Dirty Politics - Chapters 8/9 - Chaos & Mayhem/The Many Hats of David Farrar

Chapter 8 starts by indicating, as I've already indicated, sabotaging people and businesses, mainly those on a left is a sick game for Cameron Slater and his associates like Cathy Odgers.  All they care about is themselves.  It's very apparent on the first page of chapter 8 that they don't actually truly care about New Zealand at all.

It also appears as if they want to incite violence, including at Nicky Hager before this book had even been completed.  Commentator Matthew Hooton is involved here too.  What happened to fighting a competition the legitimate and honest way?  How can these people claim to be tough on crime and favouring a right wing party with a tough on crime stance when they want their enemies to be physically harmed? 

The police need to do something about this and they ALL need to be held accountable.

Further information is given in chapter 8 about the corrupt activities of Cameron Slater and his Whale Oil blog isn't designed to inform.  It's intended to act as a propaganda machine for big tobacco, big corporations and the like, the very thing true journalism is supposed to be against.  True journalism is supposed to uncover truths that people don't want to hear about that make us uncomfortable and I'm really uncomfortable reading what I'm reading and writing about it, but it's the truth as told by Nicky Hager.

At best Cameron Slater is a public relations expert, worse case scenario and what I think is most likely, he's a criminal.

David Farrar is earning his money the same way as Cam Slater.  He's being paid by big corporations to blog, and appear independent but he's not in the least bit independent.  Truly independent blogs are uncomfortable to read and often go into further detail.  Truly independent blogs seek to tell the truth and truly honest people will often fight adversity because people can't handle the truth.

Kiwiblog is run just as unethically as Whale Oil, carefully constructed PR articles, with the author's name changed, that's not journalism.  It's insulting to jouranlism that NZ's MSM hasn't focused on these issues.

The irony is that chapter nine has the following quote:

'Reporters are lazy and under-informed.  It is your job to inform them with your information.  Therefore high profile blogs can establish "what is going on".

As much as I hate what is said here, it's absolutely true, the majority of New Zealand reporters ARE lazy and that is why Cameron Slater and David Farrar have been able to get away with what they've been doing for so long - acting as puppets for those with an agenda.  The New Zealand media has allowed them to get away with this, and by still not holding them accountable, they're still doing that.  The real villians as per my previous blogs are the bloggers and the Broadcasting Minister Craig Foss who needs to investigate the role of blogs in the digital age.  I would expect Paddy Gower and Duncan Garner to delve into the issues.  I may not like them, but I still have faith in Garner to hold bloggers accountable and delve into the story.  As a journalist, Garner should be just as appalled as I am from the contents of the book.

It gets worse.  David Farrar's Curia Market Research operates outside of National Party HQ in Wellington - in short, they're not an independent market research company.  David Farrar works for the National Party and any polling results he publishes are done by the National Party.  Is David Farrar on the National Party payroll?  I'm not 100% sure of that.  The book doesn't say.  The Market Research Association of NZ would be very interested in auditing the results.  The methods applied by Curia Market Research/David Farrar are not consistent with industry standards.