Another apology to Crosby Textor

I covered a couple of days ago an apology to Crosby Textor from JafaPete. Now we also have an apology from National Business Review. I’m quoting the apology in full here because I think its provides useful details which set the record straight.

Last Friday an article “Searching for John Key” by Ben Thomas falsely asserted that Lynton Crosby had been fined for a dishonest push poll in a Queensland election in 1995.

Ben Thomas acknowledges that this was his error based in part on a publication by Nicky Hager.

Mr Crosby has assured us that neither he nor his firm Crosby Textor has ever been involved
in so-called “push polling,” which is a technique of mass telemarketing, influencing voters by suggesting innuendoes or outright falsehoods about candidates.

Push polling is contrary to the ethical standards of the professional association, the Australian Market & Social Research Society, in which Mr Crosby’s partner Mark Textor has been awarded senior status.

The National Business Review accepts that Crosby Textor has not been involved in push polling, and acknowledges that it had no information at the time of publication which would support the false claim of push polling.

To the extent that it is relevant, we note that Mr Hager has also made a claim that Mr Textor was involved in push polling against a Labor candidate in an Australian by-election in March 1995.

We accept that the opinion poll in question was conducted by an independent pollster, Roy Morgan, instructed by the Liberal Party. It was not push polling, but an attitudinal survey based on a small sample (0.0061 of the electorate).

Some of the information tested was wrong, due to a mistake by the Liberal Party, which paid all the compensation as a result.

Mr Textor apologised because he felt it right to do so, but he was not responsible for the error himself.

Of course some will think the facts no place in this debate, but even Australians deserve the truth told about them!

The NBR also had this item in their satire column. I think they stole it off a blog!:

ROSENEATH, July 11, 2008—Investigative Researcher Nicky Hager was poised this week to publish his most explosive report yet showing that, under a secret health policy plan drawn up by Crosby Textor and already secretly approved by National Party leader John Key, every last man, woman and child currently alive in New Zealand could expect to be dead by 2140.

This is the shock finding of more than a half-year of surveillance of Mr Key by the author of the best-selling Hollow Men, who said this week that the “catastrophic” nature of the finding dwarfed earlier revelations of secret American bagmen, GE-contamination and the private romantic lives of conservative MPs.

“This is something the National Party really doesn’t want you to think about, but think about it you must,” Hager warned. “Under this secret policy, the horrific reality is that four million New Zealanders who are currently happily alive will all be dead and buried, in little more than a century.”

He continued, “Some of my friends in the Labour Party like to call the Tory leader Slippery John, but my name for him is The Grim Reaper John, because that is what he is: the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse, the candidate whose name is death!”