A lack of disclosure

There was a strange story in The Post this weekend. The basic theme of the story is that everyone is leaving Wellington and it is the Government’s fault. One particularly weird extract was this:

An out of work contractor, an open home, the finance minister flashing the cash.

The stuff of nightmares, according to 48-year-old Pete, the aforementioned unemployed contractor, who earlier this week spent eight hours on the Northern Explorer from Hamilton to Wellington staring out of a window as he pondered his – and his family’s –future.

A day or so before he had dreamt he and his wife had to sell their house. “We were doing an open home, and Nicola Willis blew through the place and says, ‘I’ll have this. It’ll make a great rental’.

“That was actually a nightmare I had.”

So the story starts with Pete (who isn’t actually Pete) talking about a nightmare involving Nicola Willis, and someone this is part of the story.

But the main focus is about a couple:

Te Hinemoa Hiroki-Tuiono and partner Aaron Moss are heading to Asia next week. …

Said Hiroki-Tuiono: “It is utterly bleak. The cuts to the public sectoraren’t just constrained to the Government ‒ it’s affecting the private sector as well. Small businesses in the Wellington CBD seem to be taking quite a big hit from this and there are hiring restrictions in the larger organisations too.

“Making the decision to leave was really difficult. I have met some amazing people in the public sector who work insanely hard. It has been awful to see their work degraded.”

I always get interested when I see random members of the public get interviewed, and they seem so highly critical (or supportive) of the Government. So I did a google.

It turns out she was a staffer for former Labour Minister Kiri Allan. This doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be in the story, but surely it would be helpful to mention this.

Now how did it happen that The Post of all the people in Wellington happened to find a former staffer for Kiri Allan for their story? Well the journalist who wrote the story just happened to be a former press secretary for Kiri Allan.

Once again this doesn’t mean she should not get to write political stories, but shouldn’t this be disclosed? A former press secretary for a Labour Minister interviews a former staffer for the same Minister for an article critical of the Government, and none of this is disclosed.

And people wonder why trust in media keeps dropping.

I also wonder why the Government is planning to pass a law to bail out media that readers are abandoning by forcing Internet companies to fund them.

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