Investi-ma-gative journalism

Avid Herald readers and the unemployed may have read this story in yesterday's paper, presented in true NZWW style: "'I worked hard but may lose my home'". It's the story of one Bruce Burgess, an engineer who fears he may lose his home after losing his job. The point of the article is that Mr Burgess cannot get the dole as his wife earns tuppence a week - putting the household over the threshold for eligibility.

Bruce Burgess, 60 years old and a qualified engineer, has been busy his entire adult life. Aside from a couple of years overseas in the early 1970s, he has worked, paid his taxes and saved his money.

His wife Jo has held down regular work as an office administrator and accounts person. Neither of them smoke, they don't take extravagant holidays, and drink only occasionally.

Oh, they don't drink or smoke? Read: white middle-class. Welcome back the Victorian concept of the 'worthy poor'. Anyway, the article, by David Eames, gives the impression of a bit of good old investigative journalism, something that, as I'm sure EtH readers will know, is sadly missing from a lot of the Herald's output. Even if it is presented as a 'women's' magazine sob story.

So far, so good. So imagine my surprise when I see the unemployed face of Mr Burgess staring out at me again, this time from a front page article. What now, I thought? Woman done left him? Nope. Hound dog gone and died? Try again. Implicated in a leftist plot to fool the media and influence government policy? Bingo!

An unemployed man put forward by the Labour Party as one who would benefit from its policy to pay the dole to people whose partners are still earning owns two properties worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in addition to his lifestyle block.

[...] Labour had told the Herald about his plight, but did not mention that he and his wife own a house in Papakura and an apartment in Auckland City.

Wait, what? "Put forward by the Labour Party"? The article is entitled "Goff's jobless man owns other property", as though Burgess had pulled off a rubber mask to reveal the unmistakable visage of the Monopoly Guy. How is he Goff's jobless man? I thought this story was the Herald's scoop? In fact, I couldn't remember reading anything in the original story about the Labour party at all, so I decided to check it on the website:

But about four months ago, Mr Burgess - whose case was brought to the Herald's attention by the Labour Party - lost his Avondale-based engineers job - and with it a $750-a-week paycheck.

That's really odd, I thought - I'm sure I don't remember reading that before. Fortunately for me and, usually, the Herald, I buy the print edition, and it's still sitting on the musty pile of newsprint on my desk. 10 points if you can guess what that paragraph says:



Skullduggery! It seems that at 2.31pm yesterday, just as the Herald "learned" about Mr Burgess's burgeoning capitalist empire, David Eames or whoever the malevolent force behind APN is (in my mind's eye he looks like Dick Dastardly) edited the article to make it very clear that this was not the Herald's story after all. Hmm. What was the name of that other journalist who quietly changed the past to avoid embarrassment? That's right: Stalin.

'Dishonest' is one word that would describe this kind of journalism. Another is 'rubbish'. But it's not the only thing wrong with this story, an early frontrunner for 'worst article' in the 1st Annual EtH Awards. With my keen news-sense, I've become more and more aware of the phenomenon I have termed 'frowny-face journalism' in the Herald. A subset of the more general human interest story, frowny-face journalism takes some boring, abstract, impersonal policy change or social problem, takes a big photo of some sad children whose playcentre is closing, an old couple who are being forced out of their subsidised housing or, in this case, a recently unemployed man losing his home(s). This way, readers automatically know what to think about the story - generally 'awwwww'. This is bad enough in itself, but there is an added danger: that of taking the analogy between the sad individual and the social issue too far.

This is exactly what has happened in Eames's second article today. Goodness me, Bruce Burgess, aka Rich Uncle Pennybags, owns (with a mortgage) a second property! He doesn't need the dole after all! Therefore, no one who has been made redundant and whose partner is still earning needs any money. The Herald seems to be suggesting that everyone who is jobless with a working partner owns another property. One thing is for certain: this will be the last article in a while advocating a change to the dole structure.

One final point. Far from the quasi-investigative journalism that was implied in the original article, today's piece gives the impression that the Herald simply picked up the story at the behest of Phil Goff and ran it without doing any background checking. Is this really better? Personally, I would have thought that just running a story handed to you by a political party was sloppy, unethical journalism, but what would I know? I haven't been to journalism school.

New Zealand Woman's Daily

Great news, people. Your favourite APN publication, the New Zealand Woman's Weekly, now comes out every weekday, in a large format, and with a new, low cover price of only $1.80. I discovered this change this morning when I saw saw the story "Prayers for a playful sister hit by bus" by the Herald's 'police reporter'.

Shweta and Sharleen Chand were yesterday praying for their big sister to be okay.

Family members told the sisters, aged 10 and 5, that 15-year-old Shateel had a "cut on her head" after being struck by a bus in Mt Wellington yesterday.

"We just say [in prayer] please help our sister," Shweta told the Herald yesterday from their grandparents' home.

She and Sharleen were looking forward to seeing their big sister who always looked out for them and was "really playful".

[...] Speaking to the Herald from hospital, Shateel's father, Rakesh Chand, said more than a dozen friends and relatives were at her side, praying for her to pull through.

Well done on turning a traffic injury, albeit a very serious and tragic one, into a front-page human interest story from the lowest drawer. Why the 'police reporter' wrote this story - apart from the fact that there are about four reporters left at the Herald these days - is beyond me; only two paragraphs mention the police at all. There is far more mention of praying, making it surely more relevant to the Herald's religion correspondent.

Milan Maharaj, 15, said she couldn't believe it when she heard her close friend had been in the accident.

"I saw police cars and a man told me that a 12-year-old girl was hit by a car and I was relieved it wasn't [Shateel] because I know she comes this way and because they said she was 12," she said.

Except it wasn't a 12-year-old. And it was Shateel. Which makes this an odd comment to put in the article. Oh well! Got to fill up the space somehow!

Milan had spoken to Shateel on the phone the night before about joining her Indian dance class.

'Her' dance class? Wait, Milan's or Shateel's? Oh, what's the point - clarity of style in the Herald is the least of my worries.

Anyway, the incident looks to have been an accident, although the investigation is ongoing. But the Herald isn't willing to stop there. In a sidebar piece entitled 'Sad Toll' (part of the same article online), they try to imply (or I try to infer...) that there is some bigger issue here than a tragic injury to a young girl. Four pedestrians (not counting Shateel, who is in critical condition at time of writing) have died in Auckland in the last 10 years after being hit by buses - not a particularly disproportionate number, it seems to me, given that they are massive, fast-moving chunks of metal relatively common on Auckland's roads. One person tripped and fell in front of a bus; another walked out onto the road in front of one. If there were some systemic reason why people are being hit by buses - poor training of drivers or slack maintenance, say - then of course that's a matter of public interest that should be on the front page of the paper. But, to me, there seems to be no evidence of anything other than 'shit happens' - people are going to walk onto the road, and sometimes buses are going to be on that road. Mining a family's grief for circulation and then half-heartedly trying to make some public safety issue out of nothing doesn't seem like responsible journalism to me.

Surprise surprise.

Toe-to-toe celeb action

Firstly, let me direct your attention to this article from the front page of today's Herald: "Celebs go toe-to-toe on smacks". It's such an astoundingly poor article that I have to resort to bullet point form to get my points across.

• First there's the vexing question of why we should care about celebrities' opinions on smacking. In fact, don't people hate it when Nanny Celebs tell them what to think? And for God's sake - Simon Barnett? The man whose explanation for going on Celebrity Treasure Island was that God, having originally advised Barnett against it, changed His mind (as He is wont to do - cf. the Flood) and told him to go ahead? The man whose late-night Face The Music repeats got many a stoner through wee-hours boredom?

• Just how are they - Barnett and actor Robyn Malcolm - going "toe-to-toe"? Oh, they're not. What they have done is "lined up as rival celebrities" for next month's smacking referendum. You remember the one - the waste of time with a ridiculous question that the Prime Minister has already said he will ignore. The very wording of the article makes it sound like 'Rival Celebrity' is some sort of official position, like being Official Photocopying Supplier of the All Blacks. Perhaps they will in fact go toe-to-toe in some sort of gladiatorial combat, although should that happen I fear for Malcolm's chances; Barnett has shown that he is not afraid to use violence in the name of discipline, and Malcolm's strategy, however honourable, of "hanging out the washing" when faced with youthful intransigence will be no match for a brutal Barnett beating.

• Attn: social issues reporter Simon Collins. Firstly, it's more of an entertainment story than a social issues story. More importantly, although I'm proud that you've stopped referring to the section 59 amendment as the anti-smacking law, calling it the "anti-smacking" law is only a marginal improvement - cf. ear-flick father and "ear-flick" father.

• Well done to the Herald online team, who have successfully turned a story about nothing into a 'vote for your fave celeb' on Your Views: "Who is right in the child discipline debate? Robyn Malcolm or Simon Barnett?" Current highlight:

  paul (Auckland Central): In the wild lets say a mother wolf, gives its young a nip when they get out of line, this is how the young learn. I dont see why things should be any different in our society.

Gah.

Hi Mum

Whenever my mother reads my blog, she always says the same thing: "It's very good, James, [ahem] but why can't you ever say something nice?"

So here goes - there is a good column on prison reform by the consistently excellent Tapu Misa in today's Herald. There, I've said it. I'd love to see her and Garth George chewing the fat at the Herald Christmas party.

Of course, anything that enrages the hypocrites - violent crime is A-OK when it's a middle class white man stabbing a brown kid to death - and sociopaths at the Sensible Sentencing Trust get the EtH seal of approval. So, sticking with the general theme, here's my attempt at influencing Google:

KEYWORDS: "sensible sentencing trust" "hypocrisy" "lazy journalism" "garth mcvicar" "rent-a-quote" "throw away the key" "wankers"

(Sorry Mum.)

Irony

Hi.

It’s nice to see that, during my recent winter hibernation period, other people have stepped up to the plate, so to speak, to criticise the “tasteless drivel” in our media. The Herald today publishes an opinion piece by one Ian Bayly that particularly critiques TV One, our supposed ‘public interest’ broadcaster.

The one aspect of contemporary life in New Zealand that I found most disappointing was the degenerate state of TV programmes. […] With respect to some sort of balanced presentation of significant world events in the main evening presentation of news, New Zealand's TV One is significantly worse than the main commercial TV channels (7 and 9) in Australia. In my view, TV One has lost the plot, and if it is to be considered New Zealand's TV flag-bearer, it is a disgrace to the nation.

Strong words indeed, and not a moment too soon. But what were the worst excesses of TV One during the time you were watching, Ian?

On the first evening, TV One managed to devote the whole of the first six minutes of news to the late Michael Jackson. The station management had apparently formed the judgment that the most significant thing that had happened in the world during the preceding 24 hours was the unseemly circus surrounding the death of an egocentric, drug-crazed weirdo who had contributed nothing significantly beneficial to humanity. [As opposed to Dr Bayly, a zoologist who has a bay in Antarctica named after him.]

Thereafter, TV One revisited, like a dog returning to its vomit, the Michael Jackson circus every night, for significant periods, for the next 11 nights. On July 8, the whole of the first 14 minutes was devoted exclusively to the circus - yes, it was so important that it was uninterrupted by commercials. But that wasn't the finish of it - they returned to it again for another two minutes during the news.

Personally, I got just as bored by people complaining about the Michael Jackson coverage as I did by the coverage itself. It’s not like someone of Jackson’s stature dies every day, or even every year, so moaning about a week or so of heavy coverage seems a bit precious. And anyway, what exactly did Michael Jackson push off the bulletin? Tap-dancing owls and Angelina Jolie adopting a chicken.

But that can’t be my real point in this instance, seeing as watching the television news myself makes me want to jump headfirst off a news-cliff. Instead, my question is this: what kind of news organisation would devote such heavy coverage to the death of a single celebrity entertainer?

When in Tonga...

Dear Lord. I hadn't really intended on writing anything today, but then I came across this gem on the Herald website. I haven't been reading or watching any news - the doctor says it's bad for my blood pressure - but it seems that John Key is visiting Tonga. This seems like the perfect opportunity for some hard-hitting political journalism. How will the trip impact on our relationships in the Pacific, our geographical hinterland? How will Key deal with the constitutional change going on there?

Royal etiquette in Tonga demands many things - among them, standing for photos to be taken in a nonchalant pose with your visitors and pretending the cameras aren't there. No questions are to be asked and no interaction had.

Well, ok. I guess that brings up some constitutional issues. Let's continue.

The King had released the royal "corgis" for the occasion - Poobah - a low-slung, rotund beast of black fur and indeterminate breeding and Estelle, a wire-haired Jack Russell, who did at least have the colouring of a corgi.

While Mr Key stood beside Tonga's King George Tupou V on the lawn for photos after their first meeting, Estelle bounded about leaping on both the reporters and the dignitaries pretending they weren't having their photos taken.

Poobah concentrated on hustling Estelle away before grovelling for pats for himself.

This isn't in the lifestyle section, if you were wondering. It's by a Herald political correspondent. We are then told that Poobah - "presumably named after his rather haughty namesake in the Mikado" - has allegedly "damaged five SUVs". This seems more in line with serious journalism; after all this is the sort of ecoterrorism that could see Poobah spending up to 22 years in prison.

I could go on, like the reporter does, about the dogs and the jokes the king told - oh, the times they had! - but it's one of those situations where I just don't know what to write. I'm sure I've said it before: it's like spoofing a spoof. When political reporting is this... wait, is this completely unironic, or is it so dripping with irony that it just seems that way? Anyway, when political reporting is like this, there's not much you can do but shake your head. Or write about it on a blog for cheap laughs.

To be fair, the article does treat some of the heavier issues at the end (presumably after most Herald readers have stopped reading):

Of the incident of the trousered women [not being allowed onto the royal compound], Mr Key took a diplomatic stance, noting it was a deeply conservative country and the wardrobe etiquette was signalled well enough in advance to have given his wife Bronagh - accompanying him on the trip - some anxious moments.

"Each country has its own standards, There needs to be an acknowledgement that Tonga is a very religious and quite conservative country.

"Yes, it is evolving and coming of age in the way we might see things but it wouldn't be for New Zealand to dictate what is appropriate attire or standards in other countries."

Progress being made elsewhere - including the King's determination to pass the constitutional and electoral changes that will dilute his own powers - also impressed Mr Key, and so he finished with some with some wardrobe advice of his own:

"I think you've got to take your hat off to the King."

Phew, that was close. You almost made a serious point.

Shit happens

So clearly, things have been going down. Fortunately, they are things that, at least in the medium- and long-term have rekindled my passion for slogging through the Herald every day when I could be undergoing waterboarding instead.

Mainly, I got a fulltime job, instead of my louche layabout position at the University. I'm starting a new position... at the University. Interestingly, the lapse in posting has been in anticipation of starting work, rather than due to any actual work demands. I'm confident that, once I start, I will have both the time, the discipline and the enthusiasm to keep going. But, you know, whatever.

But that's not all. I've heard from an internal source - let's call him GG - that there will be an exciting new development on the Herald website at some time tomorrow - a redesign! Better news, more profound opinions, whites whiter, colours brighter, etc.

Anyway, this is just so no one thinks that the blog (or its author) has died. Regular communication will start sometime between now and next Monday.