This may partly explain why the current President of the US can be so openly corrupt and rotten, and still remain in power. The shallowest man to ever sit in the Oval Office is so obviously on the take from corporate and foreign interests, including several awful dictatorships, but makes no secret about it all, and relishes in the attention. It's so hard to bring down somebody with absolute no shame.
But many people in power try to hush up an embarrassing story and do it so badly, and hurt themselves so much, by putting themselves under the microscope. If you're trying to get away with something, you need to draw as little attention to yourself as possible.
In other words, don't get some journalists who are asking questions about you thrown in jail, you stupid fucking wankers.
The arrest of the Newsroom team in Fiji while they were chasing down a meaty story last week was a breathtakingly stupid move, and whatever the people who were responsible for it were thinking, it was a massive mistake.
It was a strong enough story anyway, and they were there to interview a Chinese resort developer accused of environmental desecration of an island in the Mamanucas, and Newsroom was obviously going to go big and get the word out about this story when they were ready to publish.
But now everybody is looking at the story to see what was worth that kind of attention, and any corruption is going to be exposed. Because if you're scared enough to put people in a Fijian jail for a night, you're got something big to be ashamed of.
It's still a bit unclear who ultimately gave the order for the arrests, and the local authorities are already throwing the usual rogue patsies under the bus, but it's hard to understand what they thought they would gain from such action. Did they think that the journos involved would all be so intimidated by the arrest that they would stop digging into the story, and just go home and forget about it?
Have they.... Have they met Melanie Reid?
Even Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama- no stranger to his own huge PR blunders, and always willing to look the other way when his own critics are threatened to keep quiet - knew what a bad look this was, especially with an increasingly complex political environment in the Pacific right now, and immediately started sending out the apologies. Even Frank knows that you can't hush up professional journalists that way.
Beyond the specifics of this case, there is no self-respecting journo who is ever going to drop a story after being treated in such a heavy-handed way, and will double down on their efforts after such clumsy bullying.
To be incarcerated in such a manner is a badge of fucking honour - it means you're the best of the best, willing to give up your freedom to get at the truth, and it means the stories you are covering are big and worthy.
The Newsroom team got more than some midnight munchies form McDonalds from their night behind bars, they got the impetus and justification to follow this story through, right to the very end. And we'll all be watching them do it.
- Katherine Grant
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