Stephen Cook vs Herald on Sunday
June 29th, 2009 at 10:58 am by David FarrarI got this e-mailed to me:
HERALD ON SUNDAY IN EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS AUTHORITY
The controversial and much-rumored-about court case between award winning journalist Stephen Cook and his former employer the Herald on Sunday – where he was employed as assistant editor until earlier this year – has been assigned a hearing date
This week’s hearing will be open to the public.
Date: 2 July, 2009
Time: 9.00am
Location: Employment Relations Authority, Level 10, The 280 Centre280 Queen Street, Auckland central.
Counsel for Stephen Cook – Chris Comeskey
Counsel for the Herald on Sunday – Champan Tripp
Cook is the former Assistant Editor of the HoS. His last articles appeared in late September 2008. Ironically he won a 2009 Qantas Award for feature writing for an article on the pain of parole.
He attracted some controversy in when he pressured Debbie Gerbich (who had complained about Brad Shipton) into giving an interview, amidst revelation that she was advertising for bondage partners. Gerbich later commited suicide.
There has been some interesting speculation on the nature of the parting of the ways, and the court case sounds most interesting.
Related posts:
- Herald on Sunday wins
- Media reporting on Cook vs HoS
- SST on Cook vs HoS
- Herald on Sunday on Herald on Sunday
June 29th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Chris Comeskey is his counsel?
Vote:Not quite the right sort of advocate for an enquiry in the Employment Tribunal.
June 29th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Chris Comesky – Lawyer to the Stars?
Sorry; I think I’d rather represent myself than retain Comesky, were I ever to have a need for a litigator.
Vote:June 29th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
More FM have anew, and hopelss newsreader. Last week she prounced Comeskey as Come Sky.
I kid you not.
Just where do they breed these brainless bimboes?
Vote:June 29th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
MNIJ
In LLLs and NCEA academies.
Glossary: LLL = Leftist Labour Lovenest (urgggkkkkkk!)
Vote:June 29th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Comesky is wholly appropriate. He is very experienced at representing [deleted by DPF].
Vote:June 29th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
David, I know Stephen Cook and have first hand experience of his abilities as a journalist. I regard him as being somewhat lower down the food-chain than plankton. The HoS are well rid of him.
Vote:June 29th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I hope some blogger brings us play-by-play as they did with the Bain trial, because I suspect the ramifications of Cook v HoS will be more far-reaching. The case could kick off a debate around journalistic ethics, the way in which sources are treated, when (if at all) speculation should be published and how, and a lot of other issues.
While these may, on the face of it, sound less exciting to non-journos than a dusty whodunnit from Dunedin, the media themselves will be watching with interest. The public’s comments about how far they’re prepared to accept the “tabloidisation” of everything from TV to broadsheets – and how they’re turning away from it to blogs and other online sources – might just get listened to for once, and we might see an improvement in news coverage…
Starting with the hiring of bimbos as referenced by MNIJ above (and, I’m tempted to point out, not exactly reversed at TVNZ under the auspices of Mr Ralston).
Vote:June 29th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Did I go to far David? Shouldn’t you be having a holiday?
[DPF: I am, but I prefer not to come back to a defamation suit or contempt of court proceedings! I did actually enjoy the comment
]
Vote:June 29th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Ralston’s “first hand experience” with the said journalist was put to good use in a remix enjoyed by many.
Take a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtgZVFxKXA
And to put his comments into context, here is the story which relates directly to that “first hand experience”:
Bill Ralston to face TVNZ disciplinary process
5:00AM Sunday Sep 03, 2006
By Stephen Cook
TVNZ will tomorrow begin disciplinary proceedings against head of news and current affairs Bill Ralston for “very serious” and “quite unacceptable” conduct, says chief executive Rick Ellis.
The move follows an expletive-laden telephone call to the Herald on Sunday last week by Ralston following a request for information for a story about a relative.
In an earlier cordial email, Ralston had provided detail about the family member – a cousin living an itinerant lifestyle in Auckland – but shortly after rang the newspaper and verbally abused the reporter.
TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis met Ralston on Friday afternoon to discuss the telephone call and confirmed yesterday disciplinary action would follow.
Ralston, who later apologised to the newspaper, was “deeply remorseful”, but the behaviour was still unacceptable, said Ellis.
Ellis was not prepared to discuss what disciplinary action was planned against Ralston, saying only that the matter was “very serious” and the language “quite unacceptable”. He was waiting for advice from the TVNZ human resources department about the executive’s contract, the policies of the company and the relevant processes as set out by the Employment Relations Act.
He would not comment on whether Ralston would lose his job.
“I consider it to be very serious and quite apart from whether you were the media, which is even more distressing, that sort of behaviour, fullstop, is unacceptable,” said Ellis.
“It is not what I expect of anyone in the company, least of all my leadership, and it is not what the public should expect of a public institution such as TVNZ. I am taking it very seriously.”
With a background in television, radio and print, Ralston has been a journalist for nearly 30 years.
He was appointed head of news and current affairs at TVNZ in 2003 by Ian Fraser, with the board at the time welcoming his “bit of mongrel” attitude. Since then he has overseen sweeping changes to the formats of TVNZ’s news bulletins, but not without casualties. Among the high-profile departures have been screen favourites Judy Bailey, Richard Long, April Ieremia, Paul Holmes and Mike Hosking.
This is not the first time Ralston’s comments have landed him in hot water. His most infamous remarks were directed last year at former Prime chief executive officer Chris Taylor who he suggested should pour petrol over himself and throw himself off Auckland’s tallest building.
In October last year Ralston told the Herald on Sunday it was almost time for him to leave the job.
“I’ll probably get it all sorted and when I’m happy with it, I’ll wander off and go back to doing what I was doing, which was enjoying myself. A couple more years would be fine, as far as I’m concerned; a year or so. That’s the end of the challenge.”
Vote:June 30th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Anyone else see who his counsel is and think, shit, he must be guilty!
Vote:June 30th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I’m with Bill on this one. Cook left a trail of people he’d stitched up in pursuit of a story. The one that really confirmed my contempt for him was in 2007, when he managed to wrench a shitty little story out of the fact that Mark Burton had a little, supervised job at Auckland Zoo as part of his rehabilitation (‘KIller at the Zoo’) — and got a PR-wary Zoo management to dump Burton. As was the case with Bill’s relative, Cook never seemed to worry much about the effect of his conduct on people who couldn’t push back.
Vote:June 30th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Stephen Cook. Herald on Sunday. Its really like being asked to decide whether to root for the Ebola Virus or the Necrotizing Fasciitis — the only sane option is ‘none of the above’.
BTW, hititnow, while I carry no water for Bill Ralston getting an ethics lecture from that particular sewer is akin to getting relationship advice from Clayton Weatherstone. Not really one to talk.
Vote:July 1st, 2009 at 8:44 am
I note the extreme prejudice with which some comments have been made about Stephen Cook. One was from someone recorded in a foul-mouthed rant completely lacking self-control, and another from someone who conveniently ignores that newspapers and news items are created with decreasing resources in real time to real deadlines, but who self-righteously clucks his tongue days later saying, ooh, they should have said this, ooh, they should have done that. Some might think that a shitty little contribution.
Stephen Cook was an employee doing the bidding of people who are probably going to be exposed for what they are – underhanded and unethical. When it emerges that a telescope was trained on a rival editor’s office to steal that newspaper’s intellectual property, let’s have some real debate on where media standards are presently instead of just slagging off an individual as some sort of nasty payback.
Vote: