Last year, former Green MP Benjamin Doyle was subject to online rumour and speculation<\/a> about some dubious social media posting before coverage hit the mainstream.<\/a> <\/p>\n Police issued formal warnings to four individuals for breaches of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 in relation to Doyle, who has since left Parliament.<\/p>\n This week, right-wing warriors expressed disgust at how mainstream media (in fact very few) reported an unsubstantiated story about the Samoan Prime Minister saying Christopher Luxon had sought a matai title, a claim denied by Luxon<\/a> and since retracted by the Samoan Prime Minister.<\/p>\n The same week, the same warriors expressed disgust at how mainstream media was ignoring claims against Labour leader Chris Hipkins by his ex-wife, Jade Paul.<\/p>\n Most would call that hypocrisy.<\/p>\n On Monday, a variation in the pattern occurred. After the claims by Jade Paul were posted on Facebook, mainstream media published stories saying allegations had been made<\/a> by his ex-wife, with most choosing not to repeat the substance of them. Anyone reading or listening to the stories would have been left with a big question: What is Hipkins\u2019 ex-wife alleging?<\/p>\n In my view, it goes against one of the fundamentals of traditional journalistic practice, which is to not run a story that poses more questions than answers.<\/p>\n Do we really want to see more stories about rumours and allegations without the detail \u2013 sending readers back to social media to find it for themselves?<\/p>\n There have always been rumours in Parliament, across the political spectrum and down the decades. The behaviour of MPs, rumours of affairs among colleagues, affairs with staffers, affairs across the aisle, and affairs with staffers across the aisles. <\/p>\n Some of those have done the rounds in Wellington in the past year, supposedly involving coalition MPs. Some have been repeated on social media. To date, none of the rumours I am aware of have met what I believe is the public interest threshold. If they did, journalists should and would investigate them. <\/p>\n By the way, here\u2019s the thing about the partisans castigating the media for treading carefully on Jade Paul\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n If the shoe was on the other foot, and the media avoided reporting rumours about MPs that those partisans support, they would not be accusing media of bias in the way they are now.<\/p>\n The reason journalistic norms didn\u2019t apply in this case was no doubt threefold: <\/p>\n Almost certainly because of legal advice that repeating the claims would leave media companies exposed to potential legal action.Hipkins is the alternative Prime Minister and the public interest in his character is higher.It was his former wife making the allegations, not some random posting anonymously. <\/p>\n It may not have reached the threshold it did if Hipkins had been a backbencher, or if it had been an anonymous post. But the fact his ex-wife was making such serious claims was too big to ignore.<\/p>\n Jade Paul\u2019s post suggests she is very unhappy with Hipkins, that she had some awful health episodes when they were together, that she felt neglected by him at crucial times, and that she felt he put work first. <\/p>\n They may have had arguments about money after separating, but Hipkins\u2019 parents, Rose and Doug, also appear to have supported her at various times.<\/p>\n We won\u2019t hear Hipkins\u2019 version of events because he has chosen not to litigate the minutiae of their marriage in public.<\/p>\n Suffice to say, his blanket denials are almost certainly not about some of the facts, but of her characterisation of them and what was going on in his mind at the time. <\/p>\n That is not actually something he can prove or disprove in 2026.<\/p>\n One of the questions Hipkins answered at a press conference yesterday was about an allegation from Paul about \u201can intern and an affair\u201d. <\/p>\n Hipkins replied: \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of public record that Toni interned in my office many many years ago, that was back in about 2010. I met Jade in 2013. My relationship with Toni started in 2023 \u2013 over a year after Jade and I had separated.\u201d <\/p>\n He said there was \u201cabsolutely not\u201d a relationship with Toni during the time he was with Jade. And asked whether he had a relationship with Toni years ago when she was an intern, he said \u201cno\u201d.<\/p>\n Jade Paul and Chris Hipkins had their two children, now aged about 10 and 7, before getting married in 2020 \u2013 just before Covid-19 struck. He was made Health Minister halfway through that year and the pair split in 2022.<\/p>\n Hipkins became Prime Minister in 2023 and revealed his new relationship with Grace in October \u2013 on election night.<\/p>\n He was on holiday with her in Australia this week when Paul, on holiday in Fiji with the kids, decided to vent.<\/p>\n The closest historical comparison to Paul\u2019s posts was the phone call Naomi Lange made to a newspaper in 1989 to reveal that her husband David Lange was having an affair with speech-writer Margaret Pope, whom he later married.<\/p>\n While it was something that was not in the public interest at the time \u2013 he had already stepped down as Prime Minister \u2013 it was most certainly something the public was interested in reading about.<\/p>\n One of the worst times for personal warfare over private lives occurred in 2006 when Don Brash led National in Opposition and Helen Clark was leading Labour in its third term.<\/p>\n Brash\u2019s marriage break-up spilled into the public because an NBR journalist found out that a National MP, Brian Connell, had confronted Brash at a caucus meeting about an affair and questioned his fitness to lead.<\/a> That brought it into the realm of the public interest as well as interesting to the public.<\/p>\nRosemary and Doug Hipkins, Chris Hipkins’ parents, at their home in Raumati South. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n