Fran lashing out

An update to the post on The Nation, as Fran O’Sullivan has been adding up 2 and 2 to get five.

I saw (I think on Twitter) a reference to a story saying The Nation was not being funded next year by NZ on Air. I followed the link to a website I had never seen before called NZ Inc. The story seemed definitive “news spread last night that The Nation has missed out on funding for 2013” so I blogged a story on it. I did the story at 9.18 am and set it to appear at 2.00 pm. Most of my stories are done earlier in the day and then set to appear later.

I didn’t even note on the website whom the author was, and as I said the site was previously unknown to me.

I then left home to go to Te Papa for the preview of their Gamemakers display (opens tomorrow).  On the taxi ride there at 11.55 am I saw a comment by Fran O’Sullivan that The Nation will be back in 2013 and she stands corrected. I took this to mean that TV3 would be funding it, but then saw a further comment that NZ on Air was in fact funding it.

I then commented that this means the NZ Inc report was wrong, and I must go change my blog post lamenting it set for this afternoon.

That was the intention. I wasn’t sure what time it was set for exactly (as I do 10 a day), but anyway by the time I finished at Te Papa and headed to the airport, it was just after 2 pm when I got to go into the blog to edit the post. I do Facebook and Twitter easily from the iPhone, but significant editing of a blog post on a phone is incredibly difficult to do.

I got to the Koru Club, started up the laptop, and found that the post had already appeared, which annoyed me as I preferred not to run incorrect information.

I did a quick update to the blog the post at the top, stating the report was wrong and expressing some mild displeasure that the site I quoted hadn’t lived up to their tagline. It was only as I did that update I even realised that Fran was one of those behind the site.

Anyway Fran then lets loose on Facebook claiming my post was a “bitchy little hissy fit“,  and I was “just being an asshole cos he can be” and “He is just wanting to snipe from the sidelines. Nasty and stoking ill-will in an ill-advised manner.”

The irony may not escape people of Fran claiming I was being the nasty one.

I responded to Fran explaining the post was pre-timed, but she then effectively called me a liar. I have absolutely no time for people who doubt my word, and behave like that.

Fran doesn’t seem to have considered that if I really was wanting to damage her (and God knows why she thinks I am someone who would want to) then I would hardly have posted on her Facebook page noting the correction and saying I plan to change my blog entry. I could have said nothing at all. I could have rushed the post forward to do maximum damage, so that it got out there before the corrected version did. Her interpretation is ridiculous when you consider I made the comment myself that I planned to update it.

Sure I could have in the update acknowledged that the discovery that the story was wrong, had occurred a couple of hours earlier, but it doesn’t change the fact it was wrong and I didn’t think it was material what time the error was discovered. My commenters had already caught on that the story was wrong, and the link went through to the corrected story.

At the end I’m just surprised that Fran has such a thin skin, and turns so nasty when it is her who ran an incorrect story. We’ve all run stories that have proven to be incorrect. I don’t even mind pushback that the correction could have referred to the time, but as I said I detest people who call me a liar. I never ever will say something I know to be false (usual disclaimer around jokes, pranks etc), and as far as I know this is the first journalist to ever claim otherwise.