You’ll probably know about the rumour around the traps that blogger David Farrar is running his polling company Curia out of National Party HQ. This information first came up when Newzblog blogger James Sleep posted on a conversation he had with a young Nat in which the lad in question told him that he worked on the phones for Curia and that they did so out of the party’s Wellington HQ and that in fact they are ‘the National Party’s market research company’.
Sleep contacted Davey on MSN to find out if this is true and has now been locked out of Kiwiblog. In fact the situation is slightly stranger. He can log-on but every comment he makes just disappears. At first I suspected this was a technical glitch but after Sleep gave his log-on to a mutual friend of ours to test it, it does indeed seem to be the case.
As far as I’m concerned DPF can run his business from wherever he likes and run his blog however he chooses and all kudos to him. But if he is getting his income from the National Party and is being resourced by them then he has a clear conflict of interest when he appears in the mainstream media as a political commentator.
Farrar doesn’t mention anything of this in his disclosure statement and I would suggest that if this rumour is untrue then he needs to clear this issue up as soon as possible.
Hattip: Out of Bed for the pun-tastic title.
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