John Key And The IMF – Real News Or Fake News?

ByThe Daily Blog

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IS JOHN KEY really in the running for Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? Well, yes, according to the NZ Herald’s Deputy-Political Editor, Claire Trevett, he is. Upon closer examination, however, Trevett’s story looks a lot more like fake news than real news.

Let’s take a look at her source – a speculative opinion piece posted on the Manufacturers Success Connection (MSC) website under the dateline Monday, 21 December 2015 08:38. That’s right – 2015 – just short of one year ago.

A year ago the Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, was embroiled in yet another of the financial-cum-political scandals that have wracked the French Republic over recent years.

The anonymous author of the MSC NewsWire story is clearly of the view that since Lagarde had just been told by the French courts that she must stand trial for her role in the so-called “Tapie Affair”, she will soon be standing down from her job at the IMF.

The writer further speculates that since there is a “move to place a non-European official at the helm of the IMF”, a “door of opportunity has unexpectedly opened to enable New Zealand prime minister, John Key, to maintain his upward trajectory in the form of becoming managing director of the International Monetary Fund.”

Except that the “door of opportunity” was closed, and has remained firmly shut.

Christine Lagarde is still the Managing Director of the IMF. Her Board of Directors were in no mood to lose the services of their high-flying employee. Citing the legal doctrine of the presumption of innocence, they were happy to keep Madame Lagarde exactly where she was.

The other problem with the MSC NewsWire story is that if there ever was a “move” to place a non-European in the Managing Director’s chair, then it did not get very far. Nor was such a “move” remotely likely to succeed. Ever since the appointment of the first IMF Managing Director, the Belgian Camille Gutt, in 1946, the position has been filled exclusively by Europeans. There has been one each from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain; two from Sweden; and five from France. The chances of John Key sashaying his way down the that particular catwalk are pretty close to nil.

The more important question, however, is how did Claire Trevett ever come into possession of a speculative news release issued by a very obscure website – Manufacturers Success Connection – just shy of one year ago? The MSC NewsWire was set up by Napier entrepreneur, Max Farndale, in 2012, and while it’s a lively and a perfectly respectable website, it is not really on a par with Reuters or Associated Press!

It would only be speculation, of course, but, in the current political environment, isn’t it highly likely that the dissemination of a story such as this, to a person occupying a critical media post (such as deputy-political editor of the country’s largest newspaper) is going to be the work of the out-going prime minister’s political opponents?

All the more reason, you would think, to be extremely cautious about rushing into print with a year-old story, based on nothing more than speculation, posted on an obscure Napier website, that turned out to be completely wrong.

The sort of fake news item that you might expect to find on Breitbart News – but on the NZ Herald website?

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15 Comments

  1. Pingback: Life Lesson – never trust the NZ Herald « The Daily Blog

  3. I’ve never seen any basis to believe anything Claire Tevett has ever written. She is a National Party shrill.

  6. IMF gets a new meaning, if Key gets the job, called the ‘I (am the) Monetary Fund, how fitting, the spin continues.

  8. Perfect job for JK the IMF supposedly wrote the economic prescription for NZ which Roger Douglas and the Labour Party introduced for NZ, we went from No 1 in 1975 in the OECD to No 26 in the OECD in 2014.

    The IMF are not all they are cracked up to be, the world monetary system is in a shambles?

  11. Saying Key is “named as ideal candidate to head International Monetary Fund” or saying he is “tipped” for the job is nothing. It’s jumping to conclusions, interpreting what was written in a certain way and making inferences and repeating them that is the problem.

    That’s the bullshit bit.

    Today deliberate perverting about charter school school results has become evident. That’s not down to the public misunderstanding, being gullible, lack of critical reading or making wrong inferences, that’s down to straight propagandising. And that is bullshit.

  12. Pete: “Today deliberate perverting about charter school school results has become evident. That’s not down to the public misunderstanding, being gullible, lack of critical reading or making wrong inferences, that’s down to straight propagandising. And that is bullshit.”

    Spot on. And this is a fundamentally important story.

    I don’t care a damn about wossname, what he does or where he goes. It is of no moment to any of us. Forget about him.

    But I surely care about the charter schools! Many of us were sceptical about reported results, having doubts about the extent to which such schools could make such a difference in so short a time with such children. It hasn’t happened overseas, after all.

    And it turns out we were right: put simply, we’ve been lied to. And a bucketload of our money has gone into a lie. That had better be an election issue.

    1. Even David Seymour, whose party was responsible for Charter Schools couldn’t defend the differing standards used to measure the “success” of Charter Schools vs State Schools. The best he could come up with was some rubbish about “old” vs “new”.

  13. I suspect the gushy sycophants at the Herald so wanted to believe that the world admires John Key as they have, and dream of him stepping onto the world stage just like Helen Clark, that they are perfect dupes for this kind of story that, from a Left perspective had all the credibility of reports of WMD in Iraq, or victory for John and Max on that goddam golf course.

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