Written By: - Date published: 10:01 am, February 26th, 2008 - 76 comments
Categories: john key, national, workers' rights -
Tags: john key, national, workers' rights
One of the more unsavoury aspects of Key’s “we would love wages to drop” saga is the unwarranted attacks by Key and his allies on the journalist who quoted him, Greg Robertson.
Key referred to Robertson as some “young guy who was taking notes“. Key said Robertson’s quote was wrong, or that he was joking, or that he was talking about Australia. All of Key’s excuses attack Robertson’s credibility as a journalist. For reasons known only to themselves, the senior political journalists seem happy to believe Key’s contradictory tales, rather than their colleague.
So, is Robertson just “some young guy”, an inexperienced country reporter? I did some digging:
Greg Robertson is 35 years old. He has been a journalist for 10 years, 5 years as editor of The New Zealand Hardware Journal. He has been published in the NZ Herald, Northern Advocate, as well as trade magazines in New Zealand and abroad.
“Some young guy”, indeed. This is an experienced journalist who knows how to transcribe a quote. No wonder both the Northern Advocate and the Bay Report are standing behind their man on this issue. One has to wonder why others haven’t.
Key needs to apologise for his shameful attack on an experienced journalist and come clean on his wages policy.
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I’d add r0b that the power relationship between Clark and Campbell is nothing like that between a journalist for a provincial paper and (on current polling) the future Prime Minister of New Zealadn.
Isn’t Key into tough love (the Iti hongi incident excepted)? Maybe this is his way of helping out the little guy – a bit of a Harden The Fuck Up kind of message.
So what’s KDS, Key Derangement Syndrome apparently? That’s a bit harsh Whale, don’t be such a wanker. He may have ulterior motives, may even be disingenuous and dishonest, but even here at The Standard people don’t say he’s deranged. Save those comments for your cesspit thanks
The New Zealand Hardware Journal
Cutting edge journalism there
A “youg guy taking notes” is “shameful attack on an experienced journalist”
Get a life boys, you are way out of your depth if you feel that is an attack
OO and others, yes, Helen called Campbell a “little creep”, and it was a seriously silly thing to do (even though Campbell was, at the time, behaving like one).
The point is, she got called on it, and has been chastised for it ever since. Should Key not be held to the same standards?
Ray. santi. etc. read the post “All of Key’s excuses attack Robertson’s credibility as a journalist”
“All of Key’s excuses attack Robertson’s credibility as a journalist’
Erm, no, they don’t… unless you believe that journalists are divine in the infallibility. Poloitico’s make mistakes, you and I make mistakes, and so do journalists.
Don’t you find it somewhat duplicitious to on one hand slag off the media for not being nicer to Labour and on the other get stuck into Key for saying the reporter got the quote.
Take off the blinkers boys and girls this is a dead story Key has put the record straight move on and find a real smoking gun.
Didn’t the PM attack Duncan Garner personally last year and didn’t Cullen claim the gallery were motivated by personal gain in their coverage of tax cuts?
WHere has Key actually attacked this reporter by name or called into question his professionalism, apart from saying he made a mistake, which is hardly a professional attack.
If he wanted to attack him he could have said the reporter was incompetant because he did not accurately transcribe the what his own paper says is an accurate transcript (go and compare the two) and did not accurately or consistently report the names of the two people quoted.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10494809
PM’s Shameless attack on Newspaper.
You people just don’t get it do you?
…and neither, apparently Tane, does anyone else.
Captcha: abandoned them. I am not making this up.
I don’t recall Cullen apologising for this little idealogical burp.
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/488120/737759
Funny this. The Standard defames and smear John Key from anonymous sources which we know to actually be the labour party, and ping sJohn Key for referring to a 35 year old reporter in a minor provincial newspaper as “some young guy”. But when Helen Clark claims that the New Zealand Herald, and its journalists, have suffered from professional bias–about as large a professional smear you can launch at a journalist (Key only said Robertson was mistaken, rather than motivated by bias), the Standard remains silent.
One standard for the Labour Party, and one standard for everybody else. Hypocrites.
The criticism was of the editorial line of the paper, not denigration of any individual journalists. There is no comparison.
Do you understand how a newspaper works?
The funny thing is every time they lock onto an issue it turns around to bite them in the bum when the govt they are in the main defending is found to be doing the same thing they are criticising. Iraq, wealthy donations and now attacks on the media.
There also seems to be a relationship with how hard the Standard go on an issue the more likely it is that the govt is not only doing it too, but even more aggressively.
Case in point the above issue. How many posts have we seen on this John Key “attack” on the media? Yet how does that attack compare in intensity and directness to those of the PM’s reported today (is there a connection)?
Instead of being Murphy’s law perhaps it should be Standard’s Law or Tane’s Law (a good NZ feel to that one)? It could go along the lines of:
“the number of Standard posts on a National Party ‘scandal’ is directly proportional to the likelihood that an even bigger but similar ‘scandal’ is about to break around Labour”
SO Tane you don’t consider an attack on the editoiral line of a paper the equivalent of a direct attack on the editor of said paper?
Insider – it’s a matter of balance of power. An editor of a newspaper is fair game and has the means to defend him- or herself. Criticism of the entire media is called a structural analysis and is not an attack on any individual.
Repeatedly denigrating the professionalism of a provincial reporter to cover for your own mistakes is just slimy.
So Accusing a major newspaper of 91 years of bias after a poor showing in the polls is what if not slimy?
It’s an analysis, and a fair one if you look at the history of New Zealand’s print media. Whether it was politically wise is up for debate.
Criticising the Herald for its traditional hostility towards the Labour Party and the wider labour movement is not comparable to beating up on a provincial journalist to cover for your own mistakes.
Slightyrighty etc. You need to learn more sophisicated argument. I am not arguing that journalists are always above criticism. I am arguing that Key has groundlessly attacked the professional competence of a journalist in inventing excuses for his “we would love to see wages drop” quote, and that is not on.
If he had manned up, accepted he said what he said and, say, criticised the angle the article took, that would be something else
It’s not so much a sophisticated argument, Steve, as a tacit acceptance that Key was wrong in his actions – that’s all it can mean when someone takes the ‘they started it’ or ‘s/he did it too’ approach…
MAtthew
What you miss is that the criticism being levelled here is not of the journalist or of Clark, but of the selectivity of the Standard which has been baying like wolves and labelled an entirely innocuous phrase – a mild criticism at worst – as an attack on someone’s professional integrity/competance, yet justifies Clark’s open attack on the Herald and its complete history/integrity as just “an analysis”, and then claims Key’s is worse because of a supposed “power imbalance” when no power has been exerted as demonstrated by the fact that no-one but the Standard has inferred any imprecation on mr Robertson’s character.
The arguments you are using are becoming almost Williamsian in their pretzel-like logic.
Steve
On the subject of attacking Journalists.
Clark and Davis attack NZ Herald
Do you think Helen & Peter were trying to go one better and attack Journalists & Editors for the last 91 years – rather than just one botched incident.
It’s not a good look, I’m sure in the spirit of being even handed and credible you will blog about this and I’ll save my opinions for that thread.
captcha Mrs Dyck
Burt, you’re a bit late on that one. We’ve already discussed it and dismissed your argument.
bit quicker next time please burt. good lad.
Oh, I must have skipped over the bit where it said “It was a Labour person doing what we are beating a National party person up for so it’s fine”.
Sorry. Must try harder to understand partisan twats. Achieved.
TDS
Great link.
Cullen will prove there is no connection between a surplus and tax cuts this year when he delivers tax cuts come hell or high water. His only saving grace will be that he can say “Helen made me do it – waaaa waaaa”.
insider, I guess you missed all the parts where John Key’s office put pressure on the journalist and the paper to retract the piece and apologise, when you speak of the power imbalance. I can try and find the link if you wish, but as has been pointed out, the media isn’t interested in holding Key to account for his actions, so I might take a while (if you did genuinely miss that point).
You’re also running a typical attack-dog line, which has rightly been denigrated. Over and above calling the journalist some young guy, he siad it was hurried notes taken in a cafe and so on – the intent was to make the reporter seem incompetant.
Later, the full transcript has shown the journalist to be correct, and yet you still focus on that one line. What about Key’s attack on the journalist’s professionalism – do you support what Key has done, given he’s been proved incorrect?
Furthermore, I’ll be happy to admit that Clark is wrong about criticising the Herald’s editorial staff – prove to me that there is no pro-right bias. I can reference a plethora of anti-Labour articles, but I’d struggle to find two that criticised Key.
The only flawed logic is yours – The Standard is correct in criticising Key, and justified in its approach to Clark’s comments. The only resemblance of anything to a pretzel is your contortions in trying to present The Standard’s posts as such…
Cullen will prove there is no connection between a surplus and tax cuts this year when he delivers tax cuts come hell or high water.
I love it – now that Cullen has said that he will deliver some for of tax cuts, the thoroughly neutral and impartisan bloggers who aren’t remotely from the right, such as burt, are suddenly howling that it’s the wrong time!
Give me a break
What a pathetic and desperate post! Obviously signs of desperation and boredom.
I can remember Helen Clark being downright abusive of people in her 9 year reign….
“geriatric generals”
“feral and inbred” referring to West Coasters
Get a life
When Key alledgedly said we would love to see wages drop, in what context was he saying this?
Was he saying he want’s to see NZ workers paid less? OF COURSE NOT!
Key want’s NZ workers to get more by helping businesses become more productive, and to stop the tide of NZers going to Australia. Perhaps he would like to see the wage gap between NZ and Australia drop but because this remark appears to have not been reported in the proper context we won’t know.
With regards to the “young guy who was taking notes” comment, Key never refferred to the journo by name, yet you assume that the individual key was talking about and the journo were one and the same.
Armed with 2 sentences, you at the standard have filled in the gaps to suit your own beleifs and painted Key to sut your own picture of him. Whereas in the space of 2 days, we have Helen Clark lambasting Fiji for deporting the publisher of a newspaper and the next day lambasting the herald for a percieved 91 years of bias.
I’m sorry but if Helen Clark can have a go at a whole newspaper because she doesn’t agree with how she is portrayed and can do so with impunity in your eyes, then Key should be able to speak out against being misreported by one journalist.
Key should be able to speak out against being misreported by one journalist
Yeah, if he was.
As for your OF COURSE NOT diatribe, please recall this is a man who (unless he has sold out the ethos of National to be a popularist but useless centrist party, truly Labour Lite) then he does not support intervention in the market.
If he sees wages as artificially inflated by minimum wages and collective bargaining and so on, then there’s every reason why he would want wages to drop. If you don’t understand this, either you don’t believe Key is right wing, or you shouldn’t be batting for him because you don’t understand what right wing policies are.
Now, what a pathetic argument – ‘he wasn’t referring to the journalist by name’. You’re probably right, by ‘some young guy taking notes’ I bet he was talking about Neil Armstrong, or perhaps Lindsay Lohan.
So Matthew, what you are saying is that calling someone young and taking notes (which I assume as a reporter he was) and saying he made an error is an attack on his professionalism.
Well is this then an attack on his professionalism and integrity? – he inaccurately reported from his transcription and he inaccurately reported the names of those he was reporting on.
Matthew.
What I am saying is that Key refers to what he saw around him, and you and your fellow posters fill in the gaps to suit your view of the world.
For gods sake the initial article talks about how John Key wants to raise wages by raising productivity, and not by direct intervention. Surely the security of wage rises secured by real growth is superior to wage rises imposed on an industry that may not be able to cope with such rises, resulting in NO wages as the job losses start.
Now Matthew, can you answer one question. Why is it OK in your eyes for Helen Clark to lambast a whole newspaper while John Key cannot question one journalist? Take of your red coloured galsses for a minute and look at the two situations.
And another thing, if a person of Clark’s position feels that the reportage of her is biased in a particular publication, is it a good thing to publically say so? I have always respected Clark’s political acumen but now that the pressure is one her greatest asset appears to be missing.
For gods sake the initial article talks about how John Key wants to raise wages by raising productivity, and not by direct intervention.
You seem to be deliberately ignoring everything I’m putting across, to thepoint that I don’t understand why you’re replying – it has nothing to do with what I’m saying!
Check out what I said at 3:16. I’ve already explained how you can want wages to drop (for one reason, as he is from the Right, he will oppose Government intervention, which includes minimum wages and favouring collective bargaining) and have them rise by another method(productivity gains). The latter is not a bad thing (and this is where it would be nice to hear both parties state what they’ll do to help. Remember the wage gap opened under National, and has been steady under Labour, so National has a bit more to explain), but leaves vulnerable employees at the whims of their employers. The former is to correct for this problem.
I can’t really simplify it any more.
As has been expounded above – Clark is criticising the Herald’s editorial direction, and in a professional sense. Key is basically stomping on a single reporter. The Herald is in a position to fight back (and it probably will continue to do so, at Clark’s detriment – no disagreement with your last point but I can understand her frustration), our Bay reporter doesn’t write front page editorials to a disturbution of tens of thouands. How are those blue tints working out?
Insider – Key’s office put pressure on the reporter to withdraw the story and apologise. There’s more to it that you are trying to make out. Read my post at 2:27 if you missed it earlier… You’re doing the same as sligtlyrighty and bypassing what I’m saying, so why bother to attempt to answer my posts if you say nothing that’s related to them?