Just a little respect

Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, February 9th, 2009 - 7 comments
Categories: blogs, Media - Tags:

David Farrar has a wee post where he laments that he is rarely credited when he breaks stories that are then picked up by the media. We have the same thing happen to us. We broke the story on the minimum wage – that National/ACT was planning a freeze, despite the Department of Labour recommending a 50 cent an hour increase – which turned into quite a large media story, leading to the Government delaying its decision for a week and, probably, deciding to make an increase after all. Similarly, we broke the story on Local Government New Zealand’s strong objection to the narrowing of the definition of ‘environment’ in the RMA, which National/ACT had been planning but was dropped from the changes announced last week – that was the springboard for stories questioning Nick Smith on their plans. There are a number of further examples from the campaign, in particular, where we broke a story that was picked up by the media, who managed to forget to credit us. Yet any rumour connecting us to Labour and it’s on the news quick as can be.

I can understand the reluctance of the media, particularly the print media, to draw attention to the amount of political news that is now being led from the blogs but, as Farrar points out, we make an effort to credit not only the sources for our stories but also provide links to factual material backing up our arguments. It would be nice to be treated with the same decorum.

On a related subject, Tracey Watkins isn’t above a little plagerism it seems. Today, she writes “resisting a short-term sugar hit likely to leave an even bigger debt headache”. Neat line but I can’t help feeling I’ve seen it before. Oh, yeah, John Key in his speech last week “a short-term sugar-fix today could lead to a diet of debt later”. A cynic might say that Watkins has been running National press releases as her own work for years and she certainly isn’t the only one (‘rolling maul’, anybody?) but she could at least try to disguise it better.

7 comments on “Just a little respect ”

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  1. bill brown 1
    9 February 2009 at 11:55 am

    “…Watkins has been running National press releases as her own work for years”

    When’s she going to realise he’s just not into her?

  2. BLiP 2
    9 February 2009 at 12:20 pm

    Billbrown said:

    ” . . . When’s she going to realise he’s just not into her? . . . ”

    Hehehehe – prolly doesn’t matter if you’re getting paid for it.

  3. the sprout 3
    9 February 2009 at 12:29 pm

    “I can understand the reluctance of the media, particularly the print media, to draw attention to the amount of political news that is now being led from the blogs”

    yes i can understand it too, must be pretty humiliating when your multi-million dollar corporate enterprise consistently gets out-classed by volunteer citizen journalists.

  4. Tigger 4
    9 February 2009 at 12:33 pm

    Surely there a difference between reporting rumour and breaking a story? Hell, I can report heaps of rumours about certain MPs (got a great one about a certain female National MP) but it ain’t a ‘story’ until it has some facts and a quote… Not saying Farrar’s wasn’t a story but he himself effectively says he just ran some info that was passed to him.

    That said, the big boys do need to credit better when a genuine story is broken.

    As for Farrar saying “perhaps I could get certain media outlets disconnected from the Internet under the new copyright law” – ew! Someone fancies himself as a mover and shaker. ‘Hi John, can you just change some laws for me. kthx.’

  5. MikeG 5
    9 February 2009 at 1:26 pm

    What needs to be considered in this discussion is the PERCEPTION of some bloggers, and I’m thinking particularly of this blog and Kiwiblog. The perception is that you have close links to your respective parties, so the blog postings are perceived as press releases/spin, rather than some sort of media commentary.

    [lprent: There are 15 people who write for this blog site reasonably regularly (ie at least one post every few months). There are probably about 7 of us who write often (ie at least once a week). As far as I’m aware I’m the only one who is active in a party. That I’m on this blog is more of an accident than a plan – they needed a tech who was left political. That’s what I do in my volunteer time for the NZLP.

    There are a number of others who probably lean to voting for Labour, and a similar number who lean towards voting Green (and one who leans towards voting for the Workers party 😈 ). Look back to the pre-election endorsements.

    So to compare Farrar with this site is a exercise in seriously flawed maths (15 != 1 !!!!) or you are idiotic enough to think that the left is the preserve of Labour (I never put anything past the stupidity of the trolls of the right).

    If you want a pure Labour site – try Just Left. As far as I’m aware that is the only multi-blogger site of the left that is all Labour.]

  6. MikeG 6
    9 February 2009 at 8:21 pm

    Whoa!! Didn’t you see PERCEPTION in capital letters! Perception does not always equal fact.

    (and I’m definitely NOT a troll of the right!)

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