Do as I say, not as I do
Cameron Slater reveals:
Siouxsie Wiles is everywhere in the media at the moment. The Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year and The Spinoff contributor is used by almost every media outlet to push her health messaging. Indeed, that is why she won the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year award.
But it turns out that the New Zealander of the Year and The Spinoff contributor is a rank hypocrite along the same lines as Neil Ferguson was in the UK. Ferguson was famously busted breaking lockdown rules by visiting his girlfriend against the advice that he himself had given and the regulations of the UK Government. …
Except Siouxsie Wiles isn’t following her own advice. On Friday 3 September, while Auckland was still in Level Four lockdown, she was seen “hanging around and having a chat” with a journalist at Judges Bay in Parnell.
Worse still, the video The BFD has obtained clearly shows Siouxsie Wiles sitting in close proximity to the journalist, and neither is wearing a mask. …
Also unanswered were questions regarding the breaching of Level Four regulations by going for a swim. Siouxsie Wiles is clearly conversing in the water with her friend who is swimming in clear contravention of lockdown rules.
There’s three issues here.
- Did Wiles and the other party (who might also be a scientist, not a journalist) break any laws. There is a case that they broke laws on mask wearing, staying local, breaking your bubble and swimming. There are defences to the first three, but not really for the last one.
- Has Wiles contradicted her own advice, and is open to charges of hypocrisy. Yes, beyond doubt.
- Is this an issue that the media should have run with? Well she is the Kiwibank NZer of the Year due to her science communications around the pandemic, she is as an advisor to the PM and one of the most prominent voices in the media telling us what we all should be doing for the sake of the public health, so I think it is no doubt this is a newsworthy story.
The video above contrasts the huge gulf between the advice given by Wiles, and her actions.
This story was given to 1News journalist Benedict Collins. After sitting on the story for five days he informed my source that they had spiked the story. The reason given was that it wasn’t a politician so there was no public interest in the story. Make no mistake, this story was suppressed by an editor at 1News.
If the person concerned with say an obscure ACT List MP (ie someone with no real power or influence), you can bet that TVNZ and all other mainstream media would be running this for days on end as a major story. But instead, they all ignore it.