By Peter Boyes
Is anyone really
surprised that the New Zealand Herald has had to apologise unreservedly to the family and friends of Guy Boyland
following the incorrect use of two images in the newspaper paper and on the New
Zealand Herald website?
When I trained as a news journalist and TV presenter, some years ago
now, the accuracy of the story, the details of the what, where, when, why and
how of the piece were vital. As young journalists we feared and hated in equal
measure a strange breed known as the sub editor. We, of course, thought our
purple prose as perfect in every way. The sub editor knew better.
The seasoned old hacks whose job was to make sure our reports were clear,
correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent often struck fear into an
aspiring young Hemingway’s heart as they put a red pen through any suggestion
of florid inaccuracy. And any protest would invariably be met with a well rehearsed "make
it say what it means, and mean what it says".
Then there was the question of editorial judgement. My first news editor,
would apply a simple rule to whether the paper would run a story – she’d hook
her thumbs in her dungarees and ask `Is it sexy?’ It was her shorthand for the
old BBC Reithian principles of would it educate, inform and entertain.
The news media in New Zealand is often reported as being in its death
throes and there is no doubt that in some circles this latest incident will be
regarded as the dwindling thrashing of a mortally wounded beast. But before we
run through the gamut of the reasons our traditional media is dying and jump up
and down and blame the internet, let’s look at something more fundamental
that’s changed how we look at news.
In the years since I trained as a journalist, what has happened is that increasingly the
first two Reithian elements have fallen by the wayside. Educate and inform? Don't make me laugh. It's now only about entertainment. Simply put, nothing else matters.
New Zealand media commentator, Colin Peacock has described the process of news degradation in this country as: `news that's become condensed and morselised,
over-dramatised and under-contextualised. And more of it concerns relatively
trivial topics.’
Just leaf through the rest of
the print media or ponder on the dire state of TVNZ’s excuse for news coverage.
Nothing else matters except the question is it sexy, even if Peter Williams sometimes forces himself to ask it through gritted teeth. When you bring in the accountants and the
ratings analysts to monitor your news output, they are inclined to take a book
keeper’s approach that has no place for the traditions in journalism, such as
factual accuracy, balance and social responsibility.
The focus shifts from news as a product to the bottom-line. And the more
common and basic and bottom that bottom line is the better. As Henry Mencken, one of
America’s most influential journalists wrote: ‘no one ever went broke
underestimating the intelligence of the (American) public.’
New Zealand’s media managers are following in the footsteps of Larry
Tisch, the US hotel magnate and financier who took over CBS, overseeing its
decline as a news provider. He was sarcastically celebrated on the cover of
Esquire with the words, ‘Larry Tisch, who mistook his network for a
spreadsheet.’
News is just not a big money maker so it moves to the bottom of list of priorities. And no one complains, so it doesn’t become a political issue. It’s easier for our politicians to deal with short form commercial radio as an entertainment slot rather than an in depth analysis of their policies. When the New Zealand Prime Minister refers to a minor celebrity shock jock by a pet name, it's time to worry about the health of the fourth estate and it's ability to protect the third by holding the others to account. There’s every incentive to keep Radio New Zealand short of funds, pat TVNZ on the head and slap the New Zealand Herald around behind the scenes for impertinence.
News is just not a big money maker so it moves to the bottom of list of priorities. And no one complains, so it doesn’t become a political issue. It’s easier for our politicians to deal with short form commercial radio as an entertainment slot rather than an in depth analysis of their policies. When the New Zealand Prime Minister refers to a minor celebrity shock jock by a pet name, it's time to worry about the health of the fourth estate and it's ability to protect the third by holding the others to account. There’s every incentive to keep Radio New Zealand short of funds, pat TVNZ on the head and slap the New Zealand Herald around behind the scenes for impertinence.
In the meantime, local journalists and New Zealand stories are cut. It’s
cheaper to fill the space with syndicated reports, which is why we get stories
about relatively trivial incidents in the US on our TV. If there happens to be some
cheap overseas footage available, well it’s easier than sending a crew to
Nelson or even Auckland’s North Shore for something serious.
There is less in depth international coverage, the pieces are shorter
and softer and the news becomes bland and McDonalised. A colleague of mine has
just been made redundant as a sub editor on the New Zealand Listener after
almost thirty years. Have you tried to read it lately?
It’s not just the Listener. The same problems afflict much of the news output. Factual errors that would have been picked up
a good sub editor slip by. Spell check or an outsourced agency, in somes cases
overseas, with no understanding of the New Zealand context have replaced the informed
sub editor and we see spelling and grammar mistakes, typos and factual errors
proliferate in published pieces.
The new economics of news rooms requires that reporters piece together
stories from Google search, which means old errors are perpetuated and
multiply. There are no budgets to travel and interview real people so
consequently their voices often go unheard.
Not only that media businesses are disinclined to consider stories in
which they do not see a financial benefit. TVNZ’s move into advertorial
production through its Blacksand subsidiary is a move in a dubious direction
which is leading to a blurring of news values.
There is every incentive for preference in ‘news’ coverage to be given
to a commercial partner. Those singers or television/movie stars appearing on
the Breakfast or Good Morning are often there because they are part of an overall commercial relationship, promoting that relationship in an incestous cycle and distorting
what we see.
We hear a fair bit of criticism from ‘professional’ journalists and
politicians about bloggers such as Whaleoil and the peripatetic tribe of citizen
journalists that inhabit the web, but they are often the only watchdogs capable
of keeping what passes for the mainstream media connected with some vestigial
news values.
It is this new breed of reporter that increasingly breaks the news first
and highlights the mistakes and factual errors littering our media. In this
they are starting to set the news agenda, and provide interpretation and
analysis of issues and events instead of interviewing each other like the staff
at TVNZ or eliciting opposing quotes from pet pundits in the name of
‘objectivity’, which is the flavour of the moment at Radio New Zealand.
I've often said when I speak on media relations that up to sixty per cent of news output in New Zealand
is originally generated by public relations people. I argue that
this is because the skills exodus from mainstream journalism means that there
are more, better qualified news reporters in New Zealand PR consultancies than
are left in the media itself.
The most important differentiator of PR from advertising is the power of
the third party advocacy represented by editorial independence. If a PR agency
can persuade a media outlet of the importance of its client’s story as
compelling news, the coverage generated is, because of its ‘independence’, so
much more valuable than an advertised message. People believe it because it is on the news or in the paper.
The problem is that if there are no watchdogs left to police the media’s
output, making it say what it means, and mean what it says, is likely to be
powered by commercial self interest rather than news values.
And as that happens, the news itself becomes devalued and its use as a
PR medium ironically becomes less effective as no one believes anything anyone says any more.
