Terrible media standard

Liam Hehir has an amazing story.

Basically The Press ran a story about Bryan Cadogan, describing him as someone who voted National for many years and has now left National. They say the recent proposal to drug test beneficiaries seems to have greatly alienated him. So it makes it look like this is a recent decision.

Liam points out that Mr Cadogan was described in April by Labour MP Ingrid Leary as Labour’s campaign lead for Clutha. So The Press described a Labour campaign lead as a sort of swinging voter who left National over a recent policy decision. It is outrageous.

It then gets better with the follow up. Cadogan and Leary now both deny he is a campaign lead for Labour (despite Leary calling him that on social media), but she lets slip he has put up hoardings for her for “a number of campaigns”. This means that he went over to Labour a long long time ago, and was totally unrelated to anything this Government has done.

He has also been a member of Labour’s Policy Committee.

The Press still has not updated their story to reflect that Cadogan is in fact a long-term Labour Party activist, who they have portrayed as some sort of swinging voter who left National because of decision made by the current Government.

And again we wonder why trust in media is so low.

If ever a story was deserving of a Media Council complaint, it would be this one.