The Dominion Post

David Farrar has put pressure on other media after NBR all but confirmed TRUTH’s story about Greg King:

This confirms the story broken by Truth. The only other media publication to touch on this revelation is NBR. I’m amazed that Mediawatch did not deem it worthwhile to even ask the Dominion Post if their staff called Greg King just before he died. Did the Herald ask any questions of the Dominion Post such as “Is it true you had written a story on Greg King, which you pulled just before the print deadline”.

Greg King’s death is tragic and profoundly sad. It is even more tragic if the catalyst was a story about a dispute over $1,500 of legal aid hours. Would journalists at the Dominion Post accept a refuse to comment from any of the subjects of their investigations? So, why is it acceptable from the newspaper itself?

I’m not saying the Dominion Post has done anything wrong. But I am saying they should front up and explain exactly what their involvement was.

When Christine Rankin was thought to be involved with the family of a woman who killed herself, the Dominion Post and other Fairfax papers pursued the story with vigour. There was no sense of being inappropriate to comment until the Coroner’s Report. The double standards in this case are hypocritical. I can understand the double standard from the Dom Post (who naturally do not want bad publicity), but why are other media and shows that are meant to focus on the media not reporting on this?

There is more to come on this…

Yesterday the NBR followed up on the Greg King story that TRUTH broke over a week ago. New sources have come forward confirming aspects of our story.

They have confirmed the “18 hours of legal aid” details that TRUTH was aware of. There are further specific details regarding that but I shall remain silent on those until the DomPost comes clean.

It is unacceptable for the editor to issue only a short statement saying simply that the TRUTH story was “wrong”.

We stand by everything we have printed and this story is developing.

I repeat what we said in our original story.

The Dominion Post and its investigative journalist Phil Kitchin need to answer the following questions so that NZ can judge for itself whether their investigation was news worthy or just another chapter in the NZ book of chopping off tall poppies

1. What was the nature of the investigation that the Dominion Post was undertaking into Greg King and his legal practice?
2. What contact did the Dominion Post (either staff, contractors or freelancers) have with Greg King and his wife or anybody in his legal practice in the week prior to his death, including on Friday 2 November?
3. Who specifically from the Dominion Post has had contact over the last few weeks with an inmate of Rimutaka with regard to the investigation into Greg King?
4. At what time on the evening of Friday 2 November was the decision made to pull the story that was scheduled to appear in the Dominion Post on Saturday 3 November? And why?
5. When did they learn of Greg Kings death?

David Farrar has blogged about the lame comment from the Editor of the Dompost about Truth’s cover story published yesterday about Greg King.

The story has information which could only have come (directly or indirectly) from family members.

Dominion Post editor Bernadette Courtney told NBR ONLINE the Truth story was wrong and she had no further comment.

That’s the sort of response you normally get from politicians, not media. It is called a non denial, denial.

Saying a story is wrong, and saying nothing else, means that one word could be wrong. It is not saying that the substantive allegation is incorrect. A proper denial would be “There was no investigation and there was no contact with Mr King or his family that week”. Of course you can only make a denial like that, if you are sure that no one can not prove otherwise.

Also rare to have an Editor to refuse to comment beyond a non denial, denial. If you worked for Fairfax and were doing a story on the ethical conduct of a business, would you accept such a statement from the CEO and regard it as the end of the matter?

Kris “Tardis” Fa’afoi says he mis-spoke when he fondly remembered the opening of the Porirua McDonalds….from Christchurch, when he was just a couple of months old.

But when does mis-speaking become lying?

The first time?

Mr Faafoi first made the comments in an interview with The Dominion Post and repeated them in an television broadcast. He has since said he “mis-spoke” and meant to say it was where he had his first McDonald’s burger.

The second time?

Or the third time?

or the fourth time?

With that much lying going on, anyone would think he had met Richard Nixon at some point…..oh wait he did…with Elvis.

Kris Fa'afoi at his famous meeting with Elvis and Richard Nixon

Note to the editors of The Dominion Post and Andrea Vance. My work is  Blogged under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. That means you can use my photos, with attribution, if you ask. A link would be nice too.

The US wants us to send the SAS back to Afghanistan.

I just bet they do, these guys know how to the job of soldiering better than most. That job is to put the hurt on the enemy as quickly and effectively as possible and put them out of action permanently. That means dead.

It is what they train to do, it is what they are paid to do and it is what they want to do. Send them back I say, let them do their jobs.

Usually when a sniper is operating you really should keep your head down rather than stick it up and look all around trying to find the sneaky little bastard.

Not anymore.

Apart from the fact that one of your buddies probably just bought it from the sniper’s first shot there is now a man-portable and wearable solution to finding the little prick and terminating his ass.

A wearable sniper detection system is to be used by troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan in the US Army’s first large-scale deployment of its type. The Soldier-Wearable Acoustic Targeting System (SWATS) can pinpoint the location of snipers after a single gunshot, audibly informing soldiers of the point of origin.

Part of QinetiQ’s Ears Gunshot Localization System family, the 6.4-ounce acoustic sensor takes just a fraction of a second to locate the source of sniper fire. It works in a 360-degree radius, isn’t confused by ambient noise and can be used in a moving vehicle.

Now that is what I call out-fucking-standing use of technology. Sucks to be a bad guy though.

It’ll have to be God defending New Zealand because after a damning report realesed about the readiness of New Zealand’s armed forces it sure as fuck won’t be them.

This of course leads me to remind those members of the VRWC who were at teh Scampi and Champi drinks last Friday to remember what the sage Whaleoil told them about a bloodless coup d’etat.

So I ask you, If Helen Clark decided that it would be best for us all with all these allegations swirling around and in the interests of open and honest democracy she was going to put off the elections, who could stop her?

The Police? Not bloody likely.

The Governor-General? Well that depends on who spoke to Her Majesty the Queen first.

The Army? yeah right, they could only mount a company to deploy to Afghanistan and they are still there.

So go on, tell me who could stop Clark conducting a bloodless coup in the “best interests of us all”?