I have grave concerns about the way the term “lesbian” was mobilized within overt and whispered right wing attacks on Helen Clark’s leadership of the NZ government. This is indicative of ways in which senior women politicians continued to be undermi…

Frankly, if I ran a story as badly checked as your claims against me earlier, I’d have been nailed to the wall a long time ago.

Doesn’t that illustrate my point? You’re right, I don’t operate to the same standards as other journos – my standards are higher.

Well, the point you’ve illustrated is that your published work is researched to a higher standard than my back-of-a-napkin summary of your reputation, with which I would readily agree.

The problem with the internet is that there is one of me and thousands of potential bloggers and commentators. I could spend the rest of my working life trying to put out false information fires and they would pop up as quickly as I stamped on them.

And fair enough, too. The reason I won’t engage on the matter is similar – this reputation management stuff is a big chunk of your job, but not of mine. I suppose could spend part of my life trying to substantiate my statements above, and others like them, but frankly I’m not obsessed enough to do so off my own bat (and my employer’s hardly going to pay me to do it). Research is hard, and often thankless work.

As I said; I’m not trying to prove this argument, I’m happy to let the media market decide its validity. My comments, semi-anonymous and unsubstantiated as they are, seem unlikely to have much impact upon that.

L

I wasn’t taking wild offence at your comments, but I was trying to point out that unlike bloggers, particularly anonymous ones, I am a target for potential lawsuits and I actually have to work extremely hard to make sure stories stack up.

But, I must also say, when you wave the cudgel of `defamation’ (”for the record” not against anyone here now); or when you require the burden of proof for criticism to be “the vast bulk of [an author's published works] are faulty” as if it’s all right for some reasonable amount (less than a vast bulk) of an author’s works to be faulty; and talk about things like “accuracy rates” in journalism; you do yourself little credit.

Disagree.

Mistakes at my end are extremely rare. Have been known, nothing serious. However, I am so used to this tired old canard such as the one you fairly glibly raised about my standards etc, that I wanted to point out the difference in standard of proof that I work to, compared to what you repeated (basically hearsay).

I put in the rider about context because it is relevant. If one is making an allegation that someone has a reputation for shoddy work, which is the allegation you made, it implies a portfolio of shoddy work, not one example. Unless, in fact, the allegator could prove it was a routine occurrence rather than a one-off error, the allegator would be handing over the keys to his house.

And for the record, this is the risk that I take every time I run a contentious story. That’s why my research has to be good – for my own protection as much as anything else.

Frankly, if I ran a story as badly checked as your claims against me earlier, I’d have been nailed to the wall a long time ago.

Doesn’t that illustrate my point? You’re right, I don’t operate to the same standards as other journos – my standards are higher.

Do you know, I haven’t done one major interview with another journalist that hasn’t contained a number of errors on their part, some quite significant. Many of them can’t get facts straight, even with the aid of tape recorders.

Now, as to “reputation”.

From the moment I first crossed swords with the establishment of the day (Winebox investigation, early 1990s, I was deliberately painted as a “conspiracy theorist” in media comment. This was an attempt (and quite a successful one) to marginalise.

It was PR spin, and as a former practitioner of the dark arts I knew exactly what it was when it arose.

The problem with the internet is that there is one of me and thousands of potential bloggers and commentators. I could spend the rest of my working life trying to put out false information fires and they would pop up as quickly as I stamped on them.

The downside to letting things ride is that people like yourself assume they must be true, so every once in a while I jump up and down about it.

Hi, some of us have been away for the weekend.

To what is the absolute pantsing in addition? I assume that’s the significance of the `and’. Curious to know, since I apparently have received one (in addition to an absolute pantsing, whatever that is, and which I didn’t notice either).

L

I expected you to turn up on this thread, and it’s good that you have. Welcome.

I’m a media analyst – it’s what I do for a living – and I haven’t analysed your work, so all of this has the weight of “I reckon”. I’m not really taking issue with you personally or professionally, just enumerating some of the factors which impact on your reputation as a journalist, and for that purpose my assertion was that you have a reputation for the things I mentioned remains valid. That reputation may be unfounded, but it exists; whether or not it’s well-founded is a matter for debate, and I’m happy to let that question speak for itself in the media market. As someone whose professional life is the media, I have to say it rings some truth to me. If at some point I do end up analysing a significant body of your work you’ll be (among) the first to know.

Nevertheless I wish you all the very best – it’s hard as an independent investigative journalist, and largely thankless work at that. I await your next big story with interest.

But, I must also say, when you wave the cudgel of `defamation’ (“for the record” not against anyone here now); or when you require the burden of proof for criticism to be “the vast bulk of [an author's published works] are faulty” as if it’s all right for some reasonable amount (less than a vast bulk) of an author’s works to be faulty; and talk about things like “accuracy rates” in journalism; you do yourself little credit.

L

Ian – for it to be defamatory you would have to have a reputation to protect wouldn’t you?

Have you considered changing your (play)pen name to ‘Metronome’? A dull monotonous tick kind of sums up your contributions old chap. I appreciate that as you don’t have a reputation except in virtual reality world, that the issue would whizz over your head. Those of us with real names do, however, have reputations to protect.

oh, and could you please try to limit the length of your comments? They become difficult to read when they’re several screen-lengths long.

I’m sorry, if you are wanting posts with pictures and small fluffy animals, try NickJr.

I mean, when you write a book about a government which administers one of the freest and most democratic countries in the world, and call it “absolute power” you abrogate any claim to credibility anyway.

oh, and could you please try to limit the length of your comments? They become difficult to read when they’re several screen-lengths long.

Anita…I don’t get overly sensitive about defamation issues, but for the sake of pointing out vulnerabilities:

In other words, as an outsider interested in NZ politics, I really have no idea what you’re talking about when you mention all these smears going around. The only ones I know of are from Ian Wishart but surely no one takes him seriously.

“all these Smears” about Clark’s sexuality? I wrote one story in 2003 based on information from close confidantes to Clark, which raised the sexuality issue she herself had just raised in Brian Edwards book, and expanded on it slightly.

Absolute Power clarified those, and set the chronology straight, and revealed Clark was the first to raise sexuality issues and she did it for political points. So as an issue of fact, blaming me for “smears” is defamatory.

I don’t know. There had been speculation about Helen Clark’s sexuality for many, many years. It preceded John Key and Don Brash. It seems to be an issue that Ian Wishart was fond of obsessing over, but I very much doubt many New Zealanders do.

Obsessing? Out of the huge volume of materal I’ve written, I don’ think it quite falls into that category.

I can’t speak for the left, but I don’t find Ian Wishart’s opinions to be irrelevant. I haven’t read Eve’s Bite in whole, but I’ve looked through it and read Investigate most months. I find it frustratingly dishonest to be frank. But far from irrelevant.

Dishonest? Allegation that I’m making things up.

As an example, it may have been in Eve’s Bite I think, he had a list of quotes from the Labour party, and a list of quotes from the Nazi party, and made the claim that they were equivalent. Whatever your opinions on the Labour party, to seriously compare them with the Nazi party is simply insane. What left winger of similar influence says anything like this, with such frequency, as Ian Wishart?

If that’s your best example, it doesn’t actually get you off the hook. From memory I did one editorial piece in the magazine and a couple of pages in Eve’s Bite drawing the link to the propaganda technique of marginalisation. I’m uncertain as to how this becomes “frequency” in any real sense, nor has it ever formed the dominant part of Investigate, Eve’s Bite or other publications I’ve written. And of course, PB misunderstood the point of the link anyway.

For a start, I don’t know who this `the left’ is, of whom you speak, but just ignoring that for a moment – Wishart isn’t irrelevant, but he doesn’t adhere to the same standards of evidence as do most journalists, let alone the sorts of people who habitually undertake the in-depth and large scale sorts of research he sometimes does, historians and the like.

Defamatory, alleging my work and research are substantially inferior. Given that every contentious story I do is written with a view to defending it in court on the basis of truth, that’s a pretty big allegation for Lew to make. Has Lew written a 150,000 word book alleging criminal offending by some of the country’s richest people? Does he know the research i actually do?

“He has credibility problems because he has a reputation for selectively quoting his sources,

Really? Name some, and provide context (how many times?, is this common? Is it usual? What proportion of his stories quote people out of context?).

All journalists can make mistakes, and I don’t claim perfection. But I have not knowingly quoted anyone out of context so I’ll be interested to see how this stacks up.

And then, establish the truth of this “reputation”. Where? From ill-informed bloggers, disgruntled Labour supporters or the occasional media hack? You don’t just have to prove that people have created the reputation, you have to prove it is deserved in order to defend the claim you’ve made.

correlating things which don’t reasonably correlate, drawing extremely tenuous links across space and time, basing entire lines of argument on discredited or otherwise suspect sources, and the other sorts of Macgyver solutions to which one turns when one’s invention doesn’t quite work out on its own.

Basing entire lines of argument on discredited or suspect sources? Give me some specifics or it’s defamatory.

In addition to this, many of his sources remain anonymous – which is fair enough, but makes verification hard, and when verification is hard we repair to the credibility of the journalist for judgement. In Wishart’s case, this is where the wall comes tumbling down, for all but the most credulous readers. Congratulations. You’re one of the chosen few.

The credibility of the journalist argument would be fair comment, provided it is based on true facts. But if in fact your arguments above turn out to be based on weaker evidence than you thought, your opinion based on those facts fails as a defence as well.

I’m not, for the record, suing anyone here, but this is a process I have to go through for every single article.

Like I said, very easy to mouth off on a blog with sweeping generalisations…

Some of the rubbish you spouted is actually defamatory, which is a problem many of my critics risk because its easy to shoot your mouth off, much harder to actually do the hard work.

If you are concerned about the legality of material here in posts or comments please get in touch directly (there’s a contact address in the About page).

Otherwise claims that unspecified stuff is defamatory looks like a particularly unpleasant form of bullying which seems to be becoming endemic from the right against the left.

The Nazi/Labour comparison was not to draw moral equivalence between both administrations, which you have correctly identified as “ridiculous” – it was to illustrate how Nazi divide and rule propaganda tricks are used by politicians today. You could simply take out the word “Jews” and chuck in “Exclusive Brethren”, and the hate-filled intent to marginalise a small group was exactly the same.

But then again, Eve’s Bite’s reading level might have been a little too high for some to pick up the point.

As to Clark’s sexuality, I couldn’t care less at a personal level. Doesn’t bug me, doesn’t directly affect me. However, in Absolute Power I laid out solid, sourced evidence that it was Labour and Clark herself who first put that ball in play, not National.

Don’t believe me Anita? Check Absolute Power, read the quotes, check the chronology.

And Lew, my books are heavily footnoted with references throughout. I don’t rely on “anonymous sources”, unless absolutely necessary and I have an affidavit and willingness to stand up in court.

Some of the rubbish you spouted is actually defamatory, which is a problem many of my critics risk because its easy to shoot your mouth off, much harder to actually do the hard work.

Easy to make sweeping generalisations about the quality of my fact-checking, hard to actually name specific examples…

I remain what I always have been, a cynical investigative journalist. My beliefs colour the quality of that work no more than a non-Christian leftie’s colour the quality of their work.

I have published thousands of articles in my career and more than a dozen books. Perhaps, in context, you can illustrate where the vast bulk of those are faulty and why, and you can also compare my accuracy rate to that of other media.

Then, maybe, I’ll take you seriously

Kiwipolitico is a welcome addition to the left-wing blogosphere, but Anita is way off tune with her piece on ‘whispering campaigns’ accusing Key and National of calling Uncle Helen a “heartless childless lesbian bitch.”…

If I was Ian Wishart I’d be very proud of Investigate magazine, which has a bigger readership than all the left blogs combined. Over and out frome me, woof, woof.

Such as benefits for all – Super paid out of tax was a National idea (Muldoon), so was reducing the amount paid below 65% of the net average wage. This was unpopular with the people so they now accept Labour increasing it back to 65% or more.

National now supports WFF – because it is popular with the people and they once accepted universal family benefit for decades.

They oppose WFF at the higher levels of income – which is why they oppose income splitting (this only benefits the few on one high income) – so it is not that popular an idea with most of the public.

Nil rewards for hard work – we have the lowest minimum wage in thew OECD and many other workers work long hours for the lowest wages in the OECD. Does National really support higher wages for them or for doctors/nurses/scientists/police/military or do they want to hold public sector wages down.

National proposes no changes in benefits.

Denial of climate change is of course the ultimate in head in the sand denial of personal responsibility.

You sound like someone programmed to react/think in sound-bites as instructed – like Pavlovs dog?

Well, 80 per cent of Kiwis seemed to think of the anit smacking bill as ‘anti-family’ as well as arrogant law making, which is why there is going to be a referendum on it, as initiated by the general public.

I don’t remember a single survey which tested whether people thought the bill was anti-family. Even this press release from Family First doesn’t list a poll which discussed the effect on family.

The referendum question doesn’t mention family at al, it reads “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”