Yesterday the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) released this statement:
WHALE OIL’S DIRTY ATTACK ON OTAGO ACADEMIC
The villain of Dirty Politics, Cameron Slater, used his post-election downtime last week to attack University of Otago nutrition scientist Lisa Te Morenga, calling her a ‘trougher’ and, ironically, criticising her for being offensive on the internet.
TEU president Lesley Francey said Slater’s comments were intended to intimidate and to undermine academic freedom.
Journalist Russell Brown said the issue started with Carrick Graham, who was exposed in Dirty Politics as a lobbiest paid by big business to discredit and undermine public health advocates via Slater’s Whale Oil blog. Graham tried to intimidate Dr Te Morenga by going through her Twitter history and finding something he could quote out of context.
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Graham’s friend and supporter Cameron Slater then used Whale Oil, to attack Te Morenga.After this Brown noted there was a threatening legal letter from Jordan Williams, an official complaint to Otago University and a public warning from Carrick Graham to “be careful”.
Most of the cast of Dirty Politics is present in this hit. There’s quite a back story, which Russell Brown has gone into in detail in comments here and here.
It seems to have started with a fake Twitter account misrepresenting a conference (FIZZ-2030) aiming to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks. Jordan Williams of the “Taxpayers’ Union”* used the account as an excuse to attack Fizz and “a group of academics” (I wonder who set up the fake account?). Te Morenga responded (in unwise terms perhaps), and that triggered the full scale dirty politics hit described by the TEU above.
Russell Brown sums up:
The whole thing appears to be a carefully-constructed effort to smear a group of health and nutrition researchers on behalf of a paying client.
These people are scum.
As of yesterday Brown was still on the case…
* The “Taxpayers’ Union” is a front for right-wing spin and political attacks. “Executive Director and Co-Founder” Jordan Williams features heavily in Hager’s Dirty Politics. He’s known for extreme sexist attitudes and apparently threatening tweets. “Co-Founder” David Farrar has his own chapter in Dirty Politics, and a similarly unsavoury record. The fact that this organisation is taken seriously by any form of media is testimony to just how perverted political commentary in NZ has become.
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