3rd Degree uses Whaleoil for story ideas as if Dirty Politics never happened

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TV3s 3rd Degrees smear job on Kim Dotcom last night doesn’t bear much repeating. It was pretty pathetic journalism from a team who have brought us some great journalism in the past. It is sad to see 3rd Degree stooping to using Whaleoil as a source for a story as if Dirty Politics never happened.

Hunting down former Dotcom employees for the shocking revelation that Kim may have called NZers cheap arse farmers is truly one of the low points for the show. Instead of chasing down people in the Philippines, how about 3rd Degree try and turn those dazzling journalism skills to hunting down and finding Jason Ede?

3rd Degree wasn’t journalism last night – this is journalism. To think in the wake of NSA spying revelations and Key’s privatisation of mass surveillance that 3rd Degree somehow think  disgruntled employees who have an axe to grind is a bigger story should embarrass all involved.

Not Duncan Garner’s finest hour.

 

24 COMMENTS

  1. There are three main reasons for the smear campaign against KDC. First, he is German. Second, he can engage young people better than nearly every other politician thus he generates a lot of jealousy. Third, he doesn’t kowtow to the establishment, doesn’t intimidate easily and doesn’t care to hide his intentions behind a mass of lies and deceit.

    On the first, I am amazed at the number of people, people who I consider friends, who growl about “that b…. German, who shouldn’t even have been allowed into New Zealand” The right wing media have painted KDC as an alien because he is German. I thought the anti-German “don’t mention the war” thing had ended long ago but perhaps not. Being German is no crime, neither is being Australian, Pakeha, Asian, Swedish, whatever! Germans are not always the bad guys, remember Germany and England throughout history have been allies much more than they have been enemies.

    On the second, KDC has a rebellious, f..u attitude that attracts the young, be it right or wrong it is a reality. Obviously this makes some established politicos very jealous because they can’t do this and the MSM particularly so because they can’t seem to break into this phenomenon and understand what it is all about. Just like their National Party redneck mentors, when the MSM fail to understand something they denigrate it.

    On the third, KDC is one character who has taken it to the right wing b…s artists and he is so wealthy that they can’t shut him up, and that really hurts them! That he is wealthy enough to fund a political party virtually on his own really eats up the Nats, proven by Maggie Barry’s bitter quip to Laila Harre about sucking up to a rich German. They can’t shut him up, they can’t stop the thousands of people going to his rallies like old style town hall electioneering and it really annoys them.

    That is why the Nats do what they are best at – campaigns based on dirt, character assassination and lies. A great deal of the MSM are still the National Party’s spin doctor brigade so they have been engaged (hired) to try and score a few points a few days before the election.

    My conclusion is that, despite the bragging and bravado (Tracey Watkins in the Herald), National are deeply worried about Saturday and are sensing that the polls are a load of rubbish and the sleepy hobbits (as some other contributors like to call them) are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee.

  2. Duncan Garner is now a sad bought stool pigeon of the Key mob.

    He began as a good investigative Journalism with Guyon Espiner but two episodes into the 3rd Degree stable he folded and become another patsy for Key and Co, playing nice guy to every right winger.

    He is another worm that turned.

    He has progressed down the track now so far that he is an embarrassment to Journalistic integrity.

    What has the black op’s of Ede, Lusk, Farrar, Key and Slater got on him to have turned him into a traitor to journalism?

    Last we were driving home at between 3pm and 4pm yesterday 17th September 2014, and heard Garner say David Cunliffe is to now come finally on our show on Radio live after repeated attempts before failed, good afternoon David.

    Then he walked Cunliffe through a constructed list of doggy awkward questions that put David on the defence.

    Garner made little attempt to ask policy questions!

    We thought that was what they were screaming out all last week for!

    But the interview was really nothing more than a grilling.

    After just five minutes it was all over?

    Garner came back and said to the voter, “If you find that you didn’t’ warm to Cunliffe well——
    Then he decided he should sound more unambiguous and Garner said well he wont have a job after the elections.

    That was the worst performance of a “Henchman” for Key that any interviewer has ever conducted, and we say to Garner, shame on you for showing you are a hired assassin for “corrupt key Ltd.”

    Question is how much are they paying you?
    John Campbell, and Guyon Espiner, are the last vestiges of honest unbiased uncorrupted Journalism of truth out there for the public to rely upon for Journalistic integrity.

    Sad day indeed. We recommend you listen to Garner’s pathetic Key sell-out for key performance and his after comment to the voters.

    • You know – I get very confused when the MSM keeps slagging John Campbells ratings. They say he pulls in a 3rd of the viewers that’s candyfloss Seven Sharp show does and that his best ever viewer numbers was only about 300K.

      Can you all shed light on me about this? We aren’t still taking TV rating from 600 old sets around NZ are we?

      Surely a programme that can raise over $800K in one night has more than a small sliver of viewers?

      Sorry if this is an ignorant question, or has been covered before – I’m new to TDB, but the last few months of pathetic reporting in Stuff and the Herald had me looking for a different news website to while away the boring moments at work 🙂

      • Shit – typos in my post above. Mum would kill me (English teacher). Sorry – blame it on the antibiotics and high strength pain killers for my tooth 🙁

      • I think John Campbell is a treasure in that grubby ‘mass media’ bunch we are saddled with. Yet he does know also how to be courteous when he must. His first interview with John Key on Monday Campbell was polite, but not sycophantic. Now he can be free to be a fair, even stringent critic of wrong-doings – along with his producers who after all, structure the 30 minutes. We can rely on this arm of TV3 to provide some balance. Paul Henry at 10.30 with the lure of the 9-in-10 contest (!) could be great entertainment but for his dreadful rabid-Right views. (Yet – note how he is courteous and good-humoured to his ‘enemies’. It’s his ad-lib asides that are truly dreadful.)

  3. The Microscope
    Anton Leeuwenhoek was Dutch;
    he sold pincushions, cloth and such,
    The waiting townsfolk fumed and fussed
    as Anton’s dry goods gathered dust.
    He worked, instead of tending store,
    at grinding special lenses for
    a microscope. Some of the things
    he looked at were: mosquitoes’ wings,
    the hairs of sheep, the legs of lice,
    the skin of people, dogs and mice;
    ox eyes, spiders’ spinning gear,
    fishes’ scales, a little smear
    of his own blood, and very best of all,
    the unknown, busy, very small
    bugs that swim and hump and hop
    inside a single water drop.
    Impossible! most Dutchmen said,
    this Anton’s crazy in his head.
    We ought to ship him off to Spain:
    He says he’s seen a housefly’s brain!
    He says the water that we drink
    is full of bugs. He’s mad, we think!
    They called him dummkopf, which means dope.
    That’s how we got the microscope
    Maxine Kumin

  4. And didn’t Kim Dotcom give it to the media, post Moment of Truth meeting?

    Dotcom’s comments were reported as a temper tantrum, which wasn’t the case at all. All he did was tell the media the truth. That being msm wasn’t doing its job of investigating and finding the facts to give to the people in an objective way. So the media’s petulant response was to turn feral on KDC!

    Like him or not, Dotcom (along with Nicky Hager), has shaken the establishment to the point of (hopefully) bringing down FJK and the Natsies! If that isn’t the case after the election, KDC has managed to open a can of worms which will soil FJK’s next government to the extent it will be short lived, as more dirt and corruption will be exposed.

  5. But Jabba The Stevie gave TV 3 $42 million of our money to do what Dunc and The Hair Swinger were meant to do . Maintain the status quo . At all costs .
    As for Kim Dotcom calling NZ Farmers cheap ass . Well , I’m a farmer , or at least was a Farmer , until the Bank swindled my family .
    And I’d agree with Dotcom . Kiwi Farmers ( Excluding Dairying because they’re not . Ya know ? Farmers . )
    Kiwi farmers , for the most part , foster a deliberate ignorance while maintaining a confident , swaggering arrogance when it comes to politics .
    In other words , they have no minds of their own . They do what they are told and they’re told what to do by National .

    If NZ Farmers were not parasitised by the National Party , we’d not be having this conversation , I would still have a farm , our country would be a Utopia , not the dystopia it’s become and NZ wouldn’t need the comments , or more embarrassingly , the money of a large , sweltering German pirate with a gift for using people to his own ends . Even if his own ends means an end to jonky , the four or five eyes , the mass collecting of metadata , pet-A-Data , ( Details of Fluffy Kitty ) Porn -A-data aka wank-A-data and all the other data that data freaks think is sexy to know and down right pornographic if they know but you don’t know that you know that they know .
    To use a worn out cliche ; at the end of the day , who’s going to do what with whom when you’re fucking hungry Kim Dotcom ?
    OK . Slanging aside , I understand where Dotcom is coming from . I don’t like it as you can probably tell but I have to grudgingly agree that his comments have merit .
    If National loses the election , I wonder how TV will present itself then ? As for using Whaleoil as an info source ? Dunc must have a huge mortgage leveraged against his salary , that’s all I can say .

  6. I think Larre Harre should tell Kim Dotcom very firmly that he needs to make very sure that he treats all his employees fairly and justly.

  7. 1. First they ignore you
    2. then they laugh at you
    3. then they fight you
    4. then you win.

    He’s got to stage 3 pretty quickly – 4 is just a matter of time.

  8. I forced myself to listen to Sean Plunkett on Radio Live this morning, and predictably he was attacking Internet Mana Party as he does and has done constantly for weeks. I’ve heard him claim more than once that he is politically neutral, but he shows a strong bias against all centre-left parties consistently. For a while I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but at one point a few weeks ago when he called Kim Dotcom a Nazi I was so incensed I wrote my first ever official complaint to a radio station.

    Media works eventually replied in the post with a confirmation letter on the 22nd of August but so far no more correspondence. I’m intending to approach the BSA soon to take my complaint further as Mediaworks have failed to live up to their legal obligations in the Broadcasting Act.

    Another thing Sean said this morning was that 91% of people are registered to vote and that roughly 200,000 are not and will miss out. He advised those people to “go down to the post office and register so you can vote”. This is incredibly stupid advice as it is too late for registering in this slow process, and I suspect he said this intentionally to stop the poor and marginalised of society (who typically vote left) from having any influence this election. I sent the station a txt message admonishing him to correct this on air and advise people to instead go to an advance voting booth where they can register on the electoral role and vote at the same time on the spot. Naturally enough my txt wasn’t read out on air, or even paraphrased!

    I’m so tired of how many blatantly biased right-wing broadcasters are allowed vast influence over radio and television mediums, without enforcement of journalistic integrity or political broadcasting standards. It is apparent to me that our media truly are bought and paid for. Disgusted!

  9. Until last night I had thought 3rd Degree had integrity. Now, ppffft, what a set up. Of all the intensely interesting things they could have done, like some real journalism, they chose instead to devote time to helping the National party get down and dirty, again. It has been abundantly clear to us, especially during this election, that our media are no more than puppets, a mouthpiece for the nasty natz. I intend to complain about this officially and I do hope that many more do, too. I would love to have a citizens referendum on our media. We, the public, are the one’s they should be serving, we deserve to know the truth about what is happening in our own country. There has been very little mention of the TPPA. WHY??

  10. Garner showed his true blue colour last night with his attempted character assassination/ambush of KDC. He proclaims loudly every Radiolive Drive Time broadcast how impartial he is. What bullshit.

    This was a planned rebuttal piece to counter the Moment of Truth material that the right were fearing and it smacked of Right Wing Smear campaign. Martyn’s piece here just confirmed for me and dozens of friends that for the right it is business as usual for Dirty Politics’ brethren of Key, Lusk, Slater et al.

    Will XKEYscore outline for NZ why Rachel resigned from Colin, in the same way that Peter Dunne was outed over the Andrea Vance ‘affair’? I hope so, but I think not.

    2 days to the election. 2 more sleeps. Whoop whoop.

  11. In the middle of an election campaign TV3 has resources to go to the Philipines to track down KDC domestic staff?

    Not likely they would have been waiting at the airport for the camera crew to arrive, as arranged by the national party.

    This is why Jason Ede was off payroll for the last 9 months . He has been digging his dirt overseas.

  12. I really can’t believe the responses I’m reading here. KDC has behaved in an appalling manner for an employer. Aside from the accusations his own interview was incredibly damning. He talked about his employees being like children needing to be yelled at when they do something really stupid. He admitted illegally sacking an employee without any warnings and now preventing them from getting new jobs out of spite. He clearly flouted all of NZ’s employment and wage laws for months if not years.

    As a unionist this behaviour from an employer disgusts me. Where is the outrage? If he was still donating to right-wingers like John Banks I have no doubt there would be articles condemning him all over this site. But now all you’re focussed on is the timing of the story? He’s contributed millions to a political party and tried to influence the outcome of the election with an event of his own this week. It’s only fair the media scrutinise him a bit.

    • “…and tried to influence the outcome of the election with an event of his own this week”

      It amazes me that so many people instead of looking at evidence, and making up their own minds have delegated that responsibility to pundits and media.

      The information given on Monday night is worth investigating, discussing and debating before people go to the polls.

      The issue is not that the event was held, it is:
      1. If this is true (as overwhelmingly it seems to be) every citizen of NZ has been spied and and had their digital data collected without need for a warrant,
      2. Our PM has lied to us on this issue – and knowingly passed laws that have such a level of ambiguity that they made this level. (And those laws invited the approbation of the Privacy Commission, the Human Rights Commission and the Law Society.
      3. Did NZers get the opportunity to discuss this abuse of privacy?

      Our media has been identified as being compliant participants in smear campaigns without asking for second source verification.

      While not it cannot be proved at present, it is likely that this is the case with the latest story.

      Exercise your own logic skills to ask yourself why this story has appeared, and WHY when every other party is supported financially by many backers, it is only the internet party that is singled out. And how the media keep repeating the lie that Dotcom is being voted for.

    • Fine to scrutinize him, hes had plenty of that, and hes not not faultless.

      But why dont 3 degrees say upfront this story came from information supplied by people working for National party, they gave us a story outline and provided details of people in the Philipines we can talk to.

      If KDC is a poor employer you may write him off. He gave millions to a political party and so did Colin Craig. Its no mystery.

      Bill English had a scam where he got the taxpayers to pay him to live in his own house. And when he was caught out John key changed the rules to make sure all his ministers could do it. No problem here ?

      But of course your concern trolling is given away by your outrage over ‘trying to influence’ an election. Wake up and smell the roses, thats what elections are for. Not so we can vote for people who just want to keep rowing

  13. They are like a trained horse. They have a “bit” in their mouths which their masters pull on (ear piece). It causes the horse to react because the horse knows it will be (financially) punished if it doesn’t respond with a particular action.
    Us real human beings don’t need “bits” in our mouths/ears because we have our dignity which guides us.
    Those people have no dignity except illusory dignity. They strive for illusion and delusion with the purpose of financial gain and perception of high social status. Maybe once upon a time they had dignity, but when you swim in mud you are bound to get dirty – unless you are well prepared with protective clothing and have the purpose of cleaning up the mud.

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