Blogger David Farrar says he is making some changes at Kiwiblog, despite coming out of Nicky Hager's book Dirty Politics looking relatively clean.
Mr Farrar says he's "very comfortable" with what's written about him in the book because it's "quite innocuous" and nothing new.
"Just that I've got a background in National, I own a company that does polling for them and I blog," he said on Firstline this morning.
Mr Hager's book is largely based on emails to and from fellow right-wing blogger Cameron Slater, who runs the Whale Oil website.
But Dirty Politics, Mr Farrar says, has "shaken confidence in the wider blogosphere" which he wants to restore.
First of all, he has applied to join the Online Media Standards Authority.
"I thought hey, this is a good time to say well, I am going to follow through, join the OMSA, pay $500 so people can file complaints against me, because I think that would be a good thing to say that blogs can actually be held to similar standards to media."
He's insistent he doesn't want to be called "media" though, and is happy being known as a blogger.
"But I don't think that means you can't actually have perhaps some external accountability."
As well as joining OMSA, Mr Farrar plans to enforce tougher moderation on comments left by his readers, publicly say when he thinks friends of his – like Slater – are wrong, and reveal his sources more often.
"I have people email me lots of stuff, and I often will run it on Kiwiblog not as my own – I'll always quote saying someone sent this in to me – but I am going to be a bit more transparent," he says.
"If it comes from a Parliamentary or a political party source, I am actually going to say that."
He won't name the person directly, unless they want to be, but says this is a higher standard that many mainstream media organisations follow.
Mr Farrar says the full impact of Dirty Politics likely hasn't been fully felt yet and expects more documents to be leaked online via the @whaledump Twitter account.
"There's a lot of other people who have dealt with [Slater] who are quite concerned that their emails are floating around too, so certainly we're going to see, I think, these drip-fed every day up until the election.
"I think the people they're about are going to be quite a wide variety of New Zealanders."
The book has been labelled a "left-wing smear campaign" by the Prime Minister, but Mr Farrar – while disputing some of the Mr Hager's claims – says it has been a "good catalyst" to improving standards in the blogosphere.
3 News
source: newshub archive
