\u201cFirst of all, I am not a journalist,\u201d Hosking said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSecond of all, I don\u2019t have sources. Somebody told me this, and I know that they know … they didn\u2019t say off the record. I said, \u2018Who are they?\u2019 and they went \u2018bing, bing, bing, bing and bing.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how widely these names are known because I don\u2019t care and I haven\u2019t inquired but I have impeccable sources.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his Facebook post on Tuesday evening, Mooney said he had received an apology from ZB and thanked the station for it. <\/p>\n
He attached to his Facebook post the opening sentences of a letter from ZB, which states: \u201cDear Mr Mooney, Thank you for your patience while we have reviewed your complaint. <\/p>\n
\u201cHaving reviewed the matter, we acknowledge that the allegation that you were one of the five National Party \u2018leakers\u2019 should have been put to you for comment prior to the broadcast. Accordingly, Newstalk ZB has upheld your complaint internally. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have also spoken to the team and reminded them of their editorial obligations.\u201d<\/p>\n
National Party leader Christopher Luxon and Southland MP Joseph Mooney in Queenstown. Photo \/ Derek Cheng<\/p>\n
Media Insider understands that three of the other four MPs named by Hosking – Bayly, Uffindell and van de Molen – also complained to Newstalk ZB and have received a similar response.<\/p>\n
Despite Mooney\u2019s social media post stating there was an apology, an NZME source said this was not the case.<\/p>\n
Mooney told Media Insider on Tuesday night that this was semantics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI posted the substantive thing they said to me … I see it as an apology. If they don\u2019t see it as an apology, that\u2019s semantics. Frankly … people can draw their own conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is understood ZB has left open an invitation to Mooney to discuss the allegations on Hosking\u2019s show.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he wants to identify who his Deep Throat source was – I\u2019m being a little, a little bit allegorical there – then for sure, but otherwise I don\u2019t see much value in doing it,\u201d Mooney said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to draw a line under it. It was a pretty dumb thing that they did in my view, but they have at least acknowledged that the process they went through – that they should have at least spoken to us first.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I see it, that\u2019s an apology. If they want to play semantics to say it\u2019s not, that\u2019s up to them, but we\u2019ve got more important things to worry about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mooney said in his social media post: \u201cI hope this leads to more robust adherence to good fundamental journalistic standards going forwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t intend to take it any further.\u201d<\/p>\n
As media speculation swirled around Luxon\u2019s leadership in April, he won a vote of confidence from his caucus.<\/p>\n
An NZME spokeswoman said on Tuesday night: \u201cOur response speaks for itself. We don\u2019t have anything to add.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand\u2019s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including managing editor, NZ Herald editor and Herald on Sunday editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a broadcast in April, Hosking named the five MPs as Mooney, Andrew Bayly, Sam Uffindell, Tim van…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1554,3595,30701,42,196324,2936,227435,1073,1456,10136,3556,43,51026,1523,4762,40,38,41,39,13017,103112],"class_list":["post-445833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-alleged","tag-by","tag-complaints","tag-headlines","tag-hosking","tag-insider","tag-leakers","tag-media","tag-mike","tag-named","tag-national","tag-news","tag-newstalk","tag-over","tag-party","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-upholds","tag-zb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445833","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=445833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}