UPDATE: In an extraordinary display of service beyond the (routine) call of duty, I’m told the police actually rang individual news outlets last night (14/11/11) to emphasize this release/gag threat (above). Even going so far as saying “Have you read paragraph three? About the two years in jail?”
Wow, what great service the police give when the prime minister lays a complaint seeking to suppress a recording two weeks before an election.
[…] at his orders?) the police at first took the extremely unusual step (*never* in my experience) of ringing around news media organizations and overtly ‘warning’ them of the consequences of letting details of the conversation […]
[…] so the police ‘advise’ media organisations not to play the tape? Why? Is that another ‘shot across the bows’ of the news media? So, there’s insufficient ‘public interest’ in prosecuting the guy who recorded […]
[…] Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. So it’s not just me feeling unsettled (as I was when Mr Key called the police to his Beehive office about the ‘tea-pot’ tapes, resulting in police appearing in newsrooms with search warrants in hand and issuing ‘warnings’ to the media like this: A shot across the news media’s bows re cup of tea tape). […]
[…] called to the Beehive and tasked with serving search warrants on newsrooms … and there were heavy-handed police threats to other […]