There's going to be a lot more about this, no doubt.
Ponytail
saga: Public won't really know what happened until Herald releases
transcript
NZ
Herald changes its story three times
TVNZ,
23
April, 2015
A
former senior journalist says the John Key ponytail pulling scandal
has turned political after conflicting reports of an interview with
the woman at the centre of the incident emerged.
Allegations
made by Amanda Bailey appeared on the Daily Blog yesterday outing the
Prime Minster as a serial hair-puller.
She
alleged today that New Zealand Herald journalist Rachel Glucina duped
her into believing she was a public relations specialist during a
meeting with two of her bosses, claims both her and the newspaper
deny.
Bill
Ralston, former head of news at TVNZ, said the situation had become
political.
"There's
an underlying current of politics throughout all of this and lying at
the bottom of it," he told ONE News.
"She
(Ms Bailey) is undoubtedly of a centre-left persuasion, no doubt
about that, but then again a lot of her detractors are people of a
centre-right persuasion. So once again we're seeing a news issue
turned into pure politics."
He
said it was becoming a "he says, she says" situation.
"The
woman claims one thing, the Herald and its reporter claims another,
so until such time as they give the public a full transcript of all
the interviews Rachel Glucina did with this woman, the public won't
really know."
Media
commentator Gavin Ellis said journalists must identify who they are
and who they represent before conducting an interview.
"We
have two versions of the story, and I have no idea which is the more
accurate of them," he said.
"Clearly
there seems to be some confusion between the parties, and I simply
don't know if there was any breach of an ethical standard here or
not. If there was, clearly the Herald needs to redress that."
Herald
has a 'meltdown'
The
Herald has fought back against accusations its reporter misled Ms
Bailey, with several versions of a statement posted to its website
today.
The
first version said Ms Glucina had approached the Hip Group, which
owns the Rosie cafe in Auckland, "to seek comment from them and
the waitress for a NZ Herald article".
The
second removed the reference in that sentence to an article for the
NZ Herald, simply saying Ms Glucina approached the group after The
Daily Blog broke the story.
A
third version added that Ms Glucina "wanted to follow-up The
Daily Blog post" when she had urged the couple to "front-foot
the issue".
A
fourth change to the article removed the timestamp, re-setting the
article's publish time to 5am, thus removing the "updated xx
minutes ago" information.
Ms
Bailey today updated her Facebook cover photo with a tweet from Conan
Mckegg to Fairfax Media.
Media
Commentator Russell Brown said the multiple releases were a
"meltdown", a claim denied by the Herald's editor-in-chief
Tim Murphy.
Herald
editor Shayne Currie said in the statement he spoke to the owners of
the Hip Group yesterday.
"When
I spoke to the owners, they told me they had initially thought Rachel
was working on a statement to go to all media, along with the
photograph.
#Waitergate
– Joined-At-The-Hip-Group#Waitergate – Joined-At-The-Hip-Group
NZ
Herald changes its story three times
23
April, 2015
They
say in politics, it’s not the crime that gets you … it’s the
cover-up.
That
looks set to be what happens here with #Waitergate.
Key
initially tried to front-foot allegations of some seriously creepy
weirdness meted out to a waitress at Parnell’s Rosie’s Cafe on
Wednesday; but when the sad spectacle of our Prime Minister appearing
on the nightly news attempting to defend his inappropriate touching
of hospo staff as “a bit of fun” evidently failed to wash with
the electorate, his Black Ops team went into action.
The
first sign that this was being taken deadly seriously by the Nats
came when they deployed Rachel Glucina acting in the guise of a “PR
Advisor” to go have a chat with the waitress in question. Now, most
people know instantly who Glucina is – and while she definitely
specializes in PR and spin, she’s mostly done that in a reasonably
covert capacity as the mistress of the Herald’s Gossip pages,
rather than as a professional.
Although
having said that, experienced political warriors have long speculated
that her lines of communication run right the way into the Beehive –
allegations which were later proven during #DirtyPolitics, when it
turned out she was being deployed by the Nats to run scandalous
“exposes” about alleged links between Russel Norman, Winston
Peters, and Kim DotCom. At the time, Winston alleged her information
source must have been the Office of the Prime Minister misusing the
state’s security intelligence services to track his movements.
So
we can already see that Glucina’s regularly up to her gills in
Nat-party covert ops.
But
how did she know so instantly precisely *which* Parnell cafe the
incident had occurred at?
Or,
for that matter … which waitress to call up and talk to.
New
Zealand’s a small place – the well-healed east side of Auckland’s
central suburbs even more so … but this was just uncanny.
Fortunately,
Glucina has a brother in the know. For, you see, Rosie’s
is run by Hip Group.
And
guess who manages Hip Group? Why,
it’s Glucina’s brother, Henry.
Well
how about that.
So
what I’m speculating happened here, is when Key’s team knew the
hair was about to fly on this story; his shadow comms and PR team
called in a previously utilized and demonstrably successful political
weapon (Glucina), and told her to make the victim’s moral high
ground go away.
Glucina
then took advantage of her familial connection to Rosie’s afforded
by her brother; and set up the interview with the victim and her
immediate employers in the guise of running PR for them.
Now
obviously, I can’t prove that Henry Glucina personally leveraged or
convinced Rosie’s owners Grant and Brown to let his sister into
their home for the purposes of running damage control … but it’s
certainly not implausible.
In
fact, the idea of Henry Glucina hitting up the people he works with
on a day-to-day basis and saying something like “I know this looks
*really bad*, and I’ve heard The Herald’s about to go public with
identifiable details. Here, let me introduce you to this PR person
I’ve got sitting around on retainer” and then wheeling in his
sister to do an interview and photo-shoot – well, if anything, that
seems scarily plausible. And would definitely explain why the
Herald’s amended its own version of events to acknowledge
considerable “confusion
over the initial approach” while deleting Glucina’s earlier
claim that “at
no stage did she misrepresent herself or mislead anybody“.
This
is how the Nats work. Words-in-your-ear, taps on the shoulder, going
straight to your employers, and firing off falsehoods safe in the
knowledge that somebody else comes along to clean up the mess
afterwards.
I’m
disgusted with the way Glucina and The Herald have acted here.
But
if anything, I’m even MORE outraged that the only thing the Prime
Minister appears to have learned from #DirtyPolitics … is that the
Cameron Slater modus operandi works *really well* at skewering the
innocent.
Fortunately,
just like with #Watergate … this time, the crooks have been caught
red handed.
Radio NZ is silent about the NZ Herald's role in outing waitress' identity. They are dutybound to defend the government against too much criticism
Peters
calls for police investigation over ponytail pulling
New
Zealand First leader Winston Peters believes Prime Minister John Key
should face a police investigation after repeatedly pulling the hair
of an Auckland waitress.
23
April, 2015
But
Mr Peters said he could not understand why police officers guarding
Mr Key did not act when the incidents took place.
Mr
Peters said there was a prima facie case of assault given Mr Key had
repeatedly pulled the waitress' ponytail.
Mr
Peters criticised the police who were with Mr Key when he tugged her air.
Listen
to Winston Peters on Checkpoint ( 2 min 48 sec )
"The
police are in a most invidious position. I am not saying what they
should do. I am asking why they didn't do anything at the time. After
all, they may be bodyguards but they are policemen and women,"
he said.
Mr
Peters said the Prime Minister's conduct also undermined his
authority to deal with any National MP who might misbehave in the
future.
Labour
Party deputy leader Annette King said she was also puzzled as to why
members of John Key's diplomatic protection squad stood by and did
nothing.
"I
wonder whether the people around him have got too close to him, and,
in fact, they're too scared to tell him what they really ought to.
I'm surprised that the security people around him didn't say: 'Prime
Minister, we just want to say that's probably not appropriate, what
you're doing'."
Mrs
King said Mr Key's conduct had undermined his moral authority to lead
the Government.
"His
job is to ensure discipline amongst his members, and when they look
at his behaviour I think he's going to find it much more difficult
than in the past when he could say 'I have very high standards that I
expect from my caucus members and ministers'. It's going to make it
much harder for him," she said.
Green
Party co-leader, Metiria Turei agreed that Mr Key had previously set
very high standards for his own MPs, and where they had acted in a
similar way, he had demoted or fired them.
Listen
to analysis from Media Watch on Checkpoint ( 4 min 50 sec )
"The
big issue now really is for the National Party caucus. How can they
have any respect for his attempts to discipline them and what will
they do now to discipline their own leader?" Mrs Turei said.
Mr
Peters said it would be up to National Party MPs as to whether Mr
Key's conduct undermined his authority in their yes.
"But
he's not in a very strong position, given that when he began, he was
very, very, very loquacious about how he had high standards. Well,
with the greatest respect, on countless occasions, and this is one of
them, he's demonstrated anything but that."
Related
Sexual harrassment or workplace bullying?
Meanwhile,
Mr Key could also face an investigation by the Human Rights
Commission.
Women's
rights campaigner and former National Party MP Marilyn Waring said
anyone could make a complaint to the Human Rights Commission; it did
not have to be the waitress.
"It's
the law passed first of all by the National Government for the Human
Rights Act, amended in 1993 by the Bolger Government. Neither Muldoon
nor Bolger have ever shown any evidence they would behave in this
(manner). It's like saying, 'Oh it's all right, he only stole a
couple of packets of cigarettes'," Ms Waring said.
She
said Mr Key's conduct amounted to sexual harassment.
Amanda
Bailey - Photo: FACEBOOK
Employment
specialist Professor Tim Bentley of the Work Research Institute at
AUT University's Business School said Mr Key's actions met the
WorkSafe's definition of workplace bullying.
"It
was repeated, targeted, unreasonable in that a reasonable person
looking at this behaviour would say it is unreasonable and a threat
to the waitress' well-being, and certainly that's clear in her
account.
"I'm
not sure in what any other it meets the criteria, certainly there was
a power imbalance and that's an important aspect of most bullying case."
Photo: RNZ
/ Diego Opatowski
National 'unlikely to take a hit'
A
political marketing specialist said Mr Key's ponytail pulling would
have little effect on National.
Massey
University's Claire Robinson said the expose would only make people
who do not like Mr Key dislike him even more.
She
said National supporters would probably wonder what he was thinking,
but it would not have a major effect.
And
she said it probably would not have a big impact on women voters.
"Well
women have been turning against him ever since the first term
actually, so in National's first term in office National was more
popular than Labour, but over the last seven years that'd been
swinging back.
"I
think women are turning off John Key's sense of humour as time goes
by."
She
said she thinks the story will also blow over quickly because of
Anzac Day commemorations.
Meanwhile,
Mr Key is now in Istanbul for an international peace summit, which
starts late Thursday night New Zealand time, before he heads to
Gallipoli for the Anzac Day centennary service.
But
his act of pulling Amanda Bailey's ponytail is dominating the news
coverage, including extensive coverage by international media.
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