Scooped by Indymedia?

Just found a claim on Indymedia that:

The Dominion Post editor has been summons to the Auckland District Court to appear before Judge Perkins today for breaching the suppression order relating to the Operation 8 case.

According to Indymedia, the summons is for this DomPo article yesterday which describes evidence given in the depositions hearing for those arrested in police raids last year – all evidence is suppressed, which I commented on earlier.

Can’t find this in any other media yet though – has everyone else been scooped, or is Indymedia just tricking?

The DomPo of course, is just about to go to court for their earlier publication of materials the Solicitor General believes have damaged the ability of those arrested in the October raids to have a fair trial.

Today on A3 of the DomPo was an article I can’t seem to find online (perhaps unsurprisingly) so I’ll write it:

Urewera accused on vandal charge

One of the 18 people in court after the police anti-terrorism raids is facing fresh charges after a vandalism attack on a senior policeman’s car.

Detective Sergeant Aaron Pascoe, the officer in charge of the anti-terrorism case, said his car had the word “pig” scratched into its side yesterday.  Rubbish was dumped on top of the car while it was parked outside the courtroom and the car was spat on, he said.

Watene McClutchie, 34, of Whakatane, was arrested outside Auckland District Court about 11am yesterday.

He is at the court for a depositions hearing which will decide whether he and his 17 co-defendants will stand tril on Arms Act charges.

McClutchie was charged with wilful damage and resisting arrest.  He has pleaded not guilty.  Despite police opposition, Judge Elizabeth Aitken granted McClutchie bail…..

In contrast, Indymedia have described this incident very differently:

Watene had been arrested by a plain clothes police officer for supposedly scratching Aaron Pascoe’s car. The car had definitely been scratched, but there were several witnesses who saw the car scratched before Watene even got out of court.

There is also a link to an eye-witness account here. 

Both Indymedia and the eye-witness account are clearly partial – a point made by comments to the Indymedia site by visitors – but doesn’t the DomPo have a responsibility to give us a balanced report on this incident?  Which would include interviewing eye-witnesses?

Perhaps they did, and Indymedia are being economical with the truth.  Or perhaps the articles in the DomPo about the October raids are equally partial – and justify defence lawyers arguments for the need to suppress all evidence. 

I’m not a believer in objectivity as you know – dangerous myth invented by those who do not know their own biases – but it’s hard to argue for the public need to know in a case as important as this if we can’t trust the public will be any closer to ‘knowing’ after the media finish reporting.