Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Did Stuff make the right call publishing the Tom Phillips audio?

I'm baffled by the Police Commissioner writing that open letter telling off Stuff today.

You probably missed this thing when it actually happened, which was back in September, but in the week that Tom Phillips was shot and the kids were saved from the bush, Stuff got its hands on some of the audio of the police chase, and they published it.

And they got in trouble with the coppers immediately, and then the cops started an investigation into Stuff.

Today, the police boss, Richard Chambers has written an open letter in both main newspaper outlets - as in the Stuff guys and the New Zealand Herald, saying the police have decided not to charge Stuff, but don't do this again, it's really, really bad.

Now, I cannot explain to you why Richard Chambers thought this was a good idea - because either way you look at this, this is not a good look.

I mean, it either looks like he's trying to bully the media into being good boys and girls, or he hasn't got the cojones to actually do the thing that he's threatened and just go and prosecute Stuff.

But what's even weirder about it is - I just don't think that this warranted the cops getting this vexed about it.

I mean, as I said, you probably missed it when it happened, because the audio wasn't that interesting. It was mildly informative, because it told us that the police officer who got shot was alone and exposed like we suspected.

And it showed how he got in touch with various members of the community, locals, to find out if they could hear Tom Phillips on the quad bike, so that he could track Phillips down.

But really, other than that, it wasn't interesting enough to draw public attention to it again - unless of course, you are trying to bully Stuff.

And while I think this audio wasn't that interesting, I did find it refreshing, actually, to have a media outlet be brave for once and publish something that the authorities didn't want them to publish and tell the public something that the authorities didn't want them to know - basically doing their job.

So on the whole, I think I'm on the side of Stuff on this one. Mainly because I don't like what this looks like, which is the police trying to publicly shame them for doing their job.

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