The leader pro tempore of the Media Party, Guyon Espiner, ran another NZ First hit job yesterday, except it was all much ado about nothing. You see, Treasury made the recommendations for any law changes that occurred, notwithstanding the insinuation that changes resulted because of any donations to NZ First. In fact, the process was so mundane and ordinary that opposition member Michael Woodhouse couldn’t even raise a blush over it. The Media Party is now shooting blanks.
Meanwhile, the Media Party continues at high dudgeon over the revealing of the source of all Espiner’s “revelations”. They are upset their source has been revealed and deliberately misquoted legislation designed to protect sources.
Of course, they ignored the pile on that occurred when Nicky Hager breached Cameron Slater’s privacy and also exposed his sources. Instead, they revelled in the muck that Hager churned up.
There is another incident too that they’ve conveniently ignored. That is when Cameron Slater was sent photos of the mess that journalists left in the wake of a Press Gallery party. In that instance, they piled in and revealed the journalist’s source as Jason Ede.
A senior adviser in John Key’s office has been caught crouching among cigarette butts, taking photos of the aftermath of Parliament’s press gallery party.
Jason Ede, whose role includes “getting out National’s message to a range of bloggers”, was seen taking the photos about 7.30am today.
They show some food, broken plastic cups and cigarette butts left on the ground after the party which finished about 2am.
The photos appeared on the Whale Oil [sic] website, run by Cameron Slater. He used the photos to attack the media as “sanctimonious hypocrites”.
They had “gone into bat for the parliamentary cleaners to be paid more, calling MPs and staff messy” and had criticised smokers for lighting up in the parliamentary precinct, Slater said.
Stuff
The head of the Press Gallery was upset about the fact that their piggy-ness was exposed, but cared not one jot about exposing the source of Cameron Slater.
What is the difference between that occurrence and what The BFD revealed about Lester Grey? The answer is, of course, is there should be no difference other than that created by the rank hypocrisy of journalists.
It seems to me that the Media Party think they should be the sole arbiter of what is news and what is public interest. They are wrong, and the more they involve themselves in the political process the more they should be held to account in the same way other powerful groups are held to account.
Of course, the advent of social media and new media has broken their monopoly, and threatens their hegemony and reduces their power.
While all this has been going on, the struggling Communications Director for the Media Party is running memes that are normally the purview of allegedly dirty bloggers rather than Media Party spokespeople.
This is, of course, the same Sean Plunket who took an enforced break from radio to shill his expertise in communications for Gareth Morgan’s failed political party. Plunket was as successful running that shambles as he is in getting people to listen to his Magic Talk radio show. It is hard to call 2,000 listeners an audience, but hey, look at him, like the special kid running the school race, at least he’s giving it a go. He was useless running comms for Gareth Morgan and he’s useless now in seeking relevance to justify his fat paycheck. You know you are in trouble when the highlight of your week is a far-left hate speech blogger and a convicted fraudster as your guests.
At least the National party has finally found a willing coalition partner, the Media Party, led by Guyon Espiner with Sean Plunket as the communications director.
All they need now is some candidates and a logo.