{"id":392137,"date":"2026-04-22T13:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T13:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/392137\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T13:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T13:04:15","slug":"southland-mp-plans-media-complaint-over-leak-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/392137\/","title":{"rendered":"Southland MP plans media complaint over leak claim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Southland National MP Joseph Mooney says he plans to make a complaint to the Media Council over an &#8220;outrageous breach of journalistic standards&#8221; by Newstalk ZB&#8217;s flagship host.<\/p>\n<p>In a weekly interview with Mike Hosking on Monday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said there were five MPs in caucus he believed to be moaning to the media.<\/p>\n<p>The following day Hosking named who he believed those MPs to be, including Mooney.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mooney took to social media today to say he hadn&#8217;t leaked &#8220;nor do I know anyone else who did&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">To be very clear:  I did not leak a story to the media.  Nor do I know anyone else who did.<\/p>\n<p>Beware of radio jocks seeking relevance who claim \u201cimpeccable sources\u201d and rush out scurrilous claims on national media &#8211; without even bothering to approach me or anyone else to ask for\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Joseph Mooney MP (@JosephMooneyMP) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JosephMooneyMP\/status\/2046673908544438778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">April 21, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Beware of radio jocks seeking relevance who claim &#8216;impeccable sources&#8217; and rush out scurrilous claims on national media &#8211; without even bothering to approach me or anyone else to ask for comment before doing so. Not even an attempt at &#8216;balance&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am going to be making a complaint to the Media Council about this outrageous breach of journalistic standards.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I dare Mr Hosking to name his impeccable source &#8211; because I know for a fact that &#8216;he&#8217; is full of it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a01News-Verian poll at the weekend showed the coalition government, made up of National, NZ First and Act, would be out of power.<\/p>\n<p>National was on just 30% approval and Luxon, the leader of the party, dipped four points to 16% in the preferred prime minister stakes.<\/p>\n<p>Luxon took the extraordinary move of\u00a0calling a motion of confidence in himself\u00a0at a caucus meeting yesterday, following intense media speculation about his position.<\/p>\n<p>The meeting involved a secret ballot with anonymous voting. While successful for Luxon, he refused to take questions about it afterwards, or say if the vote was unanimous.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southland National MP Joseph Mooney says he plans to make a complaint to the Media Council over an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-392137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}