Naive DimPost editorialist up in arms …Who rights [sic] this drivel?

September 14, 2011

This post deserves a subtitle:

“Kick’em when they’re up; kick’em when they’re down” Don Henley (see below)

My concern this evening is a weird little editorial in today’s Dominion Post concerning the reportorial credentialing of one N Hager Esq.

To wit, in evidence I copy and paste the following:

Hager sees himself as an author and a journalist. In the common definition of the journalistic craft, he is not. He is a meticulous compiler and ferreter out of information that some people would wish to keep secret, and he is very good at it.

What? Can I just take a moment to let this sink in.

Nicky Hager’s not a journalist, at least as you [DomPost editorialist 13.9.2011] choose to define it.

How do you define it by the way?

Nicky’s not a journalist, but he might be an author though.

Is that good or bad?

Is that what you’re saying here?

I must have missed something, run that par by me again…

Hager sees himself as an author and a journalist. In the common definition of the journalistic craft, he is not. He is a meticulous compiler and ferreter out of information that some people would wish to keep secret, and he is very good at it.

I don’t think “ferreter” is a word in the context you’re trying to shoehorn it into.

But, leaving aside your poor composition skills, what you’re trying to say is that Nicky Hager is good at his job — ferreting out information that some people would wish to keep secret — but that’s not journalism as you define it. How do you define journalism by the way? That last bit sounds suspiciously like what journalism is. Or at least, what it should be.

I must be stupid, but I still don’t get it…tell me more.

The flaw in Hager’s modus operandi is that he amasses what he has learned and then presents it to the public through the prism that best suits his world view, without allowing for the possibility that there might be a plausible explanation for what he has “uncovered”. The case he builds is thus rarely troubled by opposing opinions and inconvenient facts, realities that journalists in the mainstream media are morally obliged to take into account, and present.

[Seeing Afghanistan through naive prism]

Excuse me, even the headline on this piece doesn’t stand up to lexical scrutiny.

OK, you can call me a media studies poser if you like. You won’t be the first. The fact remains, we have to deconstruct this argument to make sense of the DomPo’s position.

First of all, a disclaimer. I know and admire Nicky Hager. I consider him a friend and I’ve defended him before here at EM on similar charges from Fran O’sullivan.

I haven’t yet read Nicky’s latest book Other People’s Wars — the centre of this controversy — but I am told by reliable sources that it is brilliant and you should all read it. I’m picking up my copy from Unity Books in the morning and will read it on the plane home this weekend.

I think his work in Hollow Men is exemplary investigative journalism, despite this mean-spirited and misleading line in the DumPoo’s rite [sic] of reply.

Take his earlier book, The Hollow Men, for example, which – though not news to political junkies – made uncomfortable reading for some associated with the Don Brash-led National Party.

Not even faint praise in this damning dismissal from the Dismal Poke.

Speaking of definitions of journalism didn’t Lord Harmsworth once say that it was about “afflicting the comfortable”?

Like many a determined investigator, some of whom have worked at the DomPost and done brilliant work of journalism, Nicky takes excellent care of his sources and his facts. He does, in other words, exactly what those imbued with, and accountable to, the spirit of excellence in reporting, should do.

The sputtering [sic] rage of the Dim’s editorialist — whether real or feigned for 13 sovereigns — is best expressed in this nonsense:

In the common definition of the journalistic craft, he is not.

Did that make your eyes water? Ferfucksake! Is this grammatic and syntactic outrage the result of outsourced subbing? Is there nobody in the office to tell the editorialist they’ve written gibberish; up with which we will not put.

[Ahhem, so to speak]

Can we just look, for a brief indulgent moment, at the definition of a journalist that is common today.

Actually, we might need a few, here’s one to be going on with.

“Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It’s absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees.”

That’s from Marguerite Duras, it is echoed by many; including George Orwell. Regular readers of EM will know my line Orwell and Trotsky.

I’ll be back. In the meantime…

Read the rest of this entry »


What’s “Our Willie” up to? Full disclosure necessary

January 24, 2010

So what is Willie Apiata up to in Kabul?

Certainly he’s not visiting night clubs or giving road safety lectures to school kids.

According to reports from overseas papers and pieced together by Jon Stephenson and Anthony Hubbard in today’s Sunday Star Times, the corporal and his SAS comrades-in-arms have been training Afghan army commandos and playing shoot-em-ups with the local insurgents.

And it seems “Honest John” may have broken a promise that Kiwi troops on the ground in Afghanistan wouldn’t be involved in combat operations.

This is why we need full disclosure.

The ongoing occupations of Afghanistan (8 years+) and Iraq (6 years +) are not cut-and-dried affairs where it’s “obvious” we should be supporting “our” troops and their mission. There can only be real debate on these issues when all of us are in possession of the facts.

Now the issue of identifying Willie and his mates has become a political football and, ridiculously, linked to the issue of name suppression in our courts. [Clark blamed for SAS exposure]


Soldiers in harms way: Don’t ask, don’t tell

January 22, 2010

Philip Poupin/NZH 21-01-2010

Good on the New Zealand Herald for publishing this picture of two NZ SAS soldiers in Kabul.

And cheers to the Dominion Post for going for it again today.

It’s a Kiwi version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and really quite pathetic that the Defence Minister is upset about this image. He’s said that identifying the soldiers puts them in harm’s way. Presumably because now those pesky Taleban can put a name or a face to the troopers.

That’s just bullshit. These guys wander around Kabul in heavy body armour, armed to the teeth and ready to take potshots at anyone who looks remotely suspicious. That’s about 90 per cent of the population in the reasoning of the occupying forces.

Let’s be clear about this; these SAS troopers are in harms way because of a series of political decisions taken in Washington and Wellington. Read the rest of this entry »


Georgia on my mind – gangsters, oil and blood

August 16, 2008

Warning: this post contains some AO language and is not really about taxi drivers at all.

I have a lot of respect for cab drivers. Most of the time they’re really well-educated and they’re all very, very  street-smart. Last night I got a ride home with Ahmad. He’s from Afghanistan and he was listening to the BBC World Service.

There were items about the conflict in Georgia and so we got to talking. It was quite funny to realise that my chat with Ahmad was the perfect dessert to my main course argument with my colleague Wayne at the Brooklyn.

Wayne and I had been talking about Russia, Georgia, gangster capitalism, transnationals and failed or failing states. Ahmad segued straight into that line of thinking off the back of the World Service reports from Georgia. Ahmad has been all over the world. He thinks the Russians are crazy and hates the American presence in his homeland. There’s a nice, balanced logic to his position and I’m instantly drawn to a stranger who’s making my journey smooth on a soggy Auckland night.

My conversations with Wayne and Ahmad  led to this little tome: gangster capitalism, the looming resource wars and ‘regime change’.

What happens when you give gangsters access to new-killer weapons of mass distraction?

Read the rest of this entry »


Harry Hotpants exposes himself to Terry Taleban: "I’m a f*ck*** tosser!"

March 3, 2008

Now that the giddy “Oh my gosh!” pretend outrage has cooled a little I’d like to add my ten Kiwi cents to the Harry-Embargo-Imbroglio (HEI).

It seems that the English tosser who happens to be 3rd-in-line to the best paid non-job in the world is not that keen on the country of his birth. HEI’s been telling anyone who’ll listen – pretty much the entire world’s media – that, actually, HEI hates England. In particular Harry Hotpants doesn’t like English beer (he drinks something called a Crack

baby cocktail
(see separate post) and HEI doesn’t like the English media too much either.

From today’s New Zealand Herald (and a 1000 other quasi-tabloid shi*sheets. The NZH lifted the story from The Observer):

“I don’t want to sit around Windsor,” HEI admitted. “I generally don’t like England that much and, you know, it’s nice to be away from all the press and the papers and all the general shite that they write.”

England was, in fact, “poo”, HEI declared.

That’s a pity really. His retainers and flunkies should tell the lucky shite that thanks to the world’s oversupply of trash and gossip magazines HEI’s one of the most eligible rich dicks around and can get into the pants of every young ‘gel’ who takes his royal fancy. HEI doesn’t even know that “poo” (how upper-class quaint) “stinks”.

To be honest, I wouldn’t lose a minute of my life worrying or being upset if HEI was topped by an IED. Apparently there’s a price on HEI’s head.

‘Prince Harry

Is A Top Terror Target’

Prince Harry is now a top terror target after serving in Afghanistan, a radical cleric has warned.

<img src=”http://static.sky.com/images/pictures/1125999.jpg&#8221; alt=”Omar

Omar Bakri Mohammad

Omar Bakri Mohammad said the Prince, who is arriving back in the UK today, was behaving like a “big man, tough man” and that would make him a target for Islamic militants.

The cleric said the Prince had become an “ambassador of war” unlike his mother Diana who had been an “ambassador of peace”.

“I think now he will be more targeted by the Taliban and al Qaeda supporters than before,” he said. “It’s better for him to return home.

However, let’s remember that while the world’s media spent far too much time fawning over this blue-blooded waste of oxygen, real people were dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. We can pause to reflect on another British serviceman who was killed on Sunday March 2:

British airman killed

in Iraq attack named

8:29AM Monday March 03, 2008

By Peter Griffiths
British airman killed in rocket attack named.  Photo /Reuters.

British airman killed in rocket attack named. Photo /Reuters.

LONDON – A British airman killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq was named on Sunday as Sergeant Duane Barwood.

The Ministry of Defence in London said the 41-year-old from the town of Carterton, Oxfordshire, died on Friday after an attack on the British military base outside Basra.

His death brings to 175 the number of British armed forces personnel who have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Barwood, known as “Baz“, was part of the 903 Expeditionary Air Wing of the Royal Air Force and was based at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

He leaves a wife, Sharon, and two daughters, Leanna and Rebecca. In a statement, his family said: “Baz will be greatly missed by all those who knew him.

Harry Hotpants you are a lucky and privileged bastard. Shove another Crack Baby down your sun-burnt neck instead of complaining about English ordinariness. Harry have you sent flowers to Mrs Barwood? I didn’t think so, you insufferable waste of space.

We should also pause for the other victims of this senseless Imperialist adventure in which Prince Hotpants got to play toy soldiers. We need to be reminded of the hundreds who die every week in Iraq and Afghanistan whose names we are never told by the press.

Sunday 2 March: 22 dead

Baghdad: 3 bodies.

Diyala

Baquba: roadside bomb kills policeman trying to defuse it; gunmen kill civilian.

Wajihiya: roadside bomb kills 6, 2 of them children.

Buhriz: motorist is shot dead by Iraqi soldiers, after failing to ‘respond to checkpoint instructions.’

Muqdadiya: 3 bodies.

Ninewa

Mosul: car bomb kills civilian.

Shabana: 2 policemen killed in clashes with gunmen.

Salahuddin

Samarra: car bomb kills 4, a child among them.

But while all this is going on, the crap media’s attention is somewhere else. The photogenic action man Harry Hotpants has been discovered living a “normal” life in southern Afghanistan.

As an aside:

“Oh shi*, hold the presses!” Harry Hotpants leads ‘normal life’, now there’s a headline you don’t see every day.
You little silver-coated turd; you think life in southern Afghanistan is ‘normal’? You freakish little rich shi*, fu** you and your warped idea of ‘normal’. A life of war and poverty is not ‘normal’. You, sir, have no idea of what ‘normal’ is. Suck down another Crack Baby you lazy ill-begotten drunk and fu** off back to Knightsbridge.

HEE HEE HEE…Oops…

Sorry, back to the real point of this post:

A few days ago there was an almighty fuss that was heard around the world: some pissant little Australian gossip rag had broken an embargo on a story that the valiant prince had “seen action” in Afghanistan.

No, it wasn’t about the princely prick getting on in a Kabul whorehouse; though it would be a better story if it was. There happened to be a jeep-load of photos and video footage of Harry with a pistol tucked into his flack jacket in really cool wrap-around sunglasses in a cool brown T-shirt and a backwards baseball cap chatting to “Terry Taleban“. but I noticed with some delight that Harry and Terry were never in the same frame; though HEI did tell the media that when Terry’s head “popped up”, HEI fired his trusty blunderbuss for a minute or too.

As an aside: Does anyone else feel slightly uncomfortable about this veiled reference to “Towel Heads” (Terry-toweling)?



When HEI wasn’t kissing Terry’s babies, or getting the footman to make HEI an icy Crack Baby back in the mess, HEI was cracking off some rounds of 50 calibre machine gun fire in the general direction of the native men-folk.

“Mix me another Crack Baby, Hughes.

This damn gunnery is hot work.”

Harry Hotpants on show during a secret attack

against Terry Taleban of Helmand Province.

As an aside:

Cue Monty Python music: “I fart in your general direction.” Did you notice HEI looked remarkably uncomfortable behind that gun, with the regimental SM leaning over his shoulder: “Put your balls into it you useless twat.” Not the right kind of show for a chap with the (purely ceremonial) rank of Coronet.



Is it just me, or did the whole thing seem slightly staged from the royal “get go”?

And why pick on New Idea, according to other media reports the story was also on the Drudge Report and on several European news websites.

The point is that the whole idea of an embargo is stupid and the media who were prepared to stick with an agreement to keep Sir Hotpants‘ deployment to Afghanistan secret were colluding in a restraint of trade and an ideological hoodwinking of their readers and viewers.

Buckingham Palace and the British government had a deal: Sir Hotpants‘ heroic (sic) stint in dusty Afghanistan would be revealed to a grateful public at a time of their own choosing; preferably when Harry was doing the horizontal Zorba with a suitably lubricated (with Crack Baby) Chelsea slapper and was safely out of the way.

Just to make sure the loyal tabloids didn’t miss a beat, or a shot, a royal battalion of tame paparazzo was billeted next to HEI to film his every move across the wide brown plains of Helmand province.

“Sir, would you mind pooing in this trench, sir. We can shoot your royal buttocks from a flattering angle over here, sir.”

“Make-up, more powder on the royal derriere please…and…action.”

“Oh sir, it’s true! Royal poo is blue, and sir, it smells divine, sir.”

You think I’m being funny? No? Well, yes and no. The Telegraph story on the breaking of the embargo contained this little gem:

As part of the deal between the media and the MoD, a small number of journalists went to Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan to report.

[British defence chief] Sir Richard said: “What the last two months have shown is that it is perfectly possible for Prince Harry to be employed just the same as other Army officers of his rank and experience.

Yes, just the same as any officer with rank of Coronet with fuc*all experience, except in drinking Crack Baby cocktails and senseless rutting.

Yes, just the same as every Coronet who needs a battalion of minders tagging along in a war zone.

Harry Hotpants was never in danger in Helmand Province. He’s safer there than in any Soho nightclub where he might drown in his 37th Crack Baby of that particular binge.

The whole thing was a stinking propaganda exercise designed to hit British hearts and minds with a “shock and awe” message bomb. The war is unpopular in Britain and this would have been a huge publicity coup.

I don’t much care who broke this story. If it was New Idea then good luck to them. According to The Telegraph in London, the story was in New Idea a month ago and no one picked it up then. In a statement issued on Feb 29, New Idea is quoted as saying:

“New Idea was not issued with a press embargo and was unaware of the existence of one…

The story was published on Monday, January 7. Since then New Idea has received no comment from the British Ministry of Defence.

We take these matters very seriously and would never knowingly break an embargo. We regret any issues the revelation of this story in America has caused today. “

Six weeks ago this story was mentioned in NW; now they’re getting blasted by the rest of the press. Actually, NW was probably dobbed in by Palace flacks as a way of giving the story a boost. How else could Sky TV and other networks have a special all ready to go with the shit-eating headline “Hero Harry Home At Last”. PUKE!

The British tabloids hate to be upstaged and for an Antipodean trash mag to do it is the height of colonial bastardry. For revenge, the tabbies have been falling over themselves to gush the mush about the heroic Harry Hotpants and sections of the quality press have been rubbing their noses in it:

Earlier yesterday even The Sun found itself saying: “There’s no doubt Harry has struggled with the pressures of Royalty. But Harry has found richer fulfilment serving with his mates than he ever found in the bottom of a Crack Baby cocktail.

“In place of the tipsy playboy, we saw a self-assured and mature man of action at ease with himself.”

The Daily Mirror said: “Harry, famous in the past for his partying, is a young man who has come of age, serving his Queen — his grandmother — and country with distinction…

The Daily Express said: “For Harry to serve his country in a combat zone will boost the morale of forces families everywhere. Britain can be extremely proud of its soldier Prince and so can the Royal Family.”

The story was heavily used around the world, and in the United States there was sometimes a little more comment added.

The New York Post said: “Looks like the Taliban is getting the royal treatment.” And it added: “The 23-year-old royal heir, once nicknamed ‘Dirty Harry’ by British tabloids for his hard-partying ways, has now been dubbed ‘Harry the Hero’ for his role in the war on terror.”

The real point is the sycophantic coverage by the hypocritical tabloids that’s vomited up on every news website since Sir Hotpants‘ glorious return to the country of his mother, his mother country that he hates.

As an aside:

Fuck you, Harry Hotpants; bloodsucking scion of inbred ingrates.

And to you sycophantic toadies of the tabloids:

Get a grip (or actually let go of your august organs and start thinking with your brains, not your assholes).

I’m with Peter Preston of The Observer on this shabby little story:

But phooey! Double phooey! There’s no point in criticising anyone involved in this deluded little charade, because everyone acted from perfectly comprehensible motives. Harry wanted a bit of proper soldiering. The MoD wanted a warm bath of publicity on its own terms. The press loves being praised for restraint, plus getting pool exclusives of ‘Hero Harry’ playing ‘keepyuppy‘ with a toilet roll shortly after ‘shedding tears for Chelsea’. But the difficulty is that this was always going to be a flaky deal, which lasted rather longer than you’d have bet at the start.

That’s right, a flaky deal designed to get some good publicity for the British military machine and for dumbass Gordon Brown.

A flaky deal aimed at the gullible audience (in MoD parlance) of New Idea readers who were told this remarkable and top secret news SIX WEEKS AGO, but didn’t see they’d been duped by those nasty editor-bitches.

Hey guess what, Terry Taleban (or at least his missus) must also not be reading NW. Terry and his brothers had six weeks to get to Harry Hotpants with a suicide bomb or a sniper yet the self-confessed “bullet magnet” made it home alive.

The power of the press HEI HEI HEI. It seems HEI actually blew it with his “I don’t like England” comments. I think the good folk of the Home Counties should whip the hat around to buy the idiot prince a ticket back to Helmand Province. Perhaps HEI and Terry Taleban could share a Crack Baby and get drunk enough to think they’d solved all the world’s problems. At least they’d be too pissed to shoot at each other.

And for those whingeing outlets who are now ganging up on New Idea, including stupid, inane and unethical gossip websites, such as Defamer.com, stop the crocodile tears. You would steal your granny’s nickers for the sake of a story.