Party polarization has raised the stakes in elections. And polarization combined with the growth of partisan media options has created an incentive for party leaders and activists to discredit the mainstream media among their supporters. Party leaders convince their partisans in the mass public to resist informative messages from the mainstream media and ideologically hostile outlets, and instead rely more on ideologically friendly new outlets. In doing this, they can help to inoculate their supporters against voting for the other side.
I’m not sure that our political parties do this yet, but certainly this occurs within the commentariat, including blogs, where newspapers especially are described by an alleged political slant. Variously you will here the NZ Herald described as a pinko rag, or from the other side as a Tory rag. Of course the opinion is coloured by the world view of the commentator.
Political scientists have documented the tendency of people from different parties to have perceptions of reality that reflect their partisanship. Put simply, when a Democrat is president, Democrats tend to think that national conditions are better than Republicans do, and vice versa. I find that this trend is much larger among those who distrust the institutional media.
There are many from the left who think that the NZ Herald is a shill for National. I don’t believe this is a fair assumption. I do think it is fair though to say that the Herald has tabloided itself and is populated by journalists and columnists whose world-view is a little rose-tinted when it comes to political colours. But the paper itself isn’t bias one way or the other.
With blogs at least you know what side they are on and so you look at what they are saying through that prism.With newspapers and television there is a thin veneer of impartiality, but long term watchers and readers soon discover the political persuasion of the players.
As usual the mainstream media are publishing union press releases without doing any fact checking. The meat workers union has Eddie at the Standard promoting their lines, and as everyone knows Eddie is the kind of coward who refuses to disclose who he or she is.
Knowing what a bunch of liars the MUNZ were I wondered if the Meatworkers were as big a bunch of liars and decided to find out. Unlike mainstream media journalists who repeat press releases that fit their ideology I actually investigate, so I made some calls and found out the following details. This matched nicely with some of the useful information that has been coming through the tipline from disaffected union insiders.
Reading between the lines the Meat Workers Union of Aotearoa are as big a bunch of thugs as the Maritime Union of New Zealand. hey are certainly helping each other in their campaigns.They want to preserve conditions from a 1993 collective agreement, which has its foundations in the 1960s. The union wants to preserve the 1960s rights, while the modern world has free trade and a floating dollar.
In typical union fashion they have taken exactly the same stance as the port workers. They won’t make any compromises on conditions that would allow processing plants to run more efficiently, costing companies and New Zealand in a tough export environment. Give the union the opportunity to receive increased pay to work on more efficient killing chains they will want the pay but still keep the same old killing efficiency.
Thanks to some useful information from the tipline I have some very interesting Union promotional material. This union is an extremely militant, reactionary and politically active group, who fight National about as hard as they fight employers.
It seems too that they have recruited Simon Oosterman to run their campaign, and you are seeing the fruits of that with almost identical protest signsflourishing on their pickets. The fonts and style are the same, just the words differ. So too is their website, almost identical to the Save Our Port crowd. Same fonts, same design, same focus on massive families who are allegedly hard done by.
Expect too to see Labour’s own version of Michelle Boag, Helen Kelly, turn up for some union bullying. As more information flows in I will counter the media spin that is starting to flow the way of the mainstream media via professional militants like Simon Oosterman and Helen Kelly.
Self-employed Aucklander Richard Henry should teach a course in management speak. The 26-year-old says he “thrives on the creative industries and robust debate, and aspires to better the world en route to the finer things in life,” and his “entrepreneurial edge, grounded understanding, and core ethics” will get him the top job. Moving forward.
Hmmm…”entrepreneurial edge, grounded understanding and core ethics”. Let’s look at his core ethics.
First up his by-line is “Getting frank is about keeping it direct, honest and evident.” We will be doing just that. I’ll be direct, I’ll be honest and I will produce evidence.
Sometime back in 2007, Rich Henry was setting up Get Frank, an online magazine for blokes. With his partner Mitch Hall, he contacted numerous “content providers”, that is a nice term for people who write stuff. He asked if he could use the occasional article from the content providers. He even had one of his staff discuss financial terms for the use of the material with content providers. That content provider kept the email as terms of their engagement:
From: Mitchell Hall <mitchell@getfrank.co.nz>
To:
Subject: RE: up now…
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:33:59 +1300
That is most definitely the plan
In fact, as our advertising grows we will be offering all contributors the chance to take 50% of all advertising revenue from their page(s) on a CPM basis.
Sweet.
Mitchell Hall
Editor
I was one of those who was offered these terms. So was Cactus Kate and content was also taken from other content providers such as Kiwiblog. I am yet to go through the whole site but from an email today from Rich Henry, he confirms that in fact 100% of the content of Get Frank is sourced from other content providers and that they provide no content of their own.
Through my own monitoring, I have noticed increased usage of my content. So I decided to have a wee chat with Rich about his site and the use of my content.
to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix — to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
With the understanding that:
Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Public Domain — Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;
Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
I had given permission for Get Frank to use my content on a limited basis. But there were no links as required, attribution was tenuous and worse still, he was breaching the non-commercial aspect of my licence agreement. What I didn’t give permission for was for them to make truck loads of cash off my content.
Cactus Kate and Kiwiblog don’t publish specific licencing for their content and as such are protected completely by total copyright provisions. Cactus Kate eventually lost patience with these thieving prats and withdrew her permission for Get Frank to use posts of hers because of the way they were manipulating images on the re-posts.
Get Frank carried extensive advertising, some of it is intercompany related with other enterprises of Rich’s to give the impression he has substantial backing. The advertising on Get Frank is booked by Adhub, who it transpires also an investor, to the tune of over $50,000 in Get Frank.
In my discussions with Rich Henry regarding his breaches of mine and other content providers’ copyright, we discussed just exactly what revenue he was making for Get Frank.
Rich confided in me that revenue for the site exceeds $10,000 per month, or more than $120,000 per annum. All from advertising - and all booked on content that Get Frank doesn’t provide themselves and has lied to those who asked, about the profitability of the earnings derived from the collective “content providers”. Those of you may snigger now that Rich was accepted on to The Apprentice earning that as a paltry sum while making out he is an internet guru. I won’t be so unkind, the Sorcerer is struggling to put together $120,000 to pay his creditors at the moment.
I pointed out to Rich that he was in fact stealing from all of us.
We wrote the content, he took it on the basis he was currently unprofitable and would pay for the content when he made the expected profit, sold advertising on that content and then pocketed the loot without actually paying for the content.
His response to my concerns was as follows;
Hi Cam,
Good to catch up last week.
I have placed some decent thought into it and have also run past the team here.
Like a number of offshore models rather than publishing unique to getfrank content our value proposition and core model is that we offer contributors a free marketing tool / platform, in which we republish a taste from their full offering to position our contributors as the expert destinations and for some an added extension to their online voice.
As discussed last week the page impressions that we generate for each post in the editorial section a revenue split will be nickle & dime and just chewed up in administration, and with further thought and discussion around our model we’re just not going to be able to derive enough value to justify paying a lump sum for that content either.
Given the massive profile you’ve built over 2010 I fully appreciate that the whole free marketing proposition may be of limited value for you, and fully appreciate your reasoning if you choose to end the contributing relationship.
Please forward this email onto the other bloggers within the union, if they they could please email me direct I’ll be more than accommodating.
It’s been great having you on the site, and if you see any other way we can combine forces definitely let me know.
Rich
As you can see I was talking with Rich on behalf of the Bloggers Union which, as you know, is compulsory, and acts on behalf of all bloggers or (as Rich calls us) content providers. I also see it as a duty to other content providers on Get Frank that we collectively ensure compensation for our work.
As you can also see Rich Henry has admitted that not a single piece of his content is provided by him or his team. They take content from others, like me, like David Farrar, like Cactus Kate and numerous other non-blogging contributors, and they put it on their site then sell advertising on our content. They keep all the loot and then when approached about it claim it is all too hard to distribute half the revenue as promised that content providers collectively were offered, thanks for coming, feck off. Well I’ve got news for Rich Henry and it is all bad.
What Get Frank is actually doing is stealing our collective content and selling that which they didn’t produce. Imagine what would happen if say The Listener pretended to be poor and stopped paying for content? Columnists would soon pack up shop and rat the publication out for what they are – thieves.
Old media often bemoans the copy-and-paste habits of bloggers and self-professed citizen journalists, alleging that the “re-reporting” they do is more akin to plagiarism than journalism.
Smarting under these kinds of accusations, the blogosphere eagerly took up a story writer Monica Gaudio posted to her blog Wednesday evening in which she described how a for-profit print magazine called Cooks Source published a 5-year-old post she had penned for the blog Gode Cookery. The article was published without Gaudio’s permission.
A friend who had seen the article wrote to Gaudio congratulating her and asking her how she had gotten the article published in the magazine, which has a circulation of about 20,000. “This was news to me, as I hadn’t ever heard of this magazine before,” she said.
According to Gaudio, she contacted the editor of Cooks Source to inquire about the article (which is about the history of apple pie) and how it managed to appear in the magazine. At one point in the exchange, Gaudio said, the editor asked her what she wanted, and Gaudio replied that she wanted an apology to appear both in the magazine and on the magazine’s Facebook Page, as well as a $130 donation (a sum that equates to about $0.10 per word of the piece in question) to be made to the Columbia School of Journalism.
The editor, who said that she has three decades of experience editing for The Voice, Connecticut Woman Magazine and other publications, responded that since everything on the web is considered “public domain,” Gaudio “should be happy we didn’t just ‘lift’ your whole article and put someone else’s name on it,” a common occurrence on college campuses and elsewhere, she notes. She goes on to say that the article “was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than it was originally.” In fact, she says, “We put some time into rewrites, [therefore] you should compensate me!”
As it has with other incidents of private injustice — such as the case of Mary Bale, a.k.a the “Cat Bin Lady”— the web sounded its displeasure loudly, flooding the magazine’s Facebook Page with thousands of derisive comments (apparently, the original Facebook Page was hacked and the magazine has since been forced to relocate) and Twitter with the hashtag #CrooksSource.
And what happened to Cooks Source? Well it went tits up after its advertisers abandoned a known thief. Get Frank offered its content providers 50% of the advertising they generate. Whether that is Whaleoil, David Farrar or any of the non-blogger contributors, he owes half the revenue to the content providers.
Now back to Rich Henry. Even if you take his emails and his lackey’s email at face value, he could argue that his site isn’t making money and so he can’t cough up the dosh. There is a slight problem with that, and it is Rich Henry’s propensity to skite.
On the 20th of October 2008, just a few short months since having his staff offer up 50% of advertising revenue he had this to say;
My darkest hour was when:
I launched the site, with 40k of personal loans and 60k of my parents money to see no one visiting and only a couple of months liquidity left.
I came through it by:
Dropping out of fulltime work at PricewaterhouseCoopers to work on the venture fulltime to try and save it. I was very lucky to secure Shane Bradley as an Angel Investor, and three years since the light bulb moment the ventures finally cash flow positive.
We wonder quite where the 100k of start-up capital went, it seems to be an enormous sum to spend on promo girls and sponsor events around town to make Rich look like da’ main man of Auckland online media,
More importantly in October 2008, he acknowledges that the site is cashflow positive. Where were the revenues for the content? Nowhere is where…well, actually they were in Rich Henry’s pocket.
Richard is now 25 and the magazine attracts more than 50,000 readers per month. He describes it as a website for intelligent, professional men.
Nice…he gets the same traffic a month that I get a week and he has the audacity to claim that he was helping me and other content providers like Kiwiblog and Cactus Kate out!!
In March 2009 he was blabbing about his stellar success;
The website is aimed at intelligent, professional men – it has the highest concentration of 18-39 year old male readers in New Zealand, and more than 72% of its audience have a household income over $60k a year, according to Nielsen Online. It has managed to attract long-term premium advertisers such as Continental Car Services and Amstel Premium Beer – not bad for a site that drove its owner to the brink of bankruptcy.
For the first two years, Rich poured all his spare time, money and energy into the project. Winning $5,000 and a trip to Sydney in Nescafe Bigbreak bolstered both his confidence and credibility – and eventually led him to resigning from his day job to devote himself full time to the venture.
Within two months, and with bankruptcy pending, he met Shane Bradley of finda.co.nz, who brought with him resources in the form of both money and contacts. Rich threw himself into completing the content proposition, establishing key commercial relationships, and constructing the re-design of the site.
Now, two years on from that initial meeting, Rich’s passion and confidence are still there and they are beginning to prove well founded.
“We just keep on growing. We started 2008 with 10,000 unique visitors a month. We’re now looking at 70,000 – that’s nearly twice as many people as were at the Big Day Out this year.”
It is hard to believe Rich would ever lack confidence. Completing content proposition…hmmm…I wonder if he actually wrote down on the post-it notes that he is so fond of quoting, that he uses “Steal Content” as the content proposition.
I wonder how his advertisers like Continental Cars, Amstel Premium and Jack Daniels feel about his theft of our content to enable him to fill his pockets. Probably the same way Veuve Clicquot and the NBR felt when they shafted social media in a small competition recently. Nervous. Imagine the innovative and creative ways that New Zealand bloggers could destroy those three brands along with Get Frank?
“I’ve got a million things to do, with a completely open canvas on how to deliver on each one of them. Working for yourself means everyday is an opportunity, and yeah, I’m loving it.”
Yeah, I just bet you are loving it…stealing other people work and fobbing it off to advertisers on pathetic traffic statistics and keeping all the money…I just bet you’re loving it …until now. Sunshine being the best disinfectant on corporate criminals.
In a shock double elimination, the 26-year-old Aucklander and Meena Chaggen were sent packing after the boss, Terry Serepisos, accused them of duplicity.
Duplicity…look it up. If anyone knows duplicity when he sees it that would be Terry Serepisos.
Noun
duplicity (countable and uncountable; plural duplicities)
Intentional deceptiveness; double-dealing.
Rich Henry was fired from The Apprentice for duplicity….which is how he conducts business with Get Frank and Adhub.
And don’t you just love Rich Henry’s last word on the Apprentice.
I’ve got my website and that’s just screaming ahead at the moment. I’ve got 25,000 people on the newsletter and that just continues to build. It’s a men’s magazine and we do about 35 articles a week. So yeah, it’s all really exciting.
“We do about 35 articles a week”…..what a liar…duplicitous even.
So what do we do about Get Frank and Rich Henry?
Well, I for one want all of my content taken down. It’s stolen after all. I’m pretty sure that other Blogger’s Union members will request the same. Then I’ll spread it around just what sort of thief Rich Henry is, endeavour to contact every single one of his content providers and show them this page, along with his advertisers. New Zealand mainstream media loves knocking down failed Apprentice contestants on their business failures. Even repeaters get paid for their content, they get pippy when their own content is stolen and re-sold for profit elsewhere. Very pippy. Ask Barry Colman what he thinks of people who steal content.
I really think that he should be providing penalty payments and residuals in compensation for the work he has stolen.
The last thing I will do is complain to the NZICA, because Rich Henry wants to be a Chartered Accountant. Perhaps he should read their guidelines, particularly paragraphs 16-19.
Members must behave with Integrity in all professional and business relationships. Integrity implies not merely honesty but fair dealing and truthfulness.
16. Integrity is a quality of overriding importance for all members of the Institute. Integrity implies not merely honesty but fair dealing and truthfulness. It is members’ adherence to the fundamental principle of Integrity that allows the public to derive their trust in the accountancy profession. It is also the benchmark against which a member must ultimately test all decisions.
17. Integrity can accommodate the inadvertent error and honest difference of opinion. However, Integrity cannot accommodate deceit or subordination of principles, values and standards.
18. Integrity is measured in terms of what is right or just.
19. In the absence of specific rules, standards or guidance, or in the face of conflicting opinions, a member should test their decisions and actions against the following questions:
Am I doing what a person of Integrity would do?
Have I retained my Integrity?
Rule 13 is going to hurt too.
Any member who has reasonable grounds for suspecting defalcation, fraud, dishonesty or other unethical behaviour by any other member is under a duty to make a confidential report immediately to the Chief Executive of the Institute.
Bummer, the Whale will not be the issue here, Rich stole one content provider’s work – who just happens to be a member.
Rich Henry is a thief, a plagiarist and a liar. He is also now blacklisted by the Bloggers Union and anyone associated with him. De-linking and Cease and Desist action is taking place.
Never Fuck with a Blogger (NFWAB) especially if that blogger is me.
Denis Welch continued the lie that I some how started the “Jim Anderton caused the earthquake” story, these pinko whingers in the media like to think they are above any come back when they trot out their musings unanswered on Red Radio. The Whale bites back.
Chief Executive
Radio New Zealand
PO Box 123
Wellington 6140.
Dear Mr Cavanagh,
I wish to make a complaint under Standard 5 and Standard 6
On his show on Friday 21 September 2010 Denis Welch discusses me and name suppression then segues into a discussion about Jim Anderton.
He says “This time the dirty trick was played on Jim Anderton, and many people in the media swallowed what appeared to be on Youtube a video showing that Anderton made some crack about that it would take an earthquake for Bob Parker to beat me in the Chch mayoral election, he said this appeared to come from an interview just before the actual earthquake, so no one was saying that he was using the earthquake quite callously in that sense, just that there was a rather bitter irony about the fact he had given this interview just before. Well, in fact, it turns out…not so…”
He then goes on to list a group of commentators which he says were “taken in by it” and had now apologised “quite rightly”.
This suggests that the video on Youtube and the editor of the video was the source of the story. He then discusses “selective editing” and “victim of a right wing blogger” in a seperate case leaving the listener in no doubt that this is the same with the Anderton case.
They then talk about fact checking suggesting that the internet is wild west. He finishes the segment with;
“That really was a dirty trick played on Anderton and I’m very pleased to see that the people who were taken in by it did apologise and make it quite clear that they got the wrong end of the stick or indeed the trick”
In fact it is now Denis Welch that is playing “dirty tricks” by suggesting that the video and the editor of the video was the source of the story and that it was somehow a dirty trick that should be apologised for.
Radio New Zealand’s own Media Watch show acknowledges the correct timeline of events and the source of the story as Felix Marwick from the Radio Network. then NZ Herald, then other media including blogs, Twitter and such, all long before the video appeared.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
It is clear that Denis Welch’s show breached Standard 5 and Standard 6 in terms of fairness and in terms of accuracy.
Denis Welch has actually played his own “dirty trick” with this review of the viral video about Jim Anderton.
It would appropriate for Denis Welch to correct his show, or post a correction online apologizing for giving the impression that the Youtube video and the author of the video was the original source, and that it wasn’t a “dirty trick” but in fact an attempt at satire well after the mainstream media and online media ran with the story propagated by Felix Marwick.
At Farrar’s place (BTW, Happy Birthday David) DemocracyMum posts a brilliant comment;
The uncomplicated guide to the evidence so far…
Peter’s said he only heard about the donation on the day his mother died (But we know Helen by her own admission had phoned him about it back in February)
Winston said he could not have thanked Owen Glenn at Karaka 2006 because he wasn’t there (But Google have the photos to prove otherwise)
Winston said he paid back the $158,000 he owed the tax payers after the last election (But the Dominion Post had rung 50 charities and none of them had received a cheque from Winston)
Yesterday in the house Helen said she was giving both Winston Peters and Owen Glenn “the benefit of the doubt” (But they both can’t be telling the truth, because she herself said “there is clearly a conflict of evidence”)
Helen Clark also said in the house yesterday that “Frankly, I do not have reason to distrust my president’s word…” (But back in February Mike Williams was caught out lying about the 100,000 interest free loan from Owen Glenn.
Mike Williams lying? (you be the judge) Winston Peters lying? (you be the judge) Helen Clark lying? (you be the judge)
Game, Set and Match
Clue: You do not need to be presently working on the Hadron collider to figure this one out
They won’t of course because the Police are in Helen’s back pocket.
The story of the corruption of Winston Raymond Peters, 63, List MP of no fixed abode is getting murkier and stranger by the day.
Busted Blonde asks some interesting questions about WRP, 63, LMPONFA’s curious attraction to boxing and one man in particular who seems to have three names and a rather murky past involving drugs and people going missing permanently.
The Dominion Post highlights the ever changing stories of the “mistakes” at New Zealand First regarding the relatively simple task of filling in a donations return. They miss out though that the 2007 donation return was filed late, because they were waiting for WRP, 63, LMPONFA to return from overseas to sign it off. This was a lateness excuse that the Electoral Commisssion accepted.
Of course it now raises some serious questions about the honesty of that declaration now we have discovered that the Spencer Trust donate in excess of $10,000 in 2007 to NZ First and since it was WRP, 63, LMPONFA who had to sign it off it directly fingers him as responsible for the subterfuge.
with the hashtag 
My darkest hour was when: