A reporter from the website Scoop will resign from Parliament's press gallery after being caught photographing documents in Labour leader David Shearer's office.
Lyndon Hood was among a number of journalists waiting in the office for an interview with Mr Shearer yesterday afternoon, and was spotted taking photos of documents on the leader's desk by a Labour Party press secretary.
Scoop general manager Alastair Thompson confirmed today Hood would resign from the gallery but would continue working as a reporter in Wellington.
Scoop had written a letter to Mr Shearer apologising for the incident.
Now on the face of it, this is quite a significant breach of trust and of security. So where's the media storm? It hasn't been mentioned on TV this morning, and it's nowhere on the front pages of the Herald, Stuff or Dom-Post websites. You can find it on the Herald's site, but you have to drill down three levels.
Compare this to the media storm over the Teapot Tapes. Well actually, you can't; there's no comparison whatsoever in terms of the media coverage. Which begs the question; do the media take a softer line on their own?
2 comments:
Why no media fuss? Well, let's see:
1. It seems to be a story that's over - reporter deliberately photographed the docs, seen doing it, resigned from the gallery. What angle could the media pursue here?
2. So far, Shearer hasn't made any ridiculous statements or required the police to ignore actual crimes for a bit so they can indulge him in his annoyance at having his docs photographed.
On the other hand, if Shearer does decide to make a complete fool of himself over it, I'm sure the media will be happy to set up a feeding frenzy - but he won't, if he's learned anything from the PM's antics of November last.
The previous poster misses the point. Media come down very hard on other industries, particularly public servant and politicians, for breaches of probate. As a public we have very little by way knowledge of how they apply ethics and standards to themselves. As a former senior public servant I have direct experience of the very underhanded and deceitful way the media can work to get their job done.
This example like the teapot taping is an illustration of my point. The reaction of My Key or Mr Shearer should be absolutely secondary to the story itself.
Sandip
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