Dirty Politics - Chapter 11 - John Key & A Member of the Public

By the time 2014 rolled around, several powerful MPs had used the services of Slater to their advantage.  This year it was the Prime Minister John Key's turn.  And this time Slater went in with a new ironic angle and that was to target the honesty of longstanding MPs like NZ First's Winston Peters.  If you recall I previously blogged about Slater's dishonesty and previous communications with the New Zealand Herald's Rachel Glucina whom he asked to fabricate stories.  A true journalist wouldn't fabricate stories.  A true journalist would want to get the truth and only report on that.

It appears as if the right in NZ has lost faith in themselves and think they can only win by sabotaging their opponents rather than by convincing people they have better policy and rather than through honest methods.  Then again, you look at the 2002 election in NZ when Bill English was leader of the National Party, a very honest man of integrity who led National to the worst defeat they've suffered, much like David Cunliffe is doing this year with the Labour Party.

Slater's technique is to lie and make up stories, and because, like he and his associates have said, because the NZ media doesn't investigate further for source validity, they lap it up and he gets away with it, so these smear campaigns gather weight they otherwise wouldn't have.  In a way, Slater has been able to capitalise on the ignorance and laziness of the mainstream media in NZ.  That is how he was able to damage Len Brown's reputation and how he was able to destroy Bevan Chuang amongst others.  The sad part is, Slater gets kicks from doing so.  And although Key didn't orchestrate the smear campaigns he didn't say no.  Key's a smart man so in his case it might have simply been a case of keeping his friends close and his enemies even closer.  I don't think anyone would want to get on Slater's bad side given what's been reported in the book.

As Hager points out, through his thorough investigations, which take years, the mainstream media in New Zealand has been a victim of wanting to be first with the story and of Slater's manipulative games yet even today they continue to lap it up.  An example of this is a report on Fairfax' stuff.co.nz website today which says that the High Court ruled Cameron Slater is a journalist.  Had they looked at the evidence in the Nicky Hager book and investigated it, they would actually come to the conclusion that Slater is not a journalist, nor is he a blogger, at best he is a PR Expert/Spin Doctor.  Slater has also manipulated photographs and then lied about what the headline is.  A true journalist knows you NEVER lie about a story, exaggerate and embellish for sensationalism purposes, but not outright lie which is what Slater does to increase traffic on his site.