Yesterday's landmark judicial ruling against the Police for raiding Nicky Hager's house is just the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Dirty Politics. For the best coverage of the ruling, see David Fisher's Police house raid on investigative journalist Nicky Hager found to be unlawful.
For an explanation of why the judgement is so important for democracy and the public, see Regan Schoultz's Hager decision: Why you should care and Matt Nippert's Nicky Hager police raid ruling a win for journalism. Both pieces make significant points about the need to have properly functioning mechanisms that hold the powerful to account, and say the police raid undermined that mechanism.
But for the hardest-hitting criticism of the Police, see Gordon Campbell's On the Police harassment of Nicky Hager. His short must-read column paints a picture of the Police acting as blatant stooges for the political Establishment, to take out a critic. And he warns that it'd continue to happen.
Hager spoke about his victory and the "strange" actions of the police in a five-minute interview with Alison Mau - see: Hager: Police raid 'weird overkill'.
Attention is now turning to the question of how the Police could get this case so wrong. Various politicians and partisans are pointing the finger at the National Government's role in the saga - see Greg Presland's blog post, What was National's role in the police raid on Nicky Hager? and Sam Sachdeva's Nicky Hager case 'raises questions' about political pressure on police - MPs.
To understand the case properly it's worth going back and looking at some of the material from the court case in July. Alastair Thompson of the Scoop website used the Official Information Act to obtain the various court documents relating to the case - see: Inside The Hunt For Rawshark - Hager Raid Court File and Inside The Hunt For Rawshark - Hager Raid Court File Part 2. This includes my own affidavit, which you can read together with other Dirty Politics material.
The court case itself was also covered in depth by Jon Stephenson - see: Nicky Hager Case - Breaking News Reportage. See also Giovanni Tiso's essays, The Life and death of the political author and The raid.
Of course, it's also worth remembering the way the Police carried out their investigation, using controversial methods - see my October column, Libertarians against dirty politics.
And for more on the police investigation of Rawshark, see Paul Buchanan's latest blog post, The Impunity Files, Police Edition: Trolling for Rawshark, and Juha Saarinen's Hager, Whale Oil, Dirty Politics, Rawshark, and what the police should have done.
Cameron Slater's ongoing Dirty Politics
You probably shouldn't trust anything written in this column. At least that's what Cameron Slater would have you believe. Slater has just launched his latest project with co-conspirator Simon Lusk, which includes an evaluation of political journalists and commentators. The first issue of their monthly Incite newsletter came out on Tuesday, and it labelled my work as "Not to be trusted" and gave me an evaluation of two out of ten. Other pundits and journalists fared worse - Richard Harman got 8/10, followed closely by Barry Soper on 7/10. At the other end of the scale, Rachel Smalley would have been very happy with her 1/10.
For an amusing review of the new publication, see Danyl Mclauchlan's blog post, Why You Need Incite in Your Life - a Review of Cameron Slater's $35 Monthly Newsletter. See also Pete George's Incite review. For a more favourable spin, published on Slater's Whaleoil blog, see Inside Incite (and why you should subscribe).
Pete George blogged that Slater's Whaleoil blog could be in a perilous state - see: Conflict at Whale Oil. This blog post reports a testy exchange between Slater and the blog's apparent co-owner, and in the comments section there are further revealing discussion from former Whaleoil volunteers.
Part of Whaleoil's decline is financial, and the latest advertiser to pull the plug is entrepreneur Rod Drury - see Matt Nippert's Xero boss withdraws advertising from Whaleoil. According to this article, "Rodney Hide has confirmed he was probably behind a series of Whaleoil posts attacking Xero that led Rod Drury to suspend advertising on the controversial blog."
Not all is going badly for Slater however. He has was the first case of complaint for the new Online Media Standards Authority, and he won - see David Farrar's OMSA rules in favour of blogger.
Slater also brought out a slim book this year about trade unions, titled "Dodgy Unions", which got a very positive review on Amazon by a certain "B Edwards", explained by blogger Pete George in his post Which B Edwards? This was followed by a more legitimate evaluation: Dodgy Unions - review. And it got the usual endorsement from Scott Yorke - see: Why you should get Cameron Slater's book.
Slater also got some heat from his National rival Michelle Boag, who made further Dirty Politics-style claims about his activities - listen to RadioLIve's Are Kiwi bloggers taking payment to stay silent? Slater categorically denied the allegation - listen to: Cameron Slater denies Michelle Boag's claim he takes payment for silence.