Written By: - Date published: 4:36 pm, July 13th, 2008 - 48 comments
Categories: national, spin -
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Why is it that the right are so much more litigious than the left? The recent example of Crosby Textor threatening legal action over JafaPete’s minor inaccuracy on his blog is just the latest bit of overkill. For those of you who don’t know the background to it, JafaPete put up a post stating Crosby Textor Crosby had been successfully sued for push polling in Australia when if fact it was Mark Textor as an individual. No big deal? Well apparently a big enough deal to require a polite but firm letter from the firm’s lawyers and a published apology from JP.
And it seems they’ve done the same thing to the NBR. Which I guess shows that they are non-partisan in their litigiousness at least.
The stifling of dissent is of course straight out of the CT handbook and is just a variation on the same theme that brought us the ridiculing of Hager as a “conspiracy theorist” or a “thief”. Neither of which they have any proof of (nor have they produced one skerrick of proof that his evidence is wrong).
Similar threats were leveled against us for using John Key’s image for satirical purposes last year and who could forget the attacks on Greg Robertson, the journalist who quoted Key saying “we would love to see wages drop” or the attempts to bully Barry Soper out of quoting Bill English and Kate Wilkinson?
The irony of this is that despite all these attempts to bully and defame their critics the right are now crying “personal attack” over the questioning of their policies and their leader’s credibility.
I’m thinking their strategy is hypocrisy as crop-circle: so big you can’t recognise it from the ground.
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the apology from Radio NZ for airing comments that Nicky Hager was a thief?
Do you think Nicky was taking a leaf from CT for that? That he was bullying?
[lprent: Dean - you should know by now that there are all types of people here. Not all of them are Labour supporters. Some of them feel about being associated with any party like you would feel like if someone said (at a guess) you were responsible for NZ First. Think before you write - maybe use the search to look up what they've said previously before you write.]
Good point, lprent. However, at least I issued a genuine apology.
Could you also point this out to r0b? He seems to be of the opinion that I’m a National supporter because I don’t like Labour.
It might be a good idea if he thought about what he wrote before he wrote it, too.
[lprent: Yep - I was impressed with the apology - that is why my note was an explanation rather than other possible actions.
If rOb does make that class of statement:- that you as a member/supporter of a party were responsible for other members/supporters actions when you aren't a member/supporter of a party (and weren't defending them anyway) - feel free to draw it to my attention. It would be an unjustified provocation that is liable to lead to a flame war.
From my observation, rOb doesn't do that. But he does challenge people defending behaviors that he disapproves of, and then tends to get quite tenacious about following up. But he is usually quite meticulous about it from what I've seen. After all he was the person who commented early this year that I should improve the search functionality to include comments - which eventually I did.]
Lew:
“Care to distance yourselves from those folks? Or are we to understand by your refusal to do so that you endorse them?”
I am most definitely not a National supporter. And I do not endore the stupidity of some of it’s supporters.
However, I think you’re glossing over the main point.
Just because one is a supporter of one party or another doesn’t mean double standards ought to be overlooked, as with the whole “National is Nasty!” theme people like SP are touting. Anyone with any reasonable degree of intelligence can see where both parties are just as bad as each other.
To continue to pretend that it’s ok because this is a left-leaning blog is just silly. Some people point out the whole “kiwiblog right” and they have an excellent point, but this site has it’s share of the “standard left” – those who are so convinced by their own riteousness that the reality of their own supported party evades them.
Imagine if labours pr company decided to hold the right to account for every “accident” they had made posting online, hell it woudl be enough to bankrupt whale oil (again??) easily!
Crosby/Textor are entirely within their rights to see that incorrect information about them isn’t published. National Radio issued an apology to Hager and you didn’t call that a result of bullying.
I am 100% convinced that you only call this bullying because it came from Crosby/Textor, if any other organisation had done the same to David Farrar I’m sure that you’d applaud their defence of their right to fight libel/slander.
“Why is it that the right are so much more litigious than the left?”
All the talented lawyers sit on the right hand side of the political spectrum. Look at the hash Labour has made of complying with it’s own law – the EFA.
Random thought of the day; is that why they call it “left-overs”?
‘All the talented lawyers sit on the right hand side of the political spectrum’…….. nope there is nothing to suggest this and in fact much to suggest just the opposite.
Regardless of where they sit most are, however, happy to gorge on the government coffers.
More like the left wingers don’t have the cash to waste on petty squabbles and suppressing freedom of speech.
Oliver: Sure they are entitled to ask for corrections, but do they need to go through a lawyer to do it? It’s kind of like warning someone who was about to unknowingly stray onto your property that you have guard dogs that haven’t been fed recently.
Ari,
If you go through a lawyer from the start you know that nothing will get done in a manner that can queer the pitch for any potential future litigation, mediation or arbitration.
I’m pretty sure it’s possible to get straightforward factual inaccuracies sorted out without having to wave lawyers around.
If true it is very different from the US where the trial lawyers mostly vote Democrat. Although I suppose that can hardly be called left wing in the NZ context.
I think it’s bizarre to hit a blog with a legal letter – unless perhaps he had a previous warning. Surely a quiet note would have been enough to get a correction.
It happened a few months ago too. Is it becoming a pattern?
“Why is it that the right are so much more litigious than the left?”
Why is it that the left are so much more condemnatory and denigratory than the right?
Hager’s claims are not based on solid evidence, credible research requires more than one source.