Today was the New Zealand First campaign launch, in Auckland. Tova O’Brien was obviously attending to cover it for TV3. NZF have never been well known on social media, apart from Asenati. But this doesn’t stop reporters using social media to get quotes out quickly.
Now I don’t know if this is an off the cuff comment form Winston, or it is was a drafted comment. Thanks to social media we know he was working on speeches the other day. If this was an off the cuff comment, in the past the public wouldn’t have known about it until the next news bulletin on radio or the 6pm news bulletin that night. That would give the party time to prepare on how to handle it so as to minimise the impact. However with social media, it is possible for quotes like this to make it out within seconds of them happening. This means that parties have less time to react. This is a good thing, it makes it harder for them to paper over the mistakes and misspeaks of their candidates and MPs.
As I pointed out the other day, with the Conservative Party website post, social media requires that parties up their games in all areas, including how to repsond when comments like this are made. It will be interesting to see if this quote makes it in to Tova’s story on the news tonight and how NZF handle it.
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