Posts by Alastair Thompson
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Regarding the heroic forecasts. The important thing is that the ratings agencies are buying them and the foreigners are buying our sovereign debt at record low yields. So much so that we have borrowed roughly $7 billion this year that we arguably don't need yet.
Its also worth considering that if the heroic forecasts turn out to be wrong (Note: there is a theory that creditless recoveries - as opposed to consumption driven ones are slower but they still happen and they are more resilient in the long run) then the cuts ought to be a lot deeper than they are to save us from long term penury. Just sayin.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: A Credible Path to…, in reply to Keith Ng,
Radioactive Donut in Friggin’ Space,
I just installed I.E.9 and so it works in all my browsers. Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE 9. Just stuck up a link on our Front Page....
Interestingly by defailt I.E.9 is not yet flash supported - you have to install some kind of beta version which crashes the browser fairly regularly.
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Hi Keith,
Love the visualisation... is a fantastic research tool too. Is it flash or HTML5?
al
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We (Scoop) were shocked at the decision.
Only in the circumstances apart from running Valerie Morse's PR there wasn't much we could do. And we did in fact have to pull it and re-word it to fit within the suppression order at the time.
al
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@craig
If feeding them fresh copy helps keep everything on an even keel then it is part of the crisis management objective. And if not feeding them fresh copy leads - as it did - to everybody getting upset with each other it detracts from that objective. I think we have not heard the end of this - today the police have decided not to hold a briefing..... which in my view is a mistake.
We shall see....
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@jackie
I have a pic of Russell in his abode on the day of the site relaunch. Perhaps I can share.....
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Hi Russell
Inspired in part by your Media 7 panel and partly by a general feeling of misgiving around the way we collectively dealt with this disaster at the media police interface level Scoop posted an editorial on the subject this morning.
In the circumstances we think that Garry Knowles should stand down as commander of the recovery operation - not just from the front line at the mine portal.
Pike River, After The Second Explosion - Scoop Editorial
Police Superintendent Knowles should now be replaced as commander of the recovery operation. His removal from the "coalface" of operations last night at 7pm is a useful step but - given the level of interest and controversy around this event - is in this publication's view, insufficient.
This is no reflection on how he has done his job.
Like it or not, he is the individual whose decisions will now be the subject of a large part of these inquiries. For the sanctity of the process, and for his own protection, he should not be seen to be the person responsible for collecting the final evidence which will be presented at the inquiries relating to how the miners died.
Also - like it or not - in days to come and beyond Knowles will be the subject of speculation and "armchair jury" deliberation around the country, in the media, in blogs, on facebook and on talkback radio.
And this is something which the police need to accept is not the media's fault. It is the result of a natural human instinct to try to understand the things that most upset us. It will probably be painful for many of those involved in the process - but that is part of the job description.
It is the reality of life as a policeman in NZ, that when a large (or for that matter any) loss of life occurs, they and their superior's (including the Minister and the Commissioner) must expect to have their actions examined in minutiae. We do so so that we can learn from the experience and hopefully prevent similar things happening again.
Craig,
What is a YMMV?
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@Russell,
On Robyn - the interesting thing there is that it was her magazine - she founded it and left unwillingly. The PC's strength historically has been through the fact that the publishing barons have always taken it seriously. In turn the PC's deliberative functions have always been conducted in a pretty respectable fashion. So yes it has no power - but it is an organisation in pretty good standing and respected by publishers. It will be interesting to discover whether the publishers APN and Fairfax will be keen to have their own online offerings included in PC jurisdiction - or indeed whether (perhaps informally) they are already covered.
@Bernard,
Re: risks of joining the PC.
Do we risk allowing the mainstream media to reverse-engineer standards/activities online?
I doubt it and if they tried to do so we could always leave. I think in the first instance they will be focussed around coming to policy which the major MSM online publishers can live with. The way the PC process works the complainant complains - the editor responds and the PC deliberates and then gives the editor and the complainant a right of reply before it issues a judgement. I think they may take a bit of time to educate but my experience is that they want to make sensible decisions.
Do we risk being dependent on the old guys to be part of the 'club'?
Possibly - it is initeresting that NBR is covered but doesn't pay - thats quite a good precedent.
Or is this just the price we all have to pay for the excesses of Cameron and co?
Our interest in being covered is probably around the following headings:
- to be accepted as part of the "real" media (by the "real" media)
- to be seen to be acting responsiblyI appreciate not everybody will want either of these things - in which case they probably shouldn't consent. And even for our own part we are still deliberating on whether we want to be involved - the biggest negative I suspect is that it can at times be a bit time consuming responding to complaints.
As Russell said before enabling people on the internet to complain about stuff can be like a red rag to a bull - partly because it is altogether too easy to do so, also internet trolls seem to be far too common and less easily pacified than ones compelled to write actual letters.
@Graeme,
Thanks for those details. I think the rationale behind the protection from defamation arises because in ordinary circumstances any wise media will immediately stay stummm when threatened with legal action - or at least be very careful about what they say. In the case of a Press Council complaint typically what happens is that there is a fairly high level of disclosure of information as to what happened to give rise to the event which is being complained about. Neither a publisher nor their insurers would be happy about that taking place in the event that there was a defamation action in the offing still.
@Craig
Quite so :)
al
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Perhaps more important are the right of an accredited reporter to be present in court during a criminal trial even when the public is excluded, and rights relating to the protection of sources in the Evidence Act.
For clarity the definition of an "accredited" reporter is basically anyone that the registra says is one - the definition prorbably requires them to be nominated by a "recognised" media outlet or something like that.
Graeme may be able to nail it down a bit more closely than that - i.e. is a judge able to decide whether a particular journalist should be accredited or not. They are most certainly able to find journalists (accredited our otherwise) in contempt and if they desire throw them in jail so far as I know.
Accreditation is not therefore controlled by anyone in any formal manner.
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Hi,
A further piece of information which may or may not be relevant relating to the Press Council in particular - and internet standards.
Some months ago Scoop applied to join the Media Freedom Committee - i.e. we wrote to them and asked if we could join. We did so because the MFC was being consulted with over liquor and OIA reform and we felt it might be useful to be included.
Anyway the MFC at a meeting considered our request and Tim Murphy wrote back saying (and I paraphrase) that the committee felt that perhaps it wasn't appropriate because unlike their members - Scoop - as a member of the online media wasn't subject to any ethical standards.
I subsequently discussed this with Tim Pankhurst and the upshot is that we are actively considering volunteering to join the Press Council - provided I think that it doesn't cost us anything. Our preliminary view is that we certainly try to operate by ethical standards and we would greatly prefer Press Council supervision to any from a statutory authority.
And we are not averse to being subject to formal criticism. Press Council membership as I understand it basically requires willingness to respond to complaints followed by willingness to publish the findings. We don't necessarily have to agree with them.
Perhaps more significantly the upside of consenting to Press Council jurisdiction is that the complainant agrees at the outset not to pursue any other remedies.
So in terms of the two options in the ministers release:
- I think for the reasons explained by Russell the BSA is an inappropriate vehicle for internet media supervision.
- I think that the internet is inherently unregulate-able in the manner that may be being sought by some (consider the cases of Vince Seimer and Cameron Slater for starters - and then wikileaks as a followup).
- I think that some kind of online media supervision/defamation avoidance scheme is possibly desirable and the Press Council is possibly the best organisation suited to the task. An organisation to which membership is voluntary also makes some sense given the inherent unenforceability of most things online.
al
P.S. So far as Mr Slater is concerned I am increasingly concerned that some elements within the "Mainstream Media", MSM or perhaps "Old School Media" would like to equate his activties with online media as a whole. For reasons which we will understand that is not the case.
P.P.S. The Press Council is not a limp rag. I expect it is the reason that North & South lost its editor recently - though I am willing to stand corrected. The timing of the departure was most certainly immediately following one of their most damning indictments. So far as most complainants are concerned all media supervision bodies appear limp-wristed. And that is as it should be. That's why we have free speech.