The Economist is doing quite well:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/news-magazines

“Most regimes allow a defense of fair comment, with protection for example of a statement of opinion that is held to be made in good faith and without malice (encompassing any dishonest or improper motive rather than merely spite) on a matter of public interest.”

Long time since I studied Torts and never had a defamation suit.

Is this the right position?

They clearly don’t understand or are focused upon something other than their own business interests.

Totally agree DPF and have been saying it for a long time. They are only interested in their own agenda which means selling media like bars of candy and the more one-sided and controversial and “interesting” it is to the masses the more chocolate they will sell.

When I was a court lawyer and doing pleas of mitigation even the court reporters would only print the negative comments about clients never the fvourable points. Why would they? A criminal is supposed to be bad.

Then later I saw a biggish shark in the South Island following a small yacht with a nervous couple on board. I took shots of it and tried to sell them to the paper.

They asked me a few details about it.

Anyway next day, their was my name and in quotation marks this:

“The huge menacing shark dwarfed the tiny yacht.”

I had said nothiong even remotely like that yet amusingly they had quoted me and printed my name.

It turned out to be a big basking shark.

Lawyers are bagged as being scum sucking…but at least we have a book of ethics to follow and two sides get presented then the truth comes out or a decision on the evidence is made.

Journalists should be accountable for their words. Not just defamation, as that requires malice, but for misleading articles just as there are laws for false advertising. Because in essence that is what they are doing, false advertising.

The media need to realise not just them have an IQ.

That’s the one strategy since the decline which they haven’t tried in a serious, sustained way.

Instead they pursue morons with lightweight pap interspersed with “human interest” stories and celebrity gossip and wrap it up with more lightweight pap because in their delusion: “that’s what the punter’s want.”

Several questions to those here in the MSM:

1) On the spectrum, say 1-10, what are the business drivers behind your editors? Is it publishing news or attracting advertising?

2) Has any publisher ever once spoken of any connection between the fact that increasing quality information and reducing pap, might improve sales of both readership and consequently, advertising?

I’m not holding my breath.

I know i don’t.

With regard to the ‘underhanded’ way the VSM supporters attended a meeting they were entitled to attend, why is it you’re only calling them underhanded and not the VUWSA members who clearly behaved underhandedly? As shown in video footage there was more than enough for a quorum right from the start, but many VUWSA members deliberately kept their hands down during the quorum counts (even though they later voted).

There was a lot of underhanded behaviour, and we saw it all come from the VUWSA exec. Is it normal in a meeting to have one of the members propose a motion ‘that these two are fuckwits’? Do you know if that guy is actually on the exec payroll?

But the explanation for the story and the lack of extra detail might be down more to a reporter being in a rush, a subeditor being in a rush, or the story being cut to fit a convenient hole in the page, or some other reason.

If you look at some of our newspapers and listen to some of our other media none too closely you’ll detect the symptoms of things being done in a hurry, and simply to keep up. Things get left out.

I’ll give you an example: last week Nick Smith announced changes to ACC. I don’t remember their being ‘proposed’ changes, nor do I remember that they had to be debated in Parliament, and that any changes approved would not be implemented until July next year. Those important facts didn’t seem to bubble to the surface until late Friday or early Saturday.

Some of the important details about the rugby world cup farce similarly were left unclear. The Southland Times fairly quickly and early understood and informed its readers that the controversy concerned free-to-air matches, and only some of them, because Sky had the pay TV rights. But if you watched and listened to the barrage of information you wouldn’t know that, because other media outlets didn’t run it.

I don’t say this to criticise. It seems to me, as an outsider, that understaffed newsrooms are doing their best to cope with news that comes in floods and floods and floods.

Again – I don’t know why we are having this sort of debate. If you want to show that students support VSM, do it properly, not in this underhanded way. It is true that the VUWSA Executive are not lawyers. They are volunteers. If you disagree with them, or the fact that they exist, then disagree properly.

I am not sure why the VUWSA Executive is that concerned either, they have binding policy directives from students which overide SRC reommendations anyway.

[DPF: What General Meeting resolution over-rides the SRC on Sir Roger's bill?

You also don't address the issue that the quorum count of 45 was obviously incorrect - the video and the votes clearly show far more than that in attendance]

For example, this statement:

“This means VUWSA is now obliged to put in a submission in support of the Bill, which will make student associations voluntary.

Completely wrong. An SRC is nothing more than a meeting of students which can make non-binding recommendations to the Executive. There is no way that it can override the binding directive from students at a General Meeting in support of Univerisal Student Membership.

The Stuff article called this for what it was – a clever ‘blindsiding, but no more.

I don’t see why people who support VSM are so keen to get their little ambush motion recognised. If you think that students support VSM, then do it properly. Engage in the debate and convince people. Then pass a motion at a properly advertised SRC or General Meeting, once there has been proper debate. Don’t ambush a meeting, strip people of their speaking rights, unlawfully re-open the meeting once it has been closed, and then claim great victory. That’s ridiculous.

[DPF: I am amazed you say it makes non binding recommendations to the Executive, as Rule S3(1)(a) explicitly says it may give directions to the Executive regarding matters it has determined, except for financial matters.]