Jamie Whyte, Susan Devoy, Scoop and Press Releases.

Following Winston’s comments on the weekend ACT party leader Jamie Whyte has come out calling for Susan Devoy to resign as Race Relations Commissioner, due to her not commenting on Peter’s “joke”.

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Jessica Williams of Radio Live tweeted about it:

Twitter___mizjwilliams__So_now_Jamie_Whyte_is_implying____

Which elicited the typical question of:

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With Jessica replying:

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This is where things start to get interesting. Lyndon Hood work at Scoop. He says so on his Twitter profile. His reply to Jessica is:

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This rightly raised the following reply from Jessica:

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This is how Scoop descirbe themselves:

About_Scoop___Scoop_News

They go on:

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So what has happened is that on social media, someone who openly states that they work for Scoop has stated that the organisation is “think(ing)” about if it will post the press release in the form given to them. This is firstly counter to their stated method of posting “the information driving the news of the day in the form it is delivered to the media”. But it also raises the question of what other press releases have they not posted? For people like me, Scoop is an invaluable source of information. I am able to use it to compare to what is being said in the media and on social media, and raise a flag when politicians or the media are misrepresenting what has been said in a press release. It is a single source for people to go to to find things like press releases, without having to hunt around websites or parties and organisations, who in a lot of cases don’t even post their own press releases. But if they are “think(ing)” about posting it or not, it calls into question the value and status of their website. The only reason we know about this is because of a single tweet online.

 

Update 1

Scoop have now posted the press release:

Twitter___lyndonhood___mizjwilliams__DeanJBedford____

 

In the future, if scoop are going to comment on thinking about posting a press release or not, they should be explaining why they are thinking about it. Defamation is a reasonable issue to take into account before posting something. In the future, if Scoop are going to use social media to comment on issues, they should either provide more information, or refrain from commenting.

matthew