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Ryan Bridge: Don't believe everything you read · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The problem with writing books and not fact-checking them properly
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: is that you get yourself tangled in knots. At best,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: forced to apologise. At worst, sued. I haven't read the
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: one launched in Wellington yesterday because I haven't got a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: copy of it. I watched the press conference. I watched
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the stand-up afterwards. There was one allegation made, of note,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: that has been denied by the current and past board
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: chairs of the taxpayers' union. But writing a book based
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: on interviews with people without proper fact-checking or documentation is
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: fraught business. Due diligence goes a long way. Look no
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: further than Earl Spencer, Princess Diana's brother, who wrote a
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: book writing off Charles as some sort of giddy widow. Well,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: also in his book, he claimed Piers Morgan was in
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: part behind the taking of photos of Diana attending gym
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: class in a leotard with a secret camera. The problem
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: for Spencer... Had he bothered to check was that Pearce
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: was not in fact the editor of the Mirror newspaper
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the book assumed him to be until two years after
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the photos were taken. Pearce was ropeable, Spencer forced to apologise.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It should serve as fair warning that whether it's penned
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: in London or Wellington, you can't believe everything that is
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: written down.