The
attacks on Nicky Hager and their flaws
Article:
Branko
Marcetic
22
August,2014
It’s
all made up and can’t be proven. But if it can, then it doesn’t
matter, because it’s not that big a deal. Besides, everyone does
it. These are just some of the rebuttals launched at Nicky Hager
since his book, Dirty Politics, revealed the unsavoury underside of
National Party politics. Figures on the right, from government
ministers and broadcasters to the subject of the book himself,
Cameron Slater, have lined up to launch a volley of attacks on the
book and discredit its arguments.
But
apart from the self-contradictory attempts to dismiss its actual
content – the difficulty of which is reflected in the government’s
shifting positions – these same commentators on the right have
tried to sully the motives and journalistic character of both the
book and Hager himself. Amongst the flurry of controversy, three
arguments in particular have stuck out: that Hager is part of a wider
left-wing smear campaign; that he’s profiting from stolen material;
and that he’s engaging in exactly the same kind of dirty politics
he’s decrying.
For
a variety of reasons, none of these arguments are convincing.
Argument
#1: Dirty Politics is part of a left-wing smear campaign
In
a number of places, the Prime Minister has accused of the book of
being part of what he called a “well and truly orchestrated,
left-wing smear campaign” aimed at the National government and its
key figures.
Speaking
the morning after the book’s release, Key told reporters:
“Frankly,
if there’s dirty politics in New Zealand, it’s actually coming
from the left…What we’ve had from them this week is we’ve had
Dotcom putting up a video of young people chanting. We’ve had
effigies being burnt and displayed on the internet. We’ve had
billboards being wrecked. We’ve had a parody out there on the
[internet]. And now we’ve had this book of baseless allegations.”
The
first incident referenced here is the Internet Mana Party video
featuring Kim Dotcom speaking to a group of students chanting “F***
John Key”. The second incident refers to a video put online by a
group called Vote Him Out, showing students burning an effigy of the
Prime Minister, which both he and Cameron Slater swiftly tried to
link to Kim Dotcom. The final evidence Key cites is a satirical song
critical of him and the National Party that was written and performed
by a Wellington blues musician.
Earlier
this week, the Prime Minister again tried to link these incidents
together in an interview with Guyon Espiner on Radio New Zealand,
calling the book’s allegations against Judith Collins part of a
smear campaign, which began the week with “F. U. videos” and
“went into burning effigies.”
The
Prime Minister’s attempt to link these disparate events is hampered
by the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence they’re
connected in any way. Unlike the direct links between Cameron Slater
and various figures in the National Party and government demonstrated
by Hager, it’s clear that each of the videos Key is complaining
about were made by individuals who had nothing to do with each other.
Other than the fact that the videos are anti-Key, come broadly from
the left and were cited by the Prime Minister, the idea that they
have anything more in common is laughable.
More
importantly, the examples cited by Key pale in comparison to the kind
of outrageous activities described by Hager in his book. On the right
we have allegations of: the Prime Minister’s press secretary
unlawfully accessing information from Labour party computers; a
government minister feeding personal information about a political
opponent to expose him to attack; a staffer in the Prime Minister’s
office tipping off a blogger about a politically damaging OIA
request; and many sleazy accounts of attempts to gather embarrassing
details on politicians’ sex lives.
On
the left we have: some students chanting an obscenity; other students
setting fire to an effigy; vandalised billboards, an election year
tradition and hardly something National have a monopoly on; and a
parody video that’s barely discernable from the typical campaign
ads lobbed by parties during elections.
If
someone on the left was using this to orchestrate a smear campaign,
they were doing a terrible job.
Argument
#2: Hager is profiting from stolen material
Upon
first being challenged with the claims from Hager’s book, Judith
Collins replied that Hager had used “stolen emails to further slur
me, and, more importantly, the Prime Minister and the people in his
office.” The emails, after all, had originally been hacked from
Slater’s computer by an unknown source.
The
use of the term “stolen emails” by the Justice Minister is a
pointed one, meant to cast aspersions on Hager’s journalistic
credentials and his intentions, giving the book a sordid feel. Not
only that, but it also casts doubt on the legality of the book. As
she went on to say: “That is deplorable behaviour, and I am sure
the legal situation he’s in is quite interesting.” Hager wasn’t
acting as a journalist, but as an attack blogger, and had broken the
law in his zeal.
However,
unlike Slater’s collusion with Jason Ede to snoop around in the
Labour Party’s computers, there’s no evidence that Hager was
involved in any way in obtaining the hacked emails. He was leaked the
emails after the fact, and then published them selectively in the
public interest. The obtaining of the emails by the original source
may have been illegal, but thanks to the Bill of Rights Act’s
protection of freedom of expression, Hager is well within his rights
to publish the information.
As
for the attempt to attach an association of grubbiness to Hager’s
work, it’s useful to note that what Hager did happens routinely
every day around the world. It’s called journalism: someone breaks
the law or violates an oath by passing secret information on to a
reporter, who then writes a story about it. It’s why Peter Dunne
had to resign as a Minister after he was found to have discussed
leaking the Kitteridge report last year, but the reporter who he
leaked it to, Andrea Vance, went relatively unbothered. It’s also
why, while the US government tries in vain to have Edward Snowden
extradited to stand trial for his leak of NSA files, the websites and
newspapers which published them have received praise and are
untouchable by their respective governments.
The
whole affair does, however, point to the lak of logic in the High
Court’s recent decision that books are essentially not journalism.
A High Court judge ruled on 19 June that only news articles enjoy
journalistic legal protections, and so an author of a journalistic
book could be compelled to reveal her or his sources. This now puts
Hager at risk of being forced to reveal the identity of his source
for Dirty Politics if a criminal investigation is launched. Absurdly,
if he had taken the 14 chapters of his book and instead published
them as 14 separate articles in a newspaper or magazine, he would not
be.
Argument
#3: Hager himself is engaging in dirty politics
“Nicky
has clearly breached my privacy,” Slater complained to the Herald.
“The guy is a sanctimonious hypocrite,”
“Obviously,
the irony has not escaped you that you attack people for leaked
emails, and yet your entire book’s based on leaked emails,” Mike
Hosking said to Hager the day after the book’s release.
Even
an editorial on Stuff suggested there was something untoward about
Hager “using hacked emails from Slater’s private computer while
also strongly believing that for his opponents to do the same would
be the worst case of dirty tricks.”
The
idea that Hager himself has done the very thing his book crusades
against seems to be pervasive one. But just as with the difference
between a parody video made by a musician and government officials
working with some in the media to defame opponents, there is an ocean
that separates Hager’s book from what Slater was doing.
As
his critics concede when they accuse him of being “selective”
with the emails he’s used, Hager has only used those emails which
are newsworthy and are in the public interest – in other words,
those emails which relate to the National government’s collusion in
orchestrating attacks on their political rivals. Despite the fact
that Hager had six years’ worth of Slater’s emails to work with,
the book features no details about Slater’s sex life, what he gets
up to in his spare time, or other irrelevant personal information. In
fact, the recent email dumps by the original source, which aren’t
as discerning, have made Hager’s selectiveness abundantly clear.
By
contrast, excepting the OIA request on Phil Goffe’s briefing by the
SIS, this is exactly the kind of information Slater, Ede and others
were interested in. They weren’t after information that would
reveal wrongdoing or corruption by political elites. The vast
majority of their concerns involving digging up scurrilous
information on politicians’ sex lives, catching them behaving badly
on their off-hours, and using covertly obtained information to
disrupt campaigns. Instead of revealing the wrongdoing of those in
power, Slater’s work (and that of the officials he collaborated
with) aimed to embarrass politicians with seedy details about their
personal lives.
In
addition to this, equating the conduct of a hacker to that of a staff
member from the Prime Minister’s office is treading dangerous
ground. Typically, governments are meant to hold themselves to a
higher standard than your average citizen, let alone an anonymous
computer hacker. While that might not make the actions of the hacker
legal or morally sound, such violations are rightly considered more
outrageous when they came from a democratically elected,
taxpayer-funded government.
Because
the government is unable to refute the actual content of the book -
given that it’s well-documented, and a number of the parties
involved have actually admitted to some of the charges - they and
their supporters have resorted to an age-old political trick: attack
the messanger in order to discredit the message. If they plan to keep
doing so, however, they would do well to come up with more convincing
arguments than these.
John Key’s Groundhog day II
TheStandard,
22
August, 2014
Another
day and more bad press for National over dirty politics. John Key is
now claiming, without irony, that an
assault on our democracy is occurring.
There is, but not from the sources that he claims. The attack
on our democracy has come from the National Party who has politicised
the public service, abused its relationship with the press, and fed
sensitive information to an attack blogger who has then smeared away
to his heart’s content.
A Herald
Digipoll has
recorded a significant drop in support for John Key and a significant
gain for David Cunliffe in the preferred PM stakes. It appears
that more and more citizens are realising that the attacks on
Cunliffe are part of a dark ops smear campaign from within the
Beehive. As David gets more public exposure I expect support
for him to grow. And if he performs as well as he did in this
Herald video interview then
he and Labour will do well.
Yesterday
there was a lot of analysis of Key’s knowledge that sensitive
information concerning Phil Goff was declassified and handed to
Cameron Slater. I thought that we had the
smoking gun proving
that Key knew about the OIA release by the SIS to Cameron Slater.
But Enough is Enough pointed out that the
evidence was not quite there.
A
plain reading of the letters released by Tony
Manhire Felix
Marwick yesterday clearly suggested that Key, as opposed to his
office, had been briefed on the decision to release the SIS documents
to Cameron Slater. But then Ombudsman Beverley Wakam and former
SIS chief Warren Tucker came out and claimed that the language used
in both letters is a particularly Wellington form of English and that
it meant Key’s office was briefed and not him personally despite
the clear plain english used.
So
can John Key honestly claim that he did not know about the decision
to declassify and release sensitive and politically loaded SIS
documents to Cameron Slater?
The
Herald has reported
this morning on
the following video which is from a press conference back in 2011.
Key
is quoted as saying:
What
happened is Warren Tucker didn’t come to me, he went to his legal
adviser and his legal advisers told him this is the process they have
to follow and when
he was going through that process it was at that point he told me
he’d release it because he has to tell me that under the
no-surprises doctrine.”
Another
aspect to the story that is now very clear is that Tucker released
the document to Slater only because Key had referred to the
document publicly. Tucker’s
letter to Slater says
“the [NZSIS] would not normally release such information because
disclosure may breach the confidentiality of advice tendered by
officials. In this case, however, the existence and some of the
content of such briefings have already been made public.”
So
Key’s claim that Slater’s OIA
request did not come over his desk has
to be wrong. And his role in the actual release needs to be
investigated further.
Of
course this debate avoids the bleedingly obvious. By
refusing to do anything except conceding reluctantly that
Collins’ actions were unwise Key is effectively sanctioning the
Dirty Politics exposed in the book. People should lose their
jobs, starting with Collins, and continuing with chief of staff Wayne
Eagleston and continuing with Jason Ede. Their continued
presence on various payrolls shows what Key thinks about their
tactics and behaviour.
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