Stuff’s hypocrisy laid bare
- May 2018 – article on Ron Mark calling a female MP a petal
- Sep 2018 – column by Andrea Vance saying people need to play the ball, not the woman, decrying sexist terms against female MPs
- Jan 2019 – column by Alison Mau decrying sexist comments against women MPs, saying it forces them out of Parliament
- Feb 2019 – column by Jackie Blue calling for a parliamentary code of conduct to stamp out sexism against female MPs
- Sep 2020 – column by Alison Mau about sexist abuse of public officials
- Apr 2022 – editorial saying that gender based abuse of MPs is wrong
- Apr 2022 – column by Michelle Duff decrying a social media user using the c word against Jacinda Ardern
- Apr 2022 – article about sexist abuse against women MPs
- Jan 2023 – column by Alison Mau saying sexist abuse partly drove Ardern out of office
- May 2025 – column by Andrea Vance calling Nicola Willis and other female Ministers cu**s.
They have published numerous articles decrying sexist abuse of MPs, and then they turn around and publish a column by one of their own journalists calling female Ministers a bunch of cu**s.
The greatest sign of their hypocrisy is from this note by then then Dominion Post editor:
So the Editor of the DP explicitly wrote that we should be shocked that women elected to public office are called the c word. They did an entire front page feature on how disgusting this was.
And then a few years later, they run an article by a senior journalist calling female Ministers c**ts.
My spies within Stuff report that the decision to run the column wasn’t a mistake that slipped through the cracks because they were on a tight deadline. They held an actual meeting to discuss whether it was acceptable, and all these senior editors got together and said “Yeah it is fine to run a column by a senior journalist that calls the Minister of Finance a c**t”
How can one possibly take them seriously again?
If this happened to a Labour Minister, Action Station would be running a campaign urging an advertiser boycott of Stuff. There would be demands that the Government instruct all government agencies to no longer advertise with Stuff.
Remember Sean Plunket was forced out of his job due to an advertiser boycott started by left activists because he called Eleanor Catton an “ungrateful hua”. Now I don’t condone that, but that is a far less insulting term than the c word, yet no campaign against Stuff.
I actually feel sorry for the press gallery journalists at Stuff. They have to deal with Ministers and MPs every day, and their leadership has let them down badly by printing a column which called Ministers c**ts. None of them would have written such a column, but they have to wear it by association.
It is time for the leadership at Stuff to admit they made a mistake, and apologise.