don't see a legitimate public interest in where Simon Dallow's parking his (presumably straight as a spirit level) Willie Wonka nowadays either.
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OK, Philip, I should leave this alone but there's something else here that really pissed me off.
If I understand the train of thought here: Alison Mau called bullshit on a typical Paul Henry slur against GLBT parents. Therefore, there is now a public interest justification for Ratshit Glaucoma printing some salacious tittle-tattle about Mau allegedly being a "lady-lover".
Well, that's disturbingly close to a half-arsed defence of outing on Mediawatch a few weeks back from Jock Anderson (currently at the NBR, ex-chief reporter for the rag that outed Marilyn Waring). He opined that outing is justified in the case of people "in important positions of public policy" unspecified people "might have concerns about". To his (small) credit, he acknowledged that someone who reads an auto-cue at TVNZ doesn't fit that definition, but still WTF? So, LGBT civil servants don't have the same expectation of privacy as their straight colleagues because... homophobia is its own justification?
I know a few impeccably professional non-heterosexual teachers, police officers, health care professionals and civil servants (including the current Attorney-General & Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations) who would beg to differ.
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Well said, Craig. Philip, no, outing homosexuals is never in the public interest, unless they do it themselves. This particular member of the public remains determinedly uninterested.
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I find the question of the lesbianism interesting. The media's interest in trivial shite is not, it's long established, and easily explained - gossip sells copy.
Well, for me, the sexual orientation thing falls into the category of 'trival shite'. I'm just bemused that as a society we still find the question of who you shack up with an issue. I'm not really interested in which public figures are gay in the same way that I'm not really interested which ones are straight. Although clearly a lot of people are, and that has to be acknowledged.
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Craig and Ben: fair enough. It did occur to me that if Mau is taking a strong on-air position on same-sex relationships -- and good on her -- then her own relationship might not be irrelevant.
outing homosexuals is never in the public interest, unless they do it themselves.
Never? What about, for example, Ted Haggard?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article627349.ece
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I sometimes think, whenever "public interest" is discussed, that there's misunderstanding about what the term means.
As I understand it, "public interest" doesn't mean what is "of interest" to the public but what is in the interest(s) of the public; i.e. concerning the welfare of the public.
(I think the roots of the word are something about making a difference.)
That indicates to me that: just because something is interesting doesn't necessarily mean you have a right to tell the public. To qualify for that, it must be something that concerns the welfare of the public.
I can't see any way that someone's sexual orientation affects public welfare (though it might be argued that a politician's infidelity to a partner is an indication of lack of honesty).
On another point, I note that people buy and read newspapers that have gossip in them. I'm not always clear that the fact that there's a market for something is enough reason to make a product available (I know there's a market for marijuana, snuff movies, homeopathic remedies and cocaine - but not at all sure which of these should be made available to the public.)
(And I've learned to be wary of anyone who is sure about this sort of thing....) -
Craig and Ben: fair enough. It did occur to me that if Mau is taking a strong on-air position on same-sex relationships -- and good on her -- then her own relationship might not be irrelevant.
Meh... Well, Philip, using that logic it might "not be irrelevant" that someone who likes taking gutter shots at "unnatural" same-sex couples and their families couldn't keep his own marriage together -- a little factoid he was very keen to keep out of the media. But that's just playing his game by his rules, isn't it?
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I sometimes think, whenever "public interest" is discussed, that there's misunderstanding about what the term means.
Mikaere made this point upthread, but in C.
Never? What about, for example, Ted Haggard?
Now there's a poser. I guess you got me. Perhaps outing publicly homophobic homosexuals is a tiny bit in the public interest. Blatant hypocrisy does rather undermine the talking points, is kind of relevant. Technically it's a Tu Quoque, but I've said before that logical fallacies don't necessarily crush real world arguments.
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Never? What about, for example, Ted Haggard?
Um, you mean the married evangelical preacher who was scoring drugs off a prostitute -- something that would still be a crime in the great state of Colorado even if the hooker-dealer concerned was a woman?
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Never? What about, for example, Ted Haggard?
I don't think the public was terribly well served by his outing (if you can call it that, given that he didn't actually admit to any hot man-on-man action.) However, his congregation had explicit standards of behaviour (public and private) that they expected from their pastor, and he violated those, so from that angle it was almost the equivalent of an employment issue. The public titillation surrounding those events wasn't sufficient justification for the news being discussed in such detail in the media, though.
Even so, I'm not going to lie: I found the whole episode hilariously funny. But the only way I could do that is by refusing to consider Haggard a real person instead of just some unfeeling stereotype-which, of course, is exactly what he and others like him have done to homosexuals for years. I have no doubt there's a very real, very personal tragedy underneath all the schadenfreude, and I recognise the ultimate aim here really should be some kind of moral consistency from all involved, myself included.
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he didn't actually admit to any hot man-on-man action
I don't think there's any serious doubt about said action. This is Haggard's wife talking in the NY Daily News a little over a month ago:
Haggard admitted that her husband, who once led a church of nearly 14,000 worshipers, had a homosexual relationship early in their marriage.
"I think at that point I was ignorant of the gravity," she said.
"I felt as though, you know, we all struggle, you know, in different areas of our lives, and certainly in our sexuality, so I was willing to forgive him."
Haggard said he sought counseling then, and told her it wouldn't happen again.
"I felt as though the problem was pretty much solved," she said. But "it would reemerge in his life from time to time, and he wouldn't tell me about it."
Haggard also recounted the moment she learned there was "some truth" to the 2006 claims of drugs and gay sex that disgraced the religious leader, who at his height reportedly consulted with President George W. Bush.
To me, the public interest here isn't just the hypocrisy of an influential evangelist getting caught doing what he speaks against; it is that his story illustrates the sheer falsity of the idea -- still promoted by Haggard and others like him -- that homosexuality is a disorder that can be cured through counseling. If you're going to define your sexuality as a "struggle" -- rather than accept it and ask others to accept it -- this is what happens, right?
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I was far more uncomfortable with the toilet stall senator's outing, what's his name? Anyhow, there was hipocrisy there too, but I recall far too little outcry form the Left at the practice of planting policemen in public toilets to round up homosexuals.
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Yes, and Brash's alleged affair was certainly received with far more relish than it should have been.
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I don't think there's any serious doubt about said action.
I agree, and my wording was probably a little on the flippant side. I guess I should have said "He didn't exactly say he was gay" which is a slightly different point. The denial that someone can actually be gay (rather than just "perverted" or whatever) is part and parcel of fundamentalist Christianity.
To me, the public interest here isn't just the hypocrisy of an influential evangelist getting caught doing what he speaks against; it is that his story illustrates the sheer falsity of the idea -- still promoted by Haggard and others like him -- that homosexuality is a disorder that can be cured through counseling.
Well, this is where I admit to having problems with the public attention. Is it newsworthy that a man who preaches hate and lies about homosexuality is revealed to privately perform homosexual acts? The progressive in me says "Yes! Everything we can do to break these people down, and to show gay teens that the people who claim to hate them are just turning their self-doubts outwards is justified!" The classical liberal in me says "Play the ball, not the man. Whatever he does in his private life is private. Treat him the way you'd want to be treated yourself, even if he repeatedly shows he doesn't want to live up to the same standard, because the fight itself is ultimately about respecting people's right to live their lives how they want."
Like I said, at the time, I found the whole thing funny, and I kind of still do. But even if we rightly mock the guy for "struggling" with his sexuality, I still feel like it's easy to forget that we all go through our own struggles internally, and have something like a right not to be casually mocked for being human underneath it all.
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The classical liberal in me says "Play the ball, not the man. Whatever he does in his private life is private.
I find it takes on new perspective once you consider that it's harassing a person for being gay/bi/other not entirely straight classifications, and struggling with it, as many other people do.
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Eugenics and vial bodies...
Good old Brighton, Good old Christchurch...
Nice to see The Press (Fairfax) running ads for TradeMe (Fairfax) masquerading as front page stories... -
Nice to see The Press (Fairfax) running ads for TradeMe (Fairfax) masquerading as front page stories...
It's SOP for Fairfax nowadays. The Dompost is particularly bad -- TradeMe spokespeople are great for quotes regardless of field of enquiry.
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far more relish
Goes with corned beef :)
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If you're going to define your sexuality as a "struggle" -- rather than accept it and ask others to accept it -- this is what happens, right?
Philip: Would I be totally out of line in presuming you're straight, and your understanding of the process involved in coming out is entirely theoretical? When I got seriously involved in the National Party, I was so far out of the closet that I didn't have anywhere to hang my coat. But I didn't end up in that place by magic -- and there was quite a long period in my life where being maliciously outed could have been catastrophic. Do you have an inkling of what it's like living with the gnawing fear that saying those two words -- an ill-judged word or touch, trusting the wrong person -- could destroy every relationship you know?
And that's without living in a place where that could have, quite literally, been a matter of life and death or being subjected to years of psychological and physical torture. It's very easy to forget that there's a big wide world out there -- and it doesn't all look like New Zealand, or the nice enlightened corner of teh interwebz call Public Address.
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It's very easy to forget that there's a big wide world out there -- and it doesn't all look like New Zealand, or the nice enlightened corner of teh interwebz call Public Address.
On a scale of one to ten, your patronising goes up to 11, Craig.
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Speaking of the big wide world that doesn't like teh gays too much, Francis Arinze is coming to Devonport next month.
From his wiki page:
"In many parts of the world, the family is under siege. It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as is seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce."
Just what NZ needs, another paleoconservative thug masquerading as a priest of the god of love and teaching our young folks that difference and change is always bad.
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