I think most people would look quite shit in one way or another if all their personal communication was made public. Finger needs to be pointed at those that hack and print IMO
For all the big talk on email, this National "attack unit" really didn't have many big wins did it?
Can't understand why Collins and Ede aren't under a bus right now
Hager's big problem with this book is that as a piece of investigative journalism it's fairly poor quality. The emails themselves are of course interesting, but he's not attempted to independently verify the allegations he makes, and has relied on the stolen emails in totality. That means (1) it's easy to retort with a charge of hypocrisy that the emails were stolen and (2) some of the stories in reality were less interesting than implied by the emails which puts a question mark around the whole thing. Slater is a rat bag and a pretty unpleasant individual but he talks a far bigger game than he walks
Hager has made a pretty good fist of explaining this. If he had sought comment prior to publication, he would have been tied up in injunction proceedings indefinitely. The book would never have been published.
So yes, it makes it easy to knock back as a "smear" but he didn't have a load of options.
And it was information that had a genuine public interest, which he released in a thoughtful and contextualised way. Rosemary McLeod in the Dom today has fired up and said that she doesn't consider Hager a journalist, just a commentator. That is enormously unfair and quite wrong. I find it ironic coming from a masthead like the DomPost which doesn't really do journalism any more.
This is a good read for anyone who is interested, it's written by Hagar's lawyer.