Cactus Kate has an explosive revelation on her blog that APN one of the biggest publishers in New Zealand won’t print anything that comes within a broad definition of causing them possible legal problems.
Essentially they have put their hands up and surrendered.
There are categories of people who are more inclined to sue if they are the subject of adverse publications, so particular care should be taken in reporting allegations of misconduct against lawyers, doctors, judges, other professionals, politicians, critics and wealthy businessmen/women.
Right so if you are one that group and say stand up in the press and make yourself the spokeman for some crowd all the while hiding the fact that you like to conduct cervical smear tests without gloves on and are a serial rooter of your staff and patients, you will get a free pass from the APN because they are scared that you will sue them.
Or if you run a dodgy inertia selling outfit with complaints about your business practices before the Commerce Commission and a failed finance company whose documents are sealed by the court because the “whole house of cards” may come tumbling down then you also get a free ride in the media, or even better a patsy interview to explain yourself away.
These are but two examples that this blog has run but are unlikely to be touched by APN at the least and also Fairfax because of their issues with telling the truth. It is now up to brave bloggers to take on the “establishment”.
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Back to Gotcha
Who needs Granny Herald when we have Gotcha and Cactus Kate.
Perhaps some investors’ money would have been saved if the media had the balls to call Rod Petricevic’s bluff when he threatened to sue them on various occasions before bridgecorp finally tanked. Bean counters in MSM should also reaise that defamation damages and costs are tax deductable if it is part of the normal risk of doing business.
It’s a fine balance. on the one hand, people seeking to damage the business interests or reputation of a competitor / target could do great harm at little cost if the law wasn’t set to strongly discourage such activities. So you better have proof.…or keep your trap shut. Not all allegations are made by people purely motived by the public interest. Some have other motives.
On the other hand, there may be real hints of serious trouble and genuine cause for concern.…..but the level of proof won’t be up to the job until it may be far too late. What to do? Where to strike the balance? The law attempts to protect people with a lot to lose from the slimey few who would say anything to harm them. At the same time, it also allows the wealthy slimey few to hide their problems longer than might be desirable.
Suffice to say, investors / consumers need to have their ears up, noses in the wind.….and pay attention in order to protect their interests.…..
Shit stinks.…whether in the Herlad or not.
Whale. How do you reconcile this blog post with your ongoing support for the Crazy Commodore in Fiji?
You know — the despot who has stopped the Fijian media from printing 4,200 news stories since April this year.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?...
Your hypocrisy is breathtaking.
Re your APN comment — this was sent to Cactus Kate:
Your piece today on APN has been flicked onto me by someone on staff who is as puzzled as I am by its claims
I’m editor of the NZ Herald and can tell you that
a) there is no truth whatsoever to the claim that our editorial legal budget has been restricted or that we need to alter our approach to legal challenges or threats over Herald stories . No cut. No change. and
b) the rest is a heavily truncated mish-mash of unremarkable legal discussion points (a to g) in a 66-page media law training paper put together by our lawyers, Bell Gully and provided to 80 or so participants from throughout APN. Nothing secret about them and nothing new.
See part two…
Part two…
They are not publisher instructions or editor directives; they are not new (same general thoughts have been included in the training document for years) and in the context of training staff, and shorn of your views on each point, the basic points are entirely matter-of-fact for anyone seeking to get things right and avoid legal pitfalls which the media have encountered before.
There is no new ‘conservative’ approach, no recent guidelines discussed, received or implemented, no change. No orders from on-high. No end to investigations or to keeping newsmakers honest or to speaking truth to power. Put simply, no story.
Appreciate if you could let this be known to your readers.
Regards
Tim Murphy
Editor
The New Zealand Herald
Tim, it would be interesting then if you would release the 66 pages to the public having identified here where they came from because in the last month or so even the Herald on Sunday has become lame and devoid of any “good stuff”. People draw their own conclusions and I draw the conclusion that something is up with your publications as staff are clearly unhappy to have even passed on part of the document.
So here is the NZ Herald Editor accusing another of “a heavily truncated mish-mash”? LMFAO!! That perfectly describes what he does every week day to his paper to perfectly interesting stories.
The proof is in the pudding Tim, the conservative approach leads to stories such as the ones here on Gotcha being so heavily truncated you never even provide credit to source. Your paper has become a mouthpiece to conservatism.
The last thing Tim, when you are interviewing someone and they say “no story, nothing to see here”, as a journalist it only heightens your senses that there is more to it than even first meets the eye.
Tim — what about giving Cam Slater the credit for breaking the Te Reo Marama story that the HoS ran yesterday, minus all the detail which Cam provided two weeks ago.
Credit where it’s due and all that .…
Yes Inventory2, the Herald’s final story was indeed a heavily truncated mish-mash of the actual facts that WO explained in much greater detail on his blog. All and all it was a pathetic piece of conservatism to wait until the end of WO’s series to pick up the funding cut and not the events and fraud on behalf of Mr Shane to get to it. Perhaps waiting until bloggers have dumped the entire story so to be 100% sure that the docuemnts were accurate, was on pg 61 of the 66 page media law training paper to which Mr Murphy refers above.
Indeed Anon, which was precisely the reason for commenting to Tim Murphy in the manner that I did. Cam broke the story in serialised fashion, not unlike Phil Kitchin’s expose of Donna Awatere-Huata in the Dominion some years ago. It was a great piece of work from an oft-maligned blogger. Meantime, it makes the HoS look churlish, and rather Witi Ihimaera-like.
Tim if indeed such a document exists then why don’t you send me a copy of it.
I’ve seen a few Bell Gully documents in my time and this doesn’t even remotely sound like one to me.
Now you have even done an article on your site and had the perfect opportunity to publish the document to disprove us. me thinks you doth protest too much.
I’ve seen better spin in second grade Indian cricket teams.
I note Mr Murphy has responded here and apparently to my blog, however as I am not home I cannot check blogger. When I can I will reproduce Mr Murphy’s response.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cf...
The issue is of course I have seen the email forwarded to contributors and others headed “Suggested guidelines to limit defamation proceedings” and it states very clearly it was “from Sydney HQ”.
If “They are not publisher instructions or editor directives” then I wonder what they actually were?
Any “mish-mash” created therefore was directly from Sydney’s own HQ. I have reproduced the content of the email in full on my blog post. There was not 66 pages of “media law training” on that email which was why I did not produce any more of it. I have not seen such a document.
As I cannot reproduce in Scribd the two emails I have been forwarded without revealing the identity of those staffers and the other one with a narrative of what has happened, then it is a case of the reader can make up their own minds.
Either 3 people (2 very senior journalist figures) have lied to me and fabricated the entire story. Or Tim Murphy is spinning like WO says — faster than the Indian Cricket team.
Nice post. Do you feel the same way about the media refusing to report almost anything to do with Crosby/Textor after they sued Nicky Hager and Radio NZ for defamation?
If there were facts that deserved to be reported then sure. Why would I not? Remember I’ve just chastised an entire overseas publisher for directing its publications like this:
“There are categories of people who are more inclined to sue if they are the subject of adverse publications, so particular care should be taken in reporting allegations of misconduct against lawyers, doctors, judges, other professionals, politicians, critics and wealthy businessmen/women”.
So what happens when the media lies to the media? After all, according to the journalist class, lying to the media is THE most heinous offense possible. Worse than gang rape even,
If Mr Murphy is found to have been lying does he get to be sacked? Like Lianne Dalzeil?
Sounds as though he’s already sailing very close to the wind.
Will he turn out to be our very own Dan Rather?
Whale makes the point well concerning the Herald’s blatant campaign of misinformation against Labtests which campaign starts to look worse than stupid when the evil and amoral character of DML’s principal shouter is revealed for the public to see. Would you send your daughter to this man for a smear test? Hell no. He’s used up all his smears on Labtests.
It is staggering that the Herald has chosen to not devote one line to the incestous commercial relationship between certain medical practices and DML, which relationship was ended with the introduction of Labtests.
.
I commented earlier then read Kate’s blog including extracts from the alleged memo.
In fairness to MSM they do have widespread audiences and relatively deep pockets, hence they are a far more likely target for defamation suits than bloggers. One could say that many bloggers are protected by extreme poverty, that is they are not worth suing, but having said that a bloody minded litigant could still make life miserable for them. Therefore it is not so much that bloggers are ‘braver’ than MSM, it is more that they tend to be under the radar.
The guidelines reproduced by Kate fall into two categories. Firstly is contempt of court. MSM is definitely tied there, they cannot afford to mess with the courts any more than the occasional mistake, and even then it is no fun for an editor to be facing a judge who by uttering a few words can have him or her led off to the dungeons. Established well known NZ bloggers are in a similar position to MSM they cannot risk messing with the courts. This leaves others who would tend to be more impervious to a legal backlash.
The other one is defamation. IMO a good journalist is likely to have a ‘nose’ for possible defamation. They and their editors should make it their business to gain some understanding of defamation law, so there is no need to go off to lawyers the whole time. In many cases it is still possible to deliver a good ‘sting’ while keeping on the right side of defamation law. I would see the guidelines as saying:
1. Lawyers are expensive — cut down their use.
2. Get some reasonable understanding of defamation law.
3. Do not waste time and money with lawyers if the article is only of secondary importance.
The one aspect that is wrong in the guidelines — the editor should have a defamation budget and be allowed to take risks within that budget. If there is a budget, defamation damages are tax deductable, if there is no budget then AFAIK, they are not tax deductable.
Yes
That’s a rather unusual take on tax law. I’s expect an expense is either deductible or it isn’t, budget or no budget.
Years ago, NZ Truth claimed defamation damages as a deductable expense and this was rejected by IRD, They took the matter further arguing that the risk of paying defamation damages was a normal business risk for the Truth and hence they were a normal cost of doing business for which they budgeted. Truth was successful. At that time Truth was the only paper that had the balls to expose things while the other MSM including state broadcasters were a pack of real wimps — even more so than now.
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