MEDIAWATCH: The F Word, Ani O’Brien and why Maiki Sherman kinda has to resign
If the Government had leverage over TVNZ’s political editor for a year, this isn’t a scandal; it’s a warning. And now the timing raises even bigger questions.

If the Government had leverage over TVNZ’s political editor for a year, this isn’t a scandal; it’s a warning. And now the timing raises even bigger questions.
Even worse is the realisation that it is not Martyn who is defending himself against criminal charges. It is the Police who are on trial for mis-using their powers by breaching a person’s privacy without due regard to the laws of this country.The police over-stepped and mis-used their powers of search and seizure. It was an illegal action, as Privacy Commissioner John Edwards stated with searing clarity, “that Police had collected his information in an unlawful way”.
…the damage Slater and his Dirty Politics advocates caused is still reverberating throughout the NZ political spectrum. The manner in which he was empowered by the NZ mainstream media has never been examined and no one has ever been held to account.
The bottom line is that a donation was made. The question is: how was it made? Both claims of a single $100k donation and “eight donations” cannot be reconciled.
Someone is lying. By now the Police probably have a good idea who.
The co-ordination of this smear against Clarke, the anonymous troll army echo chamber promoting it, the fact the story suspiciously never changed and the place it was originally launched from – this was all a concerted effort by ‘someone’ to destabilise the Government.
…it is my belief that right wing operatives have built a Troll Army to propagate hateful lies and spread them through social media.
It has become obvious to me from the outset that this entire process to hold the NZ Police to account for breaching my privacy and civil rights is made to be as difficult and impossible as possible so that people complaining give up rather than hold them to account.
Cameron Slater and Jordan Williams win again.
The Tipline is running hot with rumours that there will be some interesting scenes today at the Manakau Court.
As New Zealanders begin to learn the full extent of Slater’s corruptions, smear campaigns and how much he and his Whale Oil blog have influenced elections in the last six years, he is being paid, as I type this, to also pedal Israeli propaganda.